Each of us has two parents. Each of them has two. So we have four grandparents, eight great grandparents, sixteen great great grandparents, and so on. So we’d only have to go back ten generations to meet our thousand ancestors… Read More ›
Everything You Wanted to Know About What’s Going On in the World But Were Afraid to Ask
MOVING THE NEGATION SIGN
It’s one of the oldest tricks in the books, and university administrators have learned to play it with panache. Professor X says or writes something politically incorrect. The media asks for comment, and the dean or president answers, quite correctly,… Read More ›
WATCH YOUR METAPHORS!
People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. So policy statements targeting the unwoke for their micro-aggressions should be especially careful about their own metaphors. Hereafter there shall be no wilful ‘blindness’. No longer should we ‘stand up’ for… Read More ›
HOW TO TEST YOURSELF FOR AUTISM
It would be so much easier, for all concerned, if we didn’t have to draw a distinction between sexual violence and just garden variety violence. But alas we have to. We have to because a judge would be hard pressed… Read More ›
Guest Post. Saturday Morning Pam-toons. A Speakeasy in the Age of Prohibition
What fascinates me about Speakeasies was the mingling between and relative equality of rich, poor, women, men, black and white. These illicit clubs helped with the momentum and success of civil rights movements. The current Prohibition with its categories of prohibited… Read More ›
WHO GETS A DEPARTMENT OF THEIR OWN?
I know there are people because I’ve met some. But I’m not sure I’ve ever met a people. A people, I’m told, is a collection of people, but not just any collection of people. It has to be of people… Read More ›
HOW TO MAINTAIN ONE’S MORAL INNOCENCE NOW THAT SILENCE IS VIOLENCE
We wouldn’t have to go back too many generations to realise that every one of us is the product of rape. That every one of us is the product of incest. That every one of us is both the descendant… Read More ›
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE
I have a theory – I won’t bore you with the details – according to which I am Napoleon Bonaparte. And since I have no recollection of having abdicated, that makes me the Emperor of France. Why am I not… Read More ›
SELF-IDENTIFICATION
If what it is to be a woman, or Black, or Jewish, is just to publicly so self-identify, then all hell’s going to break loose. Some dirty ol’ man like me is going to saunter at will and unchallenged into… Read More ›
THE CATHEDRAL AND THE CAPITOL
Said the king to his henchmen, “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?!” So they did. To which he whinged afterwards, “But I didn’t mean they should do that!” I think the moral of T.S. Eliot’s Murder in… Read More ›
