When you ‘get married’ you are entering into a legal contract. You might be doing a few other things (promising your love to someone, making a deal with a god), but you are most certainly entering into a legally binding contract with another person. There are rights due to and responsibilities incumbent upon people who …
Category: uncategorized
Jan 05 2012
What Went Wrong with Political Correctness?
My guess is that it started well enough, as sensitivity: people realized that terms such as ‘crippled’ and ‘retarded’ had gathered too many negative connotations, had become insults; so they replaced them with new words such as ‘physically challenged’ and ‘mentally challenged’ – words that, because new, would be free of such slant. This linguistic …
Dec 10 2011
Appropriation or Imagination?
Two poems of mine have been published in a journal dedicated to “the Black experience”. An audio piece of mine has been aired on Native radio programs. I am neither Black nor Native. Had this been known, I suspect some might have accused me of cultural appropriation. It’s an interesting idea, but
Sep 12 2011
Rising above Natural Selection
We need to rise above natural selection. Otherwise, as a species, we will continue to become dumb and dumber. Who has the family of five? Not the physicist or philosopher. She’s chosen not to have any kids. And not the biologist or sociologist. He stopped at two. And who’s having the family of ten? The …
Sep 05 2011
Philosophy – Misunderstood
I think philosophy is one of the most misunderstood subjects. That it took so long to become a high school course, I think, attests to this. Even within academia, however, there seems to be confusion. Two PhDs expressed surprise at the title of my masters’ thesis in Philosophy (“The Issue of Consent in Sex and …
Aug 14 2011
Libraries: what are they and so what?
So I was working in my local public library the other day – well, trying to work. I was distracted by the kid on the computer next to me who was playing a computer game. My first point. Is it appropriate for kids to be allowed to play computer games on the computers in public …
Jul 27 2011
The Illegality of Assisted Suicide
Let’s say assisted suicide is illegal because it’s often a tragic, premature, perhaps even ill-informed, death. But so is unassisted suicide. And there are alternatives to assisted suicide – better pain management, for example, or counselling. Same goes for unassisted suicide. Assisted suicide violates our social values, our respect for life. Yeah, well. And yet …
Jul 01 2011
An Open Letter to Summer People Everywhere
This is not “a recreational paradise” or “a summer playground”. This is our neighbourhood. Those labels are marketing ploys used by real estate agents and business owners eager to make money on sales. They do not speak for us. We live here; they do not. Many of us have lived here for five, ten, twenty …
May 15 2011
Politics in Government: The Problem with Representation
Long ago and far away, I was one of several high school students to participate in a Federal-Provincial Government Simulation. Each of us took on the role of a provincial or federal minister and met for three days of plenary sessions, committee meetings, and caucuses. I was the federal Minister of State for Science and …
May 02 2011
Baby Androids
It finally dawned on me after reading one too many ‘failed android’ stories. I can’t remember whether it was sci-fi or AI, but suddenly I saw the problem: they always try to create an adult without a childhood. If it weren’t for Mary Shelley, I’d be tempted to put the blame on our sexist society: …
fiction
