Author Archives

I am an independent scholar from Lethbridge, Alberta. I am all-but-thesis for a masters in philosophy. My research interests include the social aspects of belief acquisition and maintenance, language, and rhetoric. I also have an artsy bent and enjoy photography, painting, and graphic narratives. I live with my husband, Paul, a social and political philosopher, Barsi, a Border Collie-Pyrenees cross, Howard, a German Shepherd-Bernese-Pyrenees cross puppy, and two cats, Mr. Tinky and Rorschach. Paul and I have three wonderful sons and their three respective equally wonderful partners between us.

• Bread and Circuses

  By pammentations on October 24, 2020 • ( 0 )

  Somewhere around the second century CE, the Roman satirist Juvenal coined the phrase ‘bread and circuses’ which has come to mean placating one’s populace with cheap bribes to distract them from their political grievances. Here’s the logic. Thomas Hobbes observed… Read More ›

• Saturday Morning Pam-toons. A Visit to the ‘Politically Incorrect’ Confession Booth.

  By pammentations on October 24, 2020 • ( 0 )

• Experiment with prose poetry. About Hell.

  By pammentations on October 22, 2020 • ( 0 )

  People wonder where is hell and what is hell and others answer, hell is here. It’s here on earth, and it’s pain. People are in pain and it’s hell. People are in hell. And people are out of hell. Some… Read More ›

• Saturday Morning Pam-toons. Cell Phone Chain Gang.

  By pammentations on October 18, 2020 • ( 2 )

• Thoughtlets. xxiv.

  By pammentations on October 12, 2020 • ( 0 )

  It’s good epistemic practice not only to have gatekeepers in science and scholarship, but also to have others beating at the gates to ensure the freedom of movement of ideas – using a battering ram, if required. In which measure… Read More ›

• There is a season, turn, turn, turn

  By pammentations on October 10, 2020 • ( 0 )

  Amid the usual crackling leaves, candy wrappers, and cigarette butts that line the city sidewalks in the fall, I find a new thing.

• Saturday Morning Pam-toons. Plato’s Tent Revival. (scroll down)

  By pammentations on October 10, 2020 • ( 1 )

  ‘Well, that is what I call the child of the good’, I said. ‘The good has begotten it in its own likeness, and it bears the same relation to sight and visible objects in the visible realm that the good… Read More ›

• On Interrupting and Myopia

  By pammentations on October 9, 2020 • ( 0 )

  Some people who think it rude when interrupted don’t think it rude to exclude the interrupter from a conversation. Sometimes interrupting is the only way to get a word in edgewise. I am NOT talking about the 2020 US presidential… Read More ›

• Thoughtlets .xxiii.

  By pammentations on October 7, 2020 • ( 0 )

  Just as one man’s junk is another’s treasure, one man’s villain is another’s hero.

• Why do social patterns perdure?

  By pammentations on October 6, 2020 • ( 1 )

  

  “Perhaps there is a sort of cycle in all things, with changes of morality coming around again like seasonal changes.” Tacitus. The Annals: The Reigns of Tiberius, Claudius, and Nero. Oxford World’s Classics. Translated by J.C. Yardley. Introduction and notes by… Read More ›