If I ask whether the blind date you’re setting me up with is good looking, and you answer that she has a wonderful personality, you’re not just saying something about her personality. Likewise, then, no one denies that all lives… Read More ›
Everything You Wanted to Know About What’s Going On in the World But Were Afraid to Ask
HOW TO WIN FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE
Let me give you a heads up. Whatever you’re most sensitive about, I’m probably going to be insensitive to it. This is regrettable, by which is meant it’s able to be regretted, but apparently not by me. Here I offer just… Read More ›
WHY I’M AN ANTI-ANTI-RACIST
Look, people, it’s not rocket science. Just as we humans know that dogs come in different shapes and sizes and colours, dogs know that humans come in different shapes and sizes and colours. But they don’t think to sort us… Read More ›
INDIGENOUS EXCEPTIONALISM
In early May of 1463, a full twenty-nine years before Columbus ‘discovered’ what was to the Europeans the ‘new world’, a boatload of Mi’kmaq from what is now Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia, set sail – actually they rowed… Read More ›
DEFUNDING THE POLICE
There’s a movement afoot in America, one that predates the current fuss over the George Floyd killing, to defund the police, if not entirely then certainly by some amount in excess of just a little. If we want to reduce… Read More ›
THE LEGACY OF GEORGE FLOYD
A law that’s impossible to obey isn’t a law. A law that’s impossible to disobey isn’t a law. A law that’s impossible to enforce isn’t a law. And a law that isn’t enforced isn’t a law. The most it can be… Read More ›
PATIENCE, GRASSHOPPER
The number of American soldiers who’ve died in Iraq since George W. Bush declared victory from the deck of that aircraft carrier has been many times the number who died before that declaration of victory. So it’s not always clear that victory… Read More ›
SCHADENFREUDE
Covid 19 has divided the human world into four distinct camps. There are those who’ve already lost – or are about to lose – their lives to this thing. That’s probably going to end up being about a half million… Read More ›
WE’RE NOT ALL IN THIS TOGETHER
Wherever you look, there are signs reminding us that “We’re all in this together!” If this is some kind of social cue I’m not picking up on, it’s probably because I don’t know what the ‘this’ refers to. For example,… Read More ›
THE NO-END-IN-SIGHT CLAUSE
All the epidemiologists and politicians are talking about flattening the curve, by which they don’t mean– at least not necessarily – reducing the total area under the curve, i.e. reducing the number of people who’ll eventually contract Covid 19. Even… Read More ›