Science & Technology – Page 8

Pets and Policies: Why Dog Parks Matter

2013-05-26 2013-05-26 Collingwood / Municipal Politics / Pets & Animal Behaviour3 Comments

Back in April, 2011, I wrote a post about municipal policies towards pets, now in the blog archives. I noted then that… A recent survey done by Colin Siren of Ipsos Reid estimated there are 7.9 million cats and 5.9 million dogs in Canada. The survey also shows that 35% of Canadian households have a dog, while 38% have a cat, which is consistent with other surveys conducted in the developed nations. Based on a figure of 9,500 households* we should have around 3,040 households with dogs and 3,610 with cats. Well, the numbers have grown. We have (according to ……… click below for more ↓

Quackery and Big Bucks Infect Health Canada

2013-05-14 2013-05-14 Balderdash & Hoaxes / Canadian Politics / Critical Thinking / Pseudoscience & Quackery / Science & TechnologyLeave a comment

Health Canada has allowed an increasing number of useless “alternative” healthcare (alternative TO healthcare in most cases) products to be sold in Canada over the last decade, despite the lack of proper (or in some cases, any) research data to prove their claims, effectiveness or safety. Most recently, however, Health Canada went further into pseudoscience and licensed homeopathic vaccines, proving that the agency has bowed to corporate pressure and given up trying to protect Canadian health. According to the BC Medical Journal, “…Health Canada has licensed 10 products with a homeopathic preparation called “influenzinum.”[8] According to providers, influenzinum is for ……… click below for more ↓

April, the cruellest month

2013-04-15 2013-05-01 Arts / Books & Reviews / Culture / History & Biography / Places & GeographyLeave a comment

April, wrote T.S. Eliot in his remarkable poem, The Waste Land, is the “cruellest month.”* And not merely because of the inclement and unsettling weather that seems to mix winter with spring in unpredictable doses. Nor for the necessity of filing one’s taxes before month end, always a painful chore. I started thinking about April while watching the movie, 1911, about the Chinese uprising against the Qing Dynasty, in 1911 (saw it this weekend). Fascinating period of Chinese history that led to the first republic under Sun Yat Sen, but, I wondered, was it so interesting elsewhere? Yes, it seems ……… click below for more ↓

Culloden and the Family Tree, 267 Years Later

2013-03-31 2020-11-11 Books & Reviews / History & Biography / Personal Reminiscences / Places & Geography / War & MilitaryOne Comment

It doesn’t begin with Culloden. History is seldom so neat and precise that a single event can be identified as the start or end of a thing. Rather, Culloden was a hinge, a point at which events changed direction, when the door to the past was closed and one to a very different future opened. You might say it really begins centuries earlier, in the long, bitter wars between England and Scotland that trace their roots to the Norman conquerors. But that’s too vague and longwinded. It would be better to say it the introduction to the story was written ……… click below for more ↓

The Dreamtime

2013-03-29 2013-03-29 Balderdash & Hoaxes / Critical Thinking / Personal Reminiscences / Science & TechnologyLeave a comment

I don’t dream very much, Susan once said to me. We were having a talk about some crazy dream I was recalling. They’re always crazy, of course. But the conversation was about whether we dream – all of us – whenever we sleep. I argued yes, we all do. We just don’t always remember them. I remember a lot of mine, at least for a few minutes after I awake. It helps if I talk about them right away, otherwise they evaporate pretty quickly. That’s the nature of dreaming: it’s just the random firing of neurons that activate memory, but ……… click below for more ↓

Speaking with the dead

2013-03-26 2013-03-26 Atheism & Spirituality / Balderdash & Hoaxes / Memes; Internet & Social / Pseudoscience & Quackery / Science & TechnologyLeave a comment

Can the dead speak to us from beyond the grave? No, of course not. But that doesn’t stop literally millions of superstitious people from believing they do. And some think they can use technology to facilitate the conversation. Of course, when you put technology into the mix, it simply cements the belief in place, no matter how ludicrous. And the internet has provided a platform for this silliness to reach worldwide. A recent post on the BBC website made me do some investigation. The BBC story is really about EVP – Electronic Voice Phenomenon. EVP, as Wikipedia tells us, is: …electronically ……… click below for more ↓

Clawing our way back up the ladder?

2013-03-21 2013-03-21 Collingwood / Media Issues / Municipal Politics / Places & GeographyLeave a comment

In 2006, Moneysense listed Collingwood as the 11th best place to live in Canada. The other ten above us on that list were all major cities. We were the number one town. Mayor Geddes beamed. Today we’re a lot further down the list. Numero 54 to be exact, out of 200. I wrote about that list back in 2011. We plummeted from the giddy heights of 11th place to 61st by 2008. The fall didn’t stop until we hit 94th place in 2012, in the bottom half of the 180 places listed. Now we’re back at 54th place. I suppose ……… click below for more ↓

To sleep, perchance to dream

2013-03-02 2013-03-02 Collingwood / Humour & Satire / My Writing / Personal Reminiscences / Pets & Animal BehaviourLeave a comment

Aye, there’s the rub. To sleep in, one weekend morning, when there are no pressures for meetings, work, deadlines. To roll away from the soft light that filters through the blinds and enjoy that delicious moment of closing your eyes and drifting back into a dream. Covers pulled up, the street quiet outside the widow, the furnace gently wheezing its warm air into the room; nothing is better in the world. But of course, there are others with different ideas. The real masters of the house brook no laziness, have no interest in our needs, in how much wine we ……… click below for more ↓

ID’s deep roots in creationism

2013-02-15 2013-02-16 Atheism & Spirituality / Balderdash & Hoaxes / Pseudoscience & Quackery / Science & Technology / Social Order & Disorder5 Comments

Proponents of creationism often try to deny that “intelligent” design (ID) is merely creationism wrapped in a fake lab coat to make it look like it’s pals with science. It isn’t. They’re not buddies, didn’t go to school together, and don’t ‘like’ each others Facebook pages. ID is merely a tawdry, paper-thin attempt to hoodwink the gullible who can’t see past the plastic pocket protector that there’s a bible in the pocket. In part this is because the popular notion of what a theory is has devolved into a synonym for guess or an unproven assumption. But that’s not the ……… click below for more ↓

Sound and fury, signifying nothing

2013-02-10 2013-02-10 Critical Thinking / Pseudoscience & Quackery / Science & Technology10 Comments

There’s a truly great moment in Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth, when Macbeth voices his last, and perhaps most moving, soliloquy about the fleetingness of life, and the meaning of what we do on this mortal coil. Life is devoid of meaning, he says, and our days are as short as a candle’f brief flame. The ignorant march onward, regardless: To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time, And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, ……… click below for more ↓

The chemtrail conspiracy nonsense

2013-01-31 2013-01-31 Balderdash & Hoaxes / Critical Thinking / Internet & Social Media / Memes; Internet & Social / Science & Technology / Social Order & Disorder2 Comments

Scientists need not apply for membership in the Chemtrail Conspiracy. In fact, scientists will probably be booted out for even walking on the same street where the meeting is being held. That’s because scientists would shine a light into the utter darkness of this nutty conspiracy. According to Wikipedia: The chemtrail conspiracy theory holds that some trails left by aircraft are chemical or biological agents deliberately sprayed at high altitudes for purposes undisclosed to the general public in clandestine programs directed by various government officials.[1] This theory is not accepted by the scientific community, which states that they are just normal contrails, as there is no scientific evidence supporting the chemtrail ……… click below for more ↓