“Although criticized for having no specific demands, the Idle No More movement asks us to remember our history. It asks us to understand that treaties were not signed out of the goodness of the heart, but out of a sense of partnership and the need to compromise,” wrote York University geography Professor Bruce Erickson in the Toronto Star Jan. 26. “[…]Cutting aboriginal people out of the decision-making process around land use is an unacceptable change to the already strained alliance that this country was built on.” Read full story.
The myth of India’s ‘GM genocide’: Genetically modified cotton blamed for wave of farmer suicides
Every 30 minutes a farmer in India commits suicide, crushed – say human-rights activists – by debt, moneylenders and the destructive policies associated with the introduction of expensive genetically modified cotton seed….“The issue of farmer suicides is not just entirely a farmer issue, or rural issue, or a village issue,” said Raju Das, a developmental studies professor at York University, in the National Post Jan. 26. “It is a much broader political-economic problem.” Read full story.
Stroke of madness
Tiger Woods may well have invented that sporting bromide about always striving to get better. But behind that cliché is a deeper truth: “Extreme perfectionism is distinguished by never being satisfied,” said York University psychology Professor Gordon Flett in ESPN The Magazine Jan. 22. “Even when they get to the peak, there’s always something for perfectionists to keep working on, always some other way for them to come at it. They’re always thinking about their mistakes or ways to get better. If they can’t stop thinking about these things, that’s when it becomes an obsession.” Read full story.
MetLife’s math tweaks VA sales
Financial advisers who have been fans of MetLife Inc. aren’t the only ones who will be affected by the company’s decision to cut its variable annuity (VA) income benefit to 4 per cent….Advisers are confronting the reality that as withdrawal rates decline and as fees rise across the industry, the role of the variable annuity could very well change in the future. “The lucrative guarantees won’t be part of the landscape, and you’ll have the fortunates and the not-so-fortunates,” said Moshe Milevesky, associate professor in finance at York’s Schulich School of Business, in Investment News Jan. 27. Read full story.