Rick Salutin: Let’s not be stupid together (in The Toronto Star)

"... we lack any self-interest in policies for which U.S. leaders are clearly willing to pay a price. We simply pay the price, with no benefits. That makes us double stupid, in Sontag’s sense.

"Causes are weird. Root or not, they’re easier to see in others than oneself. The National Post’s Andrew Coyne, defending Justin Trudeau’s query about root causes in Boston, asked why “extreme ideologies . . . take root in some people but not others.” But you could ask the same about the extreme free market ideologies that have taken root in Coyne and his colleagues at the Post. Were they “self-radicalized” — or seduced by devious outsiders? ..."

Full article: Let’s not be stupid together.

Heather Mallick: Justin Trudeau digs deep on terrorism, Harper draws a cartoon (in The Toronto Star)

"Hardline conservatives are hostile to science, art, literature, history, foreign cultures, courtroom trials, criminal rehabilitation, spending on preparation for the future, and most of all, root causes, the things that one has to dig very deep to comprehend. It’s like a surgeon removing metastasized tumours without checking the site of the original cancer.

"Terrorism is the most complicated of tangles but trying to untangle it is a potential lifesaver."

Heather Mallick: Justin Trudeau digs deep on terrorism, Harper draws a cartoon (Toronto Star).

Haroon Siddiqui: Stop importing temporary workers into Canada (in The Toronto Star)

"The arrangement [temporary workers] suits both the workers and the host society, in the short term. But it is exploitative of the former and debilitating to the latter, in that it creates a two-tier society, of varying severity and duration. ...

"... given the extent of the problem here, Ottawa should end the temporary worker program — forthwith — and forbid businesses from paying 15 per cent less to those already here.

"That would force employers to pay what they must to attract Canadians to unattractive jobs, and also invest time and money in developing high-end skills among Canadians, especially the young."

Full article: Stop importing temporary workers into Canada.

Thomas Walkom: RBC offers lesson in how to curb job outsourcing (in The Toronto Star)

"To deal with the war on wages, the entire economy, including free trade, must be rethought."

Full article: RBC offers lesson in how to curb job outsourcing: Walkom | Toronto Star

Wormwood tea to treat malaria: The WHO is opposed to an effective preventive medicine (Slate Magazine)

"The tea comes from sweet wormwood (Artemisia annua), the Chinese plant that is a source for the world's most powerful anti-malarial treatments, which combine artemisinin derivatives with an older class of drugs. It can also be grown in wetter parts of Africa, and a year’s supply costs no more than a few dollars. Although the tea itself has traditionally been used in treatment, not prevention, in China, a randomized controlled trial on this farm showed that workers who drank it regularly reduced their risk of suffering from multiple episodes of malaria by one-third."

Full article: Wormwood tea to treat malaria: The WHO is opposed to an effective preventive medicine.

Thomas Walkom: Thatcherism and Margaret Thatcher are both dead (in The Toronto Star)

"Margaret Thatcher's mean-spirited approach to the economy worked once. It no longer does."

Full article: Thomas Walkom: Thatcherism and Margaret Thatcher are both dead.

Catherine Porter: Conference Board’s food strategy summit missing important voices (in The Toronto Star)

"A ticket [to] the Conference Board’s national food summit is about $1,000. Few eaters, growers or food activists, whose opinions matter, can afford that."

Full article: Conference Board’s food strategy summit missing important voices: Porter | Toronto Star

Margaret Thatcher dies: latest reaction - Telegraph

Margaret Thatcher dies: latest reaction - Telegraph: Baroness Thatcher's politics polarised the nation. Tony Benn, the former Labour minister, said on hearing of her death:

"She did make war on a lot of people in Britain and I don't think it helped our society."

Study Points to New Culprit in Heart Disease - NYTimes.com

"Dr. Stanley Hazen of the Cleveland Clinic, who led the study, and his colleagues ... had come to believe that what damaged hearts was not just the thick edge of fat on steaks, or the delectable marbling of their tender interiors. In fact, these scientists suspected that saturated fat and cholesterol made only a minor contribution to the increased amount of heart disease seen in red-meat eaters. The real culprit, they proposed, was a little-studied chemical that is burped out by bacteria in the intestines after people eat red meat."

Full article: Study Points to New Culprit in Heart Disease.

Invention based on clay pot could save newborns from cerebral palsy (in The Toronto Star)

"Using simple, relatively cheap items, including a clay pot, a burlap basket, sand and triple-A batteries, biomedical engineering students at Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins University invented a low-tech, $40 device to cool oxygen-deprived babies at birth, potentially sparing them from cerebral palsy or even death."

Full article: Invention based on clay pot could save newborns from cerebral palsy.