Homo Sum:
humani nil a me alienum puto

And, like clockwork, the CRTC comes out with another decision that favours corporations over the public. What do you expect when the regulatory body is made up of former corporate insiders?

Today’s work session ends and I jump into my car and drive to the Whole Foods to pick up some fruit, both because I need fresh fruit every day or I go weird, and because I have plans for doing some fruit-themed explorations in my hotel fridge.
When I get back to the hotel, I eat [...]

We’ve had it in place for several years now, and you know somehow the fabric of civilization has not disintegrated. And, you know, I still haven’t heard any argument against gay marriage that isn’t premised on either “God said so” or “Gays are icky” or both.
Also, the best quote I read on this subject today: [...]

The details of the story might not be all I am hoping for, but seeing a headline that says “Cheney and Gonzales Indicted for Prisoner Abuse” is certainly a step in the right direction. Let’s hope it’s one of the first pebbles in an avalanche.

Let’s say you have to spend a couple of weeks away from home on a business trip. You’re scheduled into all day meetings, and are dining with colleagues. Then when you finally get back to the hotel, you have to dial into a meeting with the Australian office, where people are just getting to work.
How [...]

I’m normally not much for ordered lists, and especially not ordered lists of “favourites”. I tend to break things down into relatively low resolution buckets and am happy with that. For instance, with music I tend to assign a song to one of {Awesome, Good, OK, Tolerable, Terrible, OH MY GOD MAKE IT STOP} and [...]

So, I’m currently trapped in Boston, on a schedule of essentially 9 consecutive days (yes, including the weekend) of all-day meetings.
Since I recently discovered that there’s a ridiculously well-stocked liquor store very close to the Boston office–and when I say ridiculously, I mean thousands of different varieties of beers; I still haven’t even seen the [...]

Manipulation and self-interest suffused relations between the sexes even when gentlemen strode the earth; a few pages of Edith Wharton should disabuse any doubters on that score.
The lengthy article on modern dating, Love in the Time of Darwinism, at City Journal raised several reaction in me while I was reading it.
The only thing I reacted [...]

So, if someone told me I would enjoy reading a short fiction piece entitled Talking To God, I would be skeptical. If they told me it was found on a site entitled “The Ragged Trousered Philosopher“, I might be more inclined to believe them. And I would have been right to do so. Good piece. [...]

So, on the one hand we have Harper making speeches about how this isn’t the time for Conservatives to be ideological, and how they need to govern “for all the people”…
Conservatives must put ideology aside as they prepare to weather looming economic challenges facing the country, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Thursday.
…
Harper told Conservatives they [...]

Continuing on the theme of my being impressed by the kind of madness that is constructive (this dates back to at least the first time I found out about Korczak Ziolkowski), let us take a moment to reflect upon the kind of person who could build the Underground Fortress.
I am weirdly attracted to the idea. [...]

Have I talked about Dr. Bronner’s here before? My searches say not, but I remember expounding upon it recently–although it might have been at my poker game.
If you don’t know Dr. Bronner’s, I’m not even sure where to start trying to explain it.
The short version is this: my shower contains a bottle of liquid peppermint [...]

And now, from the “dumbest thing I’ve read today” file:
Bournemouth Council, which has the Latin motto Pulchritudo et Salubritas - beauty and health - has listed 19 terms it no longer considers acceptable for use.
They include ad hoc, bona fide, status quo, vice versa and even via.
Its list of alternatives includes ‘for this special [...]

You know all the noise from the right about Obama’s plan to make US income tax more progressive? (Which, sanity forces me to note, amounts to “return them to Clinton era levels”.)
In the midst of all the arguments about who should be paying what share of the costs, why is there no big loud discussion [...]

Well, I guess that program turned out to be a waste of tax dollars. Hard to get all broken up about it, though, considering.