Abortions are not always a big deal
When it comes to abortion, I sometimes feel the pro-choice side of the argument gives up half the argument to the pro-life side by agreeing to the framing that abortion…
Society
The Words We Use For People Who Do Not Believe In God(s)
Agnostic, Athiest, (strong and weak), secularist, naturalist, humanist, non-believer, pantheist, positivist; the list of terms used to describe people who do not believe in the existence of a deity is…
Harper Snubs UN General Assembly–Why?
What kind of Canada has a prime minister who does not speak at the UN General Assembly? Stephen Harper’s Canada. But why? CBC journalist David Common tweeted yesterday about Harper…
The False Dichotomy of Emotionalism vs Rationalism
There is this bizarre perception in our society that we are somehow in a great conflict between forces of emotionalism and rationalism. The idea here seems to be that going…
2011 Ontario Election: Religion in the Riding of Parkdale Highpark
Religion usually isn't a dominant issue in Canadian politics. While there is certainly a general correlation with higher levels of Christian religiosity among conservatives, prominent debates over religion as the…
On Political Correctness
I am always somewhat bemused that in today's usage the expression 'political correctness' is overwhelmingly considered a pejorative. One might accuse somebody else of being racist or sexist, but one…
Mandatory Sentences Really Mean Mandatory
Canada's top legal group, the Canadian Bar Association, was not exactly kind to Harper's approach to crime in its recent annual conference. It identified many issues from overcrowding to the…
What Global Warming And Abortion Have In Common
When trying to understand the political landscape it is often useful to figure out the various couplings and interdependencies between superficially disparate political positions. Politics divides itself into widespread factions,…
Religion’s Changing Domain of Knowledge
Religion has long claimed ultimate Truth in two differing domains of knowledge: what is, and what ought to be; descriptive and normative; knowledge about the nature of the universe and…
Oslo vs Tuscan: Asymmetric Reactions
When Jared Loughner shot dead six people in Tuscan in an attempted murder of congresswoman Gabby Giffords, there was several interesting reactions outside of the obviously deserved expressions of sympathy…
Marriage Equality, Obama, Jurisdiction
Which of these sounds like a true leader, a president one can get behind: the man who strongly and emphatically declares what he thinks is morally right and acts accordingly,…
Hate Speech, Religious Freedoms, and Islamophobia
Competing with the concurrent LGBT Pride parade in Toronto, a local imam took it upon himself to very publicly condemn homosexuality, referencing how Islamic law instructs us to execute those…
Austerity Leads to Suicide Rate Increase
Friday’s Vancouver Sun had a short item that you might have missed, “Suicides up, road deaths down due to recession.” It’s in the bottom corner of page B5: Suicides rates…
The Bridge Builders: Cultural Survival in Bosnia
This is as close to a eulogy and an ode as I can write for a place with which I struggle every day. As I write this, a now yearly…
On the Canucks Riot, Protest, and Division
I was saddened and disappointed to watch Vancouver burn last night. Disappointed because the Canucks played so poorly and lost a game that they didn’t deserve to win, saddened to…
Free agent professor
If you’re a college or university teacher, whom do you work for ?” Thus begins Stanley Fish‘s latest New York Times editorial on the subject of academia. Here are a…
The Social Determinants of Health
(Note: This post contains a portion of the talk that I gave last month at the 16th International Conference of the Association of Psychology and Psychiatry for Adults and Children…
SlutWalk and Sluts
The fact that SlutWalk has rapidly ballooned into a multinational protest movement from an ill-spoken comment by a Toronto policeman represents a distinct and poignant feeling latent in our societies.…
Nestlé’s War on Breastfeeding Mothers Takes Shameful New Turn
Infant formula is a medical necessity for those who are unable to breastfeed their infants. There are a host of medically sound reasons why a mother, in conjunction with her…
Tonight, Live-Blogging COPE’s Re:Imagine Schools
I’ve already written about how much I’m looking forward to COPE’s Re:Imagine Schools event tonight. I’ll be live-blogging the event as well. You can scroll down to watch or participate…