test 6

She was placed in a good home. It's great news. So why did I almost start to cry when I heard? Could it be I'm a little closer to being ready for another dog than I thought? I thought about the puppy all weekend. I even thought of a name. But she found a loving home, and there are plenty of dogs waiting for us when we're both truly ready. All good. Sniffle, sniffle.

Here's a testament to the train wreck that is the US education system, and to the rise of fundmentalist ignorance in that same country. It's a statistic that would have Charles Darwin turning in his grave - more than one third of Americans don't believe in evolution, according to a new study. After tabulating surveys that covered 34 countries, researchers at the University of Michigan have found that U.S. citizens are much less likely to accept Darwinism than Europeans and the Japanese. The study, published in Friday's issue of the journal Science, found that in countries like Iceland, Sweden, Denmark and France, at least 80 per cent of adult believe that humans evolved from other species. In Japan, 78 per cent of adults believe in evolution. But in the U.S. only 40 per cent of adults believe whole-heartedly in evolution, while 39 per cent called it "absolutely false" in the 2005 survey, which questioned 1,484 Americans and more than 33,000 people worldwide. ...

I've been getting lots of email from the peace movement lately. As increasing numbers of Americans wake up to reality and turn against the war in Iraq, the movement has been reaching out, and heating up. United for Peace and Justice lists a full calendar of events, under the banner "We Declare Peace". See what's happening in your area. US readers, if you haven't signed the Voter Peace Pledge , it's not too late. As always, I urge you to support Lt. Ehren Watada, the first US officer to refuse deployment to Iraq. Watada's pre-trial hearing is August 17; August 16 is a National Day of Education , asking the question "Is the US war and occupation of Iraq illegal?" Watada is not alone: see Courage To Resist for more courageous peace stories. The movie "Sir! No Sir!" - the largely untold story of the GI movement to end the Vietnam War - is now available on DVD. If you purchase it through UPJ, the distributors will make a small donation to...

Tomorrow, the XVI International AIDS conference opens in Toronto. There are hundreds of affiliated events planned in connection with the conference, to raise the level of awareness, funds and activism. And there is the Global Village , both in person at the Convention Centre and online, to make the global AIDS crisis more real to us. I'm going to look at my schedule and see when I can spend some time in the Global Village this coming week. Thinking about this makes me think about my own activism, dormant for a long time now, while we focused on our BLC*. As we close in on our one-year anniversary in Canada, I'm starting to think about doing some activism or politically-oriented volunteer work. That's always the first step for me - a recurrent thought, vague, but persistent. As it grows it will show me the next step. Of course, if we adopt a new puppy , activism will go back on hold for a while. * Big Life Change

What do you make of Stephen Harper's recent appointment? As I'm sure you know, the PM appointed a Liberal MP, who is a Muslim, to be his adviser on Middle East foreign policy. From the CBC: Prime Minister Stephen Harper has tapped a surprise source for advice on the Middle East: a Liberal MP of Muslim faith. In a move apparently aimed at quelling criticism that he's been too ideological and too pro-Israel in his approach to the Lebanese conflict, the Conservative prime minister announced Tuesday that he's appointed Wajid Khan as his special adviser on South Asia and the Middle East. Khan, the Liberal MP for Mississauga-Streetsville, was born in Pakistan, where he served as a pilot in the air force. Calgary MP Jason Kenney, Harper's parliamentary secretary, said the prime minister wanted "independent" advice from someone with intimate knowledge of the region. Kenney said Khan could also help Harper build bridges to the Arab and Muslim communities, which hav...

Yesterday was the first day in I-don't-know-how-long that I couldn't blog. Work was insanely busy, as summer Fridays are prone to be. (Let's all leave early and dump our work on other people! Whee!). But I'm not complaining. My day-job is working out nicely, and I'm damn glad to have it. The weather has been beautiful and the Red Sox won last night (and the Yankees lost). Life is good. I have a big pile of items I'd like to blog about. First, more coffee, then some single-issue posts.

There's a puppy who needs a home. It was abandoned on a road in Hamilton, near the SPCA. Someone is fostering it, but not taking it to the shelter, as there's reason to believe it would be put down. She's a female, three months old, adorable, with reports of a happy temperament. I'm on the fence. On the one hand, Cody loved Buster, and Clyde before him, so much. She adored them, doted on them, worshiped them. She clearly loved living with another dog. As Cody ages, it will be less and less fair to bring another dog into the home; I feel if we're going to get another dog, we should do so soon, or on the soon side. If we don't get another dog, when Cody dies, we'll be dog-less for the first time since shortly after we started living together. (We adopted our first dog, Gypsy, in November 1987.) That's a scary thought. I loved having two dogs, and I know I would love a new dog, we'd give it a great home, and it would bring us much joy. On the other han...