Great post of the day

Ta-Nehisi Coates describes why we have to maintain the right to abortion:

Like most people, I have deep problems with the termination of life--and that is what I believe abortion to be. Still a decade ago, I learned that those problems were abstract, and could not stand against something as tangible and imposing as death.
My embrace of a pro-choice stance is not built on analogizing Rick Santorum with Hitler. It is not built on what the pro-life movement is "like." It's built on set of disturbing and inelidable truths: My son is the joy of my life. But the work of ushering him into this world nearly killed his mother. The literalism of that last point can not be escaped.
Every day women choose to do the hard labor of a difficult pregnancy. Its courageous work, which inspires in me a degree of admiration exceeded only by my horror at the notion of the state turning that courage, that hard labor, into a mandate. Women die performing that labor in smaller numbers as we advance, but they die all the same. Men do not. That is a privilege.

Cat fight

On tonight's National, the CBC basically accused CTV and the Globe & Mail of shilling for VANOC's spin on the luge story.
I guess we're supposed to think that CTV's news judgement is suspect because they carried the Olympics last year -- but we're not supposed to wonder whether perhaps the CBC still feels some resentment because they lost the Olympic broadcast rights.
That said, John Furlong's statement in the March 24, 2009 email is chilling --"the track is in their view too fast and someone could get badly hurt. An athlete gets badly injured or worse, and I think the case could be made we were warned and did nothing."
Less than eleven months later, Nodar Kumaritashvili died.

Three years?

So I'm reading this story about a drug recall and trying to remember what exactly I bought at the drugstore last weekend and what brands have I got in the cupboard.
And then I get to this sentence, in the sixth paragraph:

. . . the products were manufactured in 2007-08, and usually have a three-year shelf life. So, he said, the six products being recalled would either have been consumed by now or expired.

Oh.
Well, never mind then.
And apparently it took three years for Health Canada inspectors to conclude there might have been contamination between product lines and possible mislabeling of expiry dates.
Now what does this remind me of?

Super Bowl Ads

So for the first time EVAH! we got to watch the Super Bowl Ads actually DURING the Superbowl, on the Fox HD channel.
So we got to see this superb story:

and this one:

But we also saw this insulting misfire:

And this one was simply strange:

Another stupid decision

Will anyone be surprised when we find out that cutting off CIDA funds for international teacher education is just another stupid ideological decision made by some Conservative cabinet minister or back bencher who knows nothing about teacher training but has a hate on for teacher federations?
UPDATE: POGGE raises a good point, too -- though rather than deliberate sabotage, I suspect that last-minute political interference in formerly non-political CIDA decisions is responsible for the chaos.

Hope for Egypt

If Obama and Clinton can pull this off, then Egypt could actually be rid of Mubarak soon and without more bloodshed.
Give Christiane Amanpour credit, too, for gently pushing Mubarak toward a graceful exit -- her contribution is another example of the kind of positive influence an experienced and trusted journalist can have in world affairs.
Compare and contrast the momentum toward change with the Harper government's "go slow" miscue, putting themselves on the wrong side of history again.

Hundert: using prison as a weapon

After spending Thanksgiving and Christmas in jail, G20 activist Alex Hundert has finally been released, still on bail. Rabble reporter John Bonnar provides Hundert's analysis of what happened to him and to many other protesters:

"It's all been about the criminalization of dissent," said Hundert, "and the state and the police and the Crown cracking down on the people who resist and organize." . . . "the prison system is used as a weapon against communities that might or would resist."

Now we hear national leaders objecting to Mubarak's police criminalizing dissent in Egypt -- while still not acknowledging that this also happened in Toronto during the G20 protests.

Who wants a food sack dress?

My reaction to the news that young women don't know how to iron a shirt or cook a roast anymore is simply "Well, iron this, buddy!" As Enchidne concludes, it is really these lost gender roles that are being mourned -- the days when men brought home the bacon and women fried it up in a pan.



As Miss Piggy says, what would you do with a food sack dress anyway.
And anyone can learn how to cook a roast -- let me google that for you.
Though perhaps some shouldn't try:

So that's what dogs are sniffing for!

Once again, animals are trying to tell us something and we haven't been listening.

Words to live by

Over at one of the dog posts on Balloon Juice, a commenter quotes the epitaph that Queen Victoria wrote for her favorite dog::

“Here lies Dash, the favorite spaniel of Her Majesty Queen Victoria, by whose command this memorial was erected. He died on the 20th December 1840 in his ninth year. His attachment was without selfishness, his playfulness without malice, his fidelity without deceit. Reader, if you would live beloved and die regretted, profit by the example.”

The scariest thing ever

No, not this one:


This one

Things fall apart

I wonder if Harper and the Conservatives hadn't better try to finesse an election sooner rather than later -- like before he turns down a stadium project, and before the air farce purchase falls apart, and before Rob Ford starts pissing off conservative Torontonions.
But why in the world would Harper think that corporate tax cuts are the issue to send Canadian voters scurrying to the polls to give him a majority he yearns for?

Sign of the times

You can tell what a society values by what its people spend their lives working on.
In medieval times, stonemasons would spend their whole lives building a church.
In our times, it appears that lawyers will spend their whole lives fighting one lawsuit.

Government commercials

Has everyone noticed how many Government of Canada commercials are on TV lately? There's the Canada's Action Plan spots, and those bizarre "your kid's head is like an egg" spots, and tonight I saw how Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation is busy protecting my money.
Sort of a warm, fuzzy feeling, isn't it, to know how much money my government is spending just to talk to me!

Saturday Morning wake-up call