Decided to check out the Telus “World of Science” when we were in Edmonton recently.

Unfortunately, the price of admission—$35, including a surcharge for the ridiculous Marvel Comics feature exhibit (and that has what to do with science, exactly?)—was a complete ripoff so I decided to wait in the foyer while the folks I was with ponied up the necessary coin.

To add insult to injury, the Telus folks have created a scale model of a new building they’d like to construct, with the help of public donations. Folks, Telus are the arseholes who are over-charging you for your cell phone service and making billions at your expense.  They could easily fund the entire facility, while asking only a nominal fee for admission, but that is not part of their mentality.

These corporate sponsorships are a joke, advertising for companies that are socially irresponsible, capitalistic, greedy and self-serving. They pay low taxes, while earning all the benefits of the infrastructure we’ve paid for out of our pockets.

Here’s what I wrote as I waited for the group I was with to finish their tour:

When you commodify the sciences and arts, charge a fee to access records of our shared achievements, whose agenda is served and whose interests ignored?

The corporate mindset is not generous or benevolent, it exacts a price for its puny tithes and refuses to acknowledge the public ownership of knowledge or the common good served by true acts of charity.

“Peasants were never permitted within the gardens of Versailles
their presence an affront to the beauty residing there;
Only the wealthy could produce the price of admission,
only they had license to piss on its manicured grounds.”