Category: ethics

  • Guns and the Right-Wing

    Yet another school shooting. Yet another round of arguing. Yet another deluge of disingenuous nonsense from the right-wing, who are not actually interested in solutions. Yet more arguments that reveal that what the right-wing really want is more dead children.

  • Confabulation, Math, and Self-Knowledge

    As with many other people, I often find myself denigrating things that I consider ridiculous, and on my best days I’ll catch myself and ask myself ‘ok, but *why* is that ridiculous…?’. There’s that weird experience of being in two places at once, the Brian that’s experiencing the ridiculous and seeing it as the silliness…

  • Physician Assisted Dying and the BC Catholic

    Physician assisted Dying (PAD from here on, aka active euthanasia) is currently being legislated in Canada, so it’s being discussed by a number of outlets, with a variety of opinions being put forward. This is a topic that has a storied history within philosophy, and I think it’s important that we have informed conversations on this topic…

  • Boundaries and Abuse

    I’m going to start with a recent pair of conversations in my life, and use that as a jumping off point to talk about who gets to define what abuse is, and who gets to set boundaries. People in my local community may well recognise the people involved from their behaviour, and while backlash due…

  • “Go Home Irish” is just Bigotry

    I’m Irish. I migrated to Vancouver, BC, in May 2006. I’ve spent a lot of time learning about the imperialist and colonial history of Canada, mostly because I felt I had a responsibility to understand where I was living. I’m a citizen of both Ireland and Canada, the former by being born there, the latter…

  • Vegetarianism, Skeptics and Cognitive Dissonance

    We all have blind spots in our thinking, and sometimes they can be pretty interesting. Other times, not so much. I’ve noticed that when I post an article about vegetarianism on facebook, a number of people can’t help themselves but make ignorant comments, people who I’ve had fairly informed conversations with on other topics. I’m…

  • “Rational” Should be Treated like a Four-Letter Word

    [This is primarily a talk I gave at a Vancouver Skepticamp recently, with some expansion/clarification at the end in response to some feedback I received] I’d like to talk about how we use the word ‘rational’ in everyday conversations, and how we use it in skeptic/atheist/freethinker circles. I don’t consider anything I say here to…

  • Firedrills Good, Active Shooter Drills Bad

    Florida has recently been in the news for having ‘active shooter drills’. Alas, Florida is not alone in this, so the rest of the world can yet again sigh ‘only in America’. And let’s face it: this is yet more security theatre, serving no legitimate purpose. Like taking off one’s shoes at security in the…

  • Speaking IS Doing.

    As is often the case when someone says some terrible things, a furore occurs between the people who think that that person should be barred from speaking at certain locations (e.g. on a university campus), or even being allowed into a country, and those people who are profoundly confused about ‘freedom of speech’. A recent…

  • Overtime, Wages and Theft

    I know a number of people here in Vancouver working in restaurants and bars, and the prevalence of unlawful behaviour is just astounding. Of course, I don’t mean the staff stealing from employers, but employers just stealing wholesale from the staff. While BC has some fairly mediocre labour laws, it has labour laws that employers are…