Credit where credit is due: Collingwood council this week voted unanimously to allow a cannabis store to open here. That came as somewhat of a surprise given earlier negative comments from come councillors, but in the end they all agreed to it. It made sense to say yes, given that
Continue readingTag: critical thinking
Scripturient: You’re going to die. Again.
Yeah, I know: we’re ALL going to die sooner or later. No one gets out of here alive. But that doesn’t stop people from saying the end is nearer than we expect. Right around the corner, in fact. The latest Magical Event being touted online (which event is absolutely not
Continue readingScripturient: Goodbye, Information Age
“Say goodbye to the information age: it’s all about reputation now,” is the headline of an article by Italian philosopher and professor Gloria Origgi, published recently on Aeon Magazine’s website. She writes: …the vastly increased access to information and knowledge we have today does not empower us or make us
Continue readingScripturient: Natural selection simplified
I was startled by the simplicity of the forumla. Stephen Jay Gould, the late eminent paleontologist, biologist and historian of science, summed up Darwin’s basic theory of natural selection so eloquently and so succinctly that it rocked me back on my heels. It was something even a diehard creationist could
Continue readingScripturient: Another bad year for ‘psychics’ and quackery
The year 2018 was another bad year for so-called ‘psychics,’ astrologers and others in the prediction business – and yes, it is a business – because nothing they predicted came true. Nothing specific or meaningful, that is. Sure lots of general “predictions” and vague lifestyle comments phrased as “predictions” were
Continue readingScripturient: Baby, It’s Politically Correct Outside…
I must have travelled to another universe because when I awoke, the world had gone mad. Radio stations were pulling a popular, rather over-played, 74-year-old, playful holiday song because some folks thought it was about rape. Sexual assault. Or at least non-consensual sex. The media was full of Chicken Littles screaming
Continue readingScripturient: Astrology: millennials in search of woo hoo
“Astrology is not a science; there’s no evidence that one’s zodiac sign actually correlates to personality.” I was disappointed to read that line in a story in The Atlantic, a piece titled, “The New Age of Astrology: In a stressful, data-driven era, many young people find comfort and insight in
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: Closed-Mindedness
How does one deal with conspiracy theorists? Quassim Cassam tackles this often thorny adventure in the dealing with the tinfoil hat crew. On the individual level, I think it comes down to how dedicated the individual is to the pursuit of the relevant evidence and knowledge associated with topic at
Continue readingScripturient: Channelling John Stuart Mill
In the opening few pages of his essay On Liberty, John Stuart Mill warned about the “tyranny of the prevailing opinion.” Anyone familiar with the mob mentality than can erupt on social media, its potential for divisiveness and the platform’s inherent weakness to be manipulated by outside forces (such as
Continue readingScripturient: Tim Fryer’s fictitious candidate
You have to wonder who is being described on Tim Fryer’s campaign website when you read about claims of: Transparent and Trustworthy Leadership. Responsible and Accountable Creative and Open Minded Socially & Environmentally Conscious Is Fryer advertising for another candidate? One not so deeply joined to Brian Saunderson and his
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Blessed Are The Benighted
My good friend Dave in Winnipeg often rails sardonically against the twin curses of intelligence and critical-thinking. If you start the following video at about the 50-second mark, you’ll see that some have ‘blessedly’ been spared such affliction. Recommend this Post
Continue readingScripturient: A cop on every corner and in every backyard
Councillor Kathy Jeffrey wants to get tough on crime. Serious crimes like throwing birdseed on your deck, not cutting the grass on the boulevard in front of your house, and riding a bicycle on a sidewalk. I suppose and we’re all at risk from imminent social collapse if they aren’t
Continue readingScripturient: More costs pile onto the SVJI
It seems Saunderson’s Vindictive Judicial Inquiry (SVJI) is eating up taxpayer money rapidly, with a little help from other town departments. It was originally estimated to cost taxpayers between $2 and $6 million – and now it seems that could be much more thanks to this latest farcical chapter. Saunderson’s
Continue readingScripturient: Doherty’s Magic Money Fairy
At 3:55:20 in the video of Monday’s Collingwood Council meeting, Councillor Deb Doherty utters the self-congratulatory claim that she is “glad” the costs of the upcoming judicial inquiry to pursue the Block’s maniacal conspiracy theories are not coming out of “taxpayer funds on an annual basis.” I can hear your
Continue readingScripturient: The costs of the Block’s conspiracy theory
$6.2 million. That’s how much it cost Mississauga to have a judicial inquiry into its utility Enersource, back in 2011. That inquiry was initially estimated to cost $2 million but the costs more than tripled, according to a story in The Connection. Imagine what The Block’s judicial inquiry is going
Continue readingScripturient: More rapture, less reality
According to some, the rapture is coming again, April 23. I’m so tired of this event. I’m still cleaning up after the last rapture. And the one before that. And the one before that, and before that, and before that… it’s even more frequent than an annual event. But next
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: A Marriage Made In Hell
Now this is really disturbing. The Verge reports that Jordan Peele and Buzzfeed combined forces to make a fake Public Service Ad: Using some of the latest AI techniques, Peele ventriloquizes Barack Obama, having him voice his opinion on Black Panther (“Killmonger was right”) and call President Donald Trump “a
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: The Simpsons Have His Number
Those whose memories extend beyond last night’s hockey scores may recall that in 2011, while he was a Toronto city councillor, Doug Ford proposed an ‘exciting’ vision for that city’s waterfront: a monorail, a megamall, and a giant Ferris wheel,: “What we’d like to do is have a monorail system
Continue readingScripturient: The magic of reading
Can you make sense of those lines in the image to the right? Of course not. They’re deconstructed from the letters of a simple, one-syllable word and randomly re-arranged. It’s just four letters, but their component parts are not arranged in the proper order, so they seem like meaningless lines
Continue readingScripturient: Our treasonous council
If Collingwood Council operated at a higher tier or government – say the federal level – they would be called treasonous and taken to court for their culture of deception, their attacks on our democratic and civic institutions, and for their ongoing betrayal of the public trust. But because they
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