Mary Cleaver posted this open letter to Stephen Harper on facebook earlier this month. This election, backofthebook.ca endorses Mary Cleaver. Dear Mr. Harper, I live in BC with my husband and two little girls. I grew up in Calgary and have many friends and family members there. I’m white and in my early 40s. One […]
BC Liberals win: Why am I not surprised?
By David@Sixthestate.net I’m not terribly interested in speculating, at least for the moment, about why the pollsters would be devastatingly incorrect — again — about a provincial election campaign, this time in British Columbia. My guess is that in this case it has something to do with young people not voting, but again, the answer […]
The birds of Spring
By Montreal Simon The birds have been flocking back to the island as they do every spring. Flying in from south of the lake, on their way north. But this year I’m not as glad to see them, as I usually am. Because this year they can’t help reminding me of what’s going on in China. The outbreak […]
The man who predicted Sandy
By John Klein (aka Saskboy) I find the current political and media climate in Canada to be insufferably stupid. Despite there being excellent, professional journalists everywhere, there are many more time/space fillers who skew the public’s perception of what is going on and what really matters. One thing the media has been terrible at is […]
Warp speed is possible . . . if we don’t fry first
By David@Sixthestate.net You may remember, as I do, how quickly even the most fervent anti-science hyper-skeptics went into fits of excitement over the announced discovery of the Higgs boson earlier this summer. I doubt any of them could tell you what a Higgs boson is, beyond the fact that some wag once called it “the […]
A Modest Opinion – Why do scientists keep lying to me?
By Nathaniel Moher Listen, I live by only a few certainties when it comes to my health. One, that eggs are bad for me. Two, that drinking 12 shots of Jim Beam a day makes me more interesting. And three, that if you don’t drink eight glasses of water a day you will die of […]
“Frankenfish” caught; Burnaby residents stop shouting “AIEEE!”
A BoB short: BC’s monster fish has been caught and killed. Dubbed “Frankenfish,” the two foot long snakehead was first spotted on May 13th in a Burnaby pond. An invasive species native to China, the fish is a so-called “top-level predator” with the hellish potential to destroy entire ecosystems. In 2004, a lake in Maryland […]
Designer Worms
by Eric Pettifor Remember all those episodes of the various Star Treks where characters were genetically altered, either willingly or unwillingly, by some means or other? It would happen within the course of a single episode and be neatly fixed at the end, with a hypo from the lovely Dr. Crusher. In reality, of course, […]
Antimatter contained for 17 minutes; hello Vulcans
by Eric Pettifor Canadian researchers (and others, but we’ll focus on lauding our countrypersons) at CERN near North Battleford, Saskatchewan (ok, CERN is really in Switzerland, but it should be in Saskatchewan) have managed to capture and contain antimatter for a whopping 17 minutes (layperson friendly description here). You realize, of course, that this means […]
Enough with the gay mice
By Jodi A. Shaw Yet another study of homosexuality has been released, this one suggesting that a neurotransmitter is the remote control for sexual preference in mammals. Yi Rao, a neuroscientist at Peking University, and his collaborators engineered male mice unable to produce serotonin, who then demonstrated a preference for other male mice. The mice […]
