It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Thursday, December 09, 2021
How Did Crocodiles Survive the Asteroid That Wiped Out the Dinosaurs?
ByMIKE LEE, FLINDERS UNIVERSITYDECEMBER 8, 2021
There are two main reasons crocodiles survived the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. First, crocodiles can live for a very long time without food. Second, they lived in places that were the least affected when the asteroid hit Earth.
When the asteroid hit earth
About 66 million years ago, dinosaurs ruled Earth. But then a massive asteroid, more than 9 kilometers wide, slammed into the shallow sea near what is now Mexico.
The explosion from this was so huge, it led to global earthquakes, tidal waves, bushfires, and even poisonous rain.
Also, the asteroid hit at one of the worst possible places, where the rocks could easily be “exploded” (or vapourised). This threw up massive amounts of dust into the sky, blocking out the Sun for many months and sending Earth into a long, dark, and freezing winter.
Without sunlight, the green plants died, followed by the plant-eating animals that ate them to survive, and the meat-eaters that ate the plant-eaters.
But some managed to survive for a range of reasons.
One important group of dinosaurs sailed through, helped by their ability to fly and find food in faraway places. Their feathers protected them from the cold, and their beaks let them eat buried seeds found near dead plants.
Amazingly, these dinosaur survivors are still with us today. We call them birds!
A battle-scarred saltwater crocodile resting near the Daintree River in North Queensland. Credit: Michael Lee
Crocodiles had some keys to survival
Crocodiles were another group that famously survived the asteroid. Obviously, they can’t fly, don’t have feathers, and don’t eat seeds! But they had other secrets to success.
Firstly, crocodile bodies use very little energy. They lie around a lot, breathe slowly and even have a very slow heartbeat. This is how they can hold their breath underwater for more than an hour.
It also means they can go without food for months, and sometimes more than a year. This would have been very helpful when food (such as other animals) became hard to find once the asteroid hit.
Dinosaurs such as Velociraptor would have struggled to survive without much food after the asteroid hit. That is, if they survived in the first place.
Crocodiles also lived in places where losing green plants didn’t make a big difference. Think of a forest or a grassland (where many dinosaurs lived): if the plants there die, then all the animals that need them die too, including the meat-eaters which are left with no food.
But the crocodile survivors mostly lived in places like rivers, lakes, and coasts. The animals living in these places don’t need green plants as much. Dead plants and animal material washes in from surrounding land, which is eaten by tiny creatures, which are then eaten by larger creatures including crocodiles.
So unlike dinosaurs living on the land, crocodiles in a river would not have starved as soon as the green plants died.
Our mammalian ancestors also survived
A similar reason helps explain why human beings’ ancestors also survived the asteroid impact. These were the small mammals that lived near the end of the age of dinosaurs, which eventually gave rise to all the different kinds of mammals around today (including humans).
They were mainly small, rat-like things that scurried about in the dead leaf litter on the ground, eating insects and worms. These tiny creatures relied not on living green plants, but on dead leaves and bark falling from the trees, or being blown and washed in from elsewhere.
So just like the crocodiles, our tiny ancestors survived the asteroid partly because they didn’t depend heavily on living plants. A good thing too: these lucky survival skills are the reason you and I are here today!
Written by Mike Lee, Professor in Evolutionary Biology (jointly appointed with South Australian Museum), Flinders University.
published 1 day ago A galaxy without dark matter would upend fundamental theories about galaxy formation.
The galaxy AGC 114905 seems to be devoid of dark matter. In this image, the stellar emission is shown in blue; and green clouds show the neutral hydrogen gas. (Image credit: Javier Román & Pavel Mancera Piña, CC BY 4.0)
On the surface, a galaxy 250 million light-years from Earth seems like any other, but a deeper look reveals a puzzling quirk: It seems to have no dark matter.
If these galaxies are ultimately confirmed to be devoid of dark matter, it could upend fundamental theories about the making of galaxies (dark matter is considered essential to this process). And that, in turn, could rule out a leading candidate for the mysterious substance, called cold dark matter.
"In principle, galaxies like this shouldn't exist,"said Pavel Mancera Piña, a doctoral candidate in astronomy at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and an astronomer at ASTRON (the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy), referring to the fact that dark matter is thought to be the glue that holds a galaxy's stars, gas and dust together. "We cannot effectively explain them with any existing theory," said Mancera Piña, who is the lead author of a new paper describing the findings.
The galaxy, called AGC 114905, is an ultradiffuse galaxy (UDG). These galaxies are faint; AGC 114905 is about the same size as the Milky Way but has 1,000 times fewer stars.
When Mancera Piña and his colleagues first looked at AGC 114905 in 2019 , they suspected it might not have dark matter because of how fast it was rotating. The speed at which a galaxy rotates reveals how much stuff it contains; the more massive a galaxy, the stronger its gravity and the faster it spins. By comparing the speed with how much stuff can be seen — the amount of stars, gas and dust — astronomers can work backward to figure out how much extra invisible stuff — dark matter — must be present to account for the speed of the galaxy.
But because the galaxy in question is so faint, they didn't have enough data initially to fully resolve the rotation speed to tell if it was totally devoid of dark matter. So they went back for a second look, compiling 40 hours of observations with the Very Large Array, a radio observatory in New Mexico.
Through their observations, which mapped the gas in the galaxy, the astronomers figured out how fast the gas was moving. This allowed them to figure out the galaxy's rotation speed and thus how much dark matter is present in the galaxy. But ultimately the researchers concluded that there doesn't seem to be any room for dark matter.
"That's what we were expecting, of course, but you never know," Mancera Piña said. "It was still a bit of a surprise."
Missing dark matter
In the past, astronomers have discovered some UDGs that are rich in dark matter and others lacking it, Live Science previously reported. Some of the latter type are found near more massive galaxies; this finding suggests they may have lost their dark matter through interactions with their larger nearby galaxies, whose gravity may have whisked the smaller galaxies' dark matter away. But considering AGC 114905 doesn't have any massive galaxies nearby, that explanation is unlikely, Mancera Piña said.
This poses a challenge to theories of galaxy formation, because dark matter is thought to be essential for their formation, as its gravity helps pull the relatively rarer normal material together. If there are galaxies with no dark matter, that implies dark matter may not be needed to form galaxies.
Studying AGC 114905 also gives astronomers a new way to test the nature of dark matter. Current theories of galaxy formation rely on a special type of dark matter called cold dark matter, but if those theories don't explain weird galaxies like AGC 114905, then maybe cold dark matter isn't workable either.
"We have been trying to understand what dark matter is for the last 50 years, but we seem to have reached some kind of dead end," Mancera Piña said. By carefully studying this galaxy and others like it, the astronomers might be able to provide constraints on what dark matter might be like, if it's not cold dark matter. In the study, the researchers also applied models of an alternative theory to dark matter called Modified Newtonian dynamics, or MOND, to see if that could explain the galaxy's unique characteristics. However, this theory wasn't able to reconcile the speed of the galaxy either.
Pieter van Dokkum, an astronomer atYale University who has studied dark matter-deficient UDGs but was not involved with the new work, said he thinks the new findings are promising and significant, but that more research will be required for astronomers to be sure the galaxy is truly devoid of dark matter.
"There will be a lot of discussion," van Dokkum said. "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
The study authors plan to study AGC 114905 further and are gathering observations of other UDGs that might be free of dark matter.
The findings were published on Nov. 30 to the preprint server arXiv and have been accepted for publication in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
THIS PHOTO OF THE SUN IS SO ABSURDLY DETAILED THAT IT LOOKS LIKE A LIVING ORGANISM
"ORDINARILY, TAKING A TELESCOPE AND POINTING AT THE SUN WOULD BE INCREDIBLY DANGEROUS."
Black Hole Sun
Famed astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy has truly outdone himself with his latest picture of the Sun.
McCarthy, who calls himself “just a normal guy with a telescope” on his Instagram account, stitched a whopping 150,000 images of the Sun together to form a massive 300 megapixel image he titled “Fire and Fusion.”
The result is a glorious swirling mess of hot gases that almost appear almost organism-like — an angry ball of energy that gave life to everything around us billions of years ago.
What makes it all the more impressive was the fact that it was taken from a backyard, rather than by an orbital telescope or space probe that had to travel almost 100 million miles to get up close.
OPINION As reigning world chess champion Magnus Carlsen marches toward a fifth straight title, the question is: Is he so good that it’s bad?
If you like your sports narratives with some Biblical flavour, this year’s world chess championships is for you.
It’s no longer nearly good enough to call the defending (x4) champion Magnus Carlsen the favourite in any tournament. He is the highest rated player in history. He’s been world No. 1 for nearly a decade. He’s been world champion for that whole stretch.
This time around, the poor sap lined up against him against him is a Russian, Ian Nepomniachtchi, commonly referred to as Nepo.
Like a lot of top chess players, Nepo doesn’t exactly leap from your screen via his irresistible physical charisma. The only visually interesting thing about him is that he wears a top knot. You get the feeling this guy may be a little too into Kurosawa.
For the first bit, things were progressing alright for Nepo against the peerless Norwegian. After seven of the planned 14 games, they’d drawn a half-dozen times.
According to the computers that measure such things, a couple of those games ranked 1-2 as the most tactically precise encounters in world chess championship history. We were watching two masters at work.
Carlsen was still winning, but Nepo was in there with a shot. Then we got to the eighth game.
It was played after a rest day. Nepo showed up having shorn off the top knot. Apparently, he is the first ever professional athlete who thinks that when things are bumping along just fine, that’s the time to make a major change to your routine.
In chess, there are three categories of error - inaccuracies, mistakes and blunders.
Midway through the game, Nepo blundered. In notation, the move was 27 C5. He dangled a pawn and left a bishop exposed.
The mistake was so enormous that it left Carlsen shaking his head slowly in wonderment. Either he couldn’t believe his luck, or he resented an opponent beating himself before he had a chance to do so. Once he realized what he’d done (almost instantaneously), Nepo leapt from his chair and fled the playing hall.
“You work your whole lifetime for one shot and this is what happens on the biggest scene,” British chess champion David Howell said, according to the Guardian. “He’s probably never blundered like this in his whole career. It’s just so sad.”
Nepo lost the ninth game as well, and then drew the tenth. Needing four straight wins over a guy who’s never lost more than one at a world championships, he was asked if his “strategy” remained “trying to win this match.”
“That is an absurd question,” Nepo said.
I’ll give chess this much - it’s populated by realists. Carlsen’s triumphal march toward a fifth straight title resumes on Friday.
That will leave us with an unusual question about Carlsen at his most imperious - is he so good that it is bad?
He is still young (31). He presents well in public, and has never done anything to toxify his brand. He’s good looking enough to work as a model.
Yet despite all these ancillary advantages to go along with his growing best-ever credentials, it feels like Carlsen is doing a slow fade on the global stage. He is not talked about nearly as much as he once was. The last time he made headlines unconnected to a specific chess match was when he briefly held first place in a British fantasy football league.
Carlsen is so excellent and wins so reliably, that it has the curious effect of deflecting interest, both from him and from chess.
Because who wants to watch a guy cruise to victory every single time? The David v. Goliath narrative is the most reliable crowd-pleaser in sports, but it works the opposite way around if Goliath wins.
For a while, Carlsen was presented as David - because he was young and looked younger in a sport we associate with fossilized beardos. But the No. 2 ranked player in the world, Alireza Firouzja, is only 18 years old. Carlsen is a fossil v now.
‘Teenage genius comes out of nowhere to stun chess world’ - that’s sexy.
‘Guy you already heard about a bunch of times is still here’ - that’s not.
The last crossover chess star was Gary Kasparov (If we define ‘crossover’ as ‘playing chess with David Letterman on live TV over the phone’). Kasparov won his sixth and final world title when he was 32 years old.
By that point, he’d also worn out his welcome in the chess world. A series of administrative roadblocks were thrown up to make it more difficult for him to find his way back into the centre. Kasparov retired in frustration ten years later.
Someone somewhere must have understood that people don’t want great. They want great, but with complications. They want it to burst onto the scene and dominate for a little bit and then disappear. Or they want it to toil for years and then finally get over the hump. Or they want a rise and a fall and a rise again.
What they don’t want is uninterrupted dominance. It offends the audience’s mediocrity. It prompts envy. Most dangerously, it bores people.
This is why people love Roger Federer so much. He was the greatest of all time, and then around the time that would have started to get annoying, he wasn’t. By his own standard, he became embarrassingly bad. Then he got good again. Now he’s back to being bad.
That’s an arc that sings. It’s exaggeratedly human, but not super-human. The rubes love that.
Maybe that’s Carlsen had such a dark look when Nepo hung that bishop out in no man’s land in Game 8. He knew in that instant that he was going to win again, as well as knowing that it wasn’t going to be the right sort of win.
RIP
Life and Times: Tom Doran was much more than Edmonton's Godfather of Drums
Author of the article:Roger Levesque Publishing date:Dec 09, 2021 •
Tom Doran, Edmonton's Godfather of drums, died Nov.30, 2021.
PHOTO BY SUPPLIED Article content
Edmonton’s musical community skipped a few beats following the recent death of groove master Tom Doran at the age of 78.
The Edmonton-born drummer, who enjoyed a side career as an entrepreneur, was best known as the man who kept time for late bandleader Tommy Banks through several decades but that only begins to sum up his multifaceted career.
As a first-call drummer to Banks and others, Doran tackled jazz, rock ‘n’ roll, R&B, country and other genres with grace, palpable enthusiasm and superior technique, going on to influence, encourage and occasionally teach younger generations of musicians. Lending his talents to several collectives, he also backed up the likes of David Foster, Paul Horn, Big Miller, George Blondheim, Lenny Breau, Cheryl Fisher, Kennedy Jensen and many more.
Doran was one of the last surviving members of Banks’ early variety band, The Banknotes, and the original Tommy Banks Big Band. The Big Band’s recorded appearance at the 1978 Montreux Jazz Festival won a Juno Award the following year.
Backing rock-pop units like The Original Caste, he joined Privilege for an extended U.S. tour performing Jesus Christ Superstar. Doran shared musical direction in projects like Wizard (later Blizzard) with other Edmonton music greats like Earl Seymour, The Jury with Mo Marshall and the Vancouver-based Django with Gaye Delorme and Hans Stammer.
During the 1970s and early 1980s when Banks’ groups figured in the hit television series Celebrity Review (later The Tommy Banks Show) and the ITV In Concert series with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, Doran’s drumming helped anchor appearances with international celebrities like Aretha Franklin, Tom Jones and Tina Turner. Banks nicknamed him “Drum” and many considered him Edmonton’s Godfather of drums.
Doran’s business ventures reflected his spiritual and artistic interests. Based in and around Old Strathcona for the better part of 40 years, he and his wife Denyse founded the metaphysical Ananda Books in the mid-’70s, Jupiter Crystal in 1982, and Remedy Cafe (now under different owners) later that decade.
Jupiter gradually morphed into Jupiter Glass, a successful outlet for Doran’s handcrafted glass art, jewellery creations and later, glass pipes. Since closing the Whyte Avenue store in September this year, their kids Sara and Tom Doran Jr. continue to market through the Winnipeg-based online venture Jupiter Cannabis.
Everyone who knew him insists Doran had an especially friendly, gentle personality. His wife Denyse credits that agreeable demeanour to “the profound influence” of his daily five-decade practice of meditation.
In an interview for the Journal in 1999, Doran said he felt his real talent grew from “hands-on trial and error”. His first drum was actually the pot of an old banjo he played with tree twigs. Seeing Louis Armstrong at age 10 steered him in the right direction and the three Doran brothers made an amateur trio. He started lessons at Heinzmen’s Music at age 12, with private lessons from Art Darch, but working with Bernie Senensky and Winston Mays taught him the fundamentals of jazz.
After starting out in a teenage rock band with pal Mo Marshall, his first official gig came in 1957 with accordion-polka king Gaby Haas. The original Yardbird Suite jazz club had recently opened and within a year Doran was a regular patron, listening to the likes of Banks, Phil Shragge and Terry Hawkeye. Finally, one Saturday night he got to jam and, as he was earlier quoted, “I was hooked on jazz after that.”
Early stints in local bands like James and the Bondsman, and with Hank DeMarco led to work at The Jazz Door with Lenny Breau and P.J. Perry. Banks asked Doran to join his quartet in 1967 and the band played Expo ’67 in Montreal.
A late ’60s sojourn to Vancouver found Doran drumming in an experimental jazz fusion sextet Django, which played a club owned by the family of Tommy Chong, who became one of his best friends.
Django member and former Edmonton guitarist-singer Hans Stammer recalls Doran, saying, “I was always amazed by what a beautiful sound he had and his style of playing. He was a fantastic drummer, so easy to play with, adjusting when the band stretched out whatever the music involved. He always sounded great and he was such a nice person to be with.”
Long before the internet, Edmonton’s live music scene offered an abundance of venues. Doran put in regular work with Banks at clubs like The Embers and accompanied by vocalists like Judy Singh, and guests like David Foster, or with Bob Stroup at the Palms Cafe. Banks’ later television projects kept Doran busy with session work at multiple television studios here and in Vancouver.
On the beat
Doran was a consummate professional whose versatility put him in high demand and he appeared on dozens of recordings.
It was Paul Horn who turned Doran on to the benefits of meditation in the early 1970s and it’s no surprise the late American-born flautist hired him for extended tours of the U.S. and Canada in 1972. Horn had a thing for hiring great jazz drummers but at the time his career was shifting from jazz to pioneering meditative sounds in new age and world music. Doran fit that musical equation perfectly.
The drummer made room to work with countless younger players and briefly taught drums in the original MacEwan College jazz program. When Banks agreed to produce the debut recording of singer and radio (CKUA, CJSR, NPR) broadcaster Dianne Donovan in 1997, Doran signed on to fashion the grooves.
“I had heard so much about him,” Donovan recalls. “I was a little nervous or shy around him. However, he was the uber-pro, exacting, tasty and never overblown. It was an honour to have him on the album.” Tom and Denyse Doran were both early advocates for the legalization of cannabis. He wasn’t one to shy away from saying so and aware enough to know the benefits of using everything in moderation. His wife observed that, “Tom had a tremendous interest in cannabis. He was really stoned a lot in the 1960s but he straightened himself out.”
She considered her husband to be, “an uncanny magnet for good fortune.”
Doran restored old automobiles as a hobby and his mechanical talents also put him in demand with Banks. As Denyse tells it, “When they went on road trips Tom Banks always made Tom (Doran) ride with him, because (Doran) was mechanical, and if something went wrong with the car, Banks knew that Tom could fix it.”
It’s difficult to sum up Doran’s life and work. His contribution to the city’s music scene will live like a subtle, stylish whisper of brushes on the snares, for years to come.
I interviewed Doran in 1999 when he announced one of several retirements from Banks’ band (it speaks volumes that Banks kept pushing him to come back). At the time, Doran pondered what a good musical situation was, saying, “Any band where the music (is) played with sincerity and a true sense of exploration in finding and going to new musical places. That’s my favourite thing, a musical adventure.”
Doran died Nov. 30 following a long struggle with renal failure. He’s survived by his wife of 50 years, Denyse, their children Leila, Thomas Jr. and Sara, and his brother Brian.
A hand-drawn poster in support of teacher Fatemeh Anvari is surrounded by green ribbons on a chain-link fence outside Chelsea Elementary School in Chelsea, Que. Recently, the school principal told the Grade 3 teacher she had to move to a position outside the classroom because she wears a hijab. Under Quebec's Bill 21, some civil servants — including teachers — can't wear religious symbols at work. (Jean Delisle/CBC)
An elementary school teacher in Chelsea, Que., says she was told she could no longer teach in class because she wears a hijab, which is Quebec law under Bill 21.
After working several months as a substitute teacher with the Western Quebec School Board, Fatemeh Anvari says she was asked to apply for a more permanent position teaching a Grade 3 class at Chelsea Elementary School.
Anvari began that job earlier this fall, but after just one month she says the school principal told her she had to move to a position outside the classroom because she wears a hijab.
The principal told her the decision was made after a discussion with the school board's human resources department.
"Honestly, at that second, it was just shock. It was very hard to process," Anvari told CBC.
WATCH | Teacher removed from classroom over hijab says law sends a troubling message to kids
Fatemeh Anvari, who was removed from her teaching position at Chelsea Elementary School because she wears a hijab, says she is concerned about the message being sent to students, though the support she’s received gives her hope. 1:02
Province appealed exemption
Under a fairly new Quebec law, also known as Bill 21, some civil servants in positions of authority — including teachers — can't wear religious symbols while at work.
A recent decision by the Quebec Court of Appeal, the province's highest court, denied a request by the English Montreal School Board to uphold an exemption of English school boards from the law.
A Quebec Superior Court judge had ruled that English school boards should be exempt from the law, saying the boards' desire to foster diversity by choosing who they hire is protected by the minority-language education rights in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. But the Quebec government soon appealed that exemption, meaning it can't be applied until the appeals court hears the case.
Meanwhile, there are several court challenges against the law, which could last years and eventually make their way to the Supreme Court.
Anvari says the hijab is now part of her identity.
"Yes, I am Muslim, but for me, [the hijab] holds other meanings of just my identity and how I've chosen to represent myself as a strong person in a world that may not want me to be myself," she said.
"But it's still a religious symbol at the end of the day, so that's why it has a conflict with the law."
WATCH | 'It's discrimination:' Parents upset as Quebec teacher reassigned over Bill 21:
‘It’s discrimination:’ Parents upset after teacher removed from post due to Quebec’s Bill 21
10 hours ago
Duration1:48
Kirsten Taylor-Bosman and Amanda Degrace, who both have children at Chelsea Elementary School, say they were upset to learn that a Grade 3 teacher had been forced out of her teaching position because she wears a hijab. 1:48
Teacher, parents blame law, not school
Neither Anvari nor the parents who spoke with CBC blame the school, which they all said fosters a welcoming and inclusive atmosphere. Instead, the parents say the law, Bill 21, should never have been passed.
"I'd like [the government] to see what it's like for an eight-year-old to lose their teacher because of something like this," said Kirsten Taylor-Bosman, whose daughter attended class with "Ms. Fatemeh," as students call her.
Taylor-Bosman said she was initially surprised when she received a letter from the school principal indicating Anvari would leave after just one month, but that quickly evolved into shock and anger once she learned why.
"It was just awful, really upsetting," she said. "These are not the values that we teach our children. So it's really hard to explain this to our kids."
Kirsten Taylor-Bosman's daughter drew this card for Anvari after students and parents found out the teacher had been reassigned. (Submitted by Kirsten Taylor-Bosman)
Due to privacy reasons, the Western Quebec School Board would not confirm why the teacher had been reassigned. The board said, like all Quebec school boards, it must comply with the province's laws, including Bill 21.
"In the English community, we're not in favour of this bill. We find it discriminatory, but as citizens of the province of Quebec, we are expected to follow the law and will do so," said interim board chairman Wayne Daly.
We're not in favour of this bill. We find it discriminatory.- Wayne Daly, Western Quebec School Board
Heidi Yetman, president of the teachers union that represents Anvari, said her union has always been against the bill, especially since it unfairly targets women.
"It's really sad because it puts like a grey cloud over this province," she said. "It's very sad to hear that there are students who enjoyed this teacher since the fall and now have found themselves without a teacher."
Taylor-Bosman wants the Quebec government to explain its opposition to diversity and this case of "discrimination."
WATCH | Western Quebec School Board on reassigning teacher who wears hijab:
Wayne Daly, interim chair for the West Quebec School Board, says the board has opposed Bill 21 but must follow the law regardless, leading to the reassignment of a Chelsea, Que., homeroom teacher because she wears a hijab. 0:30
In an ironic twist, Anvari continues to work at the school on a literacy project for students targeting inclusion and awareness of diversity, although she acknowledges it is still a teaching opportunity.
"[It's important] to educate and to raise awareness on these topics so that the kids are well aware of what's going on around them," she said.
"I think that it was a great way to navigate the situation by the school and the school board."
'Not a story just about me'
A growing assortment of green ribbons — green is Anvari's favourite colour — were seen tied to the chain-link fence outside the school this week where a sign sits asking people to tie a ribbon to oppose Bill 21.
The school community has rallied around the teacher and organized a letter-writing campaign to the school board, Quebec Premier François Legault and CAQ MNA Robert Bussière, who represents the area.
I think [the support] just shows that kids think beyond all of these labels. They just think of love.- Fatemeh Anvari, Teacher
A protest was also planned for this Sunday.
Anvari said she's seen the cards, drawings and ribbons and knows the local community is behind her, and she hopes the government takes notice about what children could inadvertently learn from Bill 21.
"This is not a story just about me. I think it's a story about humans and how we live amongst each other and just to be accepting of any difference, whatever that may be: race, religion, gender identity, cultural background," she said.
"I think [the support] just shows that kids think beyond all of these labels. They just think of love and they think of compassion and and that makes me so hopeful."
WATCH | How Quebec's religious symbols law has changed the lives of three teachers:
Three women discuss the impact Quebec's secularism law has had on their lives. 2:56With files from Steve Rukavina and Christian MillettTory Leader Erin O’Toole says Bill 21 is a Quebec issue while some of his MPs take tougher stand
STEPHANIE TAYLOR OTTAWA THE CANADIAN PRESS
Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole says he believes Bill 21 is 'an issue that is best left for Quebecers to decide.
'ADRIAN WYLD/THE CANADIAN PRESS
Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole says a Quebec law prohibiting some public servants from wearing religious symbols on the job is an issue to be dealt with by that province alone.
Some of his MPs, however, appear to be taking a tougher stand.
O’Toole discussed the Quebec secularism law, known as Bill 21, on Thursday, in response to a report that a teacher in western Quebec was reassigned from the classroom because she wore a hijab.
Bill 21 was passed in June 2019 and bans the wearing of religious symbols such as hijabs, kippas and turbans by teachers and other government employees deemed to be in positions of authority.
The Conservative leader says while he personally opposes the law and has raised it with Quebec Premier Francois Legault, he respects provincial jurisdiction and believes it to be “an issue that is best left for Quebecers to decide.”
While the Tory leader said the matters involving Bill 21 falls squarely within provincial borders, some of his MPs weren’t shy about expressing a different opinion.
“I cannot in good conscience keep silent on this anymore. This is an absolute disgrace,” tweeted Ontario MP Kyle Seeback, linking to a news story about what happened to the teacher wearing the hijab.
“It’s time politicians stood up for what’s right. Bill 21 has to be opposed. In court, in the House of Commons and in the streets.”
“100 per cent,” Jamie Schmale, the Conservative critic for Indigenous Services, tweeted in response.
Also on the social media platform, B.C. Conservative MP Mark Strahl said “Thank you for your leadership, Kyle. My views on this are the same as yours.”
Alberta Conservative Chris Warkentin added that, “If government is free to limit religious freedom it will take liberties to restrict other freedoms.”
“I support freedom for every Canadian!”
O’Toole characterized his position as being the “exact same” as that of NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh as well as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who hasn’t ruled out the idea of federal intervention.
Unlike Trudeau, O’Toole said during the September federal election he would “never challenge” a provincial law.
Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said on Thursday that Trudeau has been clear about where the government stands on the issue.
Other Liberal MPs went online to expressly condemn the Quebec law, including a representative from that province.
Alexandra Mendes called it “outrageously discriminatory and absurdly counterproductive, at a time when we need all willing adults to join the work force.”
Ontario Liberal Salma Zahid, who herself wears a hijab, tweeted she was “saddened and disappointed” by what she read about the Quebec teacher, saying “This should not be happening in Canada.”
“Nobody in Canada should ever lose their job because of what they wear or their religious beliefs.”
Union Workers Strike at Pennsylvania Coca-Cola Distribution Center
Delivery truck drivers, loaders and warehouse workers began picketing Sunday at the ABARTA Coca-Cola Beverages plant in Bethlehem, PA.
Dec 8th, 2021 Mike Hockett Teamsters Local 773 union members picketing outside the ABARTA Coca-Cola Beverages distribution center in Bethlehem, PA. Teamsters Local 773
Amid an ongoing strike at Kellogg's cereal plants that has stretched beyond two months and a weekslong strike at Nabisco factories in September, workers at a Coca-Cola distribution center in far eastern Pennsylvania have followed suit with a strike that began Dec. 6.
Local news reports say that 77 Teamsters union members— comprised of delivery truck drivers, loaders and warehouse workers — began picketing at the ABARTA Coca-Cola Beverages distribution facility in Bethlehem, PA at midnight Sunday, which, according to the company, is when those workers' contract expired. They have been picketing outside the facility since.
The facility is about 15 miles from the New Jersey border and 60 miles north of downtown Philadelphia.
Dennis Hower, president of Teamsters Local 773 (Whitehall, PA) told Lehigh Valley Live that the strike centers on the company’s desire to switch healthcare plans and move employees from a pension to a 401(k) retirement-planning account, while the union's social media posts also note wage issues.
“We told the company we’re ready to sit down and talk whenever they are. Hopefully we’ll get to an agreement,” Hower said. “We’ll be out as long as we need to. Everyone is strong. No one’s going to break. People worked here for decades, they count on that pension. The union members are picketing almost around the clock during their usual work shifts and are receiving strike benefits."
ABARTA Coca-Cola is the exclusive distributor of Coca-Cola beverages in the Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia region, carrying products that include sodas, Dasani water, Monster Energy Drinks, VitaminWater and Powerade. The company has 15 distribution centers, with 12 of them in Pennsylvania.
ABARTA said union members rejected the company's 4-year contract offer, which followed about 10 negotiation meetings over the past two months.
“Unfortunately, despite our lengthy negotiations, the union rejected our last, best and final offer,” ABARTA's human resources manager told local media. “We hope to reach a resolution in the near future and will continue to negotiate in good faith with union leadership.”
Meanwhile, ABARTA said it has a contingency plan to continue production and delivery.
Canadian small businesses face labour shortage despite wage hike, report finds
By David Lao Global News Posted December 9, 2021 'We need to grow immigration,' Manitoba premier says in state of the province address – Dec 2, 2021
More than half of Canada’s small businesses are currently unable to hire enough staff to continue operations or meet new demand — a new report says — despite an almost economy-wide raise in wages.
It’s a dilemma small business owner Jason Schnurr experienced since the beginning of September.
Schnurr, who owns and manages a handful of surf and sportswear stores in Sauble Beach and Port Hope in Ontario, said that his businesses, although seasonal, have been running on a “skeleton crew” for the last three months — and will be expected to stay that way until April of next year.
Schnurr’s businesses, Beachin’ and Jack n Jill’s surf shop, have seen extremely high rates of turnover since the onset of the pandemic, and cannot hire or keep employees despite an increase in wages.
“We have a manager job that has been open since March that we cannot fill, we just don’t get applications for,” said Schnurr in a phone interview with Global News.
“If we weren’t having the labour shortage, we would have filled this position.”
The report, released on Thursday by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB), found that 55 per cent of small businesses would not have the staff required to run their stores, though another 16 per cent would be able to continue their operations but at a significant additional cost.
“Small businesses were already experiencing a very significant shortage of labour at the beginning of 2020, and the pandemic has made the situation only more complex,” said CFIB vice-president of national research Simon Gaudreault in a press release
“Industries that were locked down for long periods of time, like hospitality, have seen a mass exodus as workers upskilled or switched to other jobs, and virtually all sectors are facing major demographic upheavals with not enough new workers coming in to replace those who are retiring.”
According to the report, such widespread labour shortage comes despite the “majority” of affected businesses having already raised employee wages. The problem has led many brick-and-mortar stores to try to hire temporary foreign workers (TFWs). Some are also trying to automate their businesses as an alternative.
The COVID-19 pandemic has driven large parts of the economy to the brink over the last two years, and has especially hammered small businesses.
Business owners have attributed both the labour shortages — a majority of which are in food services, health care and retail — to workers choosing to avoid work in a public setting during the pandemic, as well as the previous federal COVID-19 income supports.
According to a report from RBC, the number of job vacancies n Canada jumped by about 22 per cent in the summer as the economy reopened. In June, there were over 800,000 job vacancies in Canada, though the country’s unemployment rate in October dropped to a pandemic low of 6.7 per cent.
Despite the recent uptick in employment numbers over the fall, the CFIB warns that the labour shortages are now “back with a vengeance,” and that more and more small businesses will see the issue persist.
Wage hikes not the 'expected silver bullet'
According to the report, small businesses with labour shortages had expected to increase their wages by 3.7 per cent over the next year.
Over 80 per cent of affected businesses have already raised their wages, but the CFIB found that their success rate was a “mere” 31 per cent, and that three out five of those businesses that raised wages did not find it helpful in attracting workers or qualified applicants.
Other businesses have turned to other alternatives in order to fill that labour gap, according to the CFIB, with the most successful ones being automation or hiring temporary foreign workers.
Schnurr hopes that he’ll be able to fill his shortages in the coming months, or he would have to otherwise take further measures like “reducing hours, reducing days or reducing stores.”
The report found that a third of affected businesses have invested in automation with a success rate of 81 per cent, while over 15 per cent have hired TFWs and have a success rate of 52 per cent.
“The low utilization to high success rate ratio suggests that TFWs could be a promising solution for Canada’s labour shortages, especially if the program were expanded to other sectors,” read the report. Candidates and qualifications
The report also found that the shortage was being driven by several factors, namely a lack of candidates, qualification mismatches and market disruptions.
About two thirds of affected businesses said they couldn’t find applicants with the right skillsets, while just over half said they had a lack of any candidates at all.
“One reason for this is that the distribution of job seekers to jobs in different education categories is imbalanced: in Q1 2021, 22 per cent of the unemployed had a level of education equal to or higher than a bachelor’s degree, while only 15 per cent of the market requires this level of education,” read the report. STORY CONTINUES BELOW ADVERTISEMENT
The pandemic’s disruption in relationships between employers and employees also “pushed” workers out of certain sectors according to the report, with nearly one in four of small businesses stating that their workers switched industries due to the pandemic.
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“Small businesses have a long and steep climb to recovery, and having the right workers in place or other tools to address labour shortages is a big part of that,” said Corinne Pohlmann, senior vice-president of national affairs at CFIB in a statement.
“They are already doing all they can to attract workers, but they need governments to do their part by adopting policies that increase productivity, connect job seekers with employers and don’t put the cost of hiring out of reach.”
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