Terrorist acts are often heinous in nature. People targeted at a club in Orlando (or Istanbul) dancing the night away. Passengers on a city bus in Tel Aviv. Young political activists on an island in Norway. When we are happily doing whatever it is that we like and we are felled by indiscriminate terror and […]
The President of the US is a very powerful person. The so-called leader of the free world has a lot of influence on all kinds of issues and has a great deal of leeway in deciding what to say and do (within the system of checks and balances of course). The current holder of office, […]
There are few places on Earth more pitiable than Mali, a landlocked country in West Africa that is about the size of South Africa. It ranks in the bottom ten with respect to poverty, has one of the world’s largest birth rates (6 children per mother), and has a serious terrorist problem to boot. It […]
It was the US artist Andy Warhol who once said “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes”, a phrase that seems to have underscored a universal desire to get noticed. There is no question that it is much easier in a world of 24/7 news to have one’s story told: recall the […]
My late mother had a lot of great advice for me, much of which I followed and much of which has helped me immensely in life. One maxim that she shared with me has been ignored however. That would be the time she said it is a good idea never to engage in conversation on […]
I had the pleasure last week of hearing former Canadian Senator Hugh Segal give a talk at an event sponsored by the Canadian International Council on his book ‘Two Freedoms: Canada’s global future‘. He spoke of the famous ‘freedoms’ first put forward by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941: freedom of worship, freedom of […]
Every time you attend an Ottawa Senators home game there is a moment, usually during the second period, where a member of the Canadian military is honoured in a commemoration called ‘Heroes’ Ridge’. Fans stand and give the soldier a standing ovation – even the players on the ice tap their sticks – and I […]
You all know what a Rorschach ink blot test is. Invented back in 1917 by a Swiss psychiatrist working on his own in an asylum, the test has been used for decades and has also been the butt of jokes for almost as long. In the movie What About Bob, hypochondriac Bill Murray relates the […]
Now that the recommendations of the Iacobucci Commission in Canada have finally been implemented and three Canadians who claim to have been tortured in Syria with the alleged complicity of the Canadian government and CSIS have settled their case, it is time for a comment. A few weeks have passed and I for one can […]
Knowing that what you are doing is the right thing is important. There are all kinds of ideas in all kinds of fields of study and practice but they are not all equal. Some are clearly better than others. One way of telling which ones are which is to measure what they purport to do. […]