Month: April 2018

On the joys of celibacy

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celibacy

Something called the incel movement has been in he news lately, in connection with the horrific murder of 10 people in Toronto, and the serious injury of 14 others, when a man deliberately drove a rented van down several blocks of sidewalk.

The suspect now in custody and at last count now facing 10 charges of first-degree murder, may have been radicalized by the hateful, tantrum language toward women often used on websites frequented by unhappy, angry men.

Their complaint is their state of “involuntary celibacy,” hence the “incel” name of their movement.

But I’m confused. I find it hard to understand how a man, or woman, for that matter, could be celibate for an extended period of time and not at some point discover the good side of it. Better than good. I went through a period of celibacy when I was a young man, starting when I was 20 and lasting for a couple of years. Continue reading →

In praise of Const. Ken Lam: a moment of caring goes a long way

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KenLam

A moment from the video taken by a bystander.  Toronto Police Service Const. Ken Lam is on the right near his cruiser. The suspect on the left is holding a dark object in his right hand, pointing it at the officer. Less than a  minute later Const. Lam had taken the young man in custody without firing a shot.

The first time I saw that now-famous video of Toronto Police Const. Ken Lam arresting the man who had just allegedly run down 24 people in Toronto I, like a lot of other people, was impressed for all the obvious reasons.

Const. Lam’s courage and patience during a highly tense confrontation with the suspect, 25-year-old Alek Minassian, has received widespread praise as remarkable, including in the U.S. and elsewhere around the world.

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Ontario’s zero-waste plan should not be politically dumped

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plastic

A sight that’s becoming all-too-typical around the world

It could be a script for a science fiction movie: scientists discover a previously unknown bacterium that somehow evolved in a plastic recycling plant in Japan. This new organism produces an enzyme that eats plastic in a matter of weeks, reducing it to a reusable resource. Continue reading →

Ah, the joys of a late spring

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DSC00469

April 14, 2018, Hope Ness, Ontario, Canada

The local store where I buy my Big Beautiful Boy’s dog food was fairly busy one morning earlier this week. Housed in an older building, the décor steeped in Canadian, farm-store heritage, it’s staffed and operated by folks who call you by name – or soon will, if you’re new. If they say, “have a nice day,” they really mean it.

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Last tap for a tough, old tree

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DSC00462

Trees have a lot to tell us about the state of their world, and ours. They’re in trouble too.

That tough, old sugar maple clinging for dear life to a primordial rock up there by my barn, for example, has surely been through many a hard winter, summer drought, and other traumatic seasonal surprises. But this late winter/early spring, maple sap/syrup season must be one of the most challenging in its long history of stolid endurance. Continue reading →

The prisoner: Free at last

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I met a man once who said he had spent his whole life in prison. he said it was the only place he could remember ever having lived, until the day he found freedom. That’s the way he put it: he didn’t say he had broken out of prison, or got released after serving the time for whatever crime he had committed. He said he “found” it, like it was something he saw lying around and just picked up.
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