Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
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Cicero, anticipating 2015…
Marcus Tullius Cicero lived and wrote between 106 and 43BC. He was a lawyer and “first man” who documented Rome under Caesar. I was doing a little research and came across the following quotation from his works. I guess, some things never change. “Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is…
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Optimism and technology
[Some old thoughts, which may be “published” on other blogs, etc., notably Politik-Substance] It turns out that at least among technologists there is a clear, nearly religious moral divide on the subject of Edward Snowden and his revelations of government electronic snooping. This I found out by provoking the issue while discussing privacy at a…
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Jeffrey Simpson: bespectacled Cassandra
I met Jeffrey Simpson, the Globe and Mail National Affairs columnist, once over top of seat 14D on a flight between Ottawa and Toronto. He has no cause to remember me. I am, after all, not a name brand except probably in my own house. Besides the encounter lasted only long enough for a rapid…
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Asymmetric policy action: cars and drivers
I would offer to write a brief piece for Policy Options, The Walrus, or some other such magazine but have no desire to spend the time documenting the self-evident, which will be obvious later, just to appear “well researched.” Instead, I’ll write here and content myself with distributing the link. Here’s the premise. Governments of all sorts…
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Is that really what the technology is for?
New Year’s eve… Like many, many people apparently, the lovely and talented Mrs. G and I skip the parties and go straight to the movie theatre. Often following Chinese buffet dinner, but that’s another matter entirely. There is 30-40 minute opportunity to observe people in action. And what I saw made me sad. There, four…
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We are all Israel now
I say this at the risk of overreacting and seeming unhinged, or of being accused that just because now circumstances have “come to me,” that I am recognizing what so many others in the world have lived with for years and decades. I say it at the risk of being charged with tarring with an…
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The unbearable lightness of being… Snowden
I read the news today (well, on the weekend, actually), oh boy. It seems that the Internet is coming under attack in the East. It made me wonder about the poster child for Internet utopianism: Mr. Snowden, in his lavish or maybe squalid Moscow apartment. China has, of course, been a strong “administrator” of Chinese…
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Pants full of turtles… the jokes write themselves
The National Post carried this headline today, “Canadian man found with 51 live turtles stuffed in his pants.” Nuff said.
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I will NOT stop whining about the $25 baggage fee
Domini Clark’s (@tgamtravel) piece in the G+M today feels a little like mom or a schoolmarm’s finger wagging. Don’t whine about the new checked bag fee with Air Canada, Westjet, and Porter; there are plenty of other places where you spend much more than that and could save is the advice. Spot on. As a regular…
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Innovation Fads, Fashions, and Trends
So much ink; so much paper! So many pixels! So many task forces! Thank God for the bottomless pit to mine for answers to Canadian innovation challenges. The proposals are as many as there are lobbies and hobbies. And every one of them has merit. But every one of them is doomed by narrowness and…
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I use “F-Words”
I use “f-words” in mixed company. Well-bred professional, management, and executive types recoil in disgust. One might think that they would be inured to f-words. But they seem to hold themselves above all that. Of course, the most troubling f-word is not the one on the tip of your tongue now. This one sounds “eff”…
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Gwyn Morgan: the apologist
I read this op-ed piece in the Globe & Mail this past weekend by retired CEO Gwyn Morgan. Before I could respond in the G&M comments section, there were approximately 400 comments which, using the first 50 or so as a sample set, were about 90% on the side of pillorying the man. To their…
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