Patient Rights Coalition

Somebody dropped off a pamphlet that looked liked a copy of this webpage in the lunch room at work yesterday.

Apparently someone feels that acupuncture actually has some utility and wants it to be covered by provincial health insurance in Ontario.

From the web page:

Acupuncture is one of the best professions for improving health.

Qualified meridian-based acupuncture (commonly referred to as TCM-based acupuncture) can cure over 50% of the ailments or diseases that cannot be cured or controlled from a Western medical viewpoint. It is the best health care profession to prevent or treat early stage cancers, colitis, Crohn’s disease, depression, diabetes (Type I and Type II), IBS, infertility, Lyme disease, lymphoma, Meniere’s disease, migraines, multiple sclerosis, osteoporosis, Rheumatoid arthritis, skin lupus, etc. Age-related conditions such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease can even be helped.

I can't help but want to adjust this a little, based on my frequent visits to wikipedia:

It is the best health care profession to prevent or treat early stage cancers^{[citation needed]}, colitis^{[citation needed]}, Crohn’s disease^{[citation needed]}, depression^{[citation needed]}, diabetes (Type I and Type II)^{[citation needed]}, IBS^{[citation needed]}, infertility^{[citation needed]}, Lyme disease^{[citation needed]}, lymphoma^{[citation needed]}, Meniere’s disease^{[citation needed]}, migraines^{[citation needed]}, multiple sclerosis^{[citation needed]}, osteoporosis^{[citation needed]}, Rheumatoid arthritis^{[citation needed]}, skin lupus^{[citation needed]}, etc.

But that's just me and I'm very cynical.

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Happy News: Homeopathy Doesn't Work

Surprise, surprise.

The U.K. House of Commons has figured it out.

77. There has been enough testing of homeopathy and plenty of evidence showing that it is not efficacious. Competition for research funding is fierce and we cannot see how further research on the efficacy of homeopathy is justified in the face of competing priorities.

Thank you and good night.

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The Most Juvenile of Governments

Honestly.

It's as if our government is run by five-year-olds. I could see a five year old saying something like this. "Mommy. I didn't break the vase. I just told my little brother to break it."

Oh, I get it kiddo. It's not your fault because you didn't physically break the vase yourself. Totally makes sense.

The Harper Government (for so they call themselves) wants the same kind of immunity.

"The plaintiff [Abdelrazik] alleges that the Defendant [the government] requested the Government of Sudan to imprison the plaintiff without legal grounds and shared information with the Government of Sudan to facilitate his continued imprisonment. He does not allege that the defendant directly imprisoned the plaintiff. In the absence of that material fact, there is no cause of action for false imprisonment."

That's right. Apparently the Harper Government can't be charged for the results of things they ask other people to do for them.

What a clever legal precedent. I'm sure various mafia bosses and other gang leaders will be greatly pleased to know that they are not responsible for things they ask other people to do. Another thing? Corporations can dump all the pollution they want in to rivers ... as long as they outsource it.

Brilliant, brilliant, legal precedent.

Grow up, you idiots. I know it's tough, but part of maturity is accepting the consequences of your actions. If you sent the man off to be tortured, you have to own up to it.

Otherwise, we're just going to think you're a bunch of immature cowards.

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Canada != Israel

(that symbol means "does not equal")

Just putting that out there. Some people seem to have forgotten. Like Junior Foreign Minister Peter Kent, for example.

He says he's just paraphrasing what Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said, and I honestly believe him.

I just don't agree with him.

Whereas Israel is a country in the middle east, currently in a grossly unbalanced war with a population whose land it is occupying, Canada is a country in North America in a state of peace with the population of natives whose land it is occupying.

See the difference? We don't have a treaty with Israel that says we will come to their aid, and we certainly aren't bound to declare war on its enemies. At least I don't think that we have such a treaty. I won't deny that this government is the sort that would put treaties through in secret.

I wonder how long it will be before President Harper reminds his ministers that they aren't to speak to the press without vetting from his office. That's what happened when Peter McKay said Nice Things about Palestinians once.

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Unions: You're Doing It Wong

The Union is supposed to be there to protect the workers from various job hazards. Among these hazards are things like health and safety concerns, lousy pay, poor benefits, poor job security and various kinds of abuse.

That's what I expect unions to do, whether I agree with them or not.

I do not expect unions to protect and cover up for workers who are abusing other workers.

Call me crazy, but I thought that the union's job was to protect the victims, not the abusers.

Maybe they're a little confused.

They're so confused, in fact, that the employers have stepped in and filed a Human Rights complaint against the Union.

I mean, wow.

That's like Stephen Harper calling you on your sick day just to make sure you're not out on a golf course.

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I Blame The No Grammar Teaching

The Canadian Press wants you to know that Texting, Twitter and "no grammar teaching" is causing students to have poor grammar.

First of all, there's this quote:

"I get their essays and I go 'You obviously don't know what a sentence fragment is. You think commas are sort of like parmesan cheese that you sprinkle on your words'," said Budra.

You "go", do you? The verb you want there is "say".

Moving on. Moving on.

He [Budra] too blames poor - or no - grammar instruction in lower schools.

Break that sentence down. "He blames no grammar instruction in lower schools."

That doesn't make sense. What the writer means to say is that Budra is blaming a lack of grammar instruction. Instead, the sentence as written actually means that Budra does not blame grammar instruction at all.

Imagine if you were arguing with a Conservative who was determined to blame the recession on the poor. You might reply with, "I blame no poor person for this recession."

With that sentence, you would be saying that you are not blaming poor people. But, according to the "grammar" in this particular article, you would be blaming the recession on a lack of poor people.

Grammar: if you're going to write an article about it, get your act together.

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A Diatribe Against Teacher-Bashers

My mother is a supply teacher in the elementary school system. Sometimes she would teach at my school. So when I was young I had to listen to my fellow students trashing my mother. Mostly the big, dumb students who’d been held back at least a year, but I digress. My father taught at my high school. So when I went to high school, I had to listen to those most assuredly bound for jail or permanent welfare trashing him.

Then Mike Harris came along. And for the last fifteen or twenty years, I’ve had to listen to everybody trash my parents and thousands of other decent, hard-working professionals whose goal in life was to educate the young and prepare them for life.

It astounds me that I’m still hearing right-wing, conservative-supporting dittoheads using the same lies and deceit the Harris government used all those years ago in the war they waged against education.

Let us begin with the All Powerful Imperial Greedy Teacher’s Union. Yes, you know the one. Governments quake and tremble with fear in awe of their might, falling quickly to their knees. Yes, it was the All Powerful Union that let Bob Rae take five percent of their pay. It was the same Greedy Union that let Mike Harris outlaw their collective bargaining. The same Evil Union that let its teachers’ salaries be frozen for years, not even hedged against inflation. It was the same union that let the provincial government use millions of taxpayers’ dollars to trash them with deceitful television ads and then take away their retirement benefits.

That Union? I’m sure you’ve heard of it. It’s the one that makes it impossible to ever, ever, ever fire a single bad teacher. Ever.

Whatever. Your union-bashing lies are just that: lies. I’m tired of hearing them. Get some new ones.

What’s next? How about those teachers and their summer vacations? They get two months off, don’t they?

Here’s an idea. Go to Teacher’s College and become a teacher. You know those brats you’re raising? You know how you’re so happy when school starts again because you can get rid of them? Some poor bastard has to deal with 30 of them all day long while you’re at work. If it’s high school, they deal with 90 of them, maybe more if we can’t quite keep up with teacher hiring. After teaching them for 10 months, tell me you don’t need two months to regain your sanity.

You know what happens to the teachers that don’t really like to teach but get in to teaching for the summer vacation? They get to their first summer vacation and then they quit, because they can’t hack it. One of those teachers was Mike Harris. Yeah, the very same politician who set out to destroy the public education system or, as his Minister of Education put it, “Get the government out of the education business.” Coincidence?

Let’s move on to a few lies. There was the lie they told that Ontario’s education was the most expensive in the nation on a cost-per-student basis. Why was it a lie? Because they concocted their numbers by including private school tuitions in his average. Would you call that lying? I would. How about that bit about how making every teacher do an extra class per year was only “asking for fifteen minutes a day”? News flash. A teacher with a four hour teaching schedule puts in more than an eight hour day marking and preparing for classes. If you think that the only time a teacher spends working is in the classroom with the full class present, you’re both stupid and naïve and I’ve had enough of catering to your naïveté and walking on eggshells around your stupidity.

There was a time when I wanted to be teacher. It’s a tradition in my family, going back a couple of generations. But then I learned that my employer, the government, would bizarrely be permitted to purchase television ad time to tell people that I’m lazy, overpaid and greedy while implying that I don’t care about the children I teach. Can you imagine the hatred I feel for a government – and any people who support its lies – that used my tax dollars to take out television ads to publicly trash my parents?

I’m tired of being kind to you people. I’m tired of mincing words. You’re stupid. You’ve allowed yourself to be led in to ignorance. You need to be shaken out of your comfortable, arrogant, talking-point parroting shell and told to shut up. And if you’re going to repeat those lazy, conceited, twenty-year old arguments to me? I’m going to shut you up myself.

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