Last week, U.S. President Barrack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. Right-wing pundits predictably attacked him for it. Left-wing pundits predictably then attacked the right-wing pundits for it. But that’s not the story. The Nobel Peace Prize is one of five prizes bequeathed by Alfred Nobel. In his will, it said that the Peace Prize [...]
You would think that a fitness center, of all places, would be exempt from the lethargic malaise that pervades western society. In most cases, you would be mistaken. The modern gym is a plague upon fitness. That’s right, the very place we go to improve our health is practically custom-made to prevent us from exercising [...]
You know a conversation is headed sideways when the topic turns to morals and ethics. For any major social issue of our time – gay marriage, women’s reproductive rights, freedom of speech, religion in public schools, even climate change – you can find normally reasonable people who reach contradictory conclusions on the ethical choice. In [...]
A typical modern gym houses hundreds of individual pieces of exercise equipment, some of which appear purposefully designed to injure as many trainees as possible. Here are ten of the most dangerous exercise machines. Avoid these, and avoid any so-called personal trainer who recommends them. 1. Smith Machine A smith machine is just a bar [...]
The golden rule, AKA The Ethic of Reciprocity is at the very heart of Christian thinking. (Not that Christians actually practice it, but that’s a rant for another time). However, “do to others what you would like to be done to you” suffers from an obvious logical flaw: not everyone wants to be treated the [...]
Western society is plagued by obesity and general ill-health for many reasons: the raging incompetence of medical professionals; fitness snake-oil salesmen; belief in a variety of health-related myths; and desperate confusion about nutrition to name a few. Another serious problem is that people are generally confused about the meaning of exercise. Here are five non-exercises [...]
A while back, I tried to explain why the world was so screwed up. I explained that the ubiquitous societal problems we experience (bad transit infrastructure, dependence on fossil fuels, unnecessary wars, etc.) stem from a fundamental problems with governance: Laws imply the design of the systems that enact them Lawmakers don’t know sweet fuck [...]
Recently someone told me I was a radical. With the minor qualification that ‘radical’ is not the same as crazy, I take this as a compliment. The existential threats humanity faces, and the fundamental problems with our social systems cannot possibly be solved by incremental thinking. Without radicals, we’re screwed. Want evidence do I have? [...]
I was planning a post for today on why the BMI is bullshit, but Keith Devlin of NPR beat me to it. To summarize their arguments, the BMI is a 200-year-old mathematical hack, created by a man who wasn’t even versed in the anatomical sciences of the day, let alone what we know now. It [...]
Dear Prime Minister Harper, I have recently read over the Investigative Powers for the 21st Century (IP21C) Act. Giving the police the power to take down online criminals is a virtuous enterprise; however, allowing police to view any internet communication information without a warrant is unacceptable. Bypassing the cheques and balances of the courts in [...]