PicoBlog

We just finished reading McCarthy’s _No Country for Old Men_ in one of my classes. (Yes, believe it or not, I do use some other books from time to time that were not written by him…). Something very troubling happens every time we read this book. Inevitably, there are students—not a majority, certainly, but more than I’m comfortable with—who come away ad… ncG1vNJzZmiZnJrForrDnqmroZyaxm%2B%2F1JuqrZmToHuku8xop2ismJp6sb7Ip5qiqJyawG67xWaYp6yfo3qktMigrKug

Leibniz was a philosopher of principles: the Principles of Contradiction, of Sufficient Reason, of Identity of Indiscernibles, of Plenitude, of the Best, and of Continuity are among the most famous Leibnizian principles. [Footnote: According to Ortega y Gasset, Leibniz is both the philosopher who used the greatest number of maximally general principles and the philosopher who introduced the greatest number of new principles — Reference: Ortega y Gasset, J. 1979. La Idea de Principio en Leibniz y la Evolución de la Teoría Deductiva.

There’s a long history of stand-up comedians who have gone on to become serious film actors — Robin Williams, Jim Carrey, Chris Rock, Lily Tomlin, Steve Martin, Jamie Foxx, etc. Even Jim Gaffigan, who embraces his bumpkin persona, has had stellar supporting roles in small films like “Chappaquiddick” and “Troop Zero.” You may not have heard of Matt Rife because he’s young and broke out on Tik Tok, but he’s become a name in the last few years.

“To do a debate would be great. But that’s like saying pro wrestling is a show about athletic competition. … You have a responsibility to the public discourse, and you fail miserably,” - Jon Stewart to the hosts of CNN’s Crossfire, October 15, 2004. I was busy walking my dog several weeks ago, on my lunchtime Thursday break, preoccupied with the piece I was trying to write in my head. The phone rang and a frantic booker was on the line.

Toxic is a word that gets thrown around a lot these days. As a psychiatrist, I hear it frequently during therapy sessions—to describe parents, siblings, neighbors, exes and co-workers. Once primarily used to describe plants, arrows and chemicals, toxic—which is defined as “poisonous”—only recently started being applied to people. Self-help books and Britney Spears’s hit song certainly contributed to its journey from the literal to the metaphorical. In 2018, Oxford Dictionaries chose it as the word of the year.

There’s just so much more to this whole thing that I couldn’t bring myself to let it go. So I went very, very deep, because the news coverage of this whole affair has entrenched in the public record this expediently indelible impression: Owing to the “depth of hurt that she has caused”, as British Columbia premier David Eby put it, and owing to what her loudest critics call the “racist” and “colonialist” remarks she’d made, British Columbia’s advanced education minister simply had to go.

I suppose that I'm prepared for the hate, but I just can't remain quiet. It's finally time to be out with it. We writers often have ideas that live and gestate in the backs of our minds and it just becomes a question when — and whether — we ever let them see the light of day. And for the longest time I was content to let this one just be, perhaps even fester a bit.

Today is the fifth anniversary of the publication of Titania McGrath’s acclaimed book Woke: A Guide to Social Justice. I created this intersectional activist and slam poet in order to satirise this new intolerant and authoritarian identity-obsessed religion and its stranglehold on society. Having seen so many posh and entitled activists berating working… ncG1vNJzZmiZnpm%2FpsPDqLClnV6owqO%2F05qapGaTpLpwvI6tn55loKe8sbTEnKCeq12ks27AyK2Yp6GRYrqks9Gaq6E%3D

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