View from the Edge

There used to be a time when irony was the provenance of literature, of tragedy and comedy. Way back in the dark ages of the 1970’s, 1980’s and 1990’s, comedians like George Carlin, Dennis Miller, Bill Maher, and Jon Stewart built careers upon spinning the stories of irony that showed us the world as […]

As I sit on Saturday morning, watching the pictures from Iraq of masked men putting a noose over an old man’s head, looking at men afraid and unable to show their faces as they prepare to execute a man whose face is fully visible, I am reminded of…

Well, my trip to the coast is officially over, and overall, the driving was pretty good considering its late December in Canada.  I have some more pictures to upload, taken today as I drove through the Crowsnest Pass, and I plan to make a post about the route I took, and my review of the […]

Mad Hatters - Impartial and (mostly) Unbiased opinions on Medicine Hat » Grameening of Christmas - A Challenge to Medicine Hat

Ever since Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize earlier this year for his revolutionary work with the Grameen Ba…

Hundreds killed in Nigerian pipeline explosion - World - theage.com.au

Having spent 5 years living and working in Lagos, this is an unfortunately common story. The people of Lagos, in general, are wealthy in comparison to the rest of the count…

On this Christmas Day I hope that the memory of this event serves to show us that people want peace, and left to their own devices peace is what they do. Most humans by nature would rather make love than war. It is our leaders, and their lies, madness, stupidity, and greed, that lead us […]

Naked
by Lyle Bateman

Why must I stand naked
Against the winter wind’s bite?
My brother keeps his fine fir coat
And even the weepers and wailers
Drip protection all around.
Why must I stand naked?

Just thought I’d check in with everyone from my hotel room in Kamloops.  I am two days into my trip to go see my dad for Xmas, and I think the worst is over driving-wise.  While the weather and roads were actually pretty good for the Roger’s Pass, for anywhere else in the world it […]

When we think of the Golden Age of Animation, its usually the work of Disney or Warner Brothers that first pops to mind. But alongside the antics of Mickey and Pluto, or of Bugs and Daffy, a cat and mouse team named Tom and Jerry, created by the …

While the notion of a perfect and unchanging heavens has been out of scientific vogue for a few centuries, it was dealt a final death blow recently with photos of the surface of mars. Paradoxically, at the same time, old notions of a living Mars gained new unexpected new breath. In modern times, […]