Every once in awhile I read something that takes everything I thought I knew about a topic and completely stands it on its head. I found a book like that this week; it’s called Rethinking Thin by Gina Kolata, a science reporter for the New York Times. The thesis of the book is that most of the things we think we know about weight loss and obesity ( Read more... )

Brace yourselves, folks: I'm about to praise a piece of Conservative legislation. The End Times are surely near ( Read more... )

Since I wrote the Monica Grenfell post a few of days ago, I've been poking around a corner of the Internet known as the fatosphere. It turns out that in recent months a lot of self-described fat people have been banding together and producing some very smart blogs. The main aim of the movement, apart from providing a support network, is to ( Read more... )

I am perversely heartened by the the summary of the year's Toronto-area murders published in the Star yesterday. Looking through it, I conclude that if you're not connected to the underworld and you're not dating or related to anyone with violent tendencies, your odds of being killed by another human being are very, very slim in this city. If you ( Read more... )

We have crushed the Tories.

We have seen them driven before us.

We have taken their horses and goods, and heard the lamentation of their women.

All this talk of victory is making me really nervous. It's not over until the polls close.

Get the heck out and vote!
I remember reading somewhere that Bill Clinton and Al Gore had nearly identical public support the night before their respective elections. The difference in election results can be attributed to the fact that Clinton's campaign ( Read more... )

It's E-Day -1. I'm still not sure how I want to vote on the referendum about changing Ontario's legislature to a mixed member proportional system.

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As Warren Kinsella points out in his blog today, it's been exactly four years since the day Ernie Eves' campaign called Dalton McGuinty "an evil reptilian kitten-eater from another planet" during the 2003 election. I was in the media monitoring section of the Liberal war room that day, watching the story spread like a forest fire from one news ( Read more... )

Is it a good sign or a bad one when provincial cabinet ministers wander through campus and nobody recognizes them? Last night on Bay Street, I ran into Jim Bradley. He'd just left the office. It was 11:30. This is why I no longer have ambitions to be a cabinet minister.

I've managed to stay out of active politics for nearly a year, but I think I'm about to fall off the wagon again. It's all Bob Rae's fault ( Read more... )