Social and Political Commentary
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The Death of an Industry and Its Detritus
The loss of an industry in a small, remote town can also mean the loss of an entire community built up around that industry. The sketch beside the photo is modelled on the often-fractured arthritic hands of a long time labourer at the place depicted in the photo. Both of whom I know well. *The Continue reading
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On Hearsay-Generated Diatribes.
Some people pine for those three little words, I love you. I pine for, I don’t know. I realise time is short. That not everybody has time to read through primary sources to discover what someone has actually said and to discover the context that statement was uttered in. That not everyone has access to Continue reading
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Update.
I’m breaking a period of inactivity. Stay tuned later this week for a new Pam-toon. Yes, it’s in progress. Today I leave you with a photo from my archives. Laundry hung to dry in a small Italian town. I have a thing about laundry on the line. It makes me happy. There’s something calming about Continue reading
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Saturday Morning Pam-Toons. Retrieving Your “Lived Experience” From the Baggage Reclamation Centre.
This Pam-toon was inspired by two curiosities. I wondered how coherent it would be for an amnesiac to recount her “lived experience” of her forty years as a member of a marginalised group. And I wondered, given the following vignette, about the reliability of a non-amnesiac’s report of her own “lived experience.” A friend’s daughter Continue reading
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Bread and Circuses
(Originally posted Oct. 24, 2020) 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 that “If any two men [sic] desire the same thing, Continue reading
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Saturday Morning Pam-toons. Of the Right to be Right or Wrong. (With updated article, C2C Journal.)
Update : A comprehensive article on the Frances Widdowson case and the state of academic freedom in Canada, generally: Peter Shawn Taylor, “Academic Freedom vs. Wokeism: The Frances Widdowson Affair“, C2C Journal, February 2, 2022, accessed 7 February 2022. (Thank you, A.R., for bringing this article to my attention.) Frances Widdowson has been fired from Continue reading
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Saturday Morning Pam-toons. The CDC reports an alarming number of repetitive strain injuries during the Finger-Wagging pandemic.
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What, if anything, is wrong with MSNBC, CNN, and FOX? (Part 1 of 2)
My other half habitually surfs through a number of national and international news channels in the evenings. Our house is small, so I’m captive to whatever noise emanates from these rotating broadcasts. Sometimes this noise really gets under my skin. Such as? Such as the current tabloid coverage of the Gabby Petito case by the Continue reading
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Saturday Morning Pam-toons. Psychic Surgery Removes Hatred.
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