Mar

2023

The addictions we don’t know we have

Sunday January 29, 2023

A group of young people filled the restaurant booth next to mine. The first thing they all did was to pull out their cell phones.
Anne Wilson Shaef would define their behaviour as addictive. Sheaf wrote two influential books 40 years ago: When Society Becomes an Addict (1988), and The Addictive Organization (1989).
Like Marshall McLuhan’s musings on media, Shaef identified a social trend before it became too obvious to notice.
One of Shaef’s contributions was to point out that social or behavioural addictions are just as pervasive as substance addictions.

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Categories: Sharp Edges

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24

Mar

2023

Put that rebate to better use

Author: Jim Taylor

Sunday January 22, 2023

My B.C. Hydro bill arrived this week -- $1.16. For two months of electricity. At first, I thought it must be a mistake. Then I realized that the B.C. government had given me a $100 credit to compensate for the skyrocketing costs of living this past year.
One of my preferred charities provides menstrual kits to girls in Uganda. Each kit contains eight re-usable menstrual pads, and two pairs of undeerpants. Because many of the girls cannot even afford panties.

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24

Mar

2023

How media messages hook you

Author: Jim Taylor

Sunday January 15, 2023

A witticism on the internet says, “I found a solution to all the bad news I see on TV. I quit watching TV.”
I feel that way about email sometimes.
I subscribe to a number of mailing lists. Several are news oriented. Mostly bad news – although a couple of newsfeeds always end with “something to brighten your day.”
Several mailings try to be uplifting, insightful, or devotional messages or meditations.
And then there are the ones I never subscribed to

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20

Feb

2023

About those New Year’s resolutions

Author: Jim Taylor

Sunday January 8, 2023

Did you make any New Year’s Resolutions last weekend? When I broached that subject informally, a group of friends more or less agreed – they don’t make New Year’s Resolutions. Mostly because they knew they’d break those resolutions. Maybe even that same evening, if the resolution involved chocolate or wine.
Or else they knew their good intentions were too idealistic: “Peace to the world.” “End poverty and starvation.” “Cure the climate crisis.”
I share those misgivings. But I also feel it’s worthwhile to make resolutions, periodically. And a New Year seems as good a time as any to make them.

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Categories: Sharp Edges

Tags: Trump, superlatives, Resolutions

30

Jan

2023

My ‘bucket list’ has a hole in it

Author: Jim Taylor

Sunday January 1, 2023

So here we are -- New Year’s Day, 2023. It’s tempting to make guesses about what will, or will not, happen during this coming yea. Will gene-splicing enable medical science to create killer T-cells that attack only individual cancers? Will nuclear fusion – using unimaginable power to create unimaginable power – finally put the fossil-fuel industry out of business?

Will meteorologists find a way to keep polar vortexes where they belong, hovering over the high Arctic like a frigid skullcap?

It’s tempting to speculate, but useless. Because I don’t expect to be around long enough to say. “I told you so!”

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Categories: Sharp Edges

Tags: New Year, Resolutions, Bucket list

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

The addictions we don’t know we have

Put that rebate to better use

How media messages hook you

About those New Year’s resolutions

My ‘bucket list’ has a hole in it

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