Category: culture

  • The Greatest Videogame: A Tribute

    It’s been several years since I last wrote for myself, and in the period leading up to that I found my writing drop off in frequency quite sharply. I hold anxiety to be significantly responsible for that. After undergoing several years of medication (and some therapy), I’m hoping that that issue has been mitigated. But…

  • Black Lightning: Worth Watching

    In my social circles, there’s a lot of fans of both Marvel and DC’s TV universe. The fans of Agent Carter, The Flash, Supergirl (and the rest) are legion. But no-one seems to be all that interested in Black Lightning. I’d like to talk a little about why I think this show is worth your…

  • 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.

  • Anime: Fantastic and Frustrating.

    I love anime, and find a whole bunch of stuff around it immensely frustrating. I don’t even understand how the pitch meeting would go (I’m currently watching ID-0). (I’ve just picked two male Japanese names at random out of the air, there’s no intent to link this conversation with any specific individuals) [speech_bubble type=”std” subtype=”a”…

  • Punching Nazis

    Due to the recent rebranding of white supremacists, fascists, and nazis as “the alt-right” and their subsequent resurgence, there has been much hand wringing about ‘punching nazis’ as an appropriate response against those who are moving to enact genocide. This hand wringing holds echoes of the “just ignore them and they’ll go away” nonsense that…

  • Objection to the George Wainborn Park Ireland Canada Monument

    It’s come to my attention that there’s an organization pushing for a monument to be raised here in Vancouver, in George Wainborn Park, “for the sole purpose of providing recognition to the significant contribution of Irish Canadians and Canadians of Irish descent to Canada”. I object to this (and yes, I’m Irish) for a number of…

  • Trump DOES Represent American Values

    This video is intended for Americans (and only Americans) expressing the sentiment that ‘this is not the America I know’ or that ‘Trump does not represent American values’. To the Americans expressing these sentiments: where have you been all your life? Why only Americans? Because they should be familiar with the history of their country,…

  • Voting Third Party is Letting the USA Burn

    On November 8th, the American people are going to cast a relatively unimportant vote that nevertheless will tell us 1) how bigoted they are, generally, and 2) whether they understand ‘logic’ and ‘opportunity cost’. While the former should be fairly self-evident, I’d like to talk about the latter a little here. If you read around…

  • Beliefs Don’t Change in “Real-Time”

    An acquaintance of mine sent me a link to a conversation between Dan Dennett and Sam Harris, wherein Dennett attempts to explain the holes in Harris’s puerile arguments against the concept of “free will”. In any case, this particular post isn’t about Harris, but a particular point he reiterates repeatedly: that we can (and should)…

  • 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…