Wage Labour on the Fringes For all the attention it received, to my knowledge, no one provided much of a political analysis of Darren Aronofsky’s 2008 award-winning motion picture The Wrestler. I suspect this is largely a function of the subject matter of the film: professional wrestling has been a long standing punch-line, after all. […]
Continue readingTag: Society
Random Ranting Raving and Ratings: Courage in the face of Despair – I’m Voting for the Social Economy
While the Liberals and Conservatives spout on about how well each has handled Canada’s financial economy they are both equally guilty of ignoring Canada’s social economy. What is the social economy? Well it is wide range of community, voluntary and not-for-profit… ..
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: US government shuts down online poker; the case for legality
The US government has just launched an assault that has temporarily shut down the largest online poker operators in the US. This historic decision implements in a meaningful way for the first time the 2006 UIGEA law that effectively outlawed running a …
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: How we can change the political capital formula
It is a tautology that a successful politician is one who is capable of attracting votes. However the way successful politicians can attract votes is divided into largely two overlapping categories. They can enact and advocate for policies and politi…
Continue readingExponential Book: Dear flight attendant
… or airline employee standing behind your airline’s counter at the gate, or customer service desk, or checking in my luggage and issuing my boarding card(s), or talking to me on the phone: (the situation described below is hypothetical. Re…
Continue readingI know this much is true?
“Sometimes I’m confused by what I think is really obvious. But what I think is really obvious obviously isn’t obvious…”Michael StipeIt seems that the biggest troubles come about from what we believe to be true. Lately I have come to the realizati…
Continue readingFences
The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said “This is mine,” and found people naive enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might…
Continue readingOn cooperatives and housing.
I’ll get back to my electoral series eventually, I swear. But I had this weird idea today and I wanted to spell it out. It’s not an argument; more just thinking out loud. (Well, so to speak. “Speak”.)We don’t have enough housing going to the people who…
Continue readingOn the new feudalism.
I was going to blog something about the CMA’s recent report on Canadian healthcare. But there’s really not much there that anyone could reasonably disagree with. More access to prescription drugs, more access to long-term care for those who need it…
Continue readingwords
Some guy hit my fender, and I told him, ‘Be fruitful and multiply,’ but not in those words.Wood AllenA string of words can be powerful. The amount of words can be many or little but it doesn’t matter if there are many or a few…the message they contai…
Continue readingWhat the hell do I know?
“All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.”Galileo Galilei You know sometimes I just have to stop and think and think hard because sometimes it seems quite unbelievable what is going on…Oh the Fif…
Continue readingmastering the art of self preservation
“My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.” Adlai E. Stevenson quotes (American Politician. Governor of Illinois (1949-53)
and Ambassador to the United Nations (1961-65). 1900-1965)
It took about a w…
Pop The Stack: Call for Discussion of Abortion, How About a Call for Data First?
Tasha Kheiriddin over at the National Post just posted a generally pretty reasonable call for discussion on abortion in Canada. I don’t disagree with her general conclusions, that a law, crafted properly in a civilized manner, would be better than no law. But she makes the mistake of assuming one is needed based on […]