While vacationing in the Lower 48, I’ve made the mistake of occasionally tuning into CBC Radio One on the internet. Nostalgia? Home-sickness? Stupidity? So it was that the morning newscast yesterday led off with a story on hydraulic fracking. No surprise, I guess, if it was to recount the latest controversy surrounding this petroleum recovery [...]
There are varied opinions about the Globe and Mail. One school of thought, likely favoured by the broadsheet itself, suggests it’s the national paper of record. Another view is that it is aimed at Toronto stockbrokers of a certain lifestyle. An article in yesterday’s Globe tends to support the latter interpretation, in fact it suggests [...]
Rather than just me being an antediluvian knuckle-dragger, apparently there is at least one other who has not internalized the environmental imperatives of the 21st century. This individual, for obvious reasons, requests anonymity. But he is willing to share his sordid experience with us. Naturally, DrJandMrK disavows any opinions reflected in this account. It is [...]
Anyone born after 1960 has their own views about following the Baby Boomers through their self-obsessed, self-declared “journey”. The pervasiveness of their music, fashion and politics has been much documented. Some of us have been following this from their real adolescence, through a second adolescence to, I guess, the inevitable second childhood. Nowhere is this [...]
Many Habs fans will be crying in indignation tonight at the news that their young power forward, Max Pacioretty, has been suspended for three games. NHL official Brendan Shanahan levied the punishment for his mid-ice hit on Pittsburgh’s Kris Letang Saturday night. Those readers aware of my own allegiances will wonder when the other shoe [...]
There’s a recent entertainment story relating how Star Wars‘ Yoda will be replaced with a computer-generated (CGI) image in the new Blu-ray release. This made me think about a related subject that’s been bugging me for a while now: when will the next Marx Brothers movie come out? No, seriously. The technology is rapidly advancing and, [...]
We trust that readers have received all the mail they think was delayed by the Canada Post strike. There was a strike wasn’t there? Lingering holidays have delayed me posting some interesting comments on public sector unions by friend-of-the-blog Rick B. Rick was a CAW shop steward and later a manager for a large multi-national, with [...]
In the interest of honest science I need to correct what I wrote last about the propagation of fractures in deep rock formations resulting from hydraulic fracturing. Thanks to friend of the blog Dan P. for this data. According to Dan’s work and study of the literature, which I find compelling enough to quote, “all [...]
The technicalities of shale gas may interest some of you as much as the drying of latex paint or the growth of Kentucky blue grass. Certainly the U.S. customs official looked bemused when he asked why I was travelling, and I answered “shale gas conference”. That said, the amount of gas now believed producible from [...]
I grew up with a kind of reverence for the news. On a car ride there’d be a loud shushing at the beginning of each radio newscast. The daily paper was held sacrosanct until the family elders had had a chance to digest it all. By university I was listening to or watching perhaps four [...]