Maybe there are seeds of potential deep within ourselves, but maybe there’s nothing there but a collection of signals. Regardless the outcome, we need to dig in to see what we can find. In several classes I took last term, the idea of a core self that’s fluid came through
Continue readingTag: ethical dilemmas
A Puff of Absurdity: We’re Mutant Enablers
A friend said, “I watch the numbers. I’ll start to mask again when cases get high. People who are sick should wear a mask.” And that, my friends, is why Covid will never go away. Absolutely people who are sick should wear a mask. But that statement misses the vitally important
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Endgame Vision
“Where there is no vision, the people perish.” ~ Proverbs 29:18 In many versions of that passage it says with prophetic vision people cast off restraint, but I think vision works as well on its own and is more inclusive, and perish gives a clearer image of the end result. It doesn’t mean
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Teaching in the Face of a Bleak Future
I can’t imagine teaching right now. This post is a mishmash of thought around teaching at such a momentous time in history. Well, momentous for us. I’ve only been retired a year, but the world has gotten so much worse in that time with climate change hitting some serious tipping
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Looking for the Enlightened
The season finale of The Last of Us sets up a great deontological v. teleological conundrum with the big question (tiny spoiler), which ends up being an episode-long trolley problem: Is it right to kill one person if doing so could save multitudes? (The brilliant Just an Observation explains how the entire
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Being a Bad Person
I forgot to post this from last month – my monthly posting at 3 Quarks Daily: A student asked, “How many bad actions does a good person have to do before becoming a bad person?” The notion of good and bad people raises the image of final judgment at the pearly
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Moral Injury
I just re-read a post full of sound and fury that I wrote last year at this time, detailing my initial shock at our unsafe and unprecedentedly intense working conditions at the time. The only policy improvements since then is that students don’t have to be in the building during
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Gun Control
I’ve been observing many gun control arguments online and in the classroom (also online) recently. I’ve written about this before, once after Sandy Hook and then after a Stoneman Douglas shooting surviver put the onus on school staff to keep kids safe. This one’s closer to home, so I finally
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: A Bit about Cancel Culture and Academic Freedom
I’ve written before about how I support free speech but don’t support giving platforms to “White Nationalists” or neo-Nazis or any other racist group who could use the venue to garner more followers. My concern is with audience members who might be easily led or looking for a place to
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Fridays for Future
I went to the first #fridaysforfuture protest in our area with my youngest, yesterday, outside my MP’s office. The idea is the brainchild of Greta Thunberg who wants all students to strike every Friday until the political system focuses on slowing down climate change so we can avoid hitting that
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: End of an Era: On Buying My First Car
I bought a 2009 Kia Rio. I went with a friend because I had no idea how it all worked, and I had lots of stupid questions, like: How do I get license plates before I have the car, or do I leave the car at the dealer and get
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On the Necessity for a Public Takedown
When, a couple months back, I read Katie Way’s depiction of a date between “Grace” and Aziz Ansari, at first I felt badly for him to be outed as such a crappy date. How embarrassing. Then in the New York Times, Bari Weiss responded that Ansari was being asked to be a mindreader. My
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Slippery Arguments and Women at Google
You can read most of the infamous Google memo here, and for the record, I don’t think opening up this discussion should be a fireable offence, but I’m just concerned with this one piece of the puzzle right now: “the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Sugar and Socialization
An Agenda discussion on sugar use is timely for me. I typically let students eat something small and healthy in class to tide them over until lunch, but, in one class this semester, I ended up having to police their choices. A few shovelled candy into their mouths before I’d
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Sugar and Socialization
An Agenda discussion on sugar use is timely for me. I typically let students eat something small and healthy in class to tide them over until lunch, but, in one class this semester, I ended up having to police their choices. A few shovelled candy into their mouths before I’d
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Gender Pronouns and Peterson’s Case
This is a difficult thing for me to figure out, and I’m not sure I’m quite firm on anything yet, but I’ve been completely fascinated by the discussions around Jordan Peterson, the University of Toronto prof who refuses to use individually-determined gender pronouns, so I’ll try to narrow down what
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Gender Pronouns and Peterson’s Case
This is a difficult thing for me to figure out, and I’m not sure I’m quite firm on anything yet, but I’ve been completely fascinated by the discussions around Jordan Peterson, the University of Toronto prof who refuses to use individually-determined gender pronouns, so I’ll try to narrow down what
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Those Statues Again
There are dueling petitions out to continue (which curiously disappeared) and stop statues of all 22 prime ministers being planted on the grounds of Wilfrid Laurier University, my old school that I loved all to bits. I wrote about this statue project on its inception two years ago. The statues
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Sex Work
Bill C-36, which passed into law almost a year ago, begins like this: “Whereas the Parliament of Canada has grave concerns about the exploitation that is inherent in prostitution and the risks of violence posed to those who engage in it…recognizes the social harm caused by the objectification of the
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Friendships of Utility not Virtue
It sounds horrible, doesn’t it? Like we’re using people, hanging out with them only because they have a nice car or because they often pick up the bill for lunch. I wrote here about utility like it’s a bad thing, but what if we use people for their company? Does
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