The CUPE union in Nova Scotia is right to raise an alarm over calls from two of the province's three visible registered parties to have a single Halifax based health board run all the hospitals in the rural part of the province.
Will the whole damn world, one day, be run out of one office at the UN ?
Saturday, August 31, 2013
Thursday, August 29, 2013
The smallest 'small school' has no permanent school building at all
My small school proposals seem to be too radical for most in this inert little province by the restless sea.
I discovered this when I went before a Nova Scotia public inquiry and suggested that public schools follow the example of the province's universities.
I discovered this when I went before a Nova Scotia public inquiry and suggested that public schools follow the example of the province's universities.
The Small Party : North America's first and most radical 'green' Party
I seem to recall meeting Elizabeth May in the summer of 1979 at an environmental fair on Halifax's Garrison Grounds just after the 1979 federal election.
She was nonplussed by the total lack of reference to any environmental issue in the election from any party and talked about forming some sort of party that would.
A few months later she did just that : THE small PARTY ran almost a dozen candidates - all but two in the Maritimes, Elizabeth among them.
She was nonplussed by the total lack of reference to any environmental issue in the election from any party and talked about forming some sort of party that would.
A few months later she did just that : THE small PARTY ran almost a dozen candidates - all but two in the Maritimes, Elizabeth among them.
I propose to a (book) editor.... in an elevator
Clutching my manuscript to my heaving chest (insert bodice here) I got down on one knee and said to her , "This Manhattan Project is from Venus ---- and so are most of your customers."
"So enough already on any more books about Manhattan Projects that kill. This wartime Manhattan P. saved lives : its all about life and love and the whole nine months."
"So enough already on any more books about Manhattan Projects that kill. This wartime Manhattan P. saved lives : its all about life and love and the whole nine months."
May the small, like the Big, always be with us....
A blog that celebrates the small, in a world that drinks the Kool-Aid of Bigness ...
The Big are in absolutely no danger of disappearing, certainly not from our culture and not even as a result of rapid changes in the global environment.
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
The irony of 1945's twin triumphs ...
1945 was , on any account, an extraordinary year, not the least for its twin scientific triumphs.
At the time, it was almost universally held that the Man-made Bomb was the way of an atomic future so bright we'd have to wear shades .
By contrast, 1945's new Microbe-made medicine (natural penicillin) was viewed as but a temporary anomaly, a dusty throw back to the outdated caldron practises of medieval midwives.
But more than a half century later we are no longer so sure of all of this.
Atomic energy has not at all fulfilled its early promise.
Meanwhile, microbiology and biotechnology (descendants of 1945's natural-produced penicillin) have far outshot their 1945 rival, synthetic chemistry.
So today, with 20/20 hindsight, while 1945 can still feel like the apogee of the Modern age,it is also revealed as its very nadir.
Because 1945 is now seen as the birthday of our present post-Modern age.
In which case, Henry Dawson's twin follies of advocating on behalf of small individuals and on behalf of small microbes can be seen as promoting a distinguishing hallmark of postmodernity.
For few of us, under the age of eighty, devote much energy these days to replacing our current rainbow of many small cultures with a return to yesterday's dreary unitary monoculture of constipated WASP-dom.....
At the time, it was almost universally held that the Man-made Bomb was the way of an atomic future so bright we'd have to wear shades .
By contrast, 1945's new Microbe-made medicine (natural penicillin) was viewed as but a temporary anomaly, a dusty throw back to the outdated caldron practises of medieval midwives.
But more than a half century later we are no longer so sure of all of this.
Atomic energy has not at all fulfilled its early promise.
Meanwhile, microbiology and biotechnology (descendants of 1945's natural-produced penicillin) have far outshot their 1945 rival, synthetic chemistry.
So today, with 20/20 hindsight, while 1945 can still feel like the apogee of the Modern age,it is also revealed as its very nadir.
Because 1945 is now seen as the birthday of our present post-Modern age.
In which case, Henry Dawson's twin follies of advocating on behalf of small individuals and on behalf of small microbes can be seen as promoting a distinguishing hallmark of postmodernity.
For few of us, under the age of eighty, devote much energy these days to replacing our current rainbow of many small cultures with a return to yesterday's dreary unitary monoculture of constipated WASP-dom.....
Social Darwinism turns Peace into Undeclared War...
The attributes of the Age of the Big (Social Darwinism Mk I) makes the idea of contrasting it with the concept of the War of the Big (Social Darwinism Mk II) a moot point.
This is because the Social Darwin idea of reducing all Life to an unceasing, total, struggle for life or death means that only a formal declaration on paper could separate Darwinian War from Darwinian Peace.
It was always assumed , without much proof, that in this struggle the big would inevitably triumph over the small and then the ever bigger would do likewise over the merely 'big' .
By contrast ,Henry Dawson championed the small all his life - it must have come almost naturally to him, with his coming from a Canadian province that was increasingly viewed as too small to be relevant to Canadian values.
But he also noticed in his scientific investigations that while the big did thrive in stable circumstances, the small could still at least survive in hidden niches.
But in non-stable times, the big (over-extended) broke up, while the small (insured against normal hard times) took it all in stride.
Rather than modern science quickly dismissing Life's small as just part of evolution's dusty, distant beginnings, he felt they should give the small a second glance - and a second chance.
He extended this in the 1930s to those judged chronically ill and second rate and then, in the war years , to those American young people with SBE who were judged to be 'life unworthy of expensive medical care during a military crisis' .
Modern science had no time for his theory - his championing of the small was viewed as a damning folly from a medical scientist with an otherwise worthy medical career.
But post modernity science is largely shaped around the concept of reality's inherent complexity and diversity : admitting that reality will always consist of the mixing together of large and small phenomena and large and small beings.
In this long view, Dawson's folly begins to look quite prescient ...
This is because the Social Darwin idea of reducing all Life to an unceasing, total, struggle for life or death means that only a formal declaration on paper could separate Darwinian War from Darwinian Peace.
It was always assumed , without much proof, that in this struggle the big would inevitably triumph over the small and then the ever bigger would do likewise over the merely 'big' .
By contrast ,Henry Dawson championed the small all his life - it must have come almost naturally to him, with his coming from a Canadian province that was increasingly viewed as too small to be relevant to Canadian values.
But he also noticed in his scientific investigations that while the big did thrive in stable circumstances, the small could still at least survive in hidden niches.
But in non-stable times, the big (over-extended) broke up, while the small (insured against normal hard times) took it all in stride.
Rather than modern science quickly dismissing Life's small as just part of evolution's dusty, distant beginnings, he felt they should give the small a second glance - and a second chance.
He extended this in the 1930s to those judged chronically ill and second rate and then, in the war years , to those American young people with SBE who were judged to be 'life unworthy of expensive medical care during a military crisis' .
Modern science had no time for his theory - his championing of the small was viewed as a damning folly from a medical scientist with an otherwise worthy medical career.
But post modernity science is largely shaped around the concept of reality's inherent complexity and diversity : admitting that reality will always consist of the mixing together of large and small phenomena and large and small beings.
In this long view, Dawson's folly begins to look quite prescient ...
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