In professional Athletics, the sport encompassing track and field, cross country, and road running, there are dopers and non-dopers. The non-dopers are called ‘clean’ athletes. The dopers use performance enhancing drugs, or PEDs, to gain an unfair advantage over their competitors, some of whom may also be doping but many of whom are also clean. … Continue reading The Two Cultures of Athletics →

Hurting the Taliban hurts civilians more A child suffering from severe malnutrition receives care in a hospital in Kandahar. New York Times Unless we lift our sanctions against the Taliban and facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid to Afghanistan immediately, millions of Afghan civilians will die in what is rapidly becoming the world’s worst humanitarian … Continue reading Afghanistan needs our help now more than ever →

Imagine you were on your way to an event wearing your Sunday best. You walk past a pond, wherein a small child is drowning in shallow water.  Should you wade in and save the child, ruining your clothes in the process? Of course you should! They’re just clothes after all, and unless you’re Leo DiCaprio or … Continue reading This Giving Tuesday, the most good you can do →

Since I've been occupied by some other writing projects lately, I'm sharing a letter I wrote back in 2013, when I was in grade 11 at Memorial Composite High School, concerning my former elementary school's practice of daily reciting the Lord's Prayer—despite being a *public* school. I declared myself an atheist when I was probably … Continue reading Throwback Thursday: A letter to Jubilee Elementary concerning the daily recital of the Lord’s Prayer →

An appeal to climate change skeptics ** I am in the process of expanding this argument into a paper within the paradigm of existential risk mitigation. This draft will be perennially rough until then. Check back in a month or so to see if I've made any progress. In the meantime, watch this short overview … Continue reading Climate Change, Existential Risk, and Pascal’s Wager →

Should liberal democracies seek to limit hate speech with constitutional amendments? A KKK rally in Columbia, South Carolina in 2015 (Reuters) Theoretical foundations In “On Liberty,” one of the foundational texts of modern liberal philosophy, John Stuart Mill espouses one of the very first defenses of the freedom of speech: “If the arguments of the … Continue reading Hate Speech and the Limits of Tolerance →

It seems ironic to me that hope and optimism about the future of humanity is often identified with naïveté, ignorance, or "shilling for capital." It has become fashionable in some political spheres to think this way. If you refuse to admit that humans, or most of us, are doomed, then you're not only wildly mistaken … Continue reading A New Hope →

It might be less about hard work and more about risk. Innovation brought us the Chai latte Proponents of capitalism love to talk about incentives. In The Wealth of Nations, the father of capitalism, Adam Smith, had this to say: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect … Continue reading How do you incentivize innovation? →

David Card's groundbreaking "causal" economics might help us out of the impending recession Nova Scotia is facing a labour shortage. The newest Nobel laureate in economics has the answer.  One consequence of the coronavirus pandemic in Nova Scotia and around the world has been a mass exodus of workers from low-skill and even middle-class jobs. Economists … Continue reading Latest Econ Nobel rewards counterintuitive results in labour economics →

Right on cue, cops blame CERB for rise in cocaine use A version of this article appeared in the Chronicle Herald on 18 October 2021: https://www.saltwire.com/atlantic-canada/opinion/mason-maxwell-are-cerb-fuelled-cocaine-sprees-hype-from-cape-breton-police-100647072/ The war on drugs takes no prisoners.  Last week CBC reported that Cape Breton Regional Police (CBRP) have blamed the federal government’s financial assistance during the COVID-19 pandemic—the Canada … Continue reading The War on Drugs is alive and well in Cape Breton →