Confusing Fact with Fiction:
History in Hollywood and Literature “Keep away old man, you won’t fool me -- you and your History won’t rule me.” --The Who, Slip Kid “You can run out your Rules – but you won’t outrun the History Train.” -- Paul Simon, Peace like a river By Charles ...
The Meaning of Money
Arc of the Cognizant LXXXIV The Wolf of Wall St., The New York Times, and Joni “Keep your hands off of my stack, Jack.” - Pink Floyd, Money “Money is an agreement. It doesn’t have any value at all, by itself.” - Charles Eisenstein, Sacred Economics “Money can’t buy me Love.” - The Beatles By Charles ...
Sex, Lives and Media-fate
What is a thinking person to make of the new landscape of sexual consent? Since October 26, when Jian Ghomeshi left the CBC under a cloud of uncertain meaning, things have moved very fast indeed. On Parliament Hill, two NDP women have brought messages to the Liberal leader about two of his MPs and he has suspended said MPs,...
COMMENT: Remembrance Day and different versions of respect for those who died
This year I was at the Nelson cenotaph for my tenth consecutive appearance with a placard promoting peace and questioning government war policies; I was physically threatened. I have been doing this for 10 years, since 2005, when our Afghan Mission got bloodier. This was the first time someone tried to grab hold of my sign,...
Corrupt elevations: killers of Canadian soldiers and the Jian Ghomeshi scandal
Is Canada at war? This is not the simple question it once was. We have witnessed the steady degradation of language, as Orwell predicted, so that “war” has been cheapened by repetition. War on poverty, war on drugs, war on diseases, etc. have left us jaded about the meaning of war. War on terror is another such phrase with ...
My hypocrisy*: I take “lessons” from Medieval History
Inventing the idea of The Middle Ages Anyone who has studied history at the post-secondary level will likely learn that the tradition of history-teaching in the West recognizes three large eras of history: the Ancient or Classical world, the Middle Ages, and the Modern Age. The centuries assigned to the three are; Classical...
Nation-state independence and the state of happiness
Scotland's Referendum Readers will be aware of the story last week of Scotland's independence referendum. The “yes” side lost its bid for an independent Scotland, as Quebec’s yes side has lost in two recent referendums, whereas Ireland succeeded -- for 26 of its 32 counties – in seceding from the United Kingdom. I feel...
What’s it like to experience The Dark Ages?
No more future, just the past With this column, I intend to start writing only about historical topics that interest me. I have read over my columns from this year and I see a pattern in my writing, tending toward prediction rather than observation. I would rather not go on trying to be a prophet. In this column, I have been...
Imagine “It’s Getting Better All the Time”
He and his colleagues were making movies of the mind as it worked! They’d come up with objective proof that the mind was not some abstract equivalent of the soul free-floating in the inner ether, it was organic. An astonishingly complex network of neurotransmitters within the brain. Different sectors of the brain lit up...
Wearing my historian’s hat
“I am under no obligation to be the person I was five minutes ago.”--- Facebook poster ( no author ) Pessimism, the incidence of violence, and progress Is there evidence that humanity is on a historical course toward a progressive, better future? Every reader of this column by now understands I am a pessimist, I do not perceive...
