You can’t really force a child to have a genuine interest in a musical instrument. You have to lead them to that goal indirectly.
Author Archives: michael
The Militarization of Play
Most boys love weapons. Cross-bows, battle axes, harpoons, guns: they can’t get enough of them. The latest implements of war to be installed in our house are a full complement of Nerf guns.
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Pressure cookers and their role in greenhouse gas reduction
People might think that trading in their gas-guzzler for a Prius would be a good way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, there is a simpler and less expensive way of achieving similar reductions: eating less meat and using a pressure cooker to cook legumes.
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Afghanistan: escalate at your own risk
A basic lack of legitimacy is what makes the Afghan war so difficult to pursue and what makes it such a hard sell to American allies: it just doesn’t make much sense. A fight against Al-Qaeda has morphed into a fight against an anti-modern but essentially nationalistic enemy in the Taliban. This is why parallels to the Vietnam war seem more and more appropriate
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Pittsburgh and its Golden Triangle
Pittsburgh has an unusual urban configuration in that its central business district–the Golden Triangle–is relatively isolated from the rest of the city. The Triangle is where the two rivers meet to form the mighty Ohio. As we told the boys, this is where in the old days people drifted lazily down the river–Huck Finn style–all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.
Posted in Cities, Pittsburgh 2 Comments
Torturing Afghan Detainees R Us
In the ‘whatever is begun in anger ends in shame’ department, Canada risks descending into pariah status with the latest revelations of complicity in torture in Afghanistan.
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Charles and Camilla visit Hamilton!
Hamilton proved not to be a hotbed of republican sentiment last week on November 9, 2009 when Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales and his wife Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, visited Dundurn Castle.
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Fall of the Berlin Wall
The fall of the Wall in 1989 was a joyous occasion for me. I lived in West Berlin in 1981-2 and understood the brutality, ugliness and the simple lack of convenience that the Wall brought to the great city of Berlin. The Wall was an interesting geo-political artifact of the Cold War but it was also very offensive, as walls that imprison populations tend to be.
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Evidence-Based Medicine
In Saturday’s’ Globe and Mail there was an interesting article by André Picard about the career of Dr. David Sackett, who pioneered the practice of evidence-based medicine (EBM). EBM promotes the idea that rather than just relying on tradition or expert opinion in medical diagnosis, the proper approach is to find available evidence and then attempt to apply it. This idea seems to make great deal of sense.
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Sesame Street meets VeggieTales
This year for Hallowe’en Ben decided to be a Pirate Pickle, while Liam went the Sesame Street route dressed as Elmo.
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