US cities may have to be bulldozed in order to survive

Dozens of US cities may have entire neighbourhoods bulldozed as part of drastic “shrink to survive” proposals being considered by the Obama administration to tackle economic decline.

By Tom Leonard in Flint, Michigan
Published: 6:30PM BST 12 Jun 2009

The government looking at expanding a pioneering scheme in Flint, one of the poorest US cities, which involves razing entire districts and returning the land to nature.

Local politicians believe the city must contract by as much as 40 per cent, concentrating the dwindling population and local services into a more viable area.

Animal Farm still hits raw nerve for Poles

Tue, June 9, 2009
The production at London’s Polish school underscores totalitarianism that threatens freedom in the world today
By KATE DUBINSKI

In the darkened school gymnasium, as the teenagers shout “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others,” with Polish communist songs interspersed in the background, it’s hard to know who finds the moment most significant.

Is it the watching parents, who remember being forced to sing those songs in school, who immediately, unconsciously, sit a little straighter when the drum starts to beat?

Is it the teens on stage, most born here in Canada but who hear stories about the forbidden play their parents weren’t allowed to read?

Or is it the teacher who remembers the years before coming here, when teaching George Orwell’s Animal Farm in Poland wasn’t even an option?

Darker the skin, less you fit

May 14, 2009 04:30 AM
Lesley Ciarula Taylor
Immigration Reporter

Vanessa Kirunda is the last person you’d expect to be looked down on.

Poised, articulate, educated and confident, Kirunda, a black woman, can dissect and analyze why Canadians treat her differently.

But all bets were off when schoolmates called her 10-year-old son Sean a n—–. Three times. Three different children.

“I anticipated this would happen, but it breaks my heart. Something is wrong when children say these things. On top of everything, I’m not going to have my child degraded,” said the Mississauga resident.

May urges strategic voting

Canadians should vote in their ridings for any party able to defeat Tory candidates, Green leader says
Sep 25, 2008 04:30 AM
Sandro Contenta
STAFF REPORTER

ON BOARD THE CANADIAN–This cross-country train, like all fast-moving vehicles, is responsible for its share of road kill. But every now and then, it becomes the object of a suicidal revolt from a considerable force of nature.

It usually happens during the rutting season: bull moose have been known to charge the train head-on. The impact is hard enough to jolt the front car, but the result is predictably unfortunate.

“The last thing that went through that moose’s mind was its ass,” said a train worker of a recent incident.

The coming hunger

Riots over rising grain prices are ripping through the developing world and the United Nations warns there’s worse to come. Was Malthus right? Are we getting too numerous to feed ourselves?

Apr 12, 2008 04:30 AM
Lynda Hurst
Feature Writer

The warning bells are ringing, furiously.

This week, food riots paralyzed Haiti, with angry marchers outside the president’s palace shouting “We are hungry!” Five people were killed in the chaos.

In Egypt, a 15-year-old boy was shot and killed this week in two days of violence over food shortages. Last month, a two-week protest at government-subsidized bakeries ended with the deaths of 10 Egyptians in clashes with police.

A love match? That’s so last century

New research into inter-ethnic unions suggests we’re reverting to a less romantic idea of marriage

Mar 15, 2008 04:30 AM
Nicholas Keung
Immigration/Diversity Reporter

I grew up in a traditional Chinese household, where I was taught my future life partner must have an equal, if not better, upbringing than mine. That mentality is embedded in the ancient saying, “A bamboo door should match a bamboo door; a wood door should match a wood door.” Essentially, what it means is you have to marry someone in the same social class if you want the relationship to last.

The Chinese are not alone in this worldview. Many Indians are still bound by caste and the arranged unions that flow from it. And acute class-consciousness is a persistent feature of British identity.

A Question…

Why is a man who has sex with a 12 year old girl branded a paedophile, but a woman who does the same is not?

*****
Sex with boy, 12, woman jailed 15 months

Mar 29, 2007 06:01 PM
Canadian Press

QUEBEC – A woman collapsed and burst into tears today after being sentenced to 15 months in jail for having sex with a 12-year-old boy.

Italian woman finds live grenade in potato bag

If you haven’t read Donovan Webster’s book, or watched the associated documentary, Aftermath: Remnants of War, this story is a timely reminder that war stays with us a very long time indeed.

Highly recommending reading and viewing.

Italian woman finds live grenade in potato bag

Grenade was harvested in French field, officials explain
Feb 28, 2007 12:03 PM
Reuters

NAPLES, Italy – A 74-year-old Italian grandmother who bought a sack of potatoes at the her local market found a live grenade among the spuds.

“I found a bomb in the potatoes,” Olga Mauriello said in a telephone interview with Reuters.

Why are you a secretary?

originally posted on Anthropology.net

The Queen has the Power, but the Ants See the Sun, or Some Such Parable

Revisiting the anthropology of the office motif, I was thinking the other day about what it means to define a job as a “support position”. An incident comes to mind when I was having a conversation with a friend, who happens to be a professor, and I told her that I am a secretary as well as a student. She often responds straight off the hip, with pep, and she said incredulously: “Why are you a secretary?! How can you take classes?” “Well, it pays the bills, and the benefits are good,” I said.