Mid-April Blogging Bits

I've been on the road and busy with end-of-term exams, which is my latest excuse for the light blogging this month. Rather than a comprehensive new post, a few quick observations.

1) After the horrendous setback in California with Prop 8, I'm thrilled to see gay rights on the march in the US. Vermont legislators overturned their governor's short-sighted veto of legislation to permit gay marriage. Washington state has just passed legislation giving gay couples pretty much everything shy of actual marriage. Iowa's Supreme Court has ruled in favour of gay marriage. New York's governor has announced that he will sponsor gay marriage legislation. I guess that feeling of optimism that I tasted in the air when I landed in Newark last week was well-founded! Now if only Obama thought that repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell was as important as striking a task force on pirates...

2) BC is giving electoral reform a second shot. Regardless of what happens with the election, I hope that BC voters - who cast a majority (but just short of the 60% threshold) of their votes in favour of reform last time - will resoundingly endorse Single-Transferable-Vote this time around.

3) Richard Florida, rider of the "Creative Class" hobby horse, is revising his list of best Canadian cities to live in. Details of this list are here if you want to know the top ranked cities in each category, but I'm posting because my new hometown of Guelph is faring quite respectably on the list, placing 6th or 7th for a number of younger and mid-career demographics.

Exams wrap up next week - and regular blogging might resume then. I'm looking for recommendations of new "Canadiana" books to read and review, if anyone has suggestions.

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