Chaucer’s House of Fame
Recently, while I was reading in bed — as is my nightly habit — I came across some lines (641-660) from Book II of Chaucer’s early poem, House of Fame,…
Ian Chadwick
Sidewalk Ethics and Etiquette
There is a theory that a person’s moral compass may be judged by how they deal with shopping carts. Those with even a modicum sense of ethics and morality return…
Dither, Dally, and Doddle
If I were looking for a single word to succinctly describe Collingwood Council, it would not be ‘decisive.’ Nor would it be progressive, capable, innovative, or enterprising. I would not…
Don’t be a Traitor to Canada
As I write this, Canadian news media are racing to cover and explain the story that the racist felon fascist president, Donald Trump, has imposed 25% tariffs on Canada, Mexico,…
The New Fascists Have Arrived. American Democracy is Dead.
I get no satisfaction from saying ‘I told you so’ and ‘I warned you about them.’ But I did, over and over. So did many, many others, all of them…
The Body Snatchers
I think it’s about time for another remake of the 1956 film, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, this time instead of aliens taking over human bodies, we should have a…
The Rise and Fall of Self-Checkout
I refuse on moral, ethical, and simply human grounds, to use a self-checkout at any local store where they are installed. My initial reaction to them was outrage: this is…
Home on the Open World Range
A recent article in the Journal of Internet Research described a study that came to the conclusion that open-world games (OWGs) “may offer unique cognitive escapism opportunities, potentially leading to…
Blue Skies, Nothing But Blueskies…
Enshittification is a delightful neologism coined by author Cory Doctrow in 2022 to describe how things decline in quality and service. While it initially meant to describe how vendors would…
When I’m 64…
Will you still need me? Will you still feed me? When I’m sixty four… it seemed cutely remote to consider being that old when the Beatles sang “When I’m Sixty-Four”…
Normalizing Fascism: The Paradox of Tolerance
The Brexit campaign succeeded on a platform that cultivated anger, fear, conspiracies, and racism based on lies and disinformation. Donald Trump’s campaigns have succeeded twice on platforms that increasingly cultivated…
Enemy of the State
It was very clear from his first presidential campaign that Donald Trump was adversarial to the very notion of the USA, to its Constitution, to its judiciary, laws, courts, police,…
Why Are People Leaving Xitter En Masse?
The exodus from X to Bluesky has happened – the era of mass social media platforms is over. That’s the headline for a piece in today’s Guardian newspaper. People and…
Class Struggle, Slavery, TV, and Trump
Long before Blandings, long before Downtown Abbey, long before Upstairs, Downstairs (both the 1971 original and the short-lived 2010 remake), even long before The Duchess of Duke Street, there was…
The Return of the World’s Filthiest Habit
Why are celebs glamorising smoking again? That question was part of the headline in a recent story on BBC.com about how some unthinking and selfish celebrities are once again promoting…
Atheists Beware: Trump Will Come For You, Too
While women and immigrants will initially be the main target of the Talibangelists in the upcoming Trump theocracy, they will not be the only victims of Trumpist repression. Among the…
America, what have you done?
America, what have you done? You chose fascism over democracy. You chose hate over hope, oligarchs over experts, patriarchy over equality. You chose repression, theocracy, violence. You chose anger, lies,…
Democracy or Fascism?
We are, today, watching the most momentous decision that Americans have had to make in the entirety of their — and my own — lifetimes. Compared to the choice between…
Imagine There’s No Heaven…
The title above is how Imagine, the iconic 1971 song by John Lennon, begins. It is still being played and sung, more than 50 years later. Wikipedia tells us it…
How Did Democracy Come To This Sorry State?
My wife and I are members of the Boomer generation. That means our parents, their families, and their friends, their neighbours and their communities were impacted by World War II.…