October 21, 2009 – 5:08 pm
My colleague Neil McLaughlin has a blog post over at Canada’s Academic Matters that argues that it is unethical to require students to buy your own books, or at least to profit from the sale of those books:
There are, of course, good pedagogical reasons why a professor might want to assign a book they have [...]
Back from the Canadian Soc meetings, and it was much better than I expected. The Author Meets Critics session I participated in was a unique opportunity to discuss ideas about the role of political institutions in social change and their relationship to social movements. The reception was a nice chance to meet a few new [...]
The annual meeting of the Canadian Sociological Association is next week. Is anyone scatterplottish planning to attend? I’d love to meet up.
This will be my third attempt to penetrate the puzzling structure of the Canadian meetings.
I’m going out on a limb to declare mine the first sociology course podcast featured by iTunes:
February 20, 2009 – 6:55 am
President Obama stopped by Ottawa yesterday, making Canada his first foreign visit since taking office. It made us feel all squiggly on the inside. This morning, there are reports that he bought maple leaf cookies and a snow globe. He and Prime Minister Harper discussed trade relations, the economy, and the environment. Apparently, more sensitive [...]
February 11, 2009 – 10:21 am
Not for sale in Canada’s largest online bookstore:
Fabio Rojas, From Black Power to Black Studies
Kieran Healy, Last Best Gifts
Jay Livingston, Crime and Criminology
Available for sale, with free shipping!
Jeremy Freese, Regression Models for Categorical Dependent Variables using Stata
Jeff Manza and Chris Uggen, Locked Out (but only in hardcover)
Laura Beth Nielsen, License to Harass
Andrew J. Perrin, Citizen [...]
January 8, 2009 – 6:11 pm
Canada has polygamists. Canada has criminal laws against polygamy. Canada also has laws that protect religious freedom. What to do? In British Columbia, a prosecutor has decided, after 20 years of debate and inaction, to enforce the polygamy law, arresting two leaders of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or FLDS.
This [...]
December 5, 2008 – 7:54 am
The government is shut down up here. The gist of the story is that our recent election resulted in a Parliament where no party had a majority, but the Conservatives had more seats than the others. This is called a minority government, and the Prime Minister is the leader of the Conservative party, Stephen Harper.
Well, [...]
November 16, 2008 – 10:23 am
The Ontario Ministry of Health has a new public health project that encourages people to screen themselves for colorectal cancer. Ontarians over 50 can get a free home-test kit to check for blood in their stool, an early sign of the disease. Testers collect samples of their own poop for three days in a row, [...]
October 17, 2008 – 7:04 pm
Husband and Kid are on the floor of the kitchen hallway, playing a game in which hockey cards are players and a penny is the puck:
Husband: I scored!
Kid: No, you didn’t.
Husband: Let’s check the computer.
(Husband and Kid each open pretend laptops to check the slow-motion replay)
Husband: The computer says it’s a goal!
Kid: My computer [...]
October 15, 2008 – 6:06 am
Canadians joke that Americans don’t even notice us up here. Did you know that we had an election yesterday? We did, and the results are in: a continued minority government led by the Conservative Party. Prime Minister Stephen Harper will continue to be Prime Minister, but he will not get the additional power of a [...]
September 14, 2008 – 8:30 pm
Hockey, it turns out, really does help a crank like me feel better, in a way that ultimate frisbee does not. Apparently, the running around out in the fresh air on green grass–as awesome and fun and tiring as that is–is not a substitute for smashing into people as hard as you can. Go figure.
I’m [...]
Husband twitters that there are five people in line for the grand opening of the shiny new Apple Store in Montréal, which begins this evening at 5pm. It is the first store to open in Quebec, and it comes at a time when iTunes has more francophone content than ever.
Husband has arranged a number of [...]
Here’s to same-sex marriages, universal health care, and curling! Today, we’ll have Pancake Breakfast at the Dundas Driving Park, hang out with some friends, and watch the fireworks over Lake Ontario–Kid’s first fireworks ever. Yesterday, we picked our own strawberries and played some hockey in the back yard.
At this rate, I’ll be Canadian by Labour [...]
