It is difficult to confirm the workings of things without an initial post, which incidentally demonstrates my current lack of creative inspiration.
And Time Began Seriously To Pass
12 May 2001 – 12:48 pm
I’m as certain as I can be that the entire galaxy is already aware that Douglas Adams has died, but I’ll mention it here anyway. Just in case.
As reported by the BBC:
Author Douglas Adams, who wrote The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, has died suddenly aged 49.
Adams died on Friday morning in Santa Barbara, California, following a heart attack, said his spokeswoman Sophie Astin.
Rest in peace, DNA. Hopefully, there are no phone calls to complete.
What’s Up With Foot-and-Mouth Disease?
19 March 2001 – 12:01 am
I haven’t really been following the FMD issue very closely, and because I don’t own a television I haven’t seen the on location footage either. Due to time constraints I’m still not focusing on this issue, but I have begun to notice some apparent logical disconnects. Adam Radwanski, in a March 16 article in Pundit Magazine asks the following leading question:
With one of Britain’s leading experts on the disease telling Pundit that slaughters of hundreds of thousands of animals might be a “faintly ridiculous” way of addressing the problem, is it time to look at other options?
The expert mentioned in that quote is Abigail Woods a Ph.D. student at the University of Manchester’s Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine who is researching FMD. Among other points, Ms. Woods notes that the government’s mass slaughter of animals happens to be “a very convenient way of preventing any independent research on the subject,” which means the assumptions — particularly that FMD is a serious health risk — go mostly unchallenged.
It appears (although there is certainly some debate) that foot and mouth is actually a relatively minor disease, from which the infected animals recover fairly quickly. But, according to Mr. Radwanski the health and agricultural facts are secondary to economics in this story. Economics, in this case, referring to the negative impact of the near instantaneous import bans placed on agricultural products from any country that experiences an outbreak of FMD.
The fact of the matter, however, is that the entire crisis is about economics. No country can afford to harbor even a single case of FMD, or it risks immediately becoming an international pariah.
There’s a lot more information in the article: about why the economics of the disease (and the attendant draconian quarantine and slaughter response) dominates, the role that the United Kingdom itself played in that, and particularly the lack of good quality information (as opposed to sensationalism) in the media coverage. And, it is on the issue of the news media’s poor handling of this story that the article concludes.
There are questions to be answered about foot-and-mouth disease – but sadly, nobody is asking them.
(Editor’s Note: Usually, my general disclaimer covers this issue well enough, but this is an agriculture related story so I’d like to especially highlight the fact that the this website’s title doesn’t indicate any agricultural expertness. In fact, I don’t know very much at all.)
Hat tip to Bourque NewsWatch
Canadian Big Box Booksellers: The Series
Apparently, I’m not the only one who noticed the television like nature of the present saga of chain-store bookselling in Canada, or at least as it relates to the relationships of its two most prominent executives: Heather Reismen (formerly CEO of Indigo, now CEO and majority owner of Chapters, Inc.) and Larry Stevenson (former CEO of Chapters, Inc.). Terence Corcoran, comments in a Financial Post article on what he dubs the latest “episode of Heather and Larry.”
Because Mr. Corcoran writes for a business journal the humour is inevitably just a pretty wrapper for a serious comment or report of some variety. Seriousness in this case comes in the form of a basic overview of the politics, which in some ways is its own joke, that prompted the sit-com like argument between Chapters’ chief executives present and past.
Unfortunately, I don’t think the Competition Bureau — and certainly not Canadian Heritage — will follow the Financial Post’s advice on this issue, with which I agree: leave Chapters-Indigo alone and quit trying to control the market by blocking potential competitors just because they aren’t “Canadian” enough.
Hat tip to National Post Headline Scan