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FREE COURSE BY HARRIET HALL, M.D. English: This is a picture of Dr. Harriet Hall on the JREF Amazing Adventure ~ North to Alaska (Photo credit: Wikipedia) Science Based Medicine The James Randi Educational Foundation has produced a superb 10-part video lecture series in which Harriet Hall, M.D., contrasts science-based medicine with so-called “complementary and alternative” methods. The topics…

CfP: History of Economics Society, June 17-20, Duke University

Opportunity Knocks!

Sunday’s Sermon

Entity relationship diagram, essential for the design of database tables, extracts, and metadata. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) Was anyone surprised to learn that Canadian spying organizations are, well, spying on Canadians? The Communications Security Establishment, Canada’s electronic spy agency, has stopped sharing certain metadata with international partners after discovering it had not been…

The latest issue of The Reasoner is now freely available for download in pdf format here. English: inductive and deductive reasoning (Photo credit: Wikipedia) Editorial – Gustavo Cevolani Interview with Graham Oddie – Gustavo Cevolani Rationality and its Rivals, 10-11 December – Adriano Angelucci & Nevia Dolcini Uncertain Reasoning – Hykel Hosni Evidence-based medicine – Michael Wilde The…

Mark Twain young (Photo credit: Wikipedia)   Educational films and TV programs very often center around great events, artworks, books or historical figures, subscribing to a model of historiography that Matthew Arnold summarized as “the best that has been thought and known in the world.” It is thus not surprising that the Internet Archive’s collection of educational films includes many examples…

How Not to get Tough on Crime

A few years ago the Institute of Practical Philosophy at Vancouver Island University published a chapbook by my colleague, John Anderson, who at the time was the Chair of Criminology at the university. What John wrote then is still applicable today. You can read the pdf (free!) essay here. Comments are welcome.

Sermon on the Hood of an Essex: Flannery O’Connor’s “Wise Blood”

        Abstract Flannery O’Connor‘s readers have not discussed the centrality of the Wise Blood sermon. The novel includes five dialogue sermons that may be considered as a five-part discourse, from exordium through conclusion. Full of fits and starts like Hazel’s car, the sermon is integral to the novel, even central to its action, particularly that related to Hazel’s character growth. In…

Fear . . .

It is not an exaggeration to say that Fear and Trembling (1843) is Kierkegaard’s most difficult work to interpret. Kierkegaard compounds the essential difficulty that lies within the theme of the work, the Akedah, through choosing a pseudonym by the name of Johannes de silentio to praise Abraham as a knight of faith and examine his movements. That the pseudonym’s perspective is shrouded in…

On Feb. 6, 2015, the Supreme of Court of Canada’s decision in Carter v. Canada struck down the ban on doctor-assisted dying. The unanimous ruling gave eligible patients the right to receive physician help to die. Our new government of Canada has four months to develop legislation that will respond to the Supreme Court of Canada ruling that the current law that makes it illegal for anyone to help…

Foundational philosophy What is truth? asked Pilate of Jesus; unfortunately Jesus didn’t answer directly. Some time ago I was a commentator on a radio show called Insects and Robots out of Kootenay, BC. We talked about many topics on that show and one that listeners responded to was a show on truth. You can listen to the “truth” audio files at soundcloud:…

Poetry as a Way of Knowing -2

John Marshall was a student of mine in the first year of Malaspina College and is (in spite of that?) still a friend. When I think of him as a student I remember his creativity and a tendency to “kick against the pricks”. In first year English I assigned a research paper. John wrote a long poem. He worked on the college publication “omniverse” and got us both in trouble with the administration.…

Fiction as a way knowing

  I remember being deeply moved as a young pup by a short story. The title was something like “The Man who looked though heaven”. I googled. I found it (well,Google found it!) here: http://people.eku.edu/sicar/saw.through.heaven.htm

We are studying moral theories in my Grade 12 class this term and I am wondering if any of you have suggestions for paper topics for my students. They are a bright bunch of kids and can handle challenges! Suggestions welcome in the comments below. Thanks.