SYLLABI

 Course Catalogues (Part 2)

   Last year I wrote a piece about how the examination of descriptions of courses offered at universities, could be a useful way to determine what is being taught at them. I figured that the ones now offered might be quite different from the ones that once were, but I thought that finding and sifting through them would be rather difficult. That post can be read by clicking on the link above. 
   That post about "Course Catalogues" has attracted some attention. That is a surprise, but after reading it again, it is highly likely that the attraction was the mention of "Bird Courses," which are eagerly sought after, and not mentioned as such in "Course Catalogues".
   For those of you who now may have stumbled upon this post because of my mention of "Bird Courses," I will just say that there is nothing more offered about "Bird Courses."
  This post is about "Syllabi", as advertised, and to let you know that there is a way to "see" millions of them. Others had the idea that such documents would be a useful way to find out what was being offered, which is not the same thing as finding out what is actually being taught. Still, to find out what students are expected to read, what they have to write (or not) and whether they have to go to class and participate, would be one way to assess the university experience. And to find out, for example, if the place is a 'safe' or 'dangerous' one, intellectually speaking - to use criteria mentioned often these days. 
   If you are the rare reader who is interested in "Course Catalogues", not "Bird Courses," here is what you need to know to access a large number of them from over 6,000 universities. I will mention here that the actual syllabi are not offered, just the data they contain.

The Open Syllabus Project (OSP)
   Here is a description: 
The Open Syllabus Project (OSP) provides the first “big data” look at the primary activity of higher education: teaching.  It collects and analyzes millions of university syllabi to generate novel academic and public applications of the expertise embedded in these teaching choices.  This data has a wide range of uses in scholarly metrics, educational research, and the sociology of knowledge.  It supports the work of teachers, publishers, and librarians, and opens up new ways of connecting academic expertise to wider publics at a time when those connections are being attacked.  
   Here is the link to the "Open Syllabus". (There is also a Facebook page.)

   Before heading to the OSP, a look at the Wikipedia entry is useful. See, "Open Syllabus Project." Among the "Notable Findings" area you will see some examples of what people are looking for among the data. These days that includes not just information about the books and articles being used, but the colour or gender of the authors of them.

   For an article written when the OSP came out see: "What a Million Syllabuses Can Teach Us," By Joe Karaganis and David McClure, New York Times, Jan.22, 2016:
   "COLLEGE course syllabuses are curious documents. They represent the best efforts by faculty and instructors to distill human knowledge on a given subject into 14-week chunks. They structure the main activity of colleges and universities. And then, for the most part, they disappear. Some schools archive them, some don’t. Some syllabus archives are public, some aren’t. Some faculty members treat their syllabuses as trade secrets, others are happy to post them online. Despite the bureaucratization of higher education over the past few decades, syllabuses have escaped systematic treatment.
   Until now. Over the past two years, we and our partners at the Open Syllabus Project (based at the American Assembly at Columbia) have collected more than a million syllabuses from university websites. We have also begun to extract some of their key components — their metadata — starting with their dates, their schools, their fields of study and the texts that they assign…..
   Such data has many uses. For academics, for example, it offers a window onto something they generally know very little about: how widely their work is read."

   For an example of how the data are used, see this working paper and the brief summary offered:
   “Closed Classrooms? An Analysis of College Syllabi on Contentious Issues," John A. Shields, et al. Working Paper. July 10, 2025.
   “This essay shines a needed light on college classrooms by drawing on a unique database of college syllabi collected by the “Open Syllabus Project” (OSP). The OSP has amassed more than 27 million syllabi from around the world primarily by scraping them from university websites. They date as far back as 2008, though a majority are from the last ten years. Most of the data comes from universities in the United States, U.K., Canada, and Australia. And while the OSP doesn’t provide all of the raw data to scholars, it provides limited access via a searchable website and useful analytic tools to assess the data.”
   We used the OSP to explore how three contentious issues are being taught: racial bias in the American criminal justice system, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the ethics of abortion."
A copy of the 66pp pdf is available here.

Cancon:
   The syllabi of some Canadian universities are included. For the analytics relating to some of the syllabi at Western University, see here.
The Bonus:
   Princeton University Press has produced a book about this subject. Interestingly enough, it doesn't appear to be available at Western or many other Ontario university libraries. 
  Syllabus: The Remarkable, Unremarkable Document That Changes Everything, William Germano & Kit Nicholls.
   "Generations of teachers have built their classes around the course syllabus, a semester-long contract that spells out what each class meeting will focus on (readings, problem sets, case studies, experiments), and what the student has to turn in by a given date. But what does that way of thinking about the syllabus leave out—about our teaching and, more importantly, about our students’ learning?"

"On Bullshit"

   I have enclosed the title in quotes because it is not another post in my deeply philosophical "ON Series", but instead, the title of the book by Harry G. Frankfurt.  You will likely take it more seriously if I mention that the book was published by Princeton University Press, which is about to publish a 20th anniversary edition, which provides another indication that you should take it seriously. 
   I know this because I get Ron Charles' "Book Club" newsletter, which you should also take seriously because he writes for the Washington Post. Here are a few of his comments about, the book, bullshit and President Trump, who one associates more with the latter term than the former.

   A few months before the 2016 presidential election, a retired philosophy professor wrote in Time magazine that it was difficult to determine whether Donald Trump’s “unmistakably dubious statements are deliberate lies or whether they are just bullshit.” Ordinarily, such a scatological appraisal by an old academic wouldn’t have attracted much attention, but the writer in question was Harry G. Frankfurt, the world’s foremost authority on bullshit....
   “One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit,” he began. “Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted.” That tone may sound casual — it is — but Frankfurt wasn’t phoning this in. He went on to cite Max Black, Wittgenstein and St. Augustine. 
  “The contemporary proliferation of bullshit,” he wrote, stems from “various forms of skepticism which deny that we can have any reliable access to an objective reality and which therefore reject the possibility of knowing how things truly are.” 
   In 2005, Princeton University Press reissued Frankfurt’s essay as a little book, which — no bull! — sold more than 1 million copies around the globe. This is not, I can assure you, the typical sales trajectory for an academic treatise on epistemic indifference. Clearly, the world smelled it too....
  In our current political climate, Frankfurt’s words sound prescient to the point of redundancy. “The bullshitter,” he tells us, “does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.”  Last month, squatting atop the excremental culture that bears him up, Trump castigated his supporters for believing what he called the Jeffrey Epstein “bullshit.” It might be time to replace the Republican elephant with an orange-haired ouroboros — a mythical creature that swallows its own tale." 

  That "bullshit" is a serious subject is proven by the fact that it was mentioned in another newsletter I received, this time from The New Yorker, in an admittedly unserious piece by Ian Frasier, “Maybe I Shouldn’t Have Ditched That Bullshit Detector," June 6.  A detector is surely not needed now since we are knee-deep in the stuff. 

A Bullshit Bibliography
   Given the seriousness of this subject, I searched the catalogue of the London Public Library for further reading. Although they didn't have, On Bullshit the Western Libraries does and at the LPL you can find these: 

   Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World, by Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West. At the related website, this is found:
   "The world is awash in bullshit. Politicians are unconstrained by facts. Science is conducted by press release. Higher education rewards bullshit over analytic thought. Startup culture elevates bullshit to high art. Advertisers wink conspiratorially and invite us to join them in seeing through all the bullshit — and take advantage of our lowered guard to bombard us with bullshit of the second order. The majority of administrative activity, whether in private business or the public sphere, seems to be little more than a sophisticated exercise in the combinatorial reassembly of bullshit."
   The Life-Changing Science of Detecting Bullshit, by John Petrocelli.
   Post-Truth: How Bullshit Conquered the World, by James Bull

   There are even bullshit books about:
   Work - Bullshit Jobs, David Graeber.
   The Classics: Zeus Grants Stupid Wishes: A No-Bullshit Guide to World Mythology.
    And Food: The Angry Chef's Guide to Spotting Bullsh*t in the World of Food: Bad Science and the Truth About Healthy Eating, Anthony Warner.
  

Cancon: 
  I am pleased to report that a pioneer in the field of bullshit studies is Laura Penny. She also should be taken seriously since she has a PhD and teaches at King's (the other one in Halifax.) Even more serious-sounding is the MA thesis she did while passing through Western, (the one here in London) - Spent: On Economic Metaphor in Post-Structuralist Philosophy.  

The Bonus: A Related Concept and More Cancon
  The concept is Enshittification and the coiner of it is the Canadian, Cory Doctorow:

   "Last year, I coined the term ‘enshittification,’ to describe the way that platforms decay. That obscene little word did big numbers, it really hit the zeitgeist. I mean, the American Dialect Society made it their Word of the Year for 2023 (which, I suppose, means that now I’m definitely getting a poop emoji on my tombstone).

   So what’s enshittification and why did it catch fire? It’s my theory explaining how the internet was colonized by platforms, and why all those platforms are degrading so quickly and thoroughly, and why it matters — and what we can do about it.

  We’re all living through the enshittocene, a great enshittening, in which the services that matter to us, that we rely on, are turning into giant piles of shit."

   You will likely take this concept more seriously if I mention that the quotation above is from, "My McLuhan Lecture on Enshittification"  and that there is a good piece about it in The Guardian: " 'What Many of Us Feel': Why 'enshittification' is Macquarie Dictionary's Word of the Year". If that is not enough, Paul Krugman wrote about "The General Theory of Enshittification" just a few weeks ago. 
                       "Making Light of Heavy Things Since 2016"

The Good Life

   In the past, Mulcahy's Miscellany has offered book suggestions for those interested in intellectual self-improvement and here is another one (for earlier examples, see: "More Aids for Autodidacts" and "MIT Press - Additional Aids for Autodidacts.")
   Those wishing to live a "good life" are likely surprised when they look for books in a library and do not find them grouped under the subject heading, "the good life". Those who rely on Wikipedia, probably give up and end up watching "The Good Life", the British TV series to which Wikipedia directs them. Searching for books about such a nebulous concept is difficult, but this suggestion from the research staff at MM may help. 
  Simply go to the website of Oxford University Press where books about the good life are easily found. A dozen of them are listed below along with the brief description provided by the OUP. 
  Given that June is "Indigenous History Month", and to provide Canadian content, a bonus book is included. It is published by JCharlton which is located in Vernon, B.C.

                                    A Beginner's Baker's Dozen

1. The Good Life

Unifying the Philosophy and Psychology of Well-Being

Michael A Bishop

Proposes a new approach to the study of well-being and an original theory of well-being

Redefines Positive Psychology and connects it to the philosophical study of well-being

Explains philosophy and positive psychology's respective literatures on well-being in understandable, straightforward, and concise language, bringing them into dialogue in innovative and productive ways

2. A Good Life on a Finite Earth

The Political Economy of Green Growth

Daniel J. Fiorino

Studies in Comparative Energy and Environmental Politics

Provides an accessible overview of ecological policy

The first book to offer a systematic analysis of the concept of green growth

Disrupts the assumed conflict between economic and environmental goals, arguing that they can be complementary

3. A Guide to the Good Life

The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy

William B. Irvine

A refreshing presentation of Stoicism that shows how this ancient philosophy can still direct us toward a better life.

Uses psychological insights and the practical techniques of the Stoics, offering a roadmap for anyone seeking to avoid the feelings of chronic dissatisfaction

Readers learn how to minimize worry, how to let go of the past and focus their efforts on the things they can control, and how to deal with insults, grief, old age, and the distracting temptations of fame and fortune

Shows readers how to become thoughtful observers of their own lives.

4. Happiness and the Good Life

Mike W. Martin

Integrates philosophy with the new branch of psychology called "positive psychology"

Draws substantially on fiction, memoir, and film

Accessible to a wide audience in practical and applied ethics

5. A Minimally Good Life

What We Owe to Others and What We Can Justifiably Demand

Nicole Hassoun

Explores and asks what we owe to others as a basic minimum

Challenges opposing accounts of the basic minimum and the limits of our obligations

Argues that concern for our common humanity requires helping others live minimally good lives

6. Morality and the Good Life

Edited by Thomas L. Carson and Paul K. Moser

7. Nature, Reason, and the Good Life

Ethics for Human Beings

Roger Teichmann

Presents an original and provocative account of ethical thought

Engages with a range of philosophical disciplines, including philosophy of mind and philosophy of language

Critiques contemporary trends of thought that exist both in academic philosophy and in wider culture

Written for a broad readership, beyond as well as within academic philosophy

8. Organizational Ethics and the Good Life

Edwin Hartman

The Ruffin Series in Business Ethics

In this book, Edwin Hartman argues that the real world of experience, rather than abstract theory, is the source of principles for business ethics. Hartman explains how ethical principles derive from what employees learn in good organizations and argues that an ethically good company is one that creates the good life for those who work in it.

9. Plato on Pleasure and the Good Life

Daniel Russell

Daniel Russell develops a fresh and original view of pleasure and its pivotal role in Plato's treatment of value, happiness, and human psychology. This is the first full-length discussion of the topic for fifty years, and Russell shows its relevance to contemporary debates in moral philosophy and philosophical psychology. Plato on Pleasure and the Good Life will make fascinating reading for ancient specialists and for a wide range of philosophers.

10. Pleasure and the Good Life

Concerning the Nature, Varieties, and Plausibility of Hedonism

Fred Feldman

11. Pursuing the Good Life

100 Reflections on Positive Psychology

Christopher Peterson

Compiles short essays by one of the founders and leaders of positive psychology

At times humorous, at times serious, Peterson deftly traverses a varied landscape of emerging research, personal perspectives, and big ideas

12. The Quest for the Good Life

Ancient Philosophers on Happiness

Edited by Oyvind Rabbas, Eyjolfur K. Emilsson, Hallvard Fossheim, and Miira Tuominen

New perspectives on a key philosophical topic

Illuminates the complexity of ancient ethics in fascinating ways

Shows how the ideas of ancient thinkers are relevant to contemporary debate

The Bonus and CANCON: 

13. Pimatisiwin : The Good Life, Global indigenous knowledge Systems, Settee, Priscilla.

   "Drawing upon her own life, scholarly work and an in-depth review of the relevant literature, Priscilla Settee delivers a perspective of what it means to be alive while, at the same time, furthering Indigenous-based struggles for decolonization, social justice and intellectual thought." For more see:

"Mino-Pimatisiwin is an Indigenous traditional teaching that describes how the emotional, physical,mental, and spiritual parts of a person, or the heart, body, mind, and spirit, come together in balance to lead the good life. This is a lifelong endeavour where one comes to understand how to live in relationship with oneself and others as part of the natural world with respect, reciprocity, and interconnectedness. The teaching and understanding of Mino-Pimatisiwin is deepened through continuing work with Indigenous communities, Indigenous Elders and Knowledge Keepers. Through this ongoing work, these perspectives and Indigenous phrases expressing values have become a part of how we describe the good work we do for all students in Manitoba." From: "Mino-Pimatisiwin: The Good Life," Province of Manitoba.

Armed Services Editions

 Books For The Troops

   During World War II, the Council on Books in Wartime in the U.S. established a non-profit program to get books into the hands and pockets of the troops scattered throughout the world. The books produced were very small paper ones, but they were complete not abridged. About 123 million copies of around 1300 titles were published and distributed.
   As the image indicates, the books could be classic or popular ones, fictional or non-fictional and serious or humorous. They were useful for bored soldiers in remote outposts, for sailors on long voyages and for both when convalescing in hospitals. They also promoted reading and ended up contributing to the paperback revolution for civilians.

   Much has been written about the ASE and the major sources for information are provided below for those interested in books and for those  interested in collecting them.

The Grolier Club Exhibition
  Titled, "The Best Read Army In the World" and curated by Molly Guptill Manning, this exhibition and the Wikipedia entry will be enough for many of you. For an article about it see: "A New Exhibition Tells the Story of the Armed Services Editions, Pocket-size Paperback Weapons in the Fight For Democracy," Jennifer Schuessler, New York Times, Oct. 6, 2023.

Related Books by Manning
   The Best-Read Army in the World, Molly Guptill Manning and Brian Anderson, The University of Chicago Press, 2020
"In late 1943, small packages bound in sturdy brown paper began to arrive at American military outposts, each containing a set of ingenious pocket-sized books called the Armed Services Editions. Titled the “Victory Book Campaign,” this initiative was led by librarians, who garnered the support of individuals, businesses, civic organizations, and Eleanor Roosevelt. For war-weary, homesick men, these books—fiction, biographies, classics, sports tales, history books, poetry, compilations of short stories, books of humor—represented the greatest gift the military could give them. This annotated catalogue includes posters, photographs, newspaper clippings, and other contemporary documents that provide valuable context for how the written word not only increased morale during wartime but ultimately transformed American education and changed the book industry forever."

   When Books Went To War: The Stories That Helped Us Win World War II. Molly Guptill Manning, HarperCollins, 2014
"When America entered World War II in 1941, [it] faced an enemy that had banned and burned over 100 million books and caused fearful citizens to hide or destroy many more. Outraged librarians launched a campaign to send free books to American troops and gathered 20 million hardcover donations. In 1943, the War Department and the publishing industry stepped in with an extraordinary program: 120 million small, lightweight paperbacks, for troops to carry in their pockets and their rucksacks, in every theater of war. Comprising 1,200 different titles of every imaginable type, these paperbacks were beloved by the troops and are still fondly remembered today. Soldiers read them while waiting to land at Normandy; in hellish trenches in the midst of battles in the Pacific; in field hospitals; and on long bombing flights. They wrote to the authors, many of whom responded to every letter. They helped rescue The Great Gatsby from obscurity. They made Betty Smith, author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, into a national icon. When Books Went to War is an inspiring story for history buffs and book lovers alike."--Publisher's website. Chronicles the joint effort of the U.S. government, the publishing industry, and the nation's librarians to boost troop morale during World War II by shipping more than one hundred million books to the front lines for soldiers to read during what little downtime they had.
  For a review see: "Marching Off to War, With Books," Janet Maslin, NYT, Dec. 24, 2014.
  Manning has a new book out: The War of Words: How America's GI Journalists Battled Censorship and Propaganda to Help Win World War II, Blackstone, 2023.

Library Collections
  Small paperback books, such as the ASE ones would not have been routinely collected, but interest in having them developed later.

The Library of Congress has a full set, of course, and published this on the 40th anniversary of the ASE: Books in Action: The Armed Services Editions, by John Y. Cole, 1984. (This can be accessed online, but it may take a while to load.)

The Huntington Library
  "Fighting A War With Books," Natalie Russell, Verso: The Blog of the Huntington Library, May 22, 2019.

University of Alabama: The W.S. Hoole Special Collections Library
  The ASE collection here is almost complete and was lacking only five titles when this was written in 2015: “Armed Services Editions: A Quest For A Complete Collection,” Allyson Holliday, UofA Blog, Feb 16, 2015.

University of South Carolina - The Irvin Department of Rare Books & Special Collections Blog
"Books are Weapons in the War of Ideas..." Michael Weisenburg, Sept. 4, 2020
"The Irvin Department is pleased to announce that it has recently acquired the three final titles needed to complete its collection of the Armed Services Editions series of books. The books, Peter Field’s Fight for Powder Valley, William Colt MacDonald’s Master of the Mesa, and Clarence E. Mulford’s Hopalog Cassidy’s Protégé, are part of a series produced by the Council on Books in Wartime, from 1943 to 1947."

The University of Virginia
  "Books Enlist." This provides an exhibit of the ASE held in 1996.

Blogs

  This is worth a look: "Books For Victory: The Armed Services Editions of WWII," Andrew Brozyna, April 28, 2013.

  For Collectors: The Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America.

Another Attempt In This Century - 2002
  See:" Literature Re-enlists In the Military; Pilot Project Is Sending Books to American Ships And Troops Abroad," by Mel Gussow, NYT, Nov. 7, 2002

   "During World War II soldiers carried Armed Services Editions of pocket-size books and read them avidly whenever they had time. These were literary classics, popular novels, plays and nonfiction issued free to troops around the world. The books, increasingly dog-eared, were a cultural oasis as well as entertainment. Some soldiers took them into battle. Copies were handed out as troops left England for the Normandy invasion....
   Andrew Carroll, an author and archivist, described the program as ''the biggest giveaway of books in our history'' with the possible exception of Gideon Bibles. It is, he said, ''a great forgotten story'' of World War II. After the war the editions were at least partly responsible for the proliferation of paperbacks in the United States.

   This month, in a pilot project created by Mr. Carroll, the Armed Services Editions are returning with 100,000 copies of new versions of four books being printed in the same wide, brightly colored ''cargo pocket'' format: Shakespeare's ''Henry V,'' ''The Art of War'' (Sun Tzu's classic 500 B.C. study of military strategies) and two recent best sellers, ''Medal of Honor: Profiles of America's Military Heroes From the Civil War to the Present'' by Allen Mikaelian, with commentary by Mike Wallace, and ''War Letters: Extraordinary Correspondence From American Wars,'' edited by Mr. Carroll....

   Clarence Strowbridge, president of Dover, which is publishing ''Henry V'' and ''The Art of War,'' said that the original editions ''inspired a whole generation of servicemen and women to become lifelong readers, and I have no doubt these books will do the same.'' After the war Dover became a leader in the paperback revolution....

   Mr. Carroll first became aware of the editions four or five years ago when he found a Steinbeck novel in an antiquarian bookstore in California. He soon began his own collection, which includes a rare copy of ''Superman,'' a novel, not a comic book.

Echoing his predecessors during World War II, Mr. Carroll said he wanted ''to promote the love of reading.'' He was adamant about using the original format as an act of nostalgia and ''a tip of the hat to this great project.'

CANCON
   Three books by Stephen Leacock are found listed by the ASE: 1) Laugh With Leacock #197; 2) Happy Stories Just to Laugh #344 and 3) My Remarkable Uncle: and Other Stories #976.

   One reason I became aware of the ASE is through the research I did for my book about Hulbert Footner who was born in Hamilton, Ontario. His book, The Murder That Had Everything was chosen for the ASE. I could find no pictures of the ASE version and that edition of the novel is  probably rare. One likely exists in the collection held in the Calvert County Historical Collection in Prince Frederick, Maryland. Here are two reviews of it:

The Murder That Had Everything

Here is a review from The Observer, by Maurice Richardson, Sept. 17, 1939.

“The Crime Ration”

The Murder That Has Everything has an extremely New York setting. Chief victim is a gigolo on the eve of his marriage to one of the richest and silliest girls in the world. Suspects include the husbands of several women who have been visiting him in his love nest. Lee Mappin and his beautiful secretaries do the detecting. The plot becomes trickier and muddier with every page; there is some interesting characterisation and strong satire at the expense of New York smarties and gossip writers. In fact it has everything to make you go on reading.

A Canadian review is found in the Vancouver Sun, Sept. 2, 1939.

“Mystery Fiction”

Park Avenue society, familiar to New York haunts and true-to-life habitues combine to make Hulbert Footner’s new mystery, The Murder That Has Everything (Musson), an A1 Thriller. Here’s the story of a cunning crime syndicate that plies among the daughters of millionaires. 

More Bad News For Books

 

COSTCO & Books
   I never really thought of Costco as a place to buy books, but I had also not considered buying gold or silver from a Costco store. I think I have seen books stacked on tables at the local one, but according to a recent article they may become a scarce commodity at Costco. A first reaction may be, "Who Cares?", but a more reasoned one might be, "Holy Cow!" Costco as a customer purchases thousands of books.
   Here is the article and while it refers to the United States, I would think the same decision would be made for the Canadian Costcos.
"Costco Plans to Stop Selling Books Year-Round: The Decision, Which Will Be Implemented in January 2025, Could Significantly Impact Publishers," Elizabeth A. Harris and Alexandra Alter, New York Times, June  5, 2024.

   Beginning in January 2025, the company will stop stocking books regularly, and will instead sell them only during the holiday shopping period, from September through December. During the rest of the year, some books may be sold at Costco stores from time to time, but not in a consistent manner, according to the executives, who spoke anonymously in order to discuss a confidential business matter that has not yet been publicly announced.
   Costco’s shift away from books came largely because of the labor required to stock books, the executives said. Copies have to be laid out by hand, rather than just rolled out on a pallet as other products often are at Costco. The constant turnaround of books — new ones come out every Tuesday and the ones that have not sold need to be returned — also created more work....
   The decision could be a significant setback for publishers at a moment when the industry is facing stagnant print sales and publishing houses are struggling to find ways to reach customers who have migrated online. 
   While Costco isn’t as critical a retail outlet as bookstore chains like Barnes & Noble, it has provided a way for people who might not otherwise seek out books to see them and perhaps grab a new thriller or a cookbook while shopping for socks and paper towels. Shoppers could also browse books at Costco in a way that is difficult to do online.
   Robert Gottlieb, a literary agent and chairman at Trident Media Group, said he’d spoken about the changes at Costco to a number of publishers who were alarmed by the potential blow to sales.
“Costco across the country was a big outlet for books,” he said. “There are now fewer and fewer places to buy books in a retail environment.”
   The change may also impact Costco customers, particularly those who live in areas without a bookstore. And because many books at Costco were impulse buys, some of those sales may not shift over to Amazon or Barnes & Noble. Instead, they might not happen at all.


Additional Bad Book News from Ukraine

All of the news from this area has been bad, but this may be overlooked, given the tremendous loss of lives.
   "On May 23, Russian missiles struck the Factor Druk printing house in Kharkiv, Ukraine (story). Seven people were reportedly killed and more than 40 injured. In addition, some 50,000 books and 60 tons of paper were burned....
  Factor Druk was surely not a random target. Vladimir Putin has been determined to obliterate Ukrainian culture even before he began his barbaric invasion in early 2022. Unfortunately, this spring, Putin’s buddies in Congress were able to slow U.S. aid long enough to give Russia a major advantage.  Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky issued a statement saying that the attack on the Factor Druk printing house “demonstrates that Russia is waging war against humanity and all aspects of normal life.”
[The source for this is Ron Charles, "Book Club" newsletter from the Washington Post, June, 7.]

CANCON
   If Costco needs to store their excess books in freezers, they should have good ones:
"NDP Leader Slams Liberals For Giving Nearly $26-Million to Costco, Loblaw in Recent Years," Canadian Press, Globe and Mail, May 9, 2024. 

"The money came from the Liberal government’s low-carbon economy fund, which is meant to support projects that will reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.In 2019, the Liberals faced heat from Conservatives after the government announced it was giving up to $12 million to Loblaw for energy-efficient refrigerators and freezers at 370 of its stores. Newly released data from Environment and Climate Change Canada show Costco was also given more than $15 million for efforts to reduce emissions, including new fridges.
Loblaw was ultimately given more than $10 million.
The payments were made to the two grocery chains between 2019 and 2023."

Beyond the Palewall (8)

 

Coming Soon Next to the Shawarma Shop Near You: A Private Clinic

   If you need a knee or hip replaced, you may be able to soon hobble down the street and get one, or two, or even four. Our government announced that more private options were being made available and that news was nicely conveyed by the Canadian correspondent for the New York Times: The Growing Private-Sector Involvement in Canadian Public Health Care Systems," Canada Letter, Ian Austen,

January 20, 2024.

This week, the provincial government in Ontario announced that it was expanding the number of private clinics providing medical services.

Right now, Ontario has about 900 such clinics, and they mostly offer medical imaging and cataract surgeries. Sylvia Jones, the province’s health minister, said this week that the government was expanding its program to include hip and knee replacements.

The province is being careful not to violate the Canada Health Act by requiring people to pay for medically necessary procedures. That would jeopardize the 20 billion Canadian dollars the province will receive this year from the federal government for health care. While the clinics will be privately operated, their procedures will be covered under the provincial health care plan as if they had been performed in public hospitals.

Ms. Jones said that the expansion would allow more such procedures to be performed and that doing so would cut wait times for patients. Her critics say it will further undermine the public system, that it may actually increase wait times and that it is a step toward full privatization of health care.

   You may not be able to read the NYT article, but you can read this 36 page report which has just been released: "The Scope and Nature of Private Healthcare in Canada," by Katherine Fierlbeck. It is published by the C.D. Howe Institute.
 A serious subject which I should not treat so lightly.

Boil Water Advisory in the Nation's Capital

   Not in Ottawa, but Washington. I mentioned in "Water Woes" that, soon we are all likely to  be very thirsty.  A recent headline indicated that it is true, even in D.C., where a great deal of water is needed for the scotches. In this article, one learns that even the citizens in the ritzy areas (Chevy Chase, Bethesda) were likely to experience problems. Apparently these city dwellers need advice that is much clearer than the water: “Do not drink the water without boiling it first,” the D.C. Water said in an alert issued Friday evening. (The water should be allowed to cool before drinking it.) ("Many Residents of Northern D.C. Are Asked to Boil Water," Martin Weil, Washington Post, Jan. 19, 2024.)

  Some related CANCON: A Canadian Press headline: "Long-Term Prairie Drought Raises Concerns Over Groundwater Levels," Bob Weber, Jan.20, 2024.

“The lowest water levels are all in the last seven years and the levels are much lower now than they were in the ’70s and ’80s,” Pomeroy said. “It'll be a climate signal that we’re seeing....” “It’s something we need to keep an eye on.”

Don't Bet On It

   At the end of last year, I suggested in "On Betting" that perhaps we should be as worried about the gambling situation as we are tired over watching all the ads promoting it. I did offer one source suggesting that money was being made and people are getting jobs in the gambling sector. If you think you can find better statistics related to Ontario, Don't bet on it.  
   Read, if you can, this good article: “Got Questions About Ontario’s Online Gambling Industry” Don’t Bet on Getting the Answers,” Simon Houpt, Globe and Mail, Jan. 19, 2024. He begins by noting that this gambling thing is supposed to be great and he attempts to find out how great from iGaming Ontario. He wasn't able to get much information from them, but it was easy to find out from the folks in New York and Massachusetts.

  

When Ontario announced a few years ago that it was giving the green light to online gambling, politicians made familiar promises about the scheme. It would be great for consumers. Great for the province’s tax revenue. Great for jobs, great for the local innovation economy. (They didn’t say anything about how great it might be for our blood pressure to be subjected to the ensuing flood of sportsbook ads.)

Since then, most of the talk about online gambling has focused on its downsides: the volume of ads; the disappointment in seeing heroes such as Wayne Gretzky or Auston Matthews encouraging fans to get into the betting game; the cautionary tales about addicts losing their homes, their jobs, their families, their lives.

Would the conversation be different if the government actually trusted the public enough to give them real information about the state of the industry?

For almost two years, iGaming Ontario (or iGO), which oversees online gambling in the province on behalf of the Alcohol Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO), has followed a policy of saying as little as possible. It releases quarterly snapshots that contain a handful of data to show things are going swimmingly.

Which they might be. Who knows.

For the first year of those quarterly reports, iGO revealed almost nothing. It published the total amount of money that had been wagered, but refused to outline how much came from the different types of betting: casino, sports, or online poker. It was hardly a vote of confidence in a promising industry.

It’s finally begun breaking out those figures. Still, it evidently believes most information is like thrash metal or direct democracy: potentially dangerous if released onto an unsuspecting public. And so it withholds data that might help Ontarians grapple with the emerging place of online betting in the province.

He then made a few phone calls and it seems our southern neighbours were rather chatty.

Other jurisdictions seem to recognize the benefits in giving the public access to timely, comprehensive information....

A quick scan of the information published by Massachusetts and New York may give you some idea of the warts that Ontario might be trying to hide.

Last month, mobile sportsbooks in New York State took in US$2.04-billion in total wagers. Of that amount, the market goliath FanDuel handled US$835-million, or about 41 per cent of all wagers. DraftKings handled US$773-million (about 38 per cent), and Caesars handled US$202-million (or almost 10 per cent)....

The Massachusetts numbers for December echo the winners-take-all landscape in New York. Of US$643-million wagered on online sportsbooks, DraftKings handled US$316-million, or 49 per cent. FanDuel handled US$187-million (29 per cent). ESPN Bet, newly rebranded from Penn Sports Interactive, handled US$50-million and saw its market share jump to almost 8 per cent from 6 per cent. The other five licenced operators handled the remaining 14 per cent of the action.

All of which is to say the industry looks a little like America itself: a few fat cats at the top, with everyone else scrambling to survive.

And what does the landscape look like in Ontario, where there were an astonishing 49 licensees operating 72 gambling websites – including, by my count, 30 sports-betting operations – as of Dec. 31, 2023? Are two or three foreign juggernauts dominating an industry the government had hoped would become a central player in the province’s innovation economy, as people suspect? Are Canadian-based companies, which have much smaller marketing budgets than the global behemoths, connecting with consumers? Are they barely keeping their heads above water? Are they targets for the industry consolidation that so many observers believe is inevitable? Will the jobs that the province trumpeted as a major reason to greenlight gambling never materialize, or evaporate? Will online gambling be yet another branch-plant economy of foreign giants?

The questions were not answered.

Year-End CanCon Continued

   Here is some more CanCon which was found in an American source. It is taken from a piece by Dave Barry who is widely syndicated and hilariously humorous. It is very difficult to make 2022 funny, but in his rundown of that year, Canada gets a mention in February and here it is:

February

"… there is trouble in, of all places, Canada. The news up there is that the capital city, Ottawa (from the Algonquin word “adawe,” meaning “Washington”) is besieged by a massive protest convoy of trucks, clogging the streets, honking horns, blocking traffic and making it impossible for anybody to get anywhere. Granted, this is the situation pretty much every day in, for example, New York City, but apparently in Canada it is a big deal. As tensions mount, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, in a controversial move, invokes emergency powers enabling the government to freeze the protesters’ access to beaver pelts.

Ha-ha! We are poking some good-natured fun at Canada, which is actually a modern nation and an important trading partner that we depend on to supply us with many vital things. Celine Dion is only one example. In all seriousness, the Canadian trucker strike is a significant event that raises some important issues, which everyone immediately stops caring about because of the situation in Ukraine."

In a banner year for our country, it again gets a minor mention in October:

The verified drama on Twitter is interrupted, briefly, by the midterm elections. For weeks the political experts, relying on Scientific Polling Data, have been predicting a Red Wave, with the Republicans taking control of the House and Senate as well as large swaths of Canada. The outlook is so dire that the New York Times tweets out a list of five “evidence-based strategies” for coping with election anxiety, including — we swear we are not making this up — “Plunge your face into a bowl with ice water for 15 to 30 seconds.”

Covering the entire, very long year of 2022 results in a very long column, which also includes illustrations such as this one: 

   Mr. Barry has noticed Canada before and I pointed that out to you a couple of years ago in a post that you probably passed on since it is titled "On Worms." In 1993, Barry reported on the Canadian worm wars and the widely syndicated column had headlines like these: 

"We've Got One Really Slimy Problem Here"; "Worms on the Highway"; "Worms On the Road: Recipe For Disaster" and "CANADIAN IMPORT OPENS A WHOLE CAN OF WORMS." 

If I produced headlines such as those, perhaps I would have more readers. By clicking on the link above you can learn more about the worm battles along the 401 and, you must be a little curious. Since it is Boxing Day and you probably won't bother, here is a snippet from the post which should serve to make you even more curious. Mr. Barry quotes from a CP piece and then raised the important questions:

In May, the Canadian Press Service sent out a report that began: "GEORGETOWN, Ontario - More than 50 worm pickers beat each other with steel pipes and pieces of wood in a battle over territory." The story states that two rival worm-picking groups "arrived at the same spot at the same time" and started fighting over who would pick worms there. A number of people were hospitalized . . . and a van was set on fire.

You may have the same questions I did:

 

1. These people were fighting over WORMS?

 

2. Is there some kind of new drug going around Canada?

Mr. Barry is now 75 and is likely surprised given that he wrote this book:

I am not sure if he is allowing his daughter to date: 

Source: "Dave Barry's Year in Review: No One Cared How You Did on 'Wordle,' And Democracy Died At Least Three Times; (It's Time to Don Surgical Gloves, Reach Deep Down Inside the Big Bag of Stupid That Was the Past 12 Months, and See What We Pull Out." Washington Post, Dec. 25, 2022.