About Chris Dick

Chris rides on his digital sway-backed donkey tilting his lance, quixotically at all sorts of causes -- some hopeless, some perhaps -- not. I enjoy your feedback. Long live rational debate.
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Graft, Quebec & COVID

By |2020-05-06T12:18:08-04:00May 5th, 2020|Categories: Society|Tags: , , , , , , |

There is no shortage of COVID-19 coverage in the media these days; but I have seen very little analysis as to why Quebec is leading the country in COVID cases by a significant margin. I grew up in Quebec and have the greatest admiration for the culture and general joie-de-vivre to be found in Montreal where I spent my formative years -- I am often found comparing it favourably to the nose-to-the grindstone aspects of life in Toronto. There is however a dark side. Those of you who have never been immersed in the local politics of [...]

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Camera Obscura

By |2020-05-01T13:59:42-04:00May 1st, 2020|Categories: Ourselves|Tags: , , |

Camera Obscura I Have Cobwebs in My Eyes I have cobwebs in my eyes -- real or metaphorical? Real says the white coat -- fluid detaches, hardens, black strings float like spastic spiders  on the edges of my view. What of my mind’s eye -- something skitters in there too. Intimations, divinations flicker and dance I seek for clarity, a more piercing glance,  I have cobwebs.  - by C. Christian Dick

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Chastened Debater

By |2020-06-26T07:41:19-04:00April 28th, 2020|Categories: Ourselves|Tags: , , |

This is Part Two of a Discussion on Argument and Debate.  You might also want to read Part One. I don’t usually go back and forth with people in YouTube comment sections. Comments are a healthy, liberating forum for millions of people, and I don’t deny that at all. I do find that the pseudo-courage supplied by digital anonymity makes it too easy for discussion to morph quickly into personal disparagement of the ‘so’s your mother’ variety; but the web is what it is, the good outweighs the bad. I will occasionally make a sarcastic rejoinder [...]

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Selective Memory

By |2020-04-25T09:59:21-04:00April 24th, 2020|Categories: Society|Tags: , , , , , |

My father was a formidably erudite man who wore his wide-ranging scholarly acumen lightly and conveyed it deftly often with a kind of mordant humour.  He was fluent in German and French and read Russian somewhat haltingly (it is a difficult language).  Born in 1920, it was not surprising that, given his cultural interests and intellectual talents, the totalitarian nightmare and world war that framed his youth and early adulthood, preoccupied him.  He wanted to understand what at the deepest level seemed to defy comprehension.  When I became old enough (12 maybe) we would talk often about [...]

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Skeptical Idealist

By |2020-04-24T17:58:36-04:00April 24th, 2020|Categories: Ourselves|Tags: , |

Skeptical Idealist The Contradiction in Being Me? I was idly wondering the other day how many of us have ever gone through the exercise of trying to sum up our orientation to the world, our sense of what reality is, in as few words as possible -- a sentence or less. It is quite a stimulating exercise and I recommend giving it a go.  For instance,... I am a skeptical idealist. ( Sound of fanfare played with trumpets,slightly out of tune.) Now skeptic and idealist are not usually found together on the same page of your [...]

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Educational Ironies

By |2020-04-24T17:22:29-04:00April 24th, 2020|Categories: Society|Tags: , , |

Educational Ironies From First to Worst? There is a strange disjunction in America.  The U.S. has absolutely the finest university system in the world, there is not even a serious disagreement about this judgment. But primary-secondary education in that country is a real state-by-state crap shoot.  Those with enough money insulate themselves from the vagaries of U.S. public education and their kids head on to those good post-secondaries. Perhaps it is about time we redistributed some of Harvard's $20 Billion endowment to K-12 education.  All those Ivy Leaguers must now bow down to a man elected [...]

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