The road to perdition is almost always paved with the very best of intentions. For example, in 2000 the Government of Canada instituted and funded a highly ambitious Canadian Research Chair program. Tier Two rewards were designed to encourage scholars… Read More ›
Editorials
MAGA (MAKING THE ACADEMY GREAT AGAIN)
Today I heard an account I’d never heard before. White males are losing interest in a university education because the oil patch is paying too much. So to survive universities have to attract non-whites, and to do that it has… Read More ›
PARSING THE EDI INITIATIVES
All the palaver aside, EDI is just the latest rebranding of quota hiring. Quota hiring is justified by one or both of two claims: 1) social justice requires it and/or 2) performance excellence does. Hiring a nigh-illiterate indigenous women as… Read More ›
THE WHO-STARTED-IT GAME
When two parties are having at each other, strictly speaking somebody has to have delivered the first blow. But how far back are we to reconstruct? Or, what amounts to the same thing, what’s the statute of limitations on retaliation?… Read More ›
RE-ERECTING THE IRON CURTAIN FROM THIS SIDE
We’ll take Russian oil and gas. We just won’t pay for it. So they’ll cut us off. It’s spring. We’ll shiver, but we won’t freeze. We’ll have to chow down on a little crow from Iran and Venezuela. And we’ll… Read More ›
THE BUCHA MASSACRE
What’s not in dispute is that the hundreds of civilians who’ve been killed in the suburbs around Kyiv would be alive today but for the Russian invasion. No doubt some were collateral damage, though the Russians will call them human… Read More ›
UKRAINE AND THE EICHMANN DEFENCE
The Eichmann Defence – “I was just following orders!” – didn’t work for Eichmann, nor should it have. Nor did it work for William Calley at Mai Lai. It’s a scandal, then, that we all let it pass for Romeo… Read More ›
PARTISAN BLEATING AND UNSEEMLINESS
When you’re at war, it’s perfectly understandable that you’ll mourn your own losses, both military and civilian, you’ll rejoice in the losses of the enemy’s combatants, and you’ll pretty much ignore his ‘collateral’ losses, which before and since have been a… Read More ›
BREAKING NEWS IN CANADA
Some species eat their own young. So do some political parties. The Republicans in the U.S., and the Greens in Canada, are both currently engaged in devouring themselves. It’s too early to predict what will be left of the former…. Read More ›
DONALD RUMSFELD
That Nelson Mandela died at the age of 95 was no great tragedy, because he deserved the long life cosmic justice afforded him. Donald Rumsfeld died the other day at the age of 88. That was a tragedy, because he… Read More ›
Paulosophical Vimplications 