"A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.”

Henry D. Thoreau

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Wednesday
Aug012018

Why do Conservatives Oppose a Price on Carbon?

So Doug Ford, the new premier of Ontario is cancelling Ontario's program of carbon pricing, Saskatchewan's conservative government is taking the carbon tax question to the supreme court and Alberta's conservative opposition is opposed to the carbon tax. Our Manitoba government is implementing a carbon tax, but one that significantly exempts farmers and some other polluters. Why are so many conservatives opposed to a price on carbon. To me, this opposition just does not make sense.

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Tuesday
Jul242018

Cleaning House

 

Walking down the cleaning product aisle last week, I inhaled the heady scents and marvelled at the variety of products available. It seems that every month there's a new-and-improved formula for washing dishes or doing laundry. This one smells like a Hawaiian waterfall. That one, like fresh mangoes or wildberries. White and blue powders with red "activation pellets", brilliant green, pink and yellow liquids... all new formulas. I don't buy any of that stuff, and haven't for years now. Let me tell you why and how.

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Tuesday
Jul172018

The Summer Solstice is Past

The year is more than half over. The longest day has come and gone. For a time even here in southern Manitoba we do not technically have night, only astronomical twilight from June 2 to July 11. My sleep pattern has me up at least once every night, so I go outside and look at the sky. I have certainly noticed that it did not get very dark in the early summer. Some of that is due to light pollution from Winnipeg and Steinbach.

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Tuesday
Jul102018

Parking

The question of downtown parking in Steinbach has come up again, as it does periodically. The focus of the discussion is, how many ​free parking ​spaces are needed. An assumption basic to this discussion is that we all should be able to park freely and conveniently close to our destination at any time. In this article I want to challenge the validity of this assumption.

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Tuesday
Jul032018

Struvite? What's that?

Christoph Stein explaining the functioning of the struvite precipitation reactor (5161774682)Last week I had the good fortune of joining an enthusiastic group of agronomists and farmers on a small farmyard near Libau, just off Hwy 59 north east of Winnipeg. Anyone knowing anything about farming and Manitoba, knows that Libau is not known as a farming area. So why were we there?

Our common concern was sustainable food production, in this case concerns about P – phosphorous.

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