CBC Maritimes

To get the H1N1 shot or not ? Self-interest or altruism as motivations ?

Should you get the HINI vaccine ? This week, Health Canada approved its use; now you have to decide whether to take advantage of it. 
But many people are still undecided,and it hasn't helped that Canadians have been given contradictory and incomplete information over several months.
Dr Françoise Baylis is a Professor and Canada Research Chair in Bioethics and Philosophy at Dalhousie University. She and pediatrician Dr Noni MacDonald  have just published a paper that they hope will clear up the confusion (to read the paper, click here).
Dr Baylis discussed the main points - and explained why we should be motivated by altruism in our decision-making.




Is the world running out of oil ? Can renewable sources of energy such as wind and solar save the planet ?  
Those were just a couple of questions tackled by a keynote speaker at a recent energy conference in the Maritimes.
Dr Scott Tinker is a geologist & the director of the Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas in Austin.
He set out what he called the energy myth - that global production of oil and natural gas are peaking and the world is running out of fossil energy.


Paddling Through maritime History : In 1976, two men who barely knew each other set off in the cold,driving rain for a weekend canoe trip down the upper reaches of the Salmon River in Kent County, New Brunswick. It wasn't an auspicious start. But over the next 20 years, Hugh McKervill and Tom Murphy carried on paddling and forged a close, if unlikely friendship.  
Now Mr. McKervill has written an account of their journeys together called Like an Ever Rolling Stream - Paddling Through Time in the Maritimes.   

Phone-in : Over the years, Bob Bancroft has fielded many calls from you which sounded something like this : "I used to have so many (fill in the blank with the wild bird or small mammal of your choice) around my (a. bird feeder b. backyard, c. neighbourhood), but now they all seem to have disappeared."
Well, it's true - from time to time, there are sudden drops in a particular species. One year, it's nothing but goldfinches at the feeder, and the next, it's all sparrows, all the time.
Bob Bancroft told about us the difficulties of determining whether there's an actual population crash, a cyclic lull or whether the species in question has just moved on to a better grade of birdseed a few blocks away.
Bob is a biologist who writes for a number of publications on wildlife and natural resources issues. He answered your questions about Maritime wildlife and told us about the drop in his red squirrel population.