Mar

2016

No column today

Sorry, no column today Joan has not been well this week. After eight years of chronic leukemia, and about the same number of chemo treatments (I lose track) her immune levels are almost non-existent. There’s a bronchitis bug of some kind going around; she caught it. Accompanying her through three medical appointments, plus at least as many prescriptions, left my mind rather like melting jelly. I had some ideas for a column, but they simply would not gel. So all I can do is send along some of the mail received about last week’s column, on the relationship between suffering and sin.

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Categories: Sharp Edges

Tags: no column

Mar

2016

The punishment rarely fits the crime

Author: Jim Taylor

Justice William Horkins has set March 24 to announce his verdict in the Jian Ghomeshi trial. Ghomeshi, in case you’ve been emulating a groundhog all winter, pled not guilty to five charges of sexual assault and choking. A friend of a friend asked a judge, off the record, if he thought Ghomeshi would get off. The judge gave a four-word reply: "It's a slam dunk." Acquittal seems like denial of justice. The allegations by Ghomeshi’s victims, plus his own video of “rough sex,” portray him as a creep. Or, in psychological lingo, as a sadist, narcissist, or psychopath. There is, of course, a rational logic for acquittal.

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Categories: Sharp Edges

Tags: punishment, crime

Feb

2016

Banning books, good or bad

Author: Jim Taylor

These days, anyone can publish anything. Before e-publishing, books had to pass through the filter of a publishing house. It wasn’t a perfect system. A lot of good books didn’t get published, but at least a lot of bad ones didn’t get published either. Not so today. Anyone can put anything out on the Internet. And if you want something a little more prestigious than a passing blog, hundreds of outfits will help you produce something that has a cover, an ISBN, and a price tag. Every copy shop can be a publisher And Amazon will probably sell the book they produce, whether it deserves exposure or not. That’s roughly what happened with Robert Picton’s book.

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Categories: Sharp Edges

Tags: banning books

Feb

2016

Zika virus, contraception, and mortal sin

Author: Jim Taylor

A new word has entered our vocabularies – “Zika” -- the mosquito-borne virus first identified in the Zika forest in Uganda in 1947, that has since spread across southern Asia to the Pacific islands, and now to the Americas. What do we actually know about this virus? First, it is carried by the same tropical mosquitoes that carry dengue fever, yellow fever, and the West Nile virus. Second, it is a virus, a primitive form of RNA that can only replicate inside living cells. It is not a germ or a parasite, therefore it is not susceptible to antibiotics. When the virus gets inside living cells, it alters their function. Although there’s no conclusive proof yet, the World Health Organization accepts a link between the Zika virus and microcephaly.

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Categories: Sharp Edges

Tags: Zika virus, contraception, mortal sin

Feb

2016

Random chance matters in real life

Author: Jim Taylor

In the closing days of January, five snowmobilers died when an avalanche roared down the slopes of Mt. Renshaw, east of Prince George. Ordinarily, when I hear of these accidents, I tend to rant about human stupidity. About overgrown boys with too much horsepower and too little common sense, testing the limits of their machines’ performance on unstable slopes, failing to take reasonable precautions… Not in this case, apparently. Although some early reports called the avalanche “human caused,” later reports didn’t repeat that allegation. Later reports also described the snowmobilers – 17 people, in four separate groups – as well prepared and experienced back country sledders. Indeed, their safety equipment saved most of them. Two GPS tracking devices indicated their location instantly when the slide hit. Search and Rescue teams already in the area were able to reach the disaster site in minutes. A helicopter was on its way soon after. The survivors were already digging out their buried friends. Even so, they were too late for five people.

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Categories: Sharp Edges

Tags: chance, real life

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

No column today

The punishment rarely fits the crime

Banning books, good or bad

Zika virus, contraception, and mortal sin

Random chance matters in real life

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