Show Trial of Brock Professor Over Essay A DisgraceTuesday June 16th, 2020
Commentary
Thirty years ago, chemistry professor Dieter Seebach, now 83, wrote a scientific article on the state of affairs in his specialty of organic synthesis. On June 4, the prestigious German chemistry journal Angewandte Chemie published an homage to Seebach’s paper written by Brock University’s Tomas Hudlicky, a Tier 1 Canada research chair in organic chemistry.
In his own peer-re...
Show Trial of Distinguished Professor Over Essay a DisgraceTuesday June 16th, 2020
Commentary
Thirty years ago, chemistry professor Dieter Seebach, now 83, wrote a scientific article on the state of affairs in his specialty of organic synthesis. On June 4, the prestigious German chemistry journal Angewandte Chemie published an homage to Seebach’s paper written by Brock University’s Tomas Hudlicky, a Tier 1 Canada research chair in organic chemistry.
In his own peer-re...
U of A professor holds the line on free expressionTuesday June 9th, 2020
Kathleen Lowrey, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Alberta, ascribes much of her intellectual formation to Marxism and radical feminism. Not, I think my regular readers would agree, someone with whom I would normally have a great deal in common. And yet, in this strange cultural moment, Prof. Lowrey and I find ourselves amicably united in the service of a mutually reve...
The diversity, inclusion, equity movement (DIE) is now taking over the STEM fieldTuesday June 2nd, 2020
It used to be that students—mostly men, mostly white in the past, now increasingly diverse—who went into Science, Technology, Engineering and Math—STEM—thought they were safe if they kept their heads down. But they aren’t safe anymore. Having successfully suppressed the numbers of white males in most other departments, the diversity, inclusion and equity movement (...
Innovative camps look to save the summerThursday May 28th, 2020
In Ontario and Quebec, day camps have permission to open, but not sleepaway camps. This will come as a blow to many kids who have for months have had to forgo seeing their friends and participating in organized sports, but clung to the anticipation of their annual camp sojourn, where they could be blissfully immersed in both.I understand the better-safe-than-sorry spirit that guided the deci...
Erin O'Toole has what it takes to clobber Trudeau in the next electionMonday May 25th, 2020
He was out. Then Jim Karahalios thought he was back into the CPC leadership race. But last week the LEOC (Leadership Election Organizing Committee) determined that he is definitively disqualified.Karahalios has a following, and they will be disappointed, but let’s remember the good reason he was shunned in the first place. He had, as leadership competitor Erin O’Toole framed it,...
Canada Beware the Steely Claws of the Chinese RegimeFriday May 15th, 2020
The Calgary Zoo is sending Panda bears Er Shun and Da Mao, originally slated to remain through 2024, home to China. I say “home” because Pandas are never sold to zoos. China leases Pandas out in order to control their scarcity and to ensure China is the sole supplier of bamboo, Pandas’ principal source of energy (about 18 kg a day each).
Given the five-fold profit China stood to make on...
Terry Mosher's face mask/niqab cartoon misses the markThursday May 14th, 2020
Quebec premier François Legault now “strongly recommends” that Montrealers wear a mask out in public, and he underlined the message by himself wearing a medical mask when he announced it. I knew it wouldn’t be long before he became the butt of ridicule that ironically linked his mask to Quebec’s infamous Bill 21, which precludes the wearing of the niqab&mdas...
Barbara Kay on COVID-19: We have to get the kids back to playing sports againWednesday May 13th, 2020
As a grandparent who hasn’t had physical contact with my five granddaughters since mid-March, I’m naturally eager to see the end of the lockdown. But if I can only receive that benefit at the high cost of my grandchildren sacrificing their most beloved activities, I prefer to FaceTime with them indefinitely.My demographic is the one at high risk, after all, not theirs. As the dat...
Forget everything you think you know about single-use plasticTuesday May 12th, 2020
With air and car traffic reduced so dramatically during the Covid-19 crisis, the salutary knock-on effect of lowered carbon emissions and pollution must be a solace to locked-down eco-warriors.
But their mellow from that outcome is likely harshed a bit by the return to the use of plastic bags in supermarkets for the sake of virus-inspired hyper-hygiene. The once-ubiquitous plastic bag is a sta...
A coronavirus report card for Ontario and Quebec schoolsTuesday May 5th, 2020
In last week’s column, I illustrated, via the experiences of two families, the dramatic difference in responses to school closures in Quebec between the public and independent schools. The private schools, secular and parochial, immediately committed to mandatory remote-learning schedules approximating in-school routines, with a minimum of five hours a day devoted to instruction, assignments...
New petition demands fairness for women in Olympic sportsMonday May 4th, 2020
The coronavirus pandemic has affected every facet of our social, cultural and economic lives, in ways too many to count, both small and large, affecting every institution in every community, from neighbourhoods to cities to the nation and beyond. Internationally, the cancellation of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics was a particularly bitter pill to swallow for the International Olympic Committee (IOC), ...
An eye-opening tale of two school systems during the COVID-19 crisisTuesday April 28th, 2020
A clever tweet: “We are not all in the same boat. We are all in the same storm.” So true. Pandemic privilege comes in many forms. One that preoccupies me is the disparity in parental burden in homeschooling children. Private school parents live on a yacht, public school parents in a rowboat.This is a tale of two Montreal families. One is my daughter Joanne’s, whose older da...
Barbara Kay on COVID-19: The country house pandemic problemWednesday April 22nd, 2020
MONTREAL — On April 1, Premier François Legault told Quebecers they should avoid all “non-essential” travel around the province. That meant Montrealers should not be going to their country houses (as we call our “cottages”), nor should people living in other regions travel to Montreal. This was not a suggestion, it was a decree. (One Montrealer who decide...
Barbara Kay on COVI-19: The country house pandemic problemWednesday April 22nd, 2020
MONTREAL — On April 1, Premier François Legault told Quebecers they should avoid all “non-essential” travel around the province. That meant Montrealers should not be going to their country houses (as we call our “cottages”), nor should people living in other regions travel to Montreal. This was not a suggestion, it was a decree. (One Montrealer who decide...
The coronavirus crisis reveals the hypocrisy of the ‘diversity’ squadTuesday April 21st, 2020
Global statistics reveal that hospitalized men are far more likely to die of COVID-19 than women. Are men more vulnerable because of lifestyle choices—elevated smoking and obesity rates, say—or for biological reasons yet to be discovered? The jury is still out.
Apart from being used as leverage for dark humour by misandrists, this disparity hasn’t attracted significant public...
Human Wreckage: Pondering Lenin’s Legacy on 150th Anniversary of His BirthSunday April 19th, 2020
Commentary
Canada’s Liberal government has dragged its feet on acknowledging the duplicity of the Chinese Communist Party throughout the COVID-19 crisis. Occasionally, as when Health Minister Patty Hajdu recently told a journalist that accusing China of concealing the extent of its outbreak was “feeding into conspiracy theories,” the Canadian response has skirted “useful idiot” territor...
Social distancing rules are getting out of hand in the coronavirus eraThursday April 16th, 2020
We’re all doing our best to “social distance.” We get it. This novel coronavirus spreads through the air, and two metres between people is needed to keep ourselves from infection or from infecting others. We’re most of us trying to do that. But we’d be happier doing it without Big Brother hovering over us. Because, as I said, we get It
Last Friday, Oakville, Ont r...
Is it any wonder Americans are losing trust in their institutions?Tuesday April 14th, 2020
In the summer of 2018, Donald Trump was enjoying himself in Florida, immersed in his favourite activity, a rally for Donald Trump. CNN reporter Jim Acosta, an aggressive critic Trump loves to bait, was covering the event live on air, when a group of Trump supporters started screaming at him and making threatening gestures behind him into the camera.But after the rally ended and Acosta got of...
Learn from the best while you can
Thursday June 25th, 2020
Show Trial of Brock Professor Over Essay A Disgrace
Tuesday June 16th, 2020
The diversity, inclusion, equity movement (DIE) is now taking over the STEM field
Tuesday June 2nd, 2020
