gdp's Comments

This Magazine : Why your so-called "organic" farmed salmon probably isn't

Mon, 21 Mar 2011 20:23:58 +0000

Sorry for the stale link, thanks for pointing that out!

This Magazine : Would-be parents fight for publicly funded fertility treatments

Thu, 6 Jan 2011 20:18:12 +0000

Yes, it's meant to be a cost savings for the patient. As Dr. Jarvi notes near the end of the piece, if it were publicly funded, the government could regulate the procedures more closely and only fund single-embryo transfers, which are less likely to suffer complications.

The UC Observer : This Magazine - The United Church Observer

Wed, 5 Jan 2011 16:44:12 +0000

Thanks for the write-up, Drew, it's always nice to receive astute, thoughtful feedback on the magazine. Just wanted to make one small correction, which is that the magazine comes out six times per year, not quarterly. Thanks!

This Magazine : New Westminster, B.C., leads the way with Canada's first living wage bylaw

Wed, 1 Dec 2010 20:04:05 +0000

Yes, thanks for highlighting this. It's redundant in one way (inflation is accounted for in "real dollars") but while the cost of living has risen for everyone, the people with the lowest incomes have seen their earnings erode more in real terms. Other income groups have seen different proportional fluctuations. So it's kind of a belt-and-suspenders statement.

This Magazine : Fiction: He Wishes This Were Something Else by Eva Moran

Tue, 3 Aug 2010 13:25:30 +0000

Fixed! Don't know how that typo slipped through. Thanks for the catch!

This.org : Toronto: Tell us your favourite Joy Division song to win tickets to Friday's documentary screening!

Thu, 4 Feb 2010 17:37:19 +0000

OK, in a random draw, commenter Siobhan Ozege is our winner! Congrats, drop us a line (twitter DM, perhaps? or email editor, yadda yadda thismagazine dot ca) and we'll get it set up. Thanks, everyone!

This.org : Friday FTW: Forget your stupid iPad. Radio Canada's the gadget we want

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 19:56:23 +0000

It's true, I love this idea, even though I worry that it would confirm me as being totally pompous and insufferable. It reminds me of this new pin from online comic strip Cat and Girl — "I listen to NPR and I suck": http://catandgirl.com/store/allbuttons2.jpg Hits a little close to the bone...

This.org : In the shadows too long, one of Kenya's gay male prostitutes speaks out for change

Fri, 8 Jan 2010 20:10:40 +0000

Hi John, of course, if you email me your address we can send you a copy. editor at this magazine dot ca.

This.org : Prorogue, Facebook, and the politics of self-doubt

Wed, 6 Jan 2010 21:14:08 +0000

For further reading, and an idea that's exactly the opposite of mopey defeatism, Michael Wheeler over at Department of Culture (full disclosure: I'm on that committee) argues that it's time to revive the opposition coalition of 2008 (minus the Bloc). It's a provocative read: http://departmentofculture.ca/the-harper-dictator...

This.org : Prorogue, Facebook, and the politics of self-doubt

Wed, 6 Jan 2010 21:09:11 +0000

I completely agree that there isn't One Big Thing to do — just that people (myself included) seem hungry for such simplicity. But that's not in the cards, and I think it's important, as Jesse Hirsh argued, not to get tied up in hand-wringing about "is joining a Facebook group enough?" or "Am I in a 'protest ghetto'?" and instead embrace a variety of responses.

This.org : World Aids Day by the numbers

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 16:52:54 +0000

Very true, Heather Ann, thanks for pointing that out. I've changed the wording for that entry and the one following it to clarify.

This.org : Queerly Canadian #22: Chris Skinner's murder and the meaning of "community"

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:52:36 +0000

Oops, that was my Wordpress mistake, didn't set the correct author. Corrected now — thanks!

This.org : Why Roman Polanski doesn't deserve my empathy

Thu, 1 Oct 2009 20:24:18 +0000

I should add that while I disagree with Steven in this instance, I think his impulse, of questioning a generalized cultural pile-on, is a good one. I also intuitively mistrust mobs of righteous moralists, even when I think they have a point....

This.org : Wednesday WTF: Dating tips from the U.S. Department of Health!

Thu, 1 Oct 2009 14:31:43 +0000

Hi Rob, sorry this is causing trouble; I looked into this after you asked about it a couple weeks ago and we can't isolate the source of the problem. We always use the basic editor when embedding, so I don't think that's it. You'll notice that I've started always linking to the actual video pages when we embed so that if it doesn't show up you can still find it, but that's not a good solution, I know. Can you email me your OS/browser specs and I'll take another crack at it? editor /at/ this magazine /dot/ ca

This.org : Visit us at Word on the Street today!

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 14:25:07 +0000

Thanks for dropping by, Jonathan. Same goes for everyone else who stopped by, bought a subscription, told us they already had a subscription, or were just discovering the magazine for the first time.

This.org : Wednesday WTF: Caster Semenya deserves more dignity than this

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 20:53:50 +0000

Thanks Kel, it's gratifying to know that you were waiting to see our take on this story. I merely want to stress that the results of the medical tests are, to the best of my knowledge, not public yet, except for the anonymous "source closely involved with the examination," who leaked the information. Whether that source is even correct remains an open question, because the IAAF announced it won't even comment on the results until November. One thing I want to make clear, that I left out of the original post, is that it's important to clarify that being intersex, or being perceived to be, is not reason in itself to feel humiliated, for anyone, Caster Semenya included. What is humiliating is having invasive medical tests performed and having some scumball who was involved in that testing go running to the press. Whether it's an examination of your reproductive organs or your fingernail clippings, it's no one's business but your own.

This.org : What's the Legal Aid Ontario lawyers' boycott all about?

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 15:41:29 +0000

Oops, updated now. Thanks for pointing that out!

This.org : ThisAbility # 32: Accommodation vs. Unfair Advantage (Part Two in a Two-Part Series)

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 21:41:49 +0000

@B.L. Wagner — We love spelling enthusiasts of all kinds around here. Sorry not to notice it before! Fixed now. As for the question at hand, there's plenty of "doctoring" work in hospitals that doctors have only the most fleeting physical contact with; most actual labour — stitching, drawing blood, many types of examination — is performed by the nurses, who work at the doctor's direction. Doctors aren't expected to prod every injury and apply every bandage personally; I feel like Dr. Post must be able to perform the majority of tasks that doctors do every day without much of an issue. If I need a heart transplant, sure, I would like a doctor with 100% dexterity. But that's not what most medical care is about: it's about diagnosis, directing specialists, making good judgments—that's what I want in a doctor, and Dr. Post seems to fit that bill just fine.

This.org : Grumble if you want, but Toronto city workers are right to strike

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 16:31:19 +0000

@Randal, True, there is undoubtedly room for improvement. Someone wrote me privately about this post pointing out that the union's job, to extract maximum value from the employer, is very similar to the kind of selfish corporate behaviour that was demolished by the documentary The Corporation (which said that such behaviour was, in fact, the textbook profile for a psychopath). The current union/management adversarial system has its frustrations, sure, but as the Churchillian cliché goes, it's the worst system, except for all the others.

This.org : Happy 1 million to you, English

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 18:23:43 +0000

It's a good point about the colonizing nature of the English language. Not only is English (for now) the language of "world domination" as FP so charmingly puts it, but it is actually proving corrosive to indigenous languages around the world, which are going extinct at an astonishing rate. UNESCO keeps a list of endangered languages around the world, and there are hundreds: http://www.tooyoo.l.u-tokyo.ac.jp/archive/RedBook... There are plenty of benefits of having a lingua franca that so many people can speak and understand, but I think we have to acknowledge that there's a cost to the world's linguistic homogeneity, which is marginalizing or outright eradicating hundreds of other languages in the process.