Sometimes I wonder how homo sapiens ever made it to the top of the food chain. In fact, if anyone but ourselves had been in charge of assigning Latin names to the species, would anyone else have called us “wise man”? Given that we are something less than a minute away from Armageddon Midnight on…
A fascinating new area of brain research suggests something that good communicators have intuitively known all along: the human brain interprets information based on predictions it has already made. In other words, your brain largely sees or hears or feels what it has expected to see, hear, or feel. Apparently what happens is that when…
It now must be abundantly obvious, even to the most naive right-winger, that Number 45 is and always was a lying, cheating, conniving, slippery, disreputable, self-absorbed, narcissistic megalomaniac. But will his fans suddenly rediscover their ethics and moral fibre? Don’t count on it. Think about it. Even the most pious or trusting among them knew…
We’re all addicts of one sort or another. Each of us is prone to some vice, large or small, which our logical mind tells us is not good for us, yet we go back again and again like a pig to the trough. It may be as socially innocent as staying up too late, or…
They called me John Norman, after my two grandfathers. But my Canadian grandfather got to me first, picked me up and said, “Wee Normie”. So it stuck. I got to be one of those unlucky people who goes by the middle name. Bureaucrats hate people like me. But it builds character, so I passed the…
“Second time’s a charm”, the saying goes, and there is some truth to it. Left unsaid, of course, is that the first time probably didn’t work, so against that background, a second kick at the can has to have better odds. Certainly in the professional world we see those coming in from an earlier career…
Herein I try a tightwire act with two strikes against me. First, I have difficulty with brevity. Second, I’m a Canadian-trained lawyer and my understanding of US Constitutional Law is self-taught. So, with those two admissions, here goes. A country’s constitution is its baseline law, and all rights, duties and powers of the state and…
Last week we looked at constitutional interpretation. Today we look at tea leaf interpretation in general. Not as popular as it used to be, tea leaf reading was a hit at country fairs and amongst those who were into crystal balls, ouija boards, and the like. The idea was to make a cup of tea…
I hate it when someone needs to say to me, “Let me finish!” because it means I’ve been caught being rude and interruptive. And whenever that happens, it’s because I have been presumptuous, assuming that the only good ideas in the room were mine. Unfortunately, it’s a lesson I keep needing to learn. It’s more…
The story my Dad told me when I was a little boy had to do with wheelbarrows, but the same parable has been told about donkeys. Doesn’t matter, the point is the same. In any event, there was a man who worked in the factory, back in the day, and every night he would leave…