Mar

2023

Nothing to say

Sunday February 19, 2023

I didn’t send out a Sharp Edges column this weekend. This is the explanation why.
I had planned to write about 68-year-old Toronto Mayor John Tory’s affair with a 31-year-old female staff member. And I discovered I had nothing to say.
Except, perhaps, that Tory’s embarrassment proves – as if proof were needed – that for someone in the public eye, there’s no such thing as safe sex.

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24

Mar

2023

Have a heart! Donate blood or plasma!

Author: Jim Taylor

Sunday February 5, 2023

I give blood at the Canadian Blood Services clinic here in Kelowna every two weeks. Correction – I give plasma every two weeks. If I gave whole blood -- as I did for many years, until Canada’s tainted blood scandal forced rule changes that made anyone who had ever had malaria ineligible – my donations would have to be 56 days apart, to give my body time to replenish those donated blood cells.
But when I give plasma, they give me back my blood cells. All I need to replenish is fluids.

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24

Mar

2023

The paradox of reducing racial prejudice

Author: Jim Taylor

Sunday February 5, 2023

You can’t have missed the fact that February is Black History Month. .A friend from New England asks, “Black American History month? Why? Isn't Black American History, American history?”
I know him well enough to know that he’s not prejudiced against either Black people or Black history. He’s wondering why we – “we” meaning generic white society – feel a need to segregate Black History from history in general.
“Think of Black History Month as ‘affirmative action’,” I wrote back to my friend.
That is, it’s an attempt to correct a historic inequity in American awareness.

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24

Mar

2023

The addictions we don’t know we have

Author: Jim Taylor

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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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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Tags: New Year, Resolutions, Bucket list

24

Dec

2022

The way God does things

Author: Jim Taylor

Christmas Eve, 2022

Christmas and Easter sometimes remind me of the Bobbsey twins. They’re inextricably bound together, Can’t get along without each other. And yet they’re constantly competing with each other.

Briefly put, the Incarnation argues that God – whoever or whatever God is – became a human being in Jesus, the baby born in Bethlehem. The Resurrection claims that that same baby, some 30 years later, triumphed over death and will never die again.

Both focus on the uniqueness of the event. This only happened once, we declare. The rule –we commonly assume – is that God is “out there” somewhere. Or perhaps “up there”. But certainly different from us. Not mortal flesh-and-blood.

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Categories: Sharp Edges

Tags: resurrection, Christmas, Incarnation

24

Dec

2022

Manger and manager -- a study in contrasts

Author: Jim Taylor

Sunday December 18, 2022

There’s something about a season of peace and goodwill, a season marked by glad tidings of comfort and joy, that throws into stark contrast the operating systems we take for granted all the rest of the year.

I imagine that’s what prompted Eli Sopow of University Canada West to write an article for The Conversation Canada on Elon Musk.

I don’t know what you think of Musk most of the year. Envy of his wealth -- even if he’s no longer the world’s richest person? Admiration for his achievements, such as Tesla and SpaceX? Loathing? Disgust?

Whatever your feeling, I’m sure it didn’t involve comparisons with Santa Claus.

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Categories: Sharp Edges

Tags: Elon Musk, Santa Claus. Jesus, Eli Sopow

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

Nothing to say

Have a heart! Donate blood or plasma!

The paradox of reducing racial prejudice

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

The way God does things

Manger and manager -- a study in contrasts

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