J’en ai assez des citoyens habitant les USA profitant de notre pays.. certains ont utilisés leur chalet au Québec pour obtenir leur carte d’assurance santé pendant des années!!! Et ils ont été dénoncés par des personnes qui ont accepté de devenir de vrais USA citoyens qui ont accepté de vivre selon les lois de leur pays d’adoption, pendant que d’autres ont profité de notre système de santé.. Depuis,ça continue, certains viennent se faire soigner au Canada parce que ça leur coûte moins cher plutôt que de réclamer à leur assurance…
Mes parents m’ont amenés aux USA mes 3 mois… à ce moment-là, ils ont vécu dans le nord des USA… La dernière fois que je suis suis allée aux USA, ils vivaient en NC… voyageant dans ce pays, nous avons vu comment nous n’étions pas bienvenus! Spécialement dans un motel où la femme en charge, provenant de l’Inde, nous a donné la probablement la pire chambre, sans AC, alors que j’avais mentionné que nous avions quitté le Québec à 3 heures du matin et que nous avions une longue route pour nous rendre en NC le jour suivant pour souper avec eux.. Elle s’en foutait bien! Mais était plus intéressée par notre argent,.. Au retour, l’atmosphère plus relax quand nous avons loué la chambre, main le grand choc a été de voir de la part des citoyens qui après m’avoir dit : ´Morning’! Je ne pouvais faire autrement que de me demander qui portait une arme sur eux…Et évidemment, même après voir dit que j’étais french canadien, je semblais plus suspicieuse à leurs yeux alors que de mon côté, je me sentais de plus en plus en danger… En NC, nous étions protégés par les membres de notre famille, mais après, nous étions à notre propre défense, après avoir senti comment étions perçu au sud, nous avons tous ressenti une sensation de sécurité en revenant de notre côté de la frontière!!! Et nous ne pouvions qu’espérer d’y être à nouveau!!! Safe and sound!
Charlie, you write of the possible "return of old-fashioned monsters that had long been put into the crypt — measles, rubella, diphtheria, influenza."
Gee. I can think of others, too. Cholera, polio, whooping cough, scarlet fever, bubonic plague, yellow fever... There are so many.
And I don't believe that influenza has ever EVER been put in the crypt: Its variants morph very very rapidly. That's why we all still need a flu vaccine every single Fall!
----- When COVID-19 arrived, the first thing I did (after the preventative basics) was to read several histories about past pandemics. Scared the wits out of me.
Much work has been done by social media chaos agents to undermine folks' trust in science, education and expertise in general. We are all familiar with the cynical, manipulative line that precedes every calculated medical shill "Doctors won't tell you this BUT...."
The math is simple. Unvaccinated folks fall prey to disease at many, many times the multiples of those that are vaccinated, and the negative outcomes of vaccines are 1. exceedingly rare and 2. usually minor in character. But when the dust settles we trade the deaths of 40% of all children before the age of 5 (that is what it was in 1900, pre-vaccines) for deaths of 0.000001% of all children of all ages.
"Unvaccinated folks fall prey to disease at many, many times the multiples of those that are vaccinated,. . . " Ain't it the truth! A 40-something nephew in AB, father of three children under age 5, was trying to justify his refusal of the Covid vaccine by saying, "I've had delta, omicron, 'flu, and strep throat, and I'm still here. I'm healthy." I replied, "Obviously you're not." We no longer talk.
Unfortunately, we have been safe thanks to vaccines so long that folks have forgotten what happened without them. My dad was one of the last Canadian polio victims and was disabled in his teens. Growing up, the sight of folks with polio paralysis was common...I remember our neighbour had leg braces all her life. I mourn that some people seem to need to learn the hard way...at someone else's expense.
CDC is curiously silent on these deadly threats. They have made no announcements about specific preventative measures to keep the Andes strain of Hantavirus out of rodent populations in the US and around the world, such as handling trash and human waste using contaminated material protocols. It poses a greater threat to humans than the Hantavirus strains that are currently in rodents in the US and the rest of the world.
They also need to ensure that there are enough working respirators and protective gear to supply if there are any hantavirus outbreaks in the US, along with well thought out guidelines that utilize the latest scientific information about prevention and treatment. For example, the incubation period is reported to be as long as 6 weeks before symptoms appear, the initial symptoms are similar to those of many other viral illnesses, and people can remain contagious long after their symptoms have resolved (months to a year) via their sperm.
For the current Ebola epidemic in the Congo, Rwanda, and South Sudan, the available vaccines and antivirals are for a different strain and do not work on the strain causing this epidemic. Since there is no specific treatment, massive amounts of supplies for supportive measures and prevention are required. A physician from the US working there is already sick. Ebola causes cultural problems in communities since families cannot follow their usual burial practices because the dead bodies of people who had Ebola are infectious. (This is not unique to Africa. I once had a patient in the US who became seriously ill from a different infection, tuberculosis, that he acquired from a body while working at a funeral home.) Cultural norms are hampering prevention efforts as well as misinformation.
The US has earmarked funds ($23 million?) but using it to obtain and staff clinics will be far too slow to prevent the spread to more communities. The personnel and equipment are needed this week, not at some future date. The clinics previously supported by USAID were closed last year when funding was cancelled by DOGE.
CDC is curiously silent on these deadly threats. They have made no announcements about specific preventative measures to keep the Andes strain of Hantavirus out of rodent populations in the US and around the world, such as handling trash and human waste using contaminated material protocols. It poses a greater threat to humans than the Hantavirus strains that are currently in rodents in the US and the rest of the world.
They also need to ensure that there are enough working respirators and protective gear to supply if there are any hantavirus outbreaks in the US, along with well thought out guidelines that utilize the latest scientific information about prevention and treatment. For example, the incubation period is reported to be as long as 6 weeks before symptoms appear, the initial symptoms are similar to those of many other viral illnesses, and people can remain contagious long after their symptoms have resolved (months to a year) via their sperm.
For the current Ebola epidemic in the Congo, Rwanda, and South Sudan, the available vaccines and antivirals are for a different strain and do not work on the strain causing this epidemic. Since there is no specific treatment, massive amounts of supplies for supportive measures and prevention are required. A physician from the US working there is already sick. Ebola causes cultural problems in communities since families cannot follow their usual burial practices because the dead bodies of people who had Ebola are infectious. (This is not unique to Africa. I once had a patient in the US who became seriously ill from a different infection, tuberculosis, that he acquired from a body while working at a funeral home.) Cultural norms are hampering prevention efforts as well as misinformation.
The US has earmarked funds ($23 million?) but using it to obtain and staff clinics will be far too slow to prevent the spread to more communities. The personnel and equipment are needed this week, not at some future date. The clinics previously supported by USAID were closed last year when funding was cancelled by DOGE.
So there are gullible and ignorant Canadians- glad it's not just us! Unfortunately ppl are going to learn, at least temporarily, the hard way, by getting very sick or dying, yet again. I can't get myself to care much, but will limit my empathy to those who are in turn placed in jeopardy by these wuck- fits.
I too am worried about the health of the planet Catherine. I am a Master Beekeeper and there are no wild honey bees any longer in Canada, thanks to man's meddling. There are no fireflies in the fields around my childhood home any longer.
But. While we in Canada can develop, and must develop as rapidly as possible, clean sustainable domestic energy, the vast bulk of the world, in particular the developing world, runs on fossil fuels. It is a simple reality that humans are going to burn fossil fuels as long as they are a) the tech they own and b) less expensive than clean alternatives.
Unfortunately, Canadians find themselves a target of their former friend and ally. The MAGA Trump cabal is doing everything they can to destabilize our economy and our provincial governments. We are now scrambling to reorient both before we become annexed by a rogue kakistrocracy.
One of our roads to that reorientation is using the revenues from our fossil fuels to fund the pathway to clean energy, a revamped trade focus, pushing for more self-reliance in the marketplace, and creating new trade pathways....and alas invigorating our military. All that on top of our existing challenges.
I would also add the nagging worry in the back of my mind that if, as Dr. Suzuki has asked, we leave all that oil in the ground, it becomes a very low hanging, tempting fruit. Who might push Canada aside to get it for themselves?
This is a veritable mess, but there are ways to blunt the damage our fossil fuel production does. Ways to use it to move away from it. And ways to keep Canada a sovereign, principled nation. If anyone can pull that off, it is Mark Carney.
I didn't know wild honey bees actually evolved in North America after the last glaciation. My info sources must be inadequate. I read that native N Am bees were solitary and not hive-rs that accumulate honey.
Please send me a few links if you can to improve my understanding. I am doing my best to establish a rudimentary pollinator garden.
You were correct Catherine (Master Beekeeper here), honey bees, Apis mellifera, are not native to the Americas, they came over with the very first ships some 500 years ago. But they quickly established and spread across the continents. And you are right, the honey bee is the only bee that stores more honey than it needs, making in times past the only ready source of sweetener. They were even more valuable for their production of beeswax, which was the equivalent of our modern day plastic and polymers, providing waterproofing and sealing, candles and emulsions that no other substance could. Unfortunately, there are no feral honey bees in cold winter areas due to the unfortunate release of a parasite, Varroa mites, into their naive population. Now honey bees need beekeepers to keep them mite-free, or they die. If you want to attract all the native pollinators (and the managed honey bees along with them) you can plant a season long banquet for them all. You plant it and they will arrive in droves! Here is one way to do that: https://newbees101.wordpress.com/2015/09/27/helping-the-honey-bees-and-all-pollinators/
Thanks. From a number of entymology papers on Google Scholar yesterday, I learned that a variety of native insects in North America also make honey. I recall a few names, carpenter bees and aphids among them. That is how it occurred that Native North Americans smoked their caches out to obtain honey for thousands of years before Europeans came to conquer. It doesn't surprise me that we don't know this. It likewise doesn't surprise me that a Master Beekeeper doesn't know this since the focus of interest is, obviously, only on non-native honeybees!
I've planted many native plants even the site is not wonderful. Catmint, Joe Pyeweed, and many others. My semi-native pollinator garden is alive with every kind of pollinator - hummingbirds included. On summer afternoons I sit for hours and watch their acticities. It is a balm for the soul.
If anything, we should leave a large portion of the oil in the ground for future uses rather than burning it up now. Perhaps AB could look to the future to build manufacturing plants instead of encouraging more of this resource being turned into smoke.
Alas manufacturing faces incredible obstacles, tariffs among them. Will Canadians, or anyone, pay the prices you have to charge for domestic made goods where workers are well paid and regulations observed? Will investors fund the building of those plants and markets? Because they are looking for long term returns on their massive investments, and in stable political jurisdictions. Alberta is far from stable right now. Lots of issues intersect here.
As for leaving the oil in the ground or even part of it...I can only think that as oil reserves dwindle and oil becomes ever more expensive (at least until clean energy is widely adopted) and valuable. Again, who might push Canada aside to get at it for themselves...
Pretty pathetic!!! Then they refuse entry to their country because plane carries passenger from country where Ebola has raised it's head & make them land in 🇨🇦🍁🇨🇦???? This whole picture is wrong. Our eradicated diseases will return with a vengeance because of a few anti vaxers, spreading it around the 🌎. Thank God for a few Intelligent people, some children may be spared, but others not!!! We have Science expertise for a reason. Let's believe them. The 🌎 of social media will never save us.
There is a Bantu saying I learned during my many years in Tanzania and Kenya that sums up what some people in our culture have forgotten "I am because we are!" When we forget this the "I" dies.
Let’s not forget that vaccine refusal stems from a fatalistic and submissive view of the world, with its own coherence and emotional appeal.
We might dislike this, but we can only counter it with a stronger and more empowering concept of human agency and collective purpose.
Science is mostly organized common sense, but organization implies the existence of organizers, and the community of science does not intersect with as many other communities as it might.
The community of science does not intersect with large parts of Canada's educational system, and especially the parts that educated the vaccine-deniers and their children.
In the public education system, the elimination of shop and home economics courses was a powerful blow against scientific thinking, since these hands-on courses were replaced mostly by "book learning" that emphasizes the creation of written artifacts for subjective evaluation by an instructor, as opposed to physical artifacts where the natural world tells the creator whether his or her actions have met with success.
The cult of standardized testing and "teaching to the test" has also had a corrupting effect, as has the increasing use of computers in education generally.
You can read more about my thinking on education here on Substack.
The scientists whose names we remember (Galileo, Darwin, Einstein...) have all been disruptors, who successfully opposed orthodoxy with evidence and reason. The objective of most educational systems is to prevent such disruptors from emerging. Fatalism is one way of doing this, but there are other forms of learned helplessness that we are not so eager to admit to.
I'll probably write more on this topic, so if you're interested, please consider subscribing. All of my substacks are free.
I have to disagree with your conclusions, Andrew, although I share your regret at the loss of shop and home ec courses. All kids need to learn basic life skills.
I am a fan of standardized testing, as long as it is used as a simple measure of what needs improving (usually educational funding). And good luck teaching to the test....I don't think that ever worked and teachers have understood that mastery requires student engagement with the material.
What has been missing is an admiration of academic excellence, which breeds that exceptionalism, that thinking outside the box that we always need. You cannot fly a capsule to the moon without a very sophisticated booster rocket underneath it....and you cannot produce a generation of exceptional innovators and thinkers without a solid grounding in all aspects of human knowledge.
It is too bad that folks do not see that science and research are the ultimate "school of hard knocks", where you have to prove your thesis to progress to the next relevant questions.
A person's view of standardized testing usually depends on where they and their children have been educated. In my own case this includes both Canada and the United States.
Sadly, the US Common Core and the testing that surrounds it had a very negative effect on US education.
Educational testing was a huge boon for publishers like Pearson, who sold both the tests and the material needed to pass them. The whole scheme was driven by money. Academic excellence has never been the objective.
Here are some additional links for test refusal groups in New Jersey and Massachusetts. These states, along with Connecticut, have the best public school systems in the United States, and all three have very strong traditions of local control. Canada does not really have this, and provincial governments (like the Ford government in Ontario) are doing their best to eliminate local control wherever they can.
Honestly, I couldn't care less if millions of moronic MAGA Yankees perish from a variety of infectious diseases. They voted for it. 89,000,000 US citizens didn't even bother to vote; such is American arrogance, laziness, and unwarranted sense of entitlement.
The distressing part is that these diseases don't recognize borders.
So basically, the only safeguard Canada will have is to close our border to unvaccinated American morons, as we did during COVID, as should Mexico and the rest of the world.
Actually a million already died from COVID unvaccinated. Even one of the recent Republicans endorsed by Trump originally got her seat when her previously elected unvaccinated husband died of Covid- and she went from being a vaccine supporter to skeptic to election denier all to get the endorsement. No moral character.
J’en ai assez des citoyens habitant les USA profitant de notre pays.. certains ont utilisés leur chalet au Québec pour obtenir leur carte d’assurance santé pendant des années!!! Et ils ont été dénoncés par des personnes qui ont accepté de devenir de vrais USA citoyens qui ont accepté de vivre selon les lois de leur pays d’adoption, pendant que d’autres ont profité de notre système de santé.. Depuis,ça continue, certains viennent se faire soigner au Canada parce que ça leur coûte moins cher plutôt que de réclamer à leur assurance…
Mes parents m’ont amenés aux USA mes 3 mois… à ce moment-là, ils ont vécu dans le nord des USA… La dernière fois que je suis suis allée aux USA, ils vivaient en NC… voyageant dans ce pays, nous avons vu comment nous n’étions pas bienvenus! Spécialement dans un motel où la femme en charge, provenant de l’Inde, nous a donné la probablement la pire chambre, sans AC, alors que j’avais mentionné que nous avions quitté le Québec à 3 heures du matin et que nous avions une longue route pour nous rendre en NC le jour suivant pour souper avec eux.. Elle s’en foutait bien! Mais était plus intéressée par notre argent,.. Au retour, l’atmosphère plus relax quand nous avons loué la chambre, main le grand choc a été de voir de la part des citoyens qui après m’avoir dit : ´Morning’! Je ne pouvais faire autrement que de me demander qui portait une arme sur eux…Et évidemment, même après voir dit que j’étais french canadien, je semblais plus suspicieuse à leurs yeux alors que de mon côté, je me sentais de plus en plus en danger… En NC, nous étions protégés par les membres de notre famille, mais après, nous étions à notre propre défense, après avoir senti comment étions perçu au sud, nous avons tous ressenti une sensation de sécurité en revenant de notre côté de la frontière!!! Et nous ne pouvions qu’espérer d’y être à nouveau!!! Safe and sound!
Charlie, you write of the possible "return of old-fashioned monsters that had long been put into the crypt — measles, rubella, diphtheria, influenza."
Gee. I can think of others, too. Cholera, polio, whooping cough, scarlet fever, bubonic plague, yellow fever... There are so many.
And I don't believe that influenza has ever EVER been put in the crypt: Its variants morph very very rapidly. That's why we all still need a flu vaccine every single Fall!
----- When COVID-19 arrived, the first thing I did (after the preventative basics) was to read several histories about past pandemics. Scared the wits out of me.
Cholera!!!
Harper attempted the same kind of thing here. Many research projects were halted. Where did their brain cells go? So fatigued by it all.
Sounds like such a small thing doesn't it. Decency. Who knew the planet had a limited supply of it.
Much work has been done by social media chaos agents to undermine folks' trust in science, education and expertise in general. We are all familiar with the cynical, manipulative line that precedes every calculated medical shill "Doctors won't tell you this BUT...."
The math is simple. Unvaccinated folks fall prey to disease at many, many times the multiples of those that are vaccinated, and the negative outcomes of vaccines are 1. exceedingly rare and 2. usually minor in character. But when the dust settles we trade the deaths of 40% of all children before the age of 5 (that is what it was in 1900, pre-vaccines) for deaths of 0.000001% of all children of all ages.
40% vs. 0.000001%
Hard math to ignore.
"Unvaccinated folks fall prey to disease at many, many times the multiples of those that are vaccinated,. . . " Ain't it the truth! A 40-something nephew in AB, father of three children under age 5, was trying to justify his refusal of the Covid vaccine by saying, "I've had delta, omicron, 'flu, and strep throat, and I'm still here. I'm healthy." I replied, "Obviously you're not." We no longer talk.
Unfortunately, we have been safe thanks to vaccines so long that folks have forgotten what happened without them. My dad was one of the last Canadian polio victims and was disabled in his teens. Growing up, the sight of folks with polio paralysis was common...I remember our neighbour had leg braces all her life. I mourn that some people seem to need to learn the hard way...at someone else's expense.
CDC is curiously silent on these deadly threats. They have made no announcements about specific preventative measures to keep the Andes strain of Hantavirus out of rodent populations in the US and around the world, such as handling trash and human waste using contaminated material protocols. It poses a greater threat to humans than the Hantavirus strains that are currently in rodents in the US and the rest of the world.
They also need to ensure that there are enough working respirators and protective gear to supply if there are any hantavirus outbreaks in the US, along with well thought out guidelines that utilize the latest scientific information about prevention and treatment. For example, the incubation period is reported to be as long as 6 weeks before symptoms appear, the initial symptoms are similar to those of many other viral illnesses, and people can remain contagious long after their symptoms have resolved (months to a year) via their sperm.
For the current Ebola epidemic in the Congo, Rwanda, and South Sudan, the available vaccines and antivirals are for a different strain and do not work on the strain causing this epidemic. Since there is no specific treatment, massive amounts of supplies for supportive measures and prevention are required. A physician from the US working there is already sick. Ebola causes cultural problems in communities since families cannot follow their usual burial practices because the dead bodies of people who had Ebola are infectious. (This is not unique to Africa. I once had a patient in the US who became seriously ill from a different infection, tuberculosis, that he acquired from a body while working at a funeral home.) Cultural norms are hampering prevention efforts as well as misinformation.
The US has earmarked funds ($23 million?) but using it to obtain and staff clinics will be far too slow to prevent the spread to more communities. The personnel and equipment are needed this week, not at some future date. The clinics previously supported by USAID were closed last year when funding was cancelled by DOGE.
Other countries are donating money to help the affected countries.
As a Canadian, I do not expect the US government now to do anything.
However, US CITIZENS and RESIDENTS can donate to valid medical charities!
CDC is curiously silent on these deadly threats. They have made no announcements about specific preventative measures to keep the Andes strain of Hantavirus out of rodent populations in the US and around the world, such as handling trash and human waste using contaminated material protocols. It poses a greater threat to humans than the Hantavirus strains that are currently in rodents in the US and the rest of the world.
They also need to ensure that there are enough working respirators and protective gear to supply if there are any hantavirus outbreaks in the US, along with well thought out guidelines that utilize the latest scientific information about prevention and treatment. For example, the incubation period is reported to be as long as 6 weeks before symptoms appear, the initial symptoms are similar to those of many other viral illnesses, and people can remain contagious long after their symptoms have resolved (months to a year) via their sperm.
For the current Ebola epidemic in the Congo, Rwanda, and South Sudan, the available vaccines and antivirals are for a different strain and do not work on the strain causing this epidemic. Since there is no specific treatment, massive amounts of supplies for supportive measures and prevention are required. A physician from the US working there is already sick. Ebola causes cultural problems in communities since families cannot follow their usual burial practices because the dead bodies of people who had Ebola are infectious. (This is not unique to Africa. I once had a patient in the US who became seriously ill from a different infection, tuberculosis, that he acquired from a body while working at a funeral home.) Cultural norms are hampering prevention efforts as well as misinformation.
The US has earmarked funds ($23 million?) but using it to obtain and staff clinics will be far too slow to prevent the spread to more communities. The personnel and equipment are needed this week, not at some future date. The clinics previously supported by USAID were closed last year when funding was cancelled by DOGE.
So there are gullible and ignorant Canadians- glad it's not just us! Unfortunately ppl are going to learn, at least temporarily, the hard way, by getting very sick or dying, yet again. I can't get myself to care much, but will limit my empathy to those who are in turn placed in jeopardy by these wuck- fits.
I am going to borrow your bon mot, wuck-fits!!!
We Canadians can thank Trump for showing us the error of grievance politics, enabling the election of Prime Minister Carney. He is amazing.
He has his moments. However, his insistence on the new pipeline to sell more dirty tar sands to the world is a huge mistake.
I too am worried about the health of the planet Catherine. I am a Master Beekeeper and there are no wild honey bees any longer in Canada, thanks to man's meddling. There are no fireflies in the fields around my childhood home any longer.
But. While we in Canada can develop, and must develop as rapidly as possible, clean sustainable domestic energy, the vast bulk of the world, in particular the developing world, runs on fossil fuels. It is a simple reality that humans are going to burn fossil fuels as long as they are a) the tech they own and b) less expensive than clean alternatives.
Unfortunately, Canadians find themselves a target of their former friend and ally. The MAGA Trump cabal is doing everything they can to destabilize our economy and our provincial governments. We are now scrambling to reorient both before we become annexed by a rogue kakistrocracy.
One of our roads to that reorientation is using the revenues from our fossil fuels to fund the pathway to clean energy, a revamped trade focus, pushing for more self-reliance in the marketplace, and creating new trade pathways....and alas invigorating our military. All that on top of our existing challenges.
I would also add the nagging worry in the back of my mind that if, as Dr. Suzuki has asked, we leave all that oil in the ground, it becomes a very low hanging, tempting fruit. Who might push Canada aside to get it for themselves?
This is a veritable mess, but there are ways to blunt the damage our fossil fuel production does. Ways to use it to move away from it. And ways to keep Canada a sovereign, principled nation. If anyone can pull that off, it is Mark Carney.
Thank you so much for giving me your perspective.
I didn't know wild honey bees actually evolved in North America after the last glaciation. My info sources must be inadequate. I read that native N Am bees were solitary and not hive-rs that accumulate honey.
Please send me a few links if you can to improve my understanding. I am doing my best to establish a rudimentary pollinator garden.
You were correct Catherine (Master Beekeeper here), honey bees, Apis mellifera, are not native to the Americas, they came over with the very first ships some 500 years ago. But they quickly established and spread across the continents. And you are right, the honey bee is the only bee that stores more honey than it needs, making in times past the only ready source of sweetener. They were even more valuable for their production of beeswax, which was the equivalent of our modern day plastic and polymers, providing waterproofing and sealing, candles and emulsions that no other substance could. Unfortunately, there are no feral honey bees in cold winter areas due to the unfortunate release of a parasite, Varroa mites, into their naive population. Now honey bees need beekeepers to keep them mite-free, or they die. If you want to attract all the native pollinators (and the managed honey bees along with them) you can plant a season long banquet for them all. You plant it and they will arrive in droves! Here is one way to do that: https://newbees101.wordpress.com/2015/09/27/helping-the-honey-bees-and-all-pollinators/
Thanks. From a number of entymology papers on Google Scholar yesterday, I learned that a variety of native insects in North America also make honey. I recall a few names, carpenter bees and aphids among them. That is how it occurred that Native North Americans smoked their caches out to obtain honey for thousands of years before Europeans came to conquer. It doesn't surprise me that we don't know this. It likewise doesn't surprise me that a Master Beekeeper doesn't know this since the focus of interest is, obviously, only on non-native honeybees!
I've planted many native plants even the site is not wonderful. Catmint, Joe Pyeweed, and many others. My semi-native pollinator garden is alive with every kind of pollinator - hummingbirds included. On summer afternoons I sit for hours and watch their acticities. It is a balm for the soul.
PS if nothing else plant catmint (not catnip, catMINT, a perennial) and Joe Pye Weed! Long bloom period and our native bees and pollinators love them.
If anything, we should leave a large portion of the oil in the ground for future uses rather than burning it up now. Perhaps AB could look to the future to build manufacturing plants instead of encouraging more of this resource being turned into smoke.
Alas manufacturing faces incredible obstacles, tariffs among them. Will Canadians, or anyone, pay the prices you have to charge for domestic made goods where workers are well paid and regulations observed? Will investors fund the building of those plants and markets? Because they are looking for long term returns on their massive investments, and in stable political jurisdictions. Alberta is far from stable right now. Lots of issues intersect here.
As for leaving the oil in the ground or even part of it...I can only think that as oil reserves dwindle and oil becomes ever more expensive (at least until clean energy is widely adopted) and valuable. Again, who might push Canada aside to get at it for themselves...
Pretty pathetic!!! Then they refuse entry to their country because plane carries passenger from country where Ebola has raised it's head & make them land in 🇨🇦🍁🇨🇦???? This whole picture is wrong. Our eradicated diseases will return with a vengeance because of a few anti vaxers, spreading it around the 🌎. Thank God for a few Intelligent people, some children may be spared, but others not!!! We have Science expertise for a reason. Let's believe them. The 🌎 of social media will never save us.
There is a Bantu saying I learned during my many years in Tanzania and Kenya that sums up what some people in our culture have forgotten "I am because we are!" When we forget this the "I" dies.
Hopefully all other countries are more prepared than the USA.
I think Canada still believes in Science & the WHO as well as UK & Europe.
Mask up everyone
181263
?
??
Let’s not forget that vaccine refusal stems from a fatalistic and submissive view of the world, with its own coherence and emotional appeal.
We might dislike this, but we can only counter it with a stronger and more empowering concept of human agency and collective purpose.
Science is mostly organized common sense, but organization implies the existence of organizers, and the community of science does not intersect with as many other communities as it might.
I am curious to hear your list of the communities science does not intersect with. I am not sure I can think of any.
The community of science does not intersect with large parts of Canada's educational system, and especially the parts that educated the vaccine-deniers and their children.
In the public education system, the elimination of shop and home economics courses was a powerful blow against scientific thinking, since these hands-on courses were replaced mostly by "book learning" that emphasizes the creation of written artifacts for subjective evaluation by an instructor, as opposed to physical artifacts where the natural world tells the creator whether his or her actions have met with success.
The cult of standardized testing and "teaching to the test" has also had a corrupting effect, as has the increasing use of computers in education generally.
You can read more about my thinking on education here on Substack.
https://milnea.substack.com/p/shakespeare-and-ai
https://milnea.substack.com/p/ai-as-theatre
The scientists whose names we remember (Galileo, Darwin, Einstein...) have all been disruptors, who successfully opposed orthodoxy with evidence and reason. The objective of most educational systems is to prevent such disruptors from emerging. Fatalism is one way of doing this, but there are other forms of learned helplessness that we are not so eager to admit to.
I'll probably write more on this topic, so if you're interested, please consider subscribing. All of my substacks are free.
-- andrew.
I have to disagree with your conclusions, Andrew, although I share your regret at the loss of shop and home ec courses. All kids need to learn basic life skills.
I am a fan of standardized testing, as long as it is used as a simple measure of what needs improving (usually educational funding). And good luck teaching to the test....I don't think that ever worked and teachers have understood that mastery requires student engagement with the material.
What has been missing is an admiration of academic excellence, which breeds that exceptionalism, that thinking outside the box that we always need. You cannot fly a capsule to the moon without a very sophisticated booster rocket underneath it....and you cannot produce a generation of exceptional innovators and thinkers without a solid grounding in all aspects of human knowledge.
It is too bad that folks do not see that science and research are the ultimate "school of hard knocks", where you have to prove your thesis to progress to the next relevant questions.
A person's view of standardized testing usually depends on where they and their children have been educated. In my own case this includes both Canada and the United States.
Sadly, the US Common Core and the testing that surrounds it had a very negative effect on US education.
Here's an article from Forbes. The US upper-middle class has pushed back strongly against excessive testing, and the appearance of this article is significant. https://www.forbes.com/sites/petergreene/2021/08/09/further-evidence-that-common-core-did-real-harm-to-us-education/
Here's the Harvard study that they cite.
https://www.hks.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/Taubman/PEPG/research/PEPG21_03.pdf
Educational testing was a huge boon for publishers like Pearson, who sold both the tests and the material needed to pass them. The whole scheme was driven by money. Academic excellence has never been the objective.
Here are some additional links for test refusal groups in New Jersey and Massachusetts. These states, along with Connecticut, have the best public school systems in the United States, and all three have very strong traditions of local control. Canada does not really have this, and provincial governments (like the Ford government in Ontario) are doing their best to eliminate local control wherever they can.
https://www.citizensforpublicschools.org/opting-out-of-mcas/
https://www.saveourschoolsnj.org/refusing-high-stakes-testing
What we need is a full court press by the govt to make Canada the most completely vaccinated population on the planet. WE can lead the way.
ALOHA. From the COCONUT WIRELESS. ......................... OUCH. ........................
Honestly, I couldn't care less if millions of moronic MAGA Yankees perish from a variety of infectious diseases. They voted for it. 89,000,000 US citizens didn't even bother to vote; such is American arrogance, laziness, and unwarranted sense of entitlement.
The distressing part is that these diseases don't recognize borders.
So basically, the only safeguard Canada will have is to close our border to unvaccinated American morons, as we did during COVID, as should Mexico and the rest of the world.
Actually a million already died from COVID unvaccinated. Even one of the recent Republicans endorsed by Trump originally got her seat when her previously elected unvaccinated husband died of Covid- and she went from being a vaccine supporter to skeptic to election denier all to get the endorsement. No moral character.
That makes the most sense, shut down borders
Shutting borders is both impractical and ineffective.