If you’ve read my penultimate entry, you’ll know that last week I invited Frances Widdowson to Lethbridge, as the first post-Covid “Guest of Dishonour” at our Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner series on Saturday, then to give two guest lectures,… Read More ›
Everything You Wanted to Know About What’s Going On in the World But Were Afraid to Ask
THE WIDDOWSON AFFAIR
As many Canadians will know – but I’m not sure the story has hit the international wires – I invited a certain Dr. Frances Widdowson to give a talk at the University of Lethbridge on February 1st, on a topic… Read More ›
THE EVOLUTION OF THE UNIVERSITY
For most of human history – and in most parts of the world to this day – there were institutions that work like this: We tell people – priests or commissars – what to tell others, who are then sent… Read More ›
FOUR THINGS EDI PROPONENTS SHOULD NOT SAY
I’ve already blogged about this, but to repeat: Universities in the West are in the process of moving past their best before date. Why? Because 1) the economics of university education has changed, both in terms of a) what information… Read More ›
THE VAUGHN SHOOTING
The other day, in the Toronto Ontario suburb of Vaughn, a 73 year-old man, who’d been at odds with his condo board for over a year, decided he’d had enough and went on a shooting spree against his nemeses. The… Read More ›
IN FOR A PENNY …
After the humiliation of Afghanistan, the West – and most especially America – cannot allow Ukraine to be defeated without forfeiting any trust it can be counted on to make good on its assurances. The West would allow a negotiated… Read More ›
“YES, BUT WHERE ARE YOU REALLY FROM?”
Ludwig Wittgenstein, arguably the most insightful philosopher of the 20th Century, made the following seemingly paradoxical (but now considered banal) observation. Pretty much everything makes sense until we try to make sense of it. So we’d have been just fine… Read More ›
“PHILOSOPHY, POLITICS, AND LAW” AT THE UNIVERSITY OF LETHBRIDGE
My hypocrisy abounds. How so? Because I can no more define wokeism than the woke can define racism or indigenisation or decolonisation or any of the myriad indefinables that make up their vocabulary. What I can do, however, is ostend…. Read More ›
AND ODDER BY THE DAY
As far back as July 20th, I blogged about the oddity of this war in Ukraine. Since then it’s been proving odder by the day. How so? Well … Putin is telling the Russian people that the West is waging… Read More ›
NATURAL KINDS
Every more than once in a while I get to teach a course in whatever I happen to be thinking about. And so I get to con those students foolish enough to take the course into helping me think about… Read More ›