My “Open Range” column from the September 2010 edition of Alberta Venture magazine:
Bound to fail, guaranteed to waste money

Of the ways suggested for Canada to cut greenhouse gas emissions, the most seductive is “cap and trade”. It’s hailed as being both effective at cutting emissions and economically efficient, minimizing costs while maximizing benefits. It’s conceptually [...]

My “Open Range” column from the August 2010 issue of Alberta Venture magazine:
The BP disaster shows that advertisers ignore authenticity at their customers’ peril
It was a widely hailed marketing coup, a much-talked-about case study and the biggest antler rack on the ad agency’s trophy wall. BP would no longer stand for the storied brand [...]

My “Open Range” column from the July 2010 issue of Alberta Venture magazine:
Over-reliance on processes, systems and modelling trumps human judgment
One reads with a sickening sense of impending doom the recent second-by-second accounts of the Deepwater Horizon’s final minutes and the lives that were torn apart and snuffed out. There’s more than enough tragedy and [...]

My Open Range column from the June 2010 issue of Alberta Venture magazine:
Black Bonanza author defends Alberta’s turf and pokes a stick at anti-oil sands crusaders
Was it only four years ago the Alberta government parked one of those monster oil sands trucks on the Washington Mall, within site of Congress? It was Alberta’s coming-out party: [...]

My Open Range column from the May 2010 issue of Alberta Venture magazine. Note: I didn’t write the sub-hed just below. My point in the text is that some accidents are unavoidable (although whether this one was isn’t germane to my argument).
An avoidable accident for sure, but nothing more
The terrified duckling raced about under the [...]

My Open Range column from the April 2010 issue of Alberta Venture magazine:
Alberta’s Deficit Requires Tough Politicians to Make the Tough Cuts
Cutting back offends something deep within human nature. Tightening one’s belt, making do with less, deciding not to buy something intensely desirable, switching to a lower grade – self-denial is immensely difficult. Like dragging [...]

My “Open Range” column from the March 2010 issue of Alberta Venture magazine:
One by one, the utopian dreams of yesteryear are getting spanked by hard truths
Within the space of three weeks, ministers in the Ed Stelmach government were recorded saying at least three things that appear…sensible. Also tough-minded, fitted to the circumstances and aimed at [...]

My Open Range column from the February 2010 issue of Alberta Venture magazine:
Self-employment is disparaged as something less than a job. It shouldn’t be
“I’ll tell ya, by the end of the last semester, one-third of my MBA class had become ‘entrepreneurs,’” the young robotics genius cackled as we rode a chair-lift on a snowy day [...]

My Open Range column from the January 2010 issue of Alberta Venture magazine:
Alberta’s Climate Change Strategy made sense when the facts and the budget supported it. No longer
As a voter and taxpayer, I was willing to give the Alberta government a pass on its Climate Change Strategy. This despite its $4-billion price tag, whiff of [...]

My Open Range column from the December 2009 issue of Alberta Venture magazine:
Behind the fatal stalling of the Mackenzie gas pipeline lies a web of intellectual conceits and deceits
The swine flu vaccination crisis brought millions of Canadian parents eyeball-to-eyeball with the spectre of losing a child virtually overnight. It clarified like few things could that [...]