It's -17. The wind is blowing at 40k/h and is gusting to 50.

There's about five cm of snow on my stairs.

The Toronto Star's Peter Calamai looks at the federal government's disarray with respects to its Kyoto strategy:

An excerpt:

This is an excellent column by Harvard prof Orlando Patterson on Bush's definition of freedom.

Essentially, Patterson says there are two types: The freedom from (civil liberties and whatnot) and the freedom to, what he calls a more privatized view of freedom.

This NYT story reports that some scientists have found the protein that causes BSE, or mad cow disease, may migrate to other organs and that no part of an infected cow may be safe to eat.

But the experiments are only mouse-based at this time, and one scientist argued the U.S. food supply is safe because animals with obvious signs of illness don't enter the food chain.

This column by Harvard psych prof Daniel Gilbert explains why even Democrats can find a reason to be happy despite the fact that Dubya's got the keys to the White House for four more years....   more »

NYT columnist David Brooks tells us to forget about the drunken, privileged plutocrats-in-training who misbehaved at Inaugurathon parties -- the ideals behind Dubya's speech were real.

An excerpt:

A report by the CBC's Patrick Brown on how Chinese authorities are making sure the non-person status of former premier Zhao Ziyang follows him into the grave -- in both the real and virtual worlds.

Score a victory for freedom of the press in Africa. Kenya has dropped the colonial-era law of criminal libel.

An excerpt from the BBC story: