We can build a Haldron Collider but we can't build a better mousetrap

Over the summer, our mouser, Doublewide, put quite the dent in the local chipmunk population. We were a little ambivalent about that, but figured it was keeping her hunting instincts sharp for the upcoming indoor mouse-hunting season.

But apparently she considers herself a big-game hunter now, and can't be bothered with mere mice anymore.

Which is how I found myself at the Tractor Supply Company picking up a couple of Rodentex plastic traps this afternoon. I prefer the old-school Victor traps, but between them not making them like they used to, and my essential tremor, it can be quite an adventure to get them baited and set.

Hence these better mouse-traps, at four times the price.

Do they work?

Ya, but they only get the job half done. After thirty seconds the mouse comes to, and walks away with the trap stuck to its head.

Nova Scotia terrorized by tsunami of racist hate

Check out Tiffany Gooch's take on the Indigenous lobster fishery in today's Toronto Star.

Racist hate, hateful racist terror, racist terrorist mobs... holy heck, things have really gone off the rails out there in Nova Scotia!

Luckily for the future of interracial harmony and reconciliation, Liberal strategist Tiffany has got to the bottom of this shit-show and named and shamed the culprits; the racist non-Indigenous (do you mean white, Tiffany?) Indian-hating lobster-men of Nova Scotia and their racist co-conspirators in the RCMP. (I know I've not used the correct nomenclature here, Tiffany, but my research shows that the vast majority of lobster fishers self-identify as "lobster-men," and I therefore use the term as a gesture of respect.)

Here's the thing. The Donald Marshal decision that established Native rights to a "moderate livelihood" was rendered in 1999. For over 21 years the political class has failed to come up with a definition of what that means. For over two decades, our political leadership has stalled, dithered, denied, and delayed moving forward, allowing these tensions to fester. The violence that exploded in the past week was utterly predictable, and is ultimately the result of failed political leadership.

While Tiffany's article oozes faux solidarity with the victims of white oppression in the lobster fishery, she is in fact a member of the political class that has created the nightmare she now blames on racist lobster-men. Harper's Holy Rollers ignored the problem for almost ten years. Liberal governments under Chretien, Paul Martin, and Justin Trudeau have ignored it even longer.

As a "Liberal strategist," Tiffany, I'm sure it feels good pointing fingers at working-class fishers worried for their livelihood, but it's the negligence, incompetence, and arrogance of the people we look to for leadership that is responsible for having created this toxic environment in the first place.

America's three existential threats

None of them are called Russia, China, or Iran. The three existential threats are the climate change crisis, the pandemic, and systemic racism. Of the three, the climate crisis has been with us the longest.

You saw the first stirrings back in the sixties, and you must admit that as "crises" go, this one's proven itself to have impressive legs. It's gone a long way from the initial concerns of climate experts over how we're fouling our nest with our pollution, to global warming, to climate change, to species decline, to the extinction rebellion, and even though we've been distracted, this one will come back and wipe us off the planet if the other existential threats don't do us in first.

Then back in January the pandemic reared its head. This completely new virus, unlike anything previously known to humanity, has laid waste to long-term care homes around the world, snuffing the lives of hundreds of thousands, the vast majority of whom would have moved to the proverbial "better place" within months anyway, and forcing us to shut down, at the behest of medical experts, the global economy at the cost of millions of livelihoods and trillions of dollars.

As if that wasn't enough of a body blow to our species, within months social scientists had discovered another pandemic even more insidious than covid; systemic racism. Unlike the old in-your-face non-systemic racism of the bygone era, which manifested as slavery, segregation, and lynchings, this new systemic racism is much more subtle, lying more in the domain of the deadly "micro-aggression."

What do America's three existential crises have in common? Each of them, being the province of experts, is subject to continuous revision and redefinition, because that's how things work in the world 'o experts.

Science evolves, don't you know! 

And because science, even social science, evolves, you can be bloody sure that by the time humanity devises a fix for any of these malicious maladies, the threat itself will have "evolved," making our remedies irrelevant, and sending the experts back to the drawing board...

It's a vicious downward spiral. Humanity is doomed.

The academy follows NASCAR and F-1; if you want tenure, bring your own sponsors

Let's say you've got a youngster keen on gaining a tenure track position. He/she's got a gaggle of post-grad degrees from the finest schools, and is eminently qualified for that tenure track post at a top institution.

Unfortunately, there are at least 101 equally qualified candidates available for every tenure track position.

It's an embarrassment of riches for the university. Which candidate will pass muster?

The candidate who ticks all the boxes?

Or the candidate who ticks all the boxes, and their uncle just endowed a chair in the economics department to the tune of fifty million dollars?

Hmm...

It's a lot like Lance Stroll and his F-1 career. Lance can obviously drive a F-1 car, but is there a serious person on the planet who imagines that he'd be driving one if Daddy wasn't rich? 

RIP Boomer, 2004-2020

Had a picture of the old girl having a last slurp of water out of Colpoy's Bay on the way to the vet for her last appointment.

It doesn't seem to want to load. Maybe in the fullness of time...

Boomsie had a great run. She was everything you'd ever want in a hound, and then some.

We will miss her.

UN goes full commie

 Get a load of this headline; China, Russia and Cuba win spots on UN Human Rights Council.

Notice how America's most loyal allies, Canada and the Marshall Islands, are excluded. Oh baby, the fix is in!

What can the UN possibly be up to? Surely it is beyond obvious to every sentient human being that America represents the very pinnacle of human endeavour. So why elevate this disgusting gaggle of enemies of freedom and democracy to the Human Rights Council?

What's next? Venezuela and Nicaragua on the UN Security Council?

If there's one thing great about America, it's that even hostile electoral adversaries like Trump and Biden are united in their faith that America is the greatest, the light unto the nations, the shining shitty on a hill, the pinnacle of human achievement, the ....

Hello?..

Hello?

Happy Turkey Day!

 I used to think Canada had thanksgiving early because we had less to be thankful for. They had Elvis and Chuck. We had Paul Anka.

Now I realize I had it back asswards. We celebrate thanksgiving early because we have so much more to be thankful for!

It would have to suck to live down there. It's painful to watch, even at a distance. They seem to be heading into some major turbulence.

Which is completely mind-boggling, because it doesn't matter one iota who wins this election that threatens to unleash a civil war.

The billionaires have won already.