Archive for December 2011

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2012 .. from Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel

Dec 31st, 2011 | By | Category: In Brief

I know Citizen X posted a piece yesterday, saying the “next article on this site will be in the New Year.” But on my way back from the far north I heard an enchanting new video on the world wide web –  Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel doing the Nancy Wilson classic, “What Are You […]



Best of counterweights 2011 D : our top 10 issues today, 2009-2011 .. and why is Canada only 23rd happiest in world?

Dec 30th, 2011 | By | Category: In Brief

If Google Analytics is to be believed – and it no doubt is, in some significant enough degree – the majority of visitors to this site arrive via “Search Engines,” looking for information on specific issues or subjects. We also have a discriminating flow of “Direct Traffic” and “Referring Sites,” which we value very highly […]



Best of counterweights 2011 C : Aboriginal peoples of Canada, 2005-2011 .. and btw have you met Andy Radia yet?

Dec 28th, 2011 | By | Category: In Brief

We are of course far from alone in our view of 2011 as a hinge of fate. Here, eg, is Bloomberg Business Week on the subject: “Rampaging natural catastrophes, global financial calamities, the deaths of despots and desperados, the passing of America’s greatest modern technical innovator and roiling protests that shook the Arab world and […]



HAPPY SANTA CLAUS 2011 .. ALL AROUND THE GLOBAL VILLAGE????

Dec 25th, 2011 | By | Category: In Brief

Bunting says I’m not doing any work for the cause over the holidays, just bothering him as he keeps the torch of the skeleton crew alight in the office. But here I am on Christmas Day wishing everyone who drops by Happy Holidays – and above all else, HAPPY SANTA CLAUS. Among many other strange […]



Best of counterweights 2011 B : Entertainment, heritage, obituaries, sporting life, and USA today

Dec 23rd, 2011 | By | Category: In Brief

This is our second “best of counterweights 2011” list, as promised (or threatened may be the better word?) – compiled by X and I, as we recurrently toast the season in this otherwise deserted office, complete with a fake holiday tree, and several boxes of excellent seasonal cookies, left behind by the den mother by […]



Best of counterweights 2011 A : Politics, economics, and philosophy in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and Beyond

Dec 20th, 2011 | By | Category: In Brief

On various scores 2011 seems to at least most of us here to have been one of those years that actually can be seriously described as a hinge of fate (well … more or less). And so over the past few weeks everyone in the office or otherwise attached to this somewhat crazed but still […]



Is PM Harper really inventing a new Canada .. and should we be very afraid?

Dec 19th, 2011 | By | Category: In Brief

TORONTO, CANADA. The number one spot in the Globe and Mail list of its most popular stories on the last weekend before Christmas 2011 was held by a Gerald Caplan comment piece, headlined “Be very afraid: Stephen Harper is inventing a new Canada.” And I am wondering, well yes, of course, but is it true? […]



Ontario up/down, Canada NDP & Tories down, UK Tories up, young Harper & Trudeau, RIP Christopher Hitchens!

Dec 16th, 2011 | By | Category: In Brief

With the year-end holiday season now almost in high gear, I’m about to leave for the far north (well … a little further anyway, into the snowbelt, maybe). Others in the office here will apparently be leaving soon too. But I’m told that Bunting and Citizen X will be holding the fort right through to […]



What we should celebrate in 2012 is 60th anniversary of first Canadian citizen as Governor General of Canada

Dec 14th, 2011 | By | Category: In Brief

So … we have just learned that “Charles, the Prince of Wales, and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall will be touring Canada as part of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations marking her 60 years on the British throne,” this coming May 2012. For many Canadians (and we confess we are among them), this is just yet […]



Did I bump into Mitt Romney and/or his dog in Grand Bend, Ontario?

Dec 12th, 2011 | By | Category: In Brief

I see from an article in yesterday’s Toronto Star that Mitt Romney, current contender for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination among the Yankees to the south of us, “made the 12-hour drive from Boston to Grand Bend [Ontario] with the family dog strapped to the roof of his car,” in the summer of 1983. This […]