Today I heard an account I’d never heard before. White males are losing interest in a university education because the oil patch is paying too much. So to survive universities have to attract non-whites, and to do that it has… Read More ›
Social and Political Philosophy
PARSING THE EDI INITIATIVES
All the palaver aside, EDI is just the latest rebranding of quota hiring. Quota hiring is justified by one or both of two claims: 1) social justice requires it and/or 2) performance excellence does. Hiring a nigh-illiterate indigenous women as… Read More ›
THE WHO-STARTED-IT GAME
When two parties are having at each other, strictly speaking somebody has to have delivered the first blow. But how far back are we to reconstruct? Or, what amounts to the same thing, what’s the statute of limitations on retaliation?… Read More ›
IN DEFENCE OF RAPE
When someone argues in defence of x, at least in the realm of ethics, he usually means x is morally defensible, by which he need not be urging us to do x, but rather and only that it would be… Read More ›
A CORRECTIVE TO THE ABORTION DEBATE
Abortion is no longer an issue in Canada, and let’s hope, touch wood, it remains that way. This is because Canada, unlike its unfortunate neighbour to the south, is a civilised country. As is most of Europe and the Antipodes…. Read More ›
“YOU KEEP USING THAT WORD. I DON’T THINK IT MEANS WHAT YOU THINK IT MEANS”
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 ›
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 ›
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 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 ›
… BUT FEAR ITSELF
Until now in this blog I’ve been pressing my views, for what little they’re worth, on what’s happening in the world, but I’ve assiduously avoided touting myself as some kind of expert in the matters on which I’ve opined. But… Read More ›
Paulosophical Vimplications 