Author Archives: Carolyn Thomas

Is medicine “just plumbing with more expensive tools?”

Posted on by Carolyn Thomas
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“Picard, you’re a hard man to ignore. But it’s well worth the effort.”

This pithy critique, delivered by an unnamed Canadian politician to André Picard, is now his unofficial bio, boasts The Globe and Mail’s veteran public health journalist and author. When Picard was honoured as the winner of the 2011 Hyman Solomon Journalism Award by the Public Policy Forum last year, he delivered a short but brilliant thank you speech that he called “The Five Mantras of Health Care Reform.”  Here’s the text of his important message: Continue reading →

Waiter’s phony $10 tip includes a religious lesson

Posted on by Carolyn Thomas
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I have a few conflict-of-interest disclosures to get off my chest before wading into this mess:

  1. My daughter Larissa spent many years and countless long, hard hours of her young life waiting tables while attending university.
  2. I am a generous tipper for good service. See #1 for the reason why.
  3. When I worked in P.R. for an international Christian aid organization years ago, I used to cringe in embarrassment on the very rare occasions when our office went out for lunch together. Typically, I’d be one of the very few in our party who left a tip. Many of my über-devout colleagues never tipped our servers. Ever. One even openly blamed his modest wages as his excuse for stiffing the waitstaff, to which I would immediately respond with something charitable like: “Then you should be eating under the Golden Arches, you frickety-frackin’ cheapskate!”

Claire Gordon, writing in Daily Finance, has recently reported on a distressing dining-out trend in some Christian circles that brings me back to those embarrassing moments. Continue reading →

Miss Representation: how women are portrayed in the media

Posted on by Carolyn Thomas
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The documentary Miss Representation by actor and filmmaker Jennifer Siebel Newsom premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival last year. This film explores how the media’s misrepresentations of women have led to the under-representation of women in positions of power and influence. Millions of people have watched and responded to this film so far, but as Jennifer herself observes:

“More than the numbers, it’s the individual stories of action which are especially poignant. From the mother in New York who successfully lobbied Mayor Bloomberg to have a pornographic advertisement removed from her child’s bus stop, to the high school youth who started a ‘MissRep’ club to discuss sexism in the media with her classmates, we have been reminded again and again of the power of one individual having courage and using her or his voice to stand up to injustice.”

Find out about bringing this 90-minute documentary film to a classroom near you.

Continue reading →