Shoe fetish?

January 12, 2004

My husband just sent me this link, Talibanism in Technology, an article by Deepa Kandaswamy for Dataquest: The Business of Infotech aka “India’s No. 1 IT publication.” The article lists Seven reasons why women in technology remain invisible and was published on Feb. 26, 2003 — almost a year ago! — but he just came […]

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Why some of us dislike Plato

January 11, 2004

Mark on Wood’s Lot excerpts a great essay by Isaiah Berlin on Pluralism. Berlin begins by explaining what differentiates him from a relativist. While there might be a plurality of values that men and women can seek, their number is not infinite, however. And because their number is finite, one woman can understand another woman, […]

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Killer Dress Codes

January 9, 2004

I hope Victoria’s Tirdad Shirvani doesn’t object to my blogging his Jan. 7 letter to a local newspaper, The Victoria News, but as it’s a great letter, its dissemination to a few more individuals seems like a good idea. While you could find it online if you followed all the links to “letters” etc., I’ll […]

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Eyes on the skies

January 8, 2004

The Register‘s Andrew Orlowski posted this story today: Flight Sim enquiry raises terror alert. It’s about a mother trying to buy her 10-year old a Microsoft Flight Simulator at a Massachusetts Staples store. The ever-on-guard-against-terror American patriot who waited on the woman called the cops after she left, and they, searching for terrorists, in turn […]

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Tasty

January 7, 2004

This just in from the Toronto Star: Feds rule out ban on abattoir waste in cattle feed: Federal officials have ruled out a ban on feeding slaughterhouse waste to cattle even though some government scientists say such a ban is the only way to be sure of stopping mad cow disease. The reasoning — once […]

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10 C / 50 F

January 7, 2004

Yes, it’s warmer again, the snow is a slushy memory, the grass is green again, no more hats, no more scarves, but really dirty wet dogs instead. One thing in favour of icy snowy cold is its dryness: low on the ground dogs don’t hoover up mud and city dirt, they stay clean in cold […]

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Chirac’s Rubik Cube

January 7, 2004

The International Herald Tribune carried an article by Diana Pinto today that I thought was one of the smartest commentaries I’ve yet read on the French ban of religious dress and symbolism (aka “the head scarf ban”): The long, bloody path that led to French securalism: Head scarves and history. Pinto writes that a militantly […]

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Extreme/ism

January 7, 2004

We’ve had snow. Lots of snow. And it has been cold. Very cold. This is not what I moved here for, but the high-low extreme climate spikes seem to be more routine these days no matter where you go — last June we had a 3-day heat wave that sent 35++Celsius temps our way. Might […]

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About that so-called “free lunch”…

January 2, 2004

So. I’m having second thoughts about whether it is indeed better to kill than to be a hypocrite. I didn’t frame the problem in quite these terms on Dec. 27, but that really is the point I was coming to when I posted a rant that day against industrial farming and bad restaurant practices in […]

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No Floppys were harmed in the making of this entry

December 30, 2003

After my enviro-BSE-bad restaurants rant on the 27th, I felt the pain of overdoing the stitchery on the negativity blanket. But not for long, no, not for long. Yes, it’s true that (a) most Canadians mean well, (b) not all politicians or restaurants are bad, and (c) I really do think that in Canada we […]

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