Author Archives: alan

For this story about Covid-Relief Money for US Colleges, the illustration shows a Canadian high school

I wrote earlier about how I found Jonathan Haidt’s claim “a bit offensive”, but the more I think about this the more irritating and offensive I find it. I just don’t buy the claim that ” Conservatives appear to endorse … Continue reading →

The role reversal in the ‘Roman Charity‘ story reminds me to some extent of that in Robert Munch’s delightful little tear jerker Love You Forever. The daughter’s adoption of a maternal role is especially apparent in representations like these two: Others … Continue reading →

There has been a lot of noise lately about alleged Chinese “interference” in recent Canadian elections, but the suggestion that anything has somehow compromised the actual vote counts is just a load of crap. Of course any kind of covert … Continue reading →

So… For any who have been wondering about the lack of posts recently, here’s a partial(*) explanation for the most recent gap. Back in the waning years of the last century, I became interested in the potential for web-based “applets” … Continue reading →

Not exactly in accord with Loyola, but consistent with the theories behind many educational movements – from “public” schools through Boy Scouts to Hitler Youth, Red Guards, and street gangs (and perhaps why the current fights over school curricula are … Continue reading →

Source: How to think about truth | Psyche Guides I am surprised to see it claimed that truth is a more basic concept than falsehood. In fact, it seems to me that the naive mind initially accepts any proposition at … Continue reading →

Source: On the advantages of believing that nothing is true | Aeon Essays The claim that “nothing is true” only makes sense if one has a well defined concept of what it means for something to be “true”. What makes … Continue reading →

I didn’t attend this seminar, but if I had I would have asked why the proposed system uses kiosks rather than service to arbitrary addresses within the safely drivable region. Restricting the routes to specific streets on which low speeds … Continue reading →

The most egregious failure of WHO is not that they took two years to say COVID is airborne, but that they made and then failed to quickly withdraw an announcement that it is NOT airborne! Misinformation is always, to me, … Continue reading →

They say “We need your feedback to understand how we can improve your experience on our website” Well here’s my response: The site sometimes allows BCid verification as an option and sometimes not. And when I try to use by … Continue reading →

It should be no surprise to either of my readers that I would be inclined to supplement these nine steps to net zero with a tenth – namely to explore the increased use of plastics as building materials. See also … Continue reading →

Something that really troubled me at the great BC climate marches of the last decade was the presence of a large and loud anti-site-C brigade. Source: The BC Government Tapes: Climate, Energy and Site C | The Tyee

The examples in this article are just the tip of the iceberg. And appeals to “the science” in support of whatever action plan one has in mind are unfortunately, I think, a big contributor to public skepticism about things that … Continue reading →

This is a direct copy for my own easy reference from this page at ars-nova.com Why doesn’t “do-re-mi” start on A? Question: We can recite the notes as either DO, RE, MI etc, or as A, B, C, etc. Why doesn’t … Continue reading →

A recent Quora question, asks “Is Noam Chomsky’s comment that ‘NATO should not have moved an inch east of Germany’ ignoring the desires of the eastern European states?” The use of direct quotes there is dishonest unless Chomsky actually said … Continue reading →

Source: It’s not Russia that’s pushed Ukraine to the brink of war | Seumas Milne | The Guardian

Probably never. The idea of any person or ethnic group as being “inherently evil” seems to run counter to the basic ideas of Critical Race Theory. And the idea of teaching anything as sophisticated as actual CRT directly to elementary … Continue reading →

My response to the philosophers’ zombie argument is usually to do a kind of “reverse Turing test” – ie to challenge the philosopher to prove to himself (and to me) that I am not a zombie. If there was anything … Continue reading →