Sunday News Briefs

Because linking to news stories with minor commentary is easier than actually writing posts:

• First, congrats to the Ottawa Skeptics for getting tubes of dirt out of a local elementary school. The tubes were paid to a pseudo-scientific fraud who suggested that the tubes were necessary to balance the EMF in the school. Hopefully the school didn’t waste too much taxpayer money on these.
• Next, Calgary’s atheist bus ads start running on Monday. Now stop worrying, and enjoy your life.
• Linda Duncan gets a mention in a Journal editorial today, criticizing the government for not prosecuting enough despite increasing fines for environmental damage.
• Rachel Notley is also featured in the Journal for having a family and being an MLA. Says if she had to commute she wouldn’t be in the Leg. Thankfully she doesn’t have to commute.
• Yesterday former UofA SU President Michael Janz hosted the first ever IDEAfest with over 100 attendees throughout the day. The Journal wrote it up here and Dereck provides some criticism for the event for lack of cultural and gender diversity.
• The Journal’s lead story today compares communism and Hugo Chavez to the Alberta NDP, Liberals, Marxist-Leninists, Progressive Conservatives! This is in response to rural unrest over a proposed bill (pdf) that could potentially give cabinet ministers the ability to arbitrarily take people’s land for government projects.
• It’s International Women’s Day today! And in their continuing respect for women’s rights in the 20th century, the Vatican has announced that the washing machine has done more for women than the pill, ability to work and vote, or legalized abortion. I can’t make this shit up.
• Andrea Horwath won the Ontario NDP leadership. While I haven’t followed this race too closely, she seems like an exciting leader that stands a good chance to potentially unseat their Tories, who can’t even get their (former) leader elected, as official opposition. Congrats!
• Finally, on Friday hell froze over and a Sun magazine newspaper published an article that begrudgingly admitted that Jack Layton and the NDP may be on to something with that whole socialism thing…

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