test blog #10

I see a lot of excitement online, in places like Common Dreams and The Nation , and in my Facebook feed, about Bernie Sanders, supposedly remaking US politics, and Pope Francis, supposedly remaking the Roman Catholic Church. About Sanders, I shake my head and wonder why long-time Democrat voters do not see him and his candidacy for what it is. About the Pope, I wonder why progressive people allow themselves to care. Sanders is the new Dean Bernie Sanders has been praised as a maverick, an independent, and a socialist. All of which may have been true at various points in his political career. Right now Sanders is running for President  as a Democrat . He is not spearheading a movement to build a new alternative. He is not refusing corporate funding and appealing to the grassroots. He is not "challenging politics as usual," as headlines in progressive news sites often say. He is seeking the Democratic nomination, which means he will play within the boundaries of that game. And...

You will not be surprised to learn that Allan and I own a lot of books. And CDs. And even LPs! Many, many hundreds of each. We have culled our collection a bit over the years, out of necessity, but living in houses for the past 10 years, we expanded again without much thought. Now here we are in an apartment. It's a large apartment, to be sure, but we no longer have extra rooms where we can stash as much stuff as we like. And neither of us wants to fill up every inch of wall and floor space with books and music.    Thus we are contemplating weeding our own library. And this is very strange.  Books are us. Or are they? When I was in my 20s, I wanted to own every book I'd ever read. I was one of those people who believed that my personal library was a statement about myself. I needed to proudly display my politics and my tastes through my bookshelves and records. I loved seeing other people's libraries, and loved when people perused mine. I can recall that when we found our...

A thriller about public relations? And for teens? It sounds improbable, and The Doubt Factory by Paolo Bacigalupi is an improbably terrific book. Marrying a somersaulting plot with heart-pounding suspense to an unabashed political agenda and a hot love story, Bacigalupi has delivered a stunning youth read. On the political front, we contemplate "the place where big companies go when they need the truth confused. . . . when they need science to say what’s profitable, instead of what’s true.” All the tricks of the trade - astroturfing , fronts , false flags , sock puppets , money funnelling , stealth marketing , planted news, and outright false data - are touched on, along with the human damage they cause. And the political is nothing if not personal. Alix leads the good life of a private school girl in Connecticut, and is forced to confront the possibility that her privilege is built on other people's pain. That pain is impossible to miss, when she meets a group of homeless ki...

The ancient Egyptians, when preparing a body for mummification, carefully preserved the heart, liver, lungs, and other vital organs in special canisters, now known as canopic jars. The brain was yanked out and throw away as trash. A millennium or two later, human knowledge of the workings of the brain was every bit as erroneous and incomplete. Until the 1600s, no one knew what the brain did or what function it served. Even William Harvey, the pioneering British scientist who discovered the circulatory system, believed the heart was the centre of human thought and consciousness. Less enlightened but highly influential schools of thought postulated that the human body contained four souls: animal, vegetable, rational, and material. Other theories counted up to seven souls. Descartes and Hobbes, those pillars of the Age of Reason, believed in an anatomy that contained at least a few souls. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, no one knew what the brain did, and no European had eve...

In the upcoming federal election, Peel residents have an opportunity to make a real difference for ourselves, our neighbours, and all of Canada. We can support a platform aimed at supporting working people, preserving and expanding public healthcare, restoring our democracy, and protecting our environment. We can vote NDP. NDP candidates are running in all Peel ridings. For me, these five candidates stand out as stellar choices to represent our region. Rosemary Keenan , running in Brampton Centre, is a longtime leader of the Peel Poverty Action Group and the Peel Sierra Club. She has had a long career as a teacher, school principal, activist, and community organizer. In other words, she's been working to improve life for working people in Peel for decades. As a member of a federal NDP government, she'll have a greater reach and more opportunity to make a difference. Adaoma Patterson , running in Brampton West, is a long-time advocate for working and low-income people, and for ...

19th floor, central Mississauga, facing east. For locals, this is from the corner of Hurontario and Burnhamthorpe. You can see a bit of Lake Ontario on the right. Toronto is not that close. I'm zooming in. Here's the actual foreground.

As I've mentioned, my current library is located in a community centre. Here's an example of why that's so great. A customer came to the desk, an older man, speaking heavily accented English, clutching a piece of paper. It was difficult to figure out what he wanted. He kept repeating, "They said the library would help me. I have to apply online. They said the library would help." The paper turned out to be a Record of Employment. From my own experience, I know this is the first step in applying for Employment Insurance. Asking questions, I learned that he had worked as a machinist for 35 years and had been laid off. It sounded like the good people at Service Canada told him he could apply for Employment Insurance online. "I told them, I am not online, and they said, go to the library, they will help you." It's possible that Service Canada was just trying to get rid of him. I asked him, "Have you been to Malton Neighbourhood Services , down the h...

Goodbye, old friends In the 10 years I've lived in Mississauga, I've always been impressed with Peel Region's recycling and trash management. Now that I live in an apartment, I'm seeing another side of those services, and it's not pretty. First, there's no "green bin" - organics - recycling. I've grown so accustomed to throwing all food waste, coffee grinds, tea bags, tissues, wet paper, dog fur, and other organics into the green bin, it feels very strange and wasteful to toss these in the trash. Instituting an organics recycling program for apartment buildings would be challenging, but other cities with denser populations do it, so it must be possible. I don't know if Toronto is still  in the pilot phase  or if green-bin recycling has been rolled out to the whole city, but at least it's begun. On the Peel Region waste management website , I find no information that anything like this in the works. (I will tweet this post to Peel, so maybe ...

On August 30, 2015, we marked 10 years of life in Canada. On August 31, we moved from our rented house to a high-rise rental apartment, likely our last move for a very long time. The move itself was an absolute nightmare, a Murphy's Law Spectacular. I don't even want to bore you with the details. It just sucked. My mom is here for her annual visit, which does not suck, and in fact is very wonderful. Pupdate The dogs are doing well, a bit better day by day. The move was extremely stressful on Tala, involving four trips in the car, almost 24 hours of activity, and endless confusion. The following day she seemed old and frail. Both dogs were not themselves at first. The first morning when I took out Diego's leash, he was actually unsure and afraid! He had never been walked first thing in the morning before! I reminded myself that although Allan and I knew we were moving for months, for the dogs it came out of the blue. They were confused and a little shook up. But each day th...