It’s Sunday night, November 28. The CBC is playing the last episode of its Greatest Canadian series. There are 10 candidates, all in the process by popular nomination and previous rounds of voting. The concept was taken from a BBC series, and like the BBC series, it is an entertainment with a populist subtext. My …
More on soccer fans acting like dumb monkeys.
My RSS feed to BBC World news today has two stories which mention England, Spain, racism, football (soccer), monkeys, apes, and paleontology.
I began to see bloggers identifying themselves as part of the Reality-Based Community in the last couple of days. It’s an ironic response to a remark by a White House staff member who dismissed the the Reality-based community when he was talking to a journalist in 2002. Most of the proud members of the Reality-Based …
A few days after 2004 American elections, I am tired of the commentary coming from the propaganists and leaders of both of the dominant factions. Republicans, barely restraining their glee at winning, talk insincerely about reaching out to liberals and healing. Liberals talk about how illiterate and stupid fundamentalists were tricked by propaganda, funded by …
The rape trial of a large portion of the adult male population of the Pitcairn Islands has finished with guilty verdicts against 6 of 7 defendants on some charges. There were serious legal issues in the case, which have attracted learned commentary in the inaugural issue of the New Zealand Journal of Public and International …
The idea of the noble savage has run through philosophy, anthropology and literature for several hundred years and it seems to colour ideas about Aboriginal history. Many books and movies tend to show the life of North American Aboriginals in historical times, living with dignity, close to nature. There is an idea that aboriginal peopled …
People who get mad about using chemicals to kill mosquitos.
Sister Jane’s drop-in Center, Chez Nous, operated in an old bank building at the corner of Main Street and Higgins Avenue. When Jane was sick, the Center was frequently closed. When Jane died, her friends and supporters on the Board of directors of the non-profit corporation were left with a decision to sell the building, …
Starting Over is a self-help book by Thomas A. Whiteman and Randy Peterson, published by Pinon Press in 2001. I found it at McNally Robinson, a Western Canadian chain of bookstores. Whiteman is real licenced psychologist with a Ph. D. degree from Bryn Mawr, a real university. I don’t take that for granted in the …