From the Most-Memorable-One-Liners-in-Cinema file, this one’s from The Princess Bride. And here are just some of my favourite words or phrases that don’t mean what either the speaker or the listener thinks they mean: BLACK LIVES MATTER: No one thinks all… Read More ›
Everything You Wanted to Know About What’s Going On in the World But Were Afraid to Ask
A CALL TO ARMS
Don’t demand to know what these words mean. Just accept that EDI programs are assigned three prima facie laudable objectives: equity, diversity, and inclusion. Let’s look at each in turn from this particular stakeholder’s perspective, a perspective shared, I suspect,… Read More ›
WHAT NOT TO SAY WHEN …
All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore Socrates is mortal. Check. All lives matter. Black lives are lives. Therefore black lives matter. Check. But if you say black lives matter, and I respond with all lives matter, I’ll… Read More ›
UVALDE
At the risk of trivialising the death of those kids and their teachers in the latest spate of school shootings, I guess I am going to trivialise the death of those kids and their teachers in the latest spate of… Read More ›
THE ODDITY OF THE WAR IN UKRAINE
As you might have heard, there’s a war not between Russia and Ukraine but rather a war in Ukraine. This is odd, not in the sense that wars are never fought on the territory of one but not the other…. Read More ›
THE DEMISE OF ROE V WADE
There is no reason – at least not in principle – why a polity couldn’t assign certain duties to some of its members but not others. For example, men, but not women, are subject to the draft. Nor, therefore, is… Read More ›
IT’S NOT GENOCIDE
Some people aspire to greatness. Some have greatness thrust upon them. Having had it thrust upon him without his leave, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has carried greatness with the grace of a Nelson Mandela. My admiration for the man knows no bounds…. Read More ›
PROPAGANDA
When Iraq invaded Kuwait back in ’91, it was reported that Iraqi soldiers were looting incubators from premie wards. I remember wondering at the time whether this was an invention of some Madison Avenue PR firm hired by the Kuwaiti… 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 ›
Paulosophical Vimplications 