A Nova Scotia man whose brother's family lives in Dallas, Texas, recounts this recent conversation the brother had with his daughter, a student in Grade Three: Father: We don't use the word "retarded" to describe people with developmental disabilities. Daughter: But Daddy, it's in my school book....
[NB: The following post contains language not intended for canine ears. Dog-ownerly discretion is advised.] From an ad posted in the "Services-Pets" section of Seattle's Craigslist: HEY RICH-ASS DOG OWNERS: Are you at the office 23 hours a day in a coke-fueled effort to squeeze every last penny out of your 20's and 30's? Are you going out of town with your post-divorce trophy-girlfriend to visit your slave ship collection in the Barbados? I AM YOUR DOG-WALKER I am the most radical, bitching, mind blowing dog- walking experience in all of Seattle. All dogs are STOKED when I'm around, regardless of breed or sex. Your dog...
[caption id="attachment_14762" align="alignwrap" width="550"] No sex please. We're university students.[/caption] A legal lynching took place Thursday at the hands of the media, Glen Canning, and the Mount Saint Vincent University administration. They and we should all feel a bit dirty. Michael Kydd, a part-time instructor at Mount Saint Vincent University, was suspended, then resigned, after he was found to have had a brief sexual relationship with a student. The student was 38 years old, Kydd is 40. The course was a distance education offering, the sex consensual. The woman says they were both going through a difficult patch—Kydd was separated from his wife and seeking a divorce—when they found comfort...
Yesterday I criticized Irwin Fefergrad, registrar of the Royal Ontario College of Dental Surgeons, for conducting a media blitz in which he passed premature judgment on the Dalhousie Dental School crisis, and chided the school administration for good measure. A reader with long and deep experience in government responded on Facebook: It has been quite a while since I looked at Administrative Law so I could be off base here. But I suspect Fefergrad has actually complicated his ability to protect the people of Ontario — and you are correct he has not yet been called upon to protect them from Dal's class of '15. Regulators' actions were...
As everyone knows by now, Dalhousie University is in crisis over a series of repulsive Facebook posts by certain male students in the fourth year of its dentistry program. The students' actions have provoked nearly universal anger and condemnation. Dalhousie President Richard Florizone is charged with sorting out the mess. His decision to proceed deliberately, in particular his support for a restorative justice process as opposed to a purely punitive one, has been criticized by many, supported by some. Florizone has been firm that any punishment, "must follow a just process—a process which is consistent with the law, with university policies, and which upholds...
Once in a while, they really nail it: From a column by Pravda contributor John Chuckman. H/T: Miriam Elder....
Bruce Wark is concerned about "the total costs of our car culture." I feel that deaths and injuries are a subset of those costs. I also feel that your argument with Tim [Bousquet] is rather narrow and that when it comes to overall transportation policy, you’re probably both on the same side. [See previous instalments here and here, on Halifax Examiner, here and here, and on twitter ad nauseam.] Although there have been improvements in fatality and injury rates, there is still a lot of suffering associated with car crashes. The Hamm government made things worse with those absurd changes to auto insurance...
[Video link] Twitter, Facebook, and the comment link have brought many responses to my post contesting Tim Bousquet's claim that contemporary society has simply accepted "high rates of road slaughter...
In 2000, my nephew Ingram Barss and I helped Ralph Coates of New Perlican, NL, build a scaled down version of a traditional Newfoundland trap skiff at the community-run Wooden Boat Museum in Winterton, a few kilometres down the Trinity Bay shore from Ralph's home. Like tens of thousands of Newfoundlanders before him, Coates went into the woods, found trunks and limbs with just the right shape to form the complex curves of the skiff's graceful hull, and created a sturdy vessel a fishermen could trust with his life—and his family's livelihood. In keeping with local tradition, the boat Coates built had no name. As folklorist David...
Canadian highway fatalities 1991 - 2010 Tim Bousquet, city-dwelling publisher of the lively Halifax Examiner, has let his hatred of the demon automobile get the better of him. In his latest anti-car screed, he writes: ...