Blinders – NaBloPoMo
Sometimes I’m positive the dog has the right idea. Probably this is why people started keeping their domesticated animals in their houses with them; they saw reflected in their animal…
Culture
Political Discourse in Alberta: Seen through Orwell’s Lens
“Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”—George Orwell It was fascinating to consider Jason Kenney’s…
On Culture Wars
I just finally got around to Angela Nagle’s Kill All Normies. It’s a comprehensive book outlining the history and categorization of various groups online that have seeped into real life,…
Banning Alex Jones & InfoWars: Social Media Grows Up
This just in from the better-late-than-never department. Last week Apple, Facebook, YouTube and Spotify “deplatformed” Alex Jones’ InfoWars from their platforms and pages. It took them years to acknowledge that…
Girls Just Want to Have Fun…at the Calgary Stampede
“When the working day is done. Oh girls, they wanna have fun.”—Cyndi Lauper After a rough few weeks Ms Soapbox and her family dug out their cowboy hats, found some…
Relevant poetry
I was standing in a bookstore in downtown Toronto a couple of weeks back, and opened The Essential Ginsberg, a collection of poems, songs and other writing by the late…
Does ‘anti-racism’ contribute to racism?
Photo by Ted Eytan Let us begin with a heretical proposition: anti-racism may contribute not to combatting racism but to actually deepening it. How could this be possible? One of…
Media are complicit in the sexual exploitation of women
Breaking news! Time magazine names The Silence Breakers of the #metoo movement the Person the Year in 2017. The Canadian Press names the movement itself the top news story of…
Pollan’s Food fallacies
“Don’t overlook the oily little fishes,” is rule 32 in Michael Pollan’s small book, “Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual” (Penguin Books, 2009). I recently acquired a copy. I’ve read Pollan’s…
On Extra Time and IEP Designations
We administered the literacy test yesterday with one new twist that most teachers weren’t privy to until the previous evening: There would be no specific accommodations for students with IEPs…
In defense of free speech
Photo by LeWeb14 The “No-platforming” of speakers with whom we fundamentally disagree can suggest that force ought to prevail over speech that is itself regarded as “violent.” This suggestion is…
Those we lost in 2017
It’s not just because I’m older that I am reading more of the obituaries than ever in my past. At least, I don’t think so. I seldom read local newspaper…
The Role of the Political Journalist
“The journalistic mission remains at its simplest: know your patch and use your knowledge to try to tell readers what’s actually going on.”– Katharine Murphy, Journalism Professor & Guardian Australia’s…
La Bohème at the Galaxy
Starving bohemian artists living in drafty Paris attics in the mid-19th century, struggling to produce their art, falling in and out of love, sharing and suffering, living and dying, all…
Missing Shulamith and the Dialectic of #MeToo
Photo by Mihai Surdu I was 24 years old in 1970, when I read Shulamith Firestone’s The Dialectic of Sex, a year younger than she was when she wrote the…
Reading as a forgotten art
Earlier this month (February, 2018), the Globe & Mail published an essay by author Michael Harris titled, “I have forgotten how to read.” In it, he recounted how he recently…
How Black Panther liberalizes Black resistance for white comfort
Image by Marvel Studios This article contains spoilers. Black Panther didn’t have to be a “political” film. Its trailer didn’t have to feature Gil Scott-Heron’s legendary poem “The Revolution Will…
An Unfathomable Darkness — The Gerald Stanley Verdict
“There is a darkness that exists in this country and I believe we are going to have to feel our way out of it.” — Chris Murphy, lawyer for the…
Honderich’s hypocrisy
In late January, the Toronto Star published a lengthy opinion piece by board chair John Honderich, titled, “We should all be very concerned by the crisis facing quality journalism.” But…
Our civic centre the Block forgot
During the January 15 council meeting, there was a lengthy presentation of a strategic planning exercise (a real one, not the bogus one The Block call our “community-based strategic plan,”…