I have been making progress through A Fair Country while killing time in the waiting room of my wife’s OB/GYN. In two visits, I’m now over 1/3 of the way through. If my son continues to loiter, I may have it complete before he’s born. As with everything of his that I’ve read to date, […]
From today’s Toronto Star: Â “Tory leader chides city unions — Toronto strike galls taxpayers, Tim Hudak says in his first day on the job” Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. If you liked living in Toronto with the political climate of the mid-1990’s, you’ll love what’s coming in a couple of years. […]
I will happily take working outside on the farm over sitting in front of a computer any day of the week, rain or shine.
As I write, a city-wide outside public worker strike has brought many vital services (including garbage collection and public day care) in Toronto to a screeching halt. Neither side had done a good job of handling the politics of this, and both the city government and CUPE have come off looking ridiculous for their respective […]
I’ve let more than a week go without an update. This bodes ill for the future of this project. Tomorrow is my last day at the call centre. Tuesday I resume working for my father-in-law again, trying to get his farm ready for a big food safety inspection in August. This will take at least […]
All philosophy speaks to the present. The decisive difference between greater and lesser philosophy is the extent to which it speaks to the perpetual present, the permanent human condition.
I spent the morning with my long-suffering wife in the OB/GYN’s office, where we waited over 2 hours for her to be seen. In the interest of avoiding grinding my mental gears, I left the philosophical reading at home for the occasion and instead took with me Thomas Frank’s newest, The Wrecking Crew. It’s an […]
In the last 24 hours, I had the chance to finally see Rachel Getting Married and Into the Wild. I strongly recommend both these films, and especially the latter as a demonstration of what happens when one poorly understands Rousseau.
“In every tradition, the answers gain the upper hand over the questions, and in fact to such an extent that the answers come to be taken for granted and are no longer questioned; thus considerable effort is ultimately required in order once again to become conscious of which questions they answered and how the alternatives […]
Both Plato and Nietzsche are famously critical of democracy. Nietzsche’s disparagement of democracy is much more oriented towards its corrosive effect on philosophy as a way of life, however, where Plato suggests that democracy is actually conducive to the philosophic life. What, then, is the decisive difference between ancient and modern democracy? The most obvious difference is […]