Hannah Arendt on lying
Truthfulness has never been counted among the political virtues, and lies have always been regarded as justifiable tools in political dealings.
ethics
The Heart Of The Perennial Wisdom
Or, The Heart Of The Perennial Philosophy The Crux, Or Core Of The Matter: What is the nature of good and evil, being and reality? An open letter to two…
Dangerous actors — corporate and political
Progressive punishment is not enough to regulate behaviour when an offender has extraordinary wealth. To a corporation like Teck Resources Ltd. — market capitalization $29 billion — inconsequential fines are…
Professional Use of AI
Not so long ago, I wrote a piece on some of the ethical question marks that Large Language Model (LLM) Artificial Intelligence (AI) raises. In the last week not one,…
Ethics In Artificial Intelligence
The emergence of “large language model” chatbots like ChatGPT and others raises major philosophical and ethical questions that we need to start talking about now. Back in 1950, Alan Turing…
An Odium of Politicians
The proper collective noun for a group of politicians is “an odium,” at least according to James Lipton in his delightful book, An Exaltation of Larks (Ultimate Edition, Penguin Books,…
Vindication At Last!
The headline in CwoodToday reads, “OPP concludes investigation into JI events; no charges laid.” After ten years, the OPP finally shut down the investigation that actually concluded several years ago.…
Should mayoral candidates endorse council candidates?
One of Collingwood’s current mayoral candidates is doing meet-n-greet events and openly endorsing a fixed slate of the seven council candidates she wants to be elected with her (but not,…
The Misogynist Bully Files for Deputy Mayor
Councillor Bob “Lapdog” Madigan — council’s most notable bully and misogynist — filed his papers for deputy mayor, a position for which he is supremely unqualified. Well, to be fair,…
Council Gives a Bad Name to Train Wrecks
In his latest post, fellow blogger Chris Potts opines on our council’s misogynistic bullying of former councillor Tina Comi that resulted in her resignation from the toxic environment in local…
Comi-gate Continues to Plague Council
Mayor Saunderson and his gang of bullies continue to take flack for their hostile, childish behaviour towards the former Councillor Tina Comi, who resigned her seat late last month. The…
Morally and Ethically Bankrupt
It’s official: our council is morally and ethically bankrupt. You may have felt that from their past behaviour, but Monday night they confirmed it for everyone. There is not a…
Socrates and Saunderson
In Plato’s dialogue Gorgias, Socrates debates with three sophists — Gorgias the rhetorician and his pupils Polus, and Callicles — about justice, power, morality, and virtue. Socrates also questions the…
Saunderson Continues His Cancel-Culture Program
On the agenda for the Strategic Initiatives Standing Committee (SIC) for Jan. 10, 2022 is a single line under other business that underscores just how petty, puerile, and vindictive our…
Mayor and Council: Absque Verecundia
The same year Columbus set sail west for unknown lands, Sir John Kendal received a stern admonition in writing from the council of King Henry VII, of which he was…
What is Council Trying to Hide?
In an article in CollingwoodToday titled 18 simple rules? Council receives draft of new Code of Conduct, we learn that council is looking to update and revise its current Code…
The Corrupt PC Nomination Process
This week, Stella Ambler, a former candidate for the nomination for the PC party in Simcoe Grey, sent an email that expressed her disappointment over the party’s authoritarian actions: On…
An Example Our Mayor Should Follow
In a recent story in the Quinte News (March 31, 2021) the headline told us, “Belleville Councillor Ryan Williams has resigned from Belleville City Council.” Williams was elected the federal…
Still Can’t Escape the B.S. (Brian Saunderson)
It’s late February as I write this and still our mayor, Brian Saunderson, refuses to do the ethical, the moral, and the RIGHT thing for the town and resign his…
Knowledge vs Opinion, Enlightenment vs Delusion
As Plato said, everyone has opinions, but few have knowledge. It is important that we keep that in the back of our minds, if not the fore. Two levels, there…