First live ‘murder hornet’ sighted near U.S.-Canada border, say scientists

DEAR MISS LONELYHEARTS: I work in a high rise downtown and every day I come to work at the same time. I often ride the elevator up with this new guy working a few floors under me. I always feel a little disappointed when he has to get off, and I continue up into the sky.

I’ve worked my way up to speaking pleasantries about the weather, and he responds with cute remarks about the clouds. The good news? He’s not wearing a ring. I also found out his first name from hearing other people say hello to him. Now what?

— Feeling Frustrated! Downtown

Dear Frustrated: Next time you’re on the elevator ride together, say “Hi! My name is such-and-such and I work at such-and-such. Where do you work up here in the clouds?” That should make him smile and break the ice. Then you could consider asking if he might like to join you for a coffee on a work break, if you can co-ordinate it.

If you spend any amount of time having deep conversations on sensitive subject matters, you will undoubtedly encounter patterns of thought and speech peppered into the discourse as if certain people were helpless but to utter them.

Perhaps you are trying to get to the heart of a complicated matter and the disagreement with your conversational partner starts to get a little heated. Often somebody will dust off the old diplomatic gem of “let’s agree to disagree” to extinguish further argument.

Or perhaps you are trying to console a grief-stricken person who has gone through a traumatic event. People in such a state will often rail against the state of the universe with powerful philosophical sentiments, demanding to know how such injustice could be permitted. You would not be the first person to misguidedly try to soothe them with something like “everything happens for a reason.” Or, less secularly, “God works in mysterious ways.”

These are known as thought-terminating clichés. Pithy little sayings that sound like folksy wisdom but serve mostly to sever a train of thinking, often because it is either uncomfortable or more complicated than the person is willing to engage. Admittedly, they often come from a good-natured place of keeping the peace, though it could easily be argued that they mostly serve to preserve to comfort or indulge the intellectual laziness of those who speak them.

Imagine a Manitoba in which our lives are powered by clean, affordable electricity that Manitobans own and which doesn’t pollute the air and water we depend on.

That future is within reach and, as doctors, we know it would protect people’s health now and for many generations.

Instead, Manitoba Hydro wants to spend $3 billion on three new gas-fired turbines in Brandon.The Public Utilities Board is now considering this proposal, before our provincial leaders make a final decision that could lock us into burning harmful fossil fuels for decades.

Every day doctors witness the toll of air pollution, hotter summers and smokier skies on our patients — the child struggling through an asthma attack in the emergency room, the senior dangerously overheating during a heat wave. These health crises are not inevitable. They are the consequence of decisions, by governments and corporations, to keep burning fossil fuels.