Archive for the ‘Rampant Consumerism’ Category
December 22nd, 2009 | 
Author: This is quite long, so I’m going to break it into a few pieces. :-0
November was a pretty strange month around here. The first time in more than 90 years that Toronto hasn’t had any snow. When we planned this family jaunt to Florida, we had no idea what to expect for weather here. Down there, it’s pretty unsettled this time of year, but we were hoping that we could at least have a bit of snow to gloat about. Mother Nature didn’t disappoint and gave us about 10cm the day before we left. This was the view on the morning of December 8 as we loaded into the van:
Posted in 
OK, enough’s enough:
- Vancouver police purchase a sound weapon, claiming that they only want to use it as a “loudspeaker”
- Assorted Vancouver-area municipalities pass by-laws allowing the cops to barge into private homes and remove protest signs from windows
- Now, Canada Customs is screening visitors to the country on their views of the Owelympics:
(CBC’s) As It Happens radio show covers the story of Amy Goodman’s recent’ border crossing into Canada. Goodman — host of the US public radio show Democracy Now! — was coming to Canada to give a speech at a library, and Canadian border guards questioned her intensely about the subject of her talk, even reading her notes for her speech. They were fishing for something, but Goodman couldn’t figure out what, until the guards asked her outright whether she was planning on talking about the upcoming Canadian Olympic Games. When she assured them that she hadn’t been, they eventually released her (it had been a 75 minute detention) but stamped a control-order in her passport giving her only 24 hours’ stay in Canada.
This just in: my employer is broke.
Queen’s University is still in dire financial straits, and the picture is not getting any better.
There’s an interesting article about product labelling in the Toronto Star this morning:
The labels on 98 per cent of those good-for-the-earth-and-your-body items you fill your shopping basket with are lying, a new study shows.
File this under presumably well-meaning politicians trying to do something good and not properly evaluating teh consequences of their actions:
… under a law Congress passed last year aimed at regulating hazards in children’s products, the federal government has now advised that children’s books published before 1985 should not be considered safe and may in many cases be unlawful to sell or distribute. Merchants, thrift stores, and booksellers may be at risk if they sell older volumes, or even give them away, without first subjecting them to testing — at prohibitive expense.
Well, it’s 2009. I’m not going to bother with a year-end post. Bah. I’m going to look forward, instead: I turn 40 this year. A decade change in age can be a time for reflection and adjustment. Possibly change.
To that end, I’ve started keeping a journal. I doubt that I’ll write daily, but I will write regularly. It should be a great way for me to keep track of events and pay more attention to what’s happening and why. Slowing down.