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Lester B. Pearson School Board, Bastion of Small Thinking
Montreal teen, Lindsey Stocker, was suspended from her school (Beaconsfield High School) for having an opinion. Her opinion was that the school (Beaconsfield High School) was policing the clothing of the girls of the school rather than policing the unacceptable behaviour of the boys in the school, and thus contributing to a culture whereby women and…
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Shaka, When the Walls Fell
I have to admit, I’m a life-long fan of Star Trek. I grew up watching reruns of The Original Series, went through Secondary School (High School) with Picard in The Next Generation, thoroughly enjoyed the myth-building in Deep Space Nine, and wound down with Janeway in Voyager. We shall not speak of Enterprise here… Now,…
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Tenure, and the Bizarre Case of the University of Saskatchewan
On May 14th, it hit the news that the University of Saskatchewan had done the unthinkable: they had fired a tenured professor for the crime of ‘having an opinion’. It’s worth noting here that the opinion wasn’t racist, mysogynist, called for the armed overthrow of the Canadian government, declared that the Moon People were our…
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Vancouver is Neither Cold nor Unfriendly
I’m an immigrant to this city, though I’m legally a citizen. I moved here in May 2006, and I knew precisely one person prior to my arrival (my brother, Christopher). I moved here from Ireland, a country known for gregarious socialising. In the years since moving here, I’ve encountered a wide variety of people, have…
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Alltrials Petition
One of the biggest problems in medical research today is that we don’t have complete access to the clinical trials that a company did when testing their new products. While this may seem to be an issue of privacy (for the company), it’s more correctly viewed as a public health issue. Why? Because lies and…
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The Ethical Failing of the Law Society of British Columbia
Trinity Western University (TWU) is a University in British Columbia that explicitly holds certain Christian creeds at its foundation. In their own words, they hold a “Christ-centred approach to education”, whatever that means. They have been in the news recently as they’ve started a law school on their premises, and it has come to the…
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A “Personal Relationship” with Jesus
I’d like to go back to the most excellent example of terrible writing, 7 Things That Prove God Is Real, to focus on the last two points that the author (J. Lee Grady) makes. I want to focus on them as they appear to be pretty common within the arguments for [insert religion here], and they’re…
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A Short Overview of Free Will
Last night, I gave a short presentation on Free Will in order to kick off some discussion between mixed groups of atheists and theists. It went quite well, I feel, and the discussions that I was involved with went pretty well. The notes I used are included below. It’s a really just a rough overview,…
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Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and his Confusion about Words
I’d like to preface this essay by saying that I’m a big fan of Dr. Tyson. I have enjoyed pretty much every presentation of his that I’ve seen (that I can recall), and I think he’s doing an important and necessary job of communicating science (well!) to the general public. I think his new Cosmos…
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Anti-Abortion Arguments, Including the Secular Ones, are Uninformed Drivel.
I’ve had something of a writing block for the last month or so, so I’m thankful to Hemant Mehta over at Friendly Atheist for providing me with some fodder to dissect. I’ve always figured that there had to be some folk out there whose anti-abortion stance wasn’t built on a foundation of religion, as the…
