Pick a chair
In shadows a figure sits, sulks, in the corner.
ethics
Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.- Marisa Kabas discusses the moral rot in corporate, access-based media - which in turn looks to be a contributor to the decline of human…
Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading.- Don Moynihan discusses how the systematic erosion of American democracy includes the elimination of the belief among Republicans that the public service should…
Nihilism – The Scourge of the Modern World
(My response to the talk below and to the question of nihilism… To a general audience, as (virtually) always, speaking to the general public.) * Nihilism is the scourge of…
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…
Corporate fun and games
This situation involving the collection industry amuses me, but there is a serious issue here. Some elderly citizens have their capacity for self-protection diminish as time passes. Extortionate collectors know…
The pigs are now wearing trousers
Words from two of Britain’s finest humourists.
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.
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…