safety, efficiency, cost of human lives and work
My children watched part of Back to the Future III a few days ago and afterwards expressed surprise at the amount of walking on train tracks that happens in the show. “Isn’t that dangerous?” they asked...
View Articlemy thoughts on Paved With Good Intentions: Canada’s development NGOs from...
I’m getting ready to return the book Paved With Good Intentions: Canada’s development NGOs from idealism to imperialism by Kikolas Barry-Shaw and Dru Oja Jay back to the friend who lent it to me, but I...
View Articlethoughts after a visit to the social assistance offices
I went last week with some friends into the Ontario Disability Support Program office (ODSP) and the Ontario Works (OW) office. It was my first time being in the building. I was struck by the...
View ArticlePaying for blogs?
“Writers deserve to get paid for their work” says a popular blogger in defense of putting her blog behind a paywall. The arguments and comments made by her fans and detractors alike fascinate me...
View ArticleClik here to view.
work: both paid and unpaid
One Model of How Things Work I’m thinking today about work, both productive work like building houses or caring for sick people, and less productive work like packaging bad mortgages for resale or...
View ArticleWhat is social assistance really about anyway?
A few days ago I had a conversation with a woman on Ontario Works (welfare). She described what she goes through in order to get emergency dental care. She has to go first to her worker and a funding...
View Articlean open-letter about social assistance in Ontario
The other day I sent off a bunch of handwritten letters. They varied depending on whom I wrote them to. The one to the Ontario NDP leader, Andrea Horwath, went like this. Dear Ms. Horwath, Though I am...
View ArticleOh no… I’ve been sucked in by Coasterville!
Help! I’ve been sucked into a facebook game Coasterville. Yikes……. Actually, there are many reasons for me to find the game interesting. It fits with my obsessive breaking down of things into their...
View ArticleClik here to view.
the complicated problem of sweatshops in Saipan
Have you ever heard of the island of Saipan? It is an American territory in the pacific, which as a Canadian I had never heard of it until an email arrived from Walt Goodridge, who offered me two...
View Articlethe importance of “paid journalism” or my response to Sudbury wikileaks.
Something made me very angry today. I read an editorial in one of my local newspapers (The Northern Life). The editorial is defending one of the reporters against accusations made on an anonymous...
View Article
