Science Notes
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There really seems no bottom to the depths of stupidity. If you’re going to break the law, don’t videotape yourself and post the video on YouTube.
Animal lovers and legitimate hunters, as well as the Fish & Wildlife folks, are cooperating to identify three young men who bravely shot sitting ducks and ducklings at a pond in Saskatchewan or Alberta.
Thoughtless poachers of ducks
Norma Scarborough, was the sensible soul of the pro-choice movement in Canada, died April 2. A mother of five children, she had compassion and a helping hand for the unwillingly pregnant. She was a founding member of CARAL and its president for several very important years, 1984 – 92. Thus she was of of the people supporting Dr. Henry Morgentaler in his struggle to bring safe, legal abortion to Canadian women. In January of 1988 Canada’s Supreme Court struck down the criminal law on abortion because it violated women’s right to life, liberty, and security of the person. In other words, the law coerced women and put them in danger.
Louis DuLude recalls:
Once, I asked Norma why she cared so much about women’s right to an abortion. She told me that in the 1940s, when she was in the Canadian Women’s Army Corps, one day she came back to the barracks and found a colleague moaning in bed. There was blood everywhere but the woman hadn’t summoned help because she was afraid to be punished because she had had an illegal abortion. Norma told me that the woman bled to death. She never forgot it. Asked later to help start a movement to legalize abortion, she didn’t hesitate for a minute before saying “yes.”
I mean residential schools for aboriginal peoples. John Wilkins at Evolving Thoughts blogged about the Roman Catholic residential schools scandal in Ireland, and that reminded me that I hadn’t covered the Truth & Reconciliation Commission in Canada. In 2007, it Canada’s parliament formally apologized for the wrongs done and a compensation package of $1.9 billion was put in place. You can read about it on the CBC’s Residential Schools FAQ.
The main purpose of the schools was to separate children from their ancestral culture. This purpose is now considered to be genocidal, I suppose because to obliterate a culture has similar effects in history as obliterating a people.
The Mexican flu is slowly but surely spreading in Canada. One woman in her 30s has died in Alberta and the flu contributed to her death.
see more Political Pictures
Gavin Menzies has a number of dubious hypotheses about historical events. One is that the Chinese explored large parts of the world in the fifteenth century. He suggests that Ferdinand Magellan, Vasco da Gama, Christopher Columbus, and others followed Chinese maps. Others have taken Menzies’ idea and run with it.
In 2006, Paul Chiasson published a book, Island of the Seven Cities, explaining how the Chinese settled in Nova Scotia in 1421. As evidence, he shows an aerial photograph that he says was taken in the 1920s, showing traces of roads and foundations.
This web site, The ‘1421′ Myth Exposed, takes on those myths.
In this section, Island of the Seven Cities Exposed, Andrew Hanam thoroughly debunks that claim with a series of properly dated photos. The archaelogical evidence cited by Chiasson turns out to be modern firebreaks and drilling sites.
Other sections of The ‘1421′ Myth Exposed debunk the Chinese discovery of Australia, the massive size of Chinese junks suggested for oceanic voyages, and a “1418 map” that was produced within the last fifty years.
