A considerable portion of our brains is dedicated to recognising faces at a distance because our most dangerous predators are others of our species. That friend-or-foe protocol atrophies when we become habituated to living in civil society. But put a… Read More ›
Everything You Wanted to Know About What’s Going On in the World But Were Afraid to Ask
COMPELLED SPEECH
Cf. the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, the idea driving the current culture wars is that language controls thought, and thought controls behaviour. So he who controls the words we speak controls the world. And, of course, he who controls the world controls… Read More ›
RACE RELATIONS IN CANADA
Okay, let’s settle this business once and for all. When Europeans came to this continent, and as their settlements crept west, they discovered the land was already occupied. Seeing this – and had they been as ‘woke’ as some of… Read More ›
THE N-WORD AND GENOCIDE
I’m jealous. I write over 200 blog entries trashing everything from Black Lives Matter to trans-activism to indigenous land claims to Israeli Apartheid to … And what do I get? Nothin’! Frances Widdowson, a tenured professor at Mount Royal University… Read More ›
WHITE FRAGILITY
White Fragility? Read it? Hell, I haven’t even blogged on it yet! Let’s fix that right now. I’m not sure what colour I am. I’m lighter than most brown people, but I’m darker than some blacks. But whatever colour I… Read More ›
THE REPARATIONS ARGUMENT
When receiving an award, be it for this or for that, it’s now considered churlish not to acknowledge that, “We stand on the shoulders of those who came before us.” Only at one’s peril should this be confused with “We… Read More ›
THE SCRUM
*This post was first published on May 11, 2020 English has one distinct advantage over Italian. The distinction between an assertive and interrogative is embedded in the construction of the sentence. In writing Italians have to rely on the question mark,… Read More ›
FRANCES WIDDOWSON
Frances Widdowson is a tenured professor at Mount Royal University in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. As it happens, I know the woman. And truth be told, I quite like her. Were I confined to a one word description of her it… Read More ›
‘TWAS AND ‘TIS ALWAYS THUS
There isn’t a single person – or a married one for that matter – who hasn’t done something unworthy of himself. Even that Jesus fellow overturned tables that didn’t belong to him. So if we only erect statues to “he… Read More ›
RACE RELATIONS AND INFOTAINMENT
It was February, 1968, and I was just turning eighteen. I was sitting at a sidewalk cafe in Callao, the port city adjacent to Lima, Peru, reading an English language Time magazine that was reporting on the Tet Offensive in… Read More ›