Social Darwinism and "Useless Eaters"
Some people are arguing that the removal of mask mandates in hospitals is a form of eugenics. Tamara Taggart, President of Down Syndrome BC, said on “This is Vancolour,” “This…
Marie Snyder
Chris Hedges on Our Current State of Paralysis
Hedges writes on Substack now, if you haven’t been able to find him lately, and his piece today is excellent. He starts by pointing out the growing rich-poor divide that…
Earth Day #53: Simple Solutions
As a social science teacher talking about climate change, I’d often get students who raise the fact that there are just 100 companies, worldwide, producing over 70% of all GHGs.…
Forced Exposure in Hospitals
If you’re feeling unwell, McMaster is advising you to NOT go to a hospital because they no longer require masks there, and they don’t want people in there spreading their…
Transphobia is the New Homophobia
Natalie Wynn, one of my favourite YouTubers, came out with a 2-hour long video, basically a feature-length film, her first in 10 months. This one is on J.K. Rowling, whom…
At What Point is Inaction a Form of Eugenics??
This impressive and prescient thread worthy of saving is from Miles W. Griffis. He interweaves a speech from Vito Russo, AIDS activist, back and forth with current headlines on Covid-19…
We’re Not Ready for This
I’m waiting to write my last exam of the term. It’s supposed to open at 8:00, and we have 90 minutes to write it, online, multiple choice, open book. I…
Age of Absurdity
We’re skipping gleefully into the most absurd period in history. The philosophical notion of the absurd came from Camus. It grew legs with existentialists after WWII when the youngest and…
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:…
Liquid Life and the Myth of Government Protection
Liquid life is a concept some Buddhist cultures had of the young and old, typically those under 6 and over 70, whose lives weren’t seen as quite solid due to…
Where We’re At: It’s Still Here!
Several people have been screaming into the void about how Covid works, how bad it is, and what we need to do to stop it now that we’re dealing with…
Step By Step: Engulfed by a Lack of Sensitivity
Marian Turski, Auschwitz survivor and Polish historian, made a ten minute speech in December 2021 that has become a more and more timely reminder to pay attention to how we…
Being Athletic as a Pre-existing Condition of Long Covid
Novelist Alisa Lynn Valdés connected the dots between her personal observation that athletes are getting Long Covid (LC) more often than sedentary people and capillarization. The number of small blood…
International Long Covid Awareness Day
Now we have a delegated day, today, to remind the world of the number of people who have lost their lives or livelihoods to this ever-mutating virus. Worldwide, about 1…
Where is My Mind? On Freud and Neuropsychology
Freud got some things right, and this isn’t a post to slam him. But he understood the whole concept of the unconscious mind upside-down. It’s a lot like Aristotle’s science,…
In the News…
A couple unnerving things happened recently that I’m just catching up with. First, the CDC quietly added an update for guidance around certifying death from Covid last February. The controversial…
Understanding Long Covid
A couple days ago, Martin Kulldorff, a Swedish biostatistician, was at a White House roundtable discussing Covid when he said, “We knew about since 430 BC, since the Athenian plague…
The Whale and Love
I used to write about films a lot, and then I just stopped. But for the first time in a long time, I’m compelled to say something about a film,…
Marooned in Anomie
Jon Mooallem wrote a poignant piece in the New York Times yesterday about a project that’s been recording people’s experience with the pandemic since March 2020 over individual Zoom calls.…