A Closer Look: Jody Paterson

Big Society, or small government? *I'm gone after this for a couple of weeks - back blogging March 12   Britain’s “Big Society” initiative has been showing up as a story line in Canadian media in recent weeks. Not surprising, really. Our federal and provincial governments are promoting the same principles that British Prime Minister David Cameron is putting forward in his Big Society vision.   He calls it a Big Society and we call it social entrepreneurship, but the goals are the same: More social enterprise; more collective responsibility for societal ills; more use of the tools of capitalism to fund social care. Canada is suddenly awash in task forces, strategies and policy debate related to social innovation, including a new high-profile advisory committee in B.C. I like much of what’s being talked about. I’m all for innovation, and for a better way of funding community services if it gets us out of the uncertain, short-term, destructive and inefficient process we’ve got...

Andre Picard is easily the best health reporter in Canada in my opinion, not only because he writes great stuff and takes the serious measure of issues, but because he gives a public platform to important issues that we need to know about. Today's column in the Globe and Mail is a good example of that - he's highlighting a study that pokes big holes in the prescription drug industry's assertion that the reason drugs are so expensive is because the industry is spending vast sums on creating them.

OK, I don't usually go in for the flavour-of-the-day studies that have us scrambling this way and that trying to follow whatever new wisdom has popped up to help us guide our lives into better health. But I'm a long-time devotee of regular exercise, and t his latest study on lab mice underlines that exercise really does seem to be the magic bullet. While it would be hard to test the same theories using weight-training (although I'm enjoying the image of mice doing tiny little bench presses and squats, I can tell you from my own life that weights are definitely part of the magic-bullet equation as well. And never mind that every now and then you end up with a bit of an injury from too much enthusiastic gym time (like at this very moment, in my case). Weight-training helps restore the muscle we start losing in our 30s as part of the aging process. For every pound of muscle on your body, you're burning at least 10 times the calories just maintaining it as a pound of fa...

Good read from my partner Paul Willcocks , who dug up some enlightening information by taking a look at the B.C. Progress Board reports assessing the record of Gordon Campbell's Liberals in the last few years. Campbell's government created the Progress Board to measure performance, so you have to give him credit for that - up until that point, it was pretty much impossible to gauge how effective a government had been. But as the reports reveal, the Liberals haven't quite been the saviours of the economy that they position themselves as. 

A grim but fascinating reminder from Salon magazine about our seemingly overpowering need to blame the victim when a woman is sexually assaulted - in this case, CBS reporter Lara Logan. 

Our countries talk a good game about treasuring the war veterans who serve on behalf of all of us. But as with anything, what really counts is what we DO once the heart-warming media images of returning vets fade from view and the soldier returns to "normal" life. And as this study out of the U.S. shows , the love doesn't appear to last long south of the border, where military veterans are more likely than any other group to end up homeless.

Stigma blinds us The dictionary defines stigma as “a distinguishing mark of social disgrace.”   Once upon a time, it was the common term for the permanent mark burned into the skin of criminals and slaves. We like to think of ourselves as too civilized for such things nowadays. But in fact, the practice continues for all kinds of people singled out for scorn and judgment.   That we even sort people that way is probably the most interesting aspect of this thing we call stigma. Scorn and judgment are not attitudes a “nice” society generally wants to cultivate in its citizens, and for the most part I think we’re fairly kind to each other. We’re respectful of each other’s differences. But not always. Some categories of people still end up singled out for social disgrace, their lives marked as surely by stigma as if we’d burned it into them.   This is Anti-Stigma Week in Greater Victoria, and I love the theme: “Nice People Take Drugs.” People with addictions experience treme...