Nathaniel Rich’s Losing Earth
This is a quick read outlining the history of the efforts to do something to slow down fossil fuel use. Everything we know now about climate change, pretty much, we…
Marie Snyder
On Maintaining Firm Categories: Do Labels Matter?
This link about people on the spectrum came to my FB feed as “Sponsored Content,” so I’m wary at the get go, but they present this argument to be addressed:…
The Plague of Climate Change
I just finished Camus’s compelling read, The Plague. It’s a parable provoked by the Nazi Occupation, but also about general occupation, oppression, and isolation. It’s about resistance to incomprehensible evil…
Hannah Arendt’s On Violence
Unfortunately, this is really timely. Arendt wrote this short book in 1970, but there’s nothing in it that needs to be updated today. Absolutely nothing significant has changed; it’s just…
We Don’t Need a Scientist; We Need a Priest
PhilosophyTube is one of my favourite channels for in-depth analysis of issues in a philosophical and comedic yet profoundly heartfelt manner. Today Ollie tackled “Climate Grief” by working through the…
Seven Shades of Green
I’m trying to sort out all the solutions to the current and ongoing climate catastrophe. This is all getting very complicated, and I’m not sure I completely have my head…
The 1619 Project
From the opening: “The 1619 Project is a major initiative from The New York Times observing the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the…
The Giant Hamster Wheel of Political Rhetoric
I really believe that the arts are vital in times of strife, and that’s particularly true with witty orators and writers. They are the court jesters who get away with…
IPCC – On Land Use
The most recent IPCC special report is on “desertification, land degradation, sustainable land management, food security, and greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems”. The video at Lorne’s post does a…
Planet of the Humans Coming Film Release
Jeff Gibbs, a close associate of Michael Moore, has directed a new doc about the problems with green solutions to climate change. The doc isn’t out yet, but the promotional…
Being a Gadfly or Just a Bitch
Or perhaps we should be casual observers watching the end without comment. Hmmm…. A few years ago, a friend with a similar house as mine in a similar neighbourhood complimented…
Bigotry and Violence in K-W
I stayed in the small town I was born in, and it got big around me. Like parents of young kids, who fall into the trap of continuing to see…
Cancer and Lymphedema: Two Year Update
In the span of one year, from August 2016 to July 2017, I was told I had three tumours in my left breast which led to three surgeries, which provoked…
Odell’s How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy
Or maybe we’d recognize Nietzsche’s last man as ourselves: “Once blasphemy against God was the greatest blasphemy; but God died, and therewith also those blasphemers. To blaspheme the earth is…
Eleanor Oliphant? Not So Fine
I rarely read fiction, so maybe just ignore this rant. I know little about this kind of thing, but it might get me writing again after a dry spell, and…
Real World Curriculum
Almost two years ago, in July of 2017, I crafted a “Real World” curriculum. It must have rained or been outrageously hot for a few days in a row for…
McKibben is Banking on Protests
Bill McKibben in The Guardian: “Luckily, we have two relatively new inventions that could prove decisive to solving global warming before it destroys the planet. One is the solar panel,…
Can We Change by 2030?
The timeline of 12 years has stuck to the point that we’re continuing to say it after the first year has passed. We have until 2030, which is 11 years…
Life After Warming
David Wallace-Wells’s book The Uninhabitable Earth starts out with a repetition of facts that won’t be news to anyone paying attention, but he has a lovely way with words. Four…
Like Rats Jumping a Sinking Ship
My class had a great conversation the other day about discrimination and W.E.B. DuBois’s “double consciousness.” I discussed the theory and solicited for comments, but there were none, as I…