A recent conversation with a relative set me to researching chickens and ticks and what a long, strange trip it’s been. The conversation was about the efficacy of chickens in controlling tick populations. It struck a chord with me because I’ve been thinking of the advantages of backyard chickens latelyRead...

Last month, I discussed Descartes’ thought experiment and its sharp separation between mind and body. This month, I want to look at a bizarre and ethically troubling proposal that arises as a consequence of this way of understanding ourselves: the head transplant operation that Italian physician Dr. Sergio Canavero claims thatRead More

Perhaps one of Charles Dickens’ most famous lines was Oliver Twist’s “Please sir, I want some more.” First published in monthly installments from February 1837 to April 1839, Oliver Twist was pretty much an attack on Britain’s Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834. As G.K. Chesterton wrote in an introductionRead More

There is a common type of case study presented in many bioethics textbooks. It concerns a person (usually a woman, for some reason) who is suffering from somewhat advanced dementia. She is often described as having been someone who was highly intelligent, who had a professional career in which sheRead More

The last thing Weldon Bona wanted was for his very private decision to have an assisted death to become a news story, but that’s exactly what happened last week. Bona had done everything asked of him when he chose to take this step, having been diagnosed with a disease thatRead More

We are a…province? Organizers of the Father Greg MacLeod lecture series promised the talks would explore “radical,” “daring” and “out-of-the-box” ideas and I have to say Senator Dan Christmas, who gave the inaugural lecture last night, delivered. His daring idea? Cape Breton should be a province. Oh, I know, IRead More

If there was one issue that dominated the 2017 provincial election in Cape Breton, it was healthcare. And it’s not like there was any one healthcare issue that stood out — poke the system just about anywhere and you’ll hit a sore spot, whether it’s lack of access to primaryRead...

CBRM endorses UN Bomb ban I was hard on the CBRM for proclaiming Right to Know Week (for what I think are pretty obvious reasons), but there was another proclamation made during last Tuesday’s council meeting that made me quite proud of our little municipality. According to Cape Breton University (CBU)Read More

Shovel-ready Wednesday marked a momentous day in the history of Sydney port development: two First Nations Chiefs and a Montreal property developer came together to shovel…something. Part of me is ashamed at my inability to grasp the importance of Wednesday’s event, but part of me thinks that since neither BarryRead More

This morning I was told by two doctors at the Pain Clinic at the Northside General Hospital in North Sydney that if the Liberal government under Justin Trudeau follows through with his new tax on incomes over 150-200 grand, the new younger doctor will move to a province that requiresRead More