Apr

2016

What’s your “Complexity Quotient”?

Everyone knows that intelligence is not uniform. Some people have stratospheric IQs; others sink below par.
Everyone also knows that intelligence doesn’t necessarily correspond to ability to think. Mensa members can be just as dogmatically fossilized as Homer Simpson. They may know far more about far more things, but they can lock onto their conclusions like a crocodile’s jaws.

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Categories: Soft Edges

Tags: complexity

24

Apr

2016

Mass media fail to explore religious motives

Author: Jim Taylor

A group of compassionate Canadians had sponsored some Syrian refugees. After meeting one of those refugees, a young single woman, one of the sponsors said in surprise, “She’s Muslim!” Well, doh! Now, I heard that story second-hand. So I don’t know whether the speaker genuinely didn’t realize that most Syrians are Muslim. Or, to give her a little more credit, surprised that an attractive young woman could choose to remain single within a patriarchal culture. Either way, it seems to me, the story illustrates the ignorance of North Americans as a whole to any religion but their own. And perhaps even to their own.

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Categories: Sharp Edges

Tags: media, motives, Muslim

20

Apr

2016

Not good for lakes, or for us

Author: Jim Taylor

The lake below our house has been glassy calm lately. This happens, sometimes, in spring and fall. The water lies so still that it’s hard to tell the reality from the reflection.
I feel compelled to take pictures. My computer enables me to turn photographs upside down. Sometimes, the mirror image is so perfect even I don’t know which way is up.

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Categories: Soft Edges

Tags: lakes

17

Apr

2016

Aboriginal suicides based on loss of hope

Author: Jim Taylor

Only one of my long-term friends ever committed suicide. I found his death much harder to get over, to get reconciled to, than the “normal” deaths of other friends. And so I can’t help wondering about the emotional effect of 11 suicide attempts in a single night. And then a plot by13 more to kill themselves just a few nights later. My mind reels. That’s the situation in Attawapiscat, an aboriginal community about halfway up the western shore of James Bay. A few years ago, Attawapiscat made national headlines when former chief Theresa Spence held a hunger strike near the parliament building in Ottawa. Perhaps the social conditions are worse in Attawapiscat than in other reserves; perhaps they’re not.

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Categories: Sharp Edges

Tags: Attawapiscat, suicide, hope

13

Apr

2016

Revisiting the Ten Commandments

Author: Jim Taylor

A correspondent suggested that I should re-read The Ten Commandments, to get my faith straightened out. So I did.
The Ten Commandments are terse, imperative, and unconditional. They offer no wiggle room, no exceptions, no loopholes for special situations.

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Categories: Soft Edges

Tags: ten commandments

Jim Taylor's Columns - 'Soft Edges' and 'Sharp Edges'

What’s your “Complexity Quotient”?

Mass media fail to explore religious motives

Not good for lakes, or for us

Aboriginal suicides based on loss of hope

Revisiting the Ten Commandments

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