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~Truth~
~Justice~
~Peace~
TJP
Einstein on Mars: Seven minutes of terror
by Daniel Johnson, Deputy Executive EditorThe universe is not only stranger than we imagine, but stranger than we can imagine.
(Calgary, Alberta) - 
Woody Allen: “The universe is merely a fleeting idea in God’s mind—a pretty uncomfortable thought, particularly if you’ve just made a down payment on a house.”
On August 6 a new NASA Rover, Curiosity—officially the Mars Science Laboratory—landed on Mars. The landing was, by necessity, entirely automated because Mars is too far away for Earth-control.
Canadians are not unarmed Americans with health care
by Daniel Johnson, Deputy Executive EditorDespite using the same language, reading the same books and magazines and watching the same movies Canadians are, at bottom, fundamentally different.
(Calgary, Alberta) - 
Known primarily as the oil capital of Canada, every July Calgary hosts the “Stampede” which attracts more than a million visitors to the city—from all over the world.
This year it attracted Walt Wawra and his wife—he a 20-year veteran of the Kalamazoo, MI police department.
Guns in Alberta
by Daniel Johnson, Deputy Executive EditorDid a grizzly bear warn Canada Customs that George Foster was on his way?
(Calgary, Alberta) - 
On February 21, 2012 George Foster, 54, of Florida, casually pulled up to customs at Sweetgrass, Montana, intending to cross into Canada. He pleaded guilty to four criminal and two smuggling related charges.
He said he had no firearms but officers found 75 guns, including 48 handguns, four of which were loaded; a blowgun, one pistol crossbow, and 12 high-capacity magazines hidden inside his pickup truck.
Indicting Wayne LaPierre et al at the NRA
by Daniel Johnson, Deputy Executive EditorSince the gun assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King in 1968, more than a million Americans have been killed by guns.
(Calgary, Alberta) - 
The NRA is an accessory to crimes against humanity within the United States itself. The New York Times, in an editorial two days after the Colorado movie theater murders, said, in part,
“Politicians are far too fearful of the gun lobby to address gun violence, and, as a society, we keep getting stuck on a theoretical debate about the Second Amendment..”
The Circle of Madness is Closing
by Daniel Johnson, Deputy Executive EditorTwenty-four year old Jessica Ghawhi narrowly missed death by gunshot in Toronto on June 2. She was gunned down forty-eight days later, in the early minutes of July 20 near Denver, in a movie theatre.
(CALGARY, Alberta) - 
On June 2, 2012, 24 year old Jessica Ghawi, a neophyte sports reporter from Denver, was visiting Toronto, Canada.
She went to the Eaton Centre mall for sushi, but changed her mind at the last moment, later writing about it in her blog...
The Ten Commandments: The movie
Daniel Johnson, Deputy Executive EditorRotten Tomatoes says: "Bombastic and occasionally silly but extravagantly entertaining, Cecil B. DeMille's all-star spectacular is a muscular retelling of the great Bible story".
(Calgary, Alberta) - 
I was recently given a copy of Cecil B. DeMille's 1956 classic The Ten Commandments. I only ever saw it once--in 1956--and I thought it might be amusing to watch it fifty-six years later. My mistake.
It was DeMille's last movie and one of the most financially successful films ever made, grossing over $65 million at the US box office.
911 as an inside job now beyond doubt (UPDATED June 7, 2012)
by Daniel Johnson, Deputy Executive Editor911: It either knowingly happened at the level of the White House, or the highest levels of the government were wilfully blind.
(Calgary, Alberta) - 
Is the future of America worth a few hours of your time? I'm sure you would be willing to spend a day or half a day at a seminar to improve your job performance or your job prospects.
George Washington`s Children?
by Daniel Johnson, Deputy Executive EditorA tectonic shift in what America will become is something that the next generation must deal with.
(CALGARY, Alberta) - 
The United States as we know it is irrevocably changing. The Census Bureau reports that, for the first time, the percentage of whites born in the country has fallen below 50% (49.6 percent of all births in the 12-month period that ended last July). Babies born to Hispanics, blacks and those of mixed race were at 50.4%.
This is a trend. Whites are no longer in the majority in four states and the District of Columbia. They have slipped below half in many major metro areas.
Should Republicans be Arrested and Jailed?
by Daniel Johnson, Deputy Executive EditorThe short answer is "Yes". The long answer is "Of course."
(Calgary, Alberta) - 
One of the most famous sentences in the English language is the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Guns
By Daniel Johnson, Deputy Executive Editor, Salem-News.comShots are heard around the nation!
(CALGARY, Alberta) - 
Guns exist for one reason and one reason only—to kill other living creatures. The killing of animals for food and furs has always been necessary and justifiable. But the killing of other human beings is not.
Yet to hear many Americans boast, the Second Amendment is equivalent to the Eleventh Commandment, giving them freedoms that no one else on earth has. The one freedom it gives them is the freedom to be the most violent of the industrialized nations and if only other countries would adopt such craziness then they, too, can be free like Americans.
Daniel Johnson - Canada
Deputy Executive Editor, Salem-News.com
Email: omnisavant@shaw.ca
Born and raised in Calgary, Alberta, as a teenager, Daniel Johnson aspired to be a writer. Always a voracious reader, he reads more books in a month than many people read in a lifetime. He knew early that in order to be a writer, you have to be a reader.
Another early bit of self-knowledge was that writers need experience. So, in the first seven years after high school he worked at 42 different jobs ranging from management trainee in a bank (four branches in three cities), inside and outside jobs at a railroad (in two cities), then A & W, factories and assembly lines, driving cabs (three different companies), collection agent, a variety of office jobs, John Howard Society, crisis counsellor at an emergency shelter, salesman in a variety of industries (building supplies, used cars, photocopy machines)and on and on. You get the picture.
In 1968, he was between jobs and eligible for unemployment benefits, so he decided to take the winter off and just write. The epiphany there, he said, was that after about two weeks, “I realized I had nothing to say.” So back to regular work.
He has always been concerned about fairness in the world and the plight of the underprivileged/underdog. It wasn’t until the early 1990s that he understood where that motivation came from. Diagnosed with ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) he researched the topic and, among others, read a book Scattered Minds by Dr. Gabor Maté, an ADD person himself. Maté wrote: "[A] feeling of duty toward the whole world is not limited to ADD but is typical of it. No one with ADD is without it."
That explains his motivation. Hard-wired.
As a professional writer he sold his first paid article in 1974 and, while employed at other jobs, started selling a few pieces in assorted places. He created his first journalism gig. In the late 1970s, when the world was recovering from a recession, the Canadian federal government had a job creation program where, if an employer created a new job, the government would pay part of the wage for the first year or two. The local weekly paper was growing, so he approached the publisher and said this was an opportunity for him to hire a new reporter. The publisher had been thinking along those lines but cost was a factor. No longer.
Over the next 15 years, Daniel eked out a living as a writer doing, among other things, national writing and both radio and TV broadcasting for the CBC, Maclean’s (the national newsmagazine) and a host of smaller publications. Interweaved throughout this period was soul-killing corporate and public relations writing.
It was through the 1960s and 1970s that he got his university experience. In his first year at the University of Calgary, he majored in psychology/mathematics; in his second year he switched to physics/mathematics. He then learned of an independent study program at the University of Lethbridge where he attended the next two years, studying philosophy and economics. In the end he attended university over nine years (four full time) but never qualified for a degree because he didn't have the right number of courses in any particular field.
In 1990 he published his first (and so far, only) book: Practical History: A guide to Will and Ariel Durant’s “The Story of Civilization” (Polymath Press, Calgary)
Newly appointed as the Deputy Executive Editor in August 2011, he has been writing exclusively for Salem-News.com since March 2009 and, as of summer 2011, has published more than 160 stories.
He continues to work on a second book which he began in 1998 with the working title Cosmology of the Ants.
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