Author: Phil Gurski

I apologise if I am repeating myself but I am a HUGE Monty Python fan (after 600+ blog posts in almost 3 years I forget whether I am have already said this).  Yesterday, thanks to my eldest daughter, I had the distinct pleasure of attending a public talk by Python alumnus and master comedian John […]

According to the standards of witches and warlocks in the Harry Potter series there were three curses or spells that were ‘unforgivable ‘.  These three are the Imperius curse (it forces one to do the bidding of the caster), the Cruciatus curse (it subjects the victim to excruciating pain) and the Killing curse (which does […]

Have you ever been to a baseball game or a hockey game?  If so, then you know that there are risks at both from flying balls or pucks.  Some people get hurt, sometimes seriously, when they are struck by a horsehide ball or a vulcanised rubber puck traveling at very high speeds.  Hockey made changes […]

I have just had the pleasure of seeing Steven Pinker give a talk at the Ottawa Writers’ Festival about his new book Enlightenment Now: The case for reason, science, humanism and progress.  Picking up where he left off in The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why violence has declined, Mr. Pinker makes a compelling case […]

This piece appeared in The Hill Times on March 19, 2018 Of all the groups that we can describe as extremist in nature, if not necessarily violent extremist, none can be as bizarre as the one that calls itself ‘Freemen on the Land’ (a.k.a. sovereign citizens).  This small coterie of Canadians hews to a number […]

Here we go again.  Another terrorist attack by someone ‘known to police’, this time in southwestern France.  A Moroccan  hijacked a car after shooting the driver and a passenger, followed some police officers jogging nearby, shot and wounded one, went to a local supermarket where he took hostages and shot several before a tactical squad […]

I know I have gone over this material before but there is nothing like an anniversary to occasion yet another look at an incident.  The ‘incident’ I am referring to is the 15th anniversary of the US decision to invade Iraq in 2003.  No matter what side of the political spectrum you belong to I […]

This post appeared in The Hill Times on March 19, 2018   Remember Willy Horton?  No, not the former Detroit Tigers baseball player, the former convicted murderer.  He became famous (infamous?) in 1987 when, after he was released on a prison furlough programme, he raped a white woman and assaulted her fiance (Horton was African […]

This past week I had the opportunity to attend a fascinating workshop in Montreal sponsored by Concordia University’s Montreal Institute for Genocide Studies (MIGS) entitled ‘Tech Against Terrorism’.  A number of academics, private sector entities and think tanks all came to talk about the challenges behind identifying and removing terrorist content from the Internet and […]