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You want fries with that mortarboard?

With convocation season wrapping up, journalist Penney Kome is prompted by her own son’s graduation to consider the severe deflation of university degrees in trying economic times. “Convocation at the University of Alberta was a bittersweet occasion for at least one family,”  writes Kome in The Degree Bubble. “Yielding to parental pressure to attend the graduation ceremony, our son the graduate irreverently considered adding a bright duct tape debt message to his mortar board: $47K. That’s the accumulated debt from a basic part-time seven-year Bachelor of Arts, not the fees to earn a medical or law degree  … read more While on the topic

Risky Business vs Smart Development

By CHRIS WOOD If Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Australia’s Tony Abbott, the world’s most unabashed national cheerleaders for Big Carbon, were really the ‘frank,’ hard-nosed pair they pretend to be, two reports out in as many days would surely shake their certainty that acting to slow down and adapt to climate change will “destroy jobs and growth in their country,” as the first of the pair said earlier this month.  In fact, the opposite is more likely to be true. Failure to tackle climate change seriously, a bipartisan, independent and business-oriented study group in the United States has

Finding: United Kingdom Accents

Proper English gentlemen and ladies may not be amused, but we are. Siobhan Thompson of the BBC America’s Anglophenia blog pokes fun at Brit-speak. A diversion for the weekend:   

The Dictator of Eritrea — Manthorpe

“Fellow Africa hand Remer Tyson and I were huddling behind the thickest wall we could find one bad morning in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, and, as one does as the bullets fly, we grew philosophical, recalls International Affairs analyst Jonathan Manthorpe of a day in 1991. “If Africa had any sense,” said Remer, correspondent for a major American newspaper group, “it would give Somalia to the Eritreans to run.” “Trouble is,” he added, “the Eritreans are far too sensible to take it.” That was then. Now, Eritrea is called “the North Korea of Africa” writes Manthorpe. An excerpt of today’s column:  After being

Iraq on our mind

Events in Iraq have dominated world affairs this week. Reports and analysis in Facts and Opinions provide context:   In The Cold War 2.0, Thoughtlines author Jim McNiven looks at the deep historical and geopolitical picture (subscription required): For 40 years, one big contest played out in the world. It was a kind of arm-wrestling match between the Soviets and the Americans. I use the word ‘Soviets’ to distinguish one contestant from its successor of sorts: today’s Russians. Eventually, the Soviets could not keep their end of the game going and walked away from the table, into history. The last decade of the century

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