Canadian "Gasland"

It's good to see that more information is reaching the public about the madness of fracking (shale gas exploration).
Here is a documentary broadcast on the CBC:

Click here to watch the documentary

Please consider signing a petition to stop fracking in New Brunswick.

Images other than goose steps out of North Korea

Pyongyang Style from Steve Gong on Vimeo.

Soon to "Be... gone from this place"

Here is one thing that the Conservative government of NB is doing right: getting rid of the NB provincial slogan "Be... in this place." Its French equivalent was equally harrowing: "Etre... ici on le peut."  When one thinks that the previous (Shawn Graham) government charged the taxpayers of NB $229,000 on "research," consultation and development of this brand, one is entitled to speculate about how many seconds the brand team needed to come up with this inaneness.  22.9 seconds?

link

Students at STU are generating momentum

I know for a fact that St. Thomas University students have been organising for this sort of protest well before the "virus spread in the Middle East" (as John McCain said on TV about the democratic movements in Tunisia and Egypt), but no doubt that seeing that regular folks can overthrow military dictatorships by taking to the streets and occupying public places has further fired up their energy.
So, they made a public scene of their demands for lower tuition fees and for support to public education today.  Their stand is not limited to the protection of college education, but to public education in general.  There have been concerted efforts to undermine the ability to deliver and acquire quality education, perhaps not just in New Brunswick, but certainly in New Brunswick.  Elementary and secondary schools have been told to choose themselves which limb of their budget they'll agree chop off, lest they don't bleed themselves to death.
Public support for universities is also under threat, and post-secondary institutions must rely increasingly on private funding, including higher tuition fees.  Considering universities increasingly teach basic skills which high schools used to, but no longer have the resources to teach (perhaps due to recurring budget cuts), one could say that the concept of public education for the "general good" is a threatened species.
Minister of Post-Secondary Education Martine Coulombe made a courageous appearance at the rally outside the Legislature.  How to describe it?... Hm... Underwhelming perhaps?  It failed to reassure us that our education system was in good hands.  Be the judge.

Rally on the STU campus

Joined by a few UNB students on the way to the Legislature

Outside the Legislature, Minister Coulombe was heckled a few times

It was windy and cold, but STU liberal-minded students were inspired

Regulation Lax as Gas Wells’ Tainted Water Hits Rivers

Regulation Lax as Gas Wells’ Tainted Water Hits Rivers
New York Times article, 26 February 2011




If Pennsylvania is unwilling to impose high enough fines to deter companies from violating state regulations, which are presumably determined according to scientific research, we would be foolish to trust that New Brunswick (Inc.) will establish a better record. 
Most importantly, what this article shows is that "sound science" in shale gas drilling is a rather arrogant - or dishonest - assessment, considering that everything suggests that we have an unreliable understanding of the implications of what we do 3 kms underground.  Curiously, some are advocating that CURRENT regulations be set up based on FUTURE results of scientific experiments - oh! I see, experiments on us, the guinea pig communities.
In this context, how can we possibly believe that regulation will protect our environment, our access to clean water, our health and ultimately, our cheque books?

No need to translate this one.

Zotero - ideal for academics

Ever wondered what it would be like to be able to do all the following with ONE click?

- "import" the full citation of a book you find on amazon.com or on a university library catalog
- save a copy of a newspaper article onto your laptop, with full citation, of course
- save the URL of an NGO website and attach a related report in pdf format to it
- save a youtube link
- generate a bibliography or a footnote in the writing style of your choice (two clicks here)
- share a centralised bibliography

If you are looking for a tool to "collect, organize, cite, and share your research sources," you should check out  zotero.

Part of the beauty of this free tool/service is that it works from within the open-source Firefox browser, and therefore joyfully strolls across platforms.  Furthermore, you can work "locally" if you are concerned about confidentiality [i.e. you save the information you select exclusively onto your computer] or you have the option of setting up zotero to sync your data with the zotero online server.  The latter gives you the ability to share sources with collaborators, and to conduct your research or prep for class from different computers [e.g. office/home] without worrying about syncing matters.  Zotero looks after this automatically.