Rose's Place

Here's an article by Wayne Roberts of the Toronto Food Policy Council, quoted in full because I don't know how to link to it on Facebook. SHARING WORK AND FOOD CREATES AN UPSIDE TO THE ECONOMIC DOWNBY Wayne RobertsUnlike most people, Thomas Homer-Dixon doesn't think today's world economic crisis is very complicated. He thinks it's very complex, which makes for a world of difference in understanding which government anti-recession programs will fail (most of them) and deciding which ones can help.Homer-Dixon, who chairs a centre for global systems analysis at the University of Waterloo, is one … [Read more...]

A friend passed this on. She says the BBC believes the average person will only have read 6 books from this list. At least 6 of these I had to read for school. It is definitely a British list but there are several important books on it.1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen 2 The Lord of the Rings X3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte 4 Harry Potter series5 To Kill a Mockingbird – X6 The Bible - X (though I may have skimmed the begats)7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte 8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell X+9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens 11 Little Women … [Read more...]

The News Release below is from the U.S. media watch group FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting), challenging the CBC’s bias against Palestinians. Press Release FAIR Challenges CBC Ombud’s Report 2/4/09 As the BBC continues to come under fire for refusing to carry an aid appeal for Gaza, the U.S. media watch group FAIR is [...] … [Read more...]

A Mother from Gaza: Surviving Under SiegeLaila El-HaddadMarch-03-2009At the University of CalgaryRm Cragie Hall 1196:30pm Tickets are $10 available at the door.Advance tickets available(in person) at Macewan Hall Food Court Feb 25, 26, 27 and March 2 from 11am to 2pm.This event will sell out please arrive early to ensure seating"Laila El-Haddad: is a freelance Palestinian journalist, media activist,and mother from Gaza. She writes mainly for the Guardian and Aljazeera.She has also appeared on CNN, the BBC, NPR, CBC, and Democracy Now amongothers. Laila has been published in Le Monde Diplmatique, … [Read more...]

Canadian Landmine Action Week is fast approaching! It’s that time of year again!  The 10th annual Canadian Landmine Action Week (CLAW) will take place from February 23rd-March 1st, 2009. In the past, the participation of our supporters during CLAW has helped reinforce the Canadian public’s and government’s commitment to realizing a world free of landmines and cluster [...] … [Read more...]

The following News Release by the Canadian Arab Federation is in response to Immigration Minister, Jason Kenney’s threats to cut funding to newcomer service agencies served by the CAF. By these latest actions, Mr. Kenney shows that his government will use the threat of funding cuts to silence any voices it deems dissenting, especially those [...] … [Read more...]

If there were an annual worst headline award, The Sun would probably win pretty much every year. Today's paper screamed "'Enormous' fraud at City Hall"It makes it sound as though the city council or mayor has been caught doing something corrupt or fraudulent. Reading the article, one finds out there were 9 civil servants (working in social services) who are accused of insurance scams with Manulife, the city's supplier of health insurance. They allegedly made fake claims. This is being investigated, has been turned over to the Toronto Police right now, and the city sent the accused employees home … [Read more...]

I like this magazine and it seems they are looking for submissions for their upcoming edition "How I learned to stop destroying the planet and love the global recession"What if the economic recession we're presently experiencingis not just a regrettable temporary setback in the never-endingmarch of growth-fuelled prosperity, but the beginning of apainful but ecologically necessary process of scaling backour footprint to a more sustainable level? How would we manage the decline so as to ensure the burdensare shared out equitably? How would we go about reorganizingour society and economy around conservation … [Read more...]

This article is a textbook case in completely missing the point. Shorter Pinker: Gender discrimination? What gender discrimination? Women choose to marry high-achieving men and then choose to "opt out", so clearly there's no problem. It's all about love, right? Yes, women and men of similar socio-economic backgrounds often end up together. Yes, the women then often end up staying home with the kids or taking less-demanding jobs. That's not the explanation for wage disparities -- that's the _problem_. Why is it always women who stay home? Having a high-earning spouse doesn't explain it -- … [Read more...]

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Usually the Toronto Star has pretty decent writing, but this was one of the poorest pieces I've seen in a while. There are some good points made, but the headline ("In shrinking workforce, women may surpass men") is misleading, and the writing jumps around without leading to any reasonable conclusion.Perhaps this is nitpicky, but there is some sloppy math here. The article claims "there's a possibility women will soon outnumber men in the job force." The numbers quoted in the same article don't really bear that out, unless you define "soon" as "probably never". According to StatsCan, there were … [Read more...]

Ottawa's transit strike has finally ended.Of course, it'll be two months before service returns to anything approaching normal.And I fully expect to see a surge in bike commuting and walking to work as soon as the snow melts. Not to mention the huge number of people who are just going to stick to their cars, thereby setting back the cause of public transit in Ottawa by at least a decade.This has been a frustrating couple of months for the residents of Ottawa. It's cost us thousands of dollars apiece and countless hours of our time (one of the reasons this blog pretty much went dark for the duration … [Read more...]

Don Simon, The Herd 2This is from a series called Unnaturalism, which he describes:Throughout history, particularly since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, mankind has been less than kind to our cohabitants on the planet. We build, produce, and consume with little or no regard to the impact it has on the environment. It is the nature of nature to adapt and evolve in order to survive, and we are forcing other species to deal with compromised, damaged, or destroyed ecosystems.This series of triptychs depicts scenes resulting from our tragic indifference. They are rendered in a beautiful … [Read more...]