Science, Technology & Environment

“And Neither Have I Wings to Fly”: Labelled and Locked Up in Canada’s Oldest Institution

Toronto author Thelma Wheatley’s 2004 memoir, My Sad Is All Gone, describes the experience of raising her autistic son, including the challenges of finding him appropriate education and medical treatment. And Neither Have I Wings ... Read More »

August 16, 2013 | Filed under: Science, Technology & Environment

Black Code: Inside the Battle for Cyberspace

By Ronald J. Deibert

Like it or not, the Internet has become unavoidable for many people in the knowledge economy. “Cyberspace is everywhere,” says Ronald J. Deibert, director of the Canada Centre for Global Security Studies, and its reach ... Read More »

June 18, 2013 | Filed under: Science, Technology & Environment

Hungry for Change: Farmers, Food Justice and the Agrarian Question

By A. Haroon Akram-Lodhi

In his new book, Trent University professor A. Haroon Akram-Lodhi looks at systemic failings in the area of food production that have created a worldwide food crisis. The problems include small-scale farmers unable to earn ... Read More »

June 18, 2013 | Filed under: Science, Technology & Environment

The Origin of Feces: What Excrement Tells Us About Evolution, Ecology, and a Sustainable Society

By David Waltner-Toews

Shit – a mass-produced, quotidian product – is something that, for various cultural reasons, we don’t talk about much. For veterinarian and epidemiologist David Waltner-Toews, this is a mistake his new book aims to rectify. ... Read More »

May 6, 2013 | Filed under: Science, Technology & Environment

Time Reborn: From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe

By Lee Smolin

Explaining cutting-edge physics to non-physicists is a nearly impossible task. Compounding the problem is the fact that physics is grounded in mathematics, and because key concepts have to be put into layperson’s terms and illustrated ... Read More »

April 17, 2013 | Filed under: Science, Technology & Environment

Bog Tender: Coming Home to Nature and Memory

By George Szanto

Since retiring from McGill University, novelist and essayist George Szanto has spent many hours looking out from his writing studio upon the “length and breadth of the bog” that bisects his property on B.C.’s Gabriola ... Read More »

April 1, 2013 | Filed under: Science, Technology & Environment

The Juggler’s Children: A Journey into Family, Legend and the Genes that Bind Us

By Carolyn Abraham

With recent advances in genetics, science has hinted that DNA might be able to answer questions about human identity and origins that have previously been restricted to the realms of history and philosophy. Armed with ... Read More »

March 12, 2013 | Filed under: Science, Technology & Environment

The Slow Fix: Solve Problems, Work Smarter and Live Better in a World Addicted to Speed

By Carl Honore

As a sequel of sorts to the international bestseller In Praise of Slow, journalist Carl Honoré’s new book is part advocacy for social reform, part psychological guidebook for anyone who has ever needed to solve ... Read More »

March 12, 2013 | Filed under: Science, Technology & Environment

The Other Side of Midnight: Taxicab Stories

By Mike Heffernan

Newfoundland writer Mike Heffernan seems to be documenting the experiences of his home province’s working class one book at a time. His first was the best-selling Rig: An Oral History of the Ocean Ranger Disaster, ... Read More »

February 21, 2013 | Filed under: Science, Technology & Environment

Truth or Beauty: Science and the Quest for Order

By David Orrell

Due to the nature of science itself, scientific truth is always provisional. And beauty, so the saying goes, is in the eye of the beholder. Given these shifting sands, physicist David Orrell has taken on ... Read More »