2 Broke Girls, S3E20 “And the Not Broke Parents”: A TV Review

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Here’s something regular review readers don’t get from me very often: I wish this episode had been longer. After what was basically a filler issue last week [and one that seriously had me picking apart Han’s place on the show] this Monday night had us returning to the narrative that this half of the season has built itself around: the pastry school and Max’s relationship with Deke.

That’s right, Eric Andre is back after his character had the flu and went on a skiing trip. Every move this show has made so far, including the mild inconvenience that was Max finding out he was wealthy, has pointed towards him sticking around. She’s not one for relationships or even trusting others, and the way they’ve grown closer has made it seem like nothing short of death/something truly dramatic could break them apart. So this week the two girls meet Mr. and Mrs. Bromberg [as in the Bromberg Elevators, the ones that are in every building in the city, as in the Bromberg Colo-Rectal Centre at the New York Hospital].

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Shame Day: Sun News

Sun News and New Prosperity Mine

Some of you may remember the report I wrote this past summer describing the debate over the New Prosperity Mine application in Williams Lake. I attended a few debates over the mine with my mother-in-law and there was a very strong division in the room. Supporters of the mine wore blue scarves, were primarily white, and mostly discussed the economic benefits. Most of the individuals speaking out against the mine were from the reserves surrounding the mining area, where they would be most closely affected.

Why do they want to kill off these poor guys? But seriously, according to what I heard in the presentation, even losing a few grizzly would be a huge problem.

There were also several very detailed environmental reports brought forward after the general public discussion. While I wasn’t able to make every one due to work, I was able to sit in on a report by a grizzly bear specialist. They shared exactly how the mine project would harm the already threatened grizzly bear community in the area. Again, that was only one one of many other extensive environmental reports.

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Our Injustice System (Revisited)

I don’t work in prisons.

I mean, I might have to in the near future, but as of yet, I haven’t.

Today I’m going to be making some pretty bold statements, and I want to be up front about my reasons for doing so. While I don’t work in the big house (I have had to deal with min-sec “transitional housing”- if that counts for anything), I do work exclusively with an ex-felon population. As with a bad car wreck, you don’t have to be an expert to a look at the current situation and work backwards to figure out just where things started going wrong. Now I’m not saying that prisons help cause crime, just that as they stand today, they aren’t doing a whole lot of helping.

Let me break it down here.

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I was a Voluntourist

In an article that started trending recently, “The Problem with Little White Girls“, blogger Pippa Biddle shares about her experience doing short term aid in Tanzania. While her group of private school kids had flown in to build a library for an orphanage, they were actually terrible at construction:

“Each night the men had to take down the structurally unsound bricks we had laid and rebuild the structure so that, when we woke up in the morning, we would be unaware of our failure… It would have been more cost effective, stimulative of the local economy, and efficient for the orphanage to take our money and hire locals to do the work, but there we were trying to build straight walls without a level…”

Biddle goes on to ask her reader to reconsider short-term aid. Continue reading

What Do We Want From America [In Terms of Diversity]?

As I was walking around doing errands yesterday I began to muse on one of my favourite topics: diversity in media. While this could’ve been a very pleasant stroll on an afternoon that felt much more like spring than winter, my mind felt the need to challenge itself with a question I’m sure often leaves the lips of those who are sick of “having diversity crammed down their throats”: Why is the US held responsible for all of this? Continue reading

Fame Day: Tom Morello

If a musician’s Wikipedia article features more about his activist work than about his music, do we really still classify him as a musician?

That’s the riddle Tom Morello poses us, and not one we’re going to be exploring. As far as we’re concerned, Morello wouldn’t be Morello without one or the other- and rest assured we’re going to be saluting both here today.

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