There are claims and counterclaims. Both sides sound convincing, but that’s what prosecutors and defense attorneys are supposed to do.

I can’t believe I’m reading this. Obviously universal healthcare is not without flaws, and there are many variations on the theme. Some work better than others.

But for a developed, “rich” country not to provide it to their citizens is a crime. Of course, the people most affected by the lack of healthcare are they working poor, while middle class people are generally insulated by employer-provided insurance, and the rich naturally have the best health care on the planet.

I think that this is another case of the majority of Americans not being able to conceive what life outside the greatest country in the world^TM is like. Ask anyone from another country if they would prefer us-style healthcare, and you will get a resounding “NO!”

John Bigbooty, you are the weakest individual I ever know!

Bigbooté! Bigbooté!

What are you talking about? None of the Gospels were written by apostles. It’s very unlikely that any of them could read or write, before or after Jesus.

If Christians are people of the Book, why do they eat pork and shellfish, wear mixed fabrics, and why don’t they stone to death adulterers and children who disrespect their parents?

What’s that? The New Covenant, you say? Okay, then why, given the example of the Lamb and the Suffering Servant, do Christians fight in armies as opposed to turning the other cheek and loving their enemies? Why don’t they sell everything the own and give the money to the poor?

There’s always a justification for doing the opposite of what was explicitly commanded in the Bible. Before Constantine made Christianity the state religion, you could not be a Christian and serve in the Roman army. After Constantine, to serve in the Roman army you had to be a Christian. Hmmmm.

That sounds like a very Catholic interpretation (I grew up Catholic). Funny how we need to be told what to think, by people who have a vested interest in maintaining the existing power structures of the church, when the original teachings of Jesus were to illiterate farmers and fishermen.

Do you want a list of the contradictions in the Bible? Or discrepancies in all the manuscripts that we have found, let alone all the translations?

There is an enormous amount of justification and adoption of bizarre interpretations, just to try and fit our theology (both current and past) into what the Bible says, and what supports people’s preconceived ideas.

After a while, I just got tired of difficult passages in the Bible being explained with, “oh, you have to interpret it like this for it to make sense”. Or, “it’s a mystery”. A few times yes, but over and over again? No, it seems obvious that we are making the Bible do things it was never created to do.

And, if you can, try to approach it without the implicit or explicit understanding that it is a divinely inspired text. If it can’t stand up on its own, it’s definitely suspect.

Dan McClellan has a good YouTube channel on biblical scholarship issues.

It took me over 60 years, but I have finally understood that the mistranslations, misunderstandings, and outright fabrications of a small group of people thousands of years ago maybe influential, but that doesn’t make them true.

The number of logical, philosophical, and moral backflips that you have to do in order to make any sense of it can only work if you have already decided that they are true. Without all that hand-waving, it’s ludicrous.

Twice

I see your nostalgia and raise you this: this

I actually had to learn to use a slide rule in high school, in the late 1970s.

I haven’t cared about professional hockey for a couple of decades now.

I noticed that their business model turned into cultivating fans. Fans by tickets and merchandise at unreasonable prices, regardless of the quality of hockey and the way that the fans are treated. That’s the way you maximize the profit you can extract.

For example, take the Toronto Maple Leafs. I’m in my 60s, and I was 5 years old when they last won the Stanley Cup. Yet season tickets range from $2300 to $28,000 each, with an upfront fee that can be more than $100,000. And there is a 20-year waiting list. An extreme example, but also a perfect example of a franchise abusing its willing fans.

You see it with the marketing surrounding national teams as well. I first noticed this when I was living in japan, and my kids became confused about whether they should root for their father’s Canadian team, or their mother’s Japanese team. I wondered why they should have to choose, and why we shouldn’t just appreciate the beauty and thrill of competition rather than identifying with one side.

A this has happened because the military has shown itself incapable of and unwilling to handle the cases themselves

And how many of those ultra high-speed chargers do they expect to find between Milan and Hong Kong? I can’t even find one in the 500 km between Montreal and Toronto, Canada’s most densely populated stretch of land.

Edit: I can’t even find a 350 KV charger, the highest my car can handle, between Montreal and Toronto. Instead I am stuck charging at a third of that or less, taking well over an hour to fully charge.

One of my kids started to play the piano at about 13. By the age of 18, he was playing pieces that were Royal Conservatory grade 10 level, and he was accepted into several universities.

He only had one hour of lessons a week during those 4 years of high school, but usually practiced 2 to 3 hours a day, without any pushing on my part. In some of his lessons he wouldn’t even touch the keyboard, they would just analyze a piece of music or discuss the theory behind it.

In university, the professors sometimes told other students to watch him play. His technique, they said, was not great (he himself admits that playing scales early on would have helped), but his feeling was superb.

I have a lot more respect fory Jodie W-R’s integrity than Christian F’s.

That would be fine if the book was to be an objective, historical approach. But how likely do you think that is, as opposed to a self-serving screed to push her own agenda?

Are we going to get an honest critique of the Liberal politicians with whom she worked and politicked? An exposé of things that should have been but weren’t, or that shouldn’t have been but were? People who should or shouldn’t have been successful, in either case to the detriment of the country?

Put simply, I don’t see that there could possibly be anything of value in this kind of first-person account.

I hate to tell you, but whatever the other company you went to is, it’s almost certainly Luxottica, the same people who make Ray-Ban now.

Why don’t Mennonites have sex standing up?

Because it could lead to dancing.

(Explanation: some Mennonite sects believe that dancing is inappropriate. Sex is not considered dirty, as long as it is within a marriage.)

That’s exactly what I mean. I remember reading that article. Remains of children have been found on residential school sites, but it doesn’t appear that those were related to the potential graves reported by ground penetrating radar.

ground radar studies are unable to definitively establish if what they are reporting is human remains

What is stopping investigations from actually determining if these are graves, and if so exhuming them and returning them to their communities?

What bothers me is that I haven’t seen any reporting on actual discoveries of human remains at any of these sites.

I think that the residential schools were a shameful part of white Canadian society’s desire to wipe out indigenous peoples. There is no doubt about that. But after more than five years why have we not seen even a partial exploration of the sites? If there are remains, let’s at least get them back to their communities.

Meanwhile, one of the places in Ontario (Grassy Narrows) has lost its funding after receiving more than 3 million, because they have not provided any audited financial statements for how the money was used so far.

The best way to combat denialism is to provide the proof of these claims. I want a complete reckoning of everything that was done, and how the native pupils suffered, so that it can never again be denied.

No fair, that’s Dartmouth’s favourite son listening to Kingston’s favourite sons!