As I pushed the stroller down the path, I met a couple coming towards me. “Oh, what a beautiful baby girl,” said the woman. “You must be so proud of your. . .” and she froze, mid-sentence, looking at my white hair. “Daughter,” I said. “Daughter,” she replied, relieved. “You have a lovely daughter.” There…
In 2016, I wrote an article for Christian Courier called “Disruptive Theology.” I said that in the digital age, churches are less about where you live, and more about a community of believers with a shared understanding of faith. That digital ways of connecting with each other were becoming more important to many of us…
Everything has changed in politics, since Trump. I should know. In 1999 I was contracted to write speeches for Ontario Premier Mike Harris. A few years later, I was called up to work for Dalton McGuinty, a job I kept until 2012. I also worked in the last election in 2018. So, in total, I’ve…
“So, how much money do you make?” It’s hard to imagine starting a conversation this way. You can ask about a person’s education and grades. You can ask what music they like. You can even ask why they still follow a certain Toronto Hockey Team even though they haven’t won a Stanley Cup in the…
The winter of 1709 was a killer. In England it was called “The Great Frost.” In France it was called “Le Grand Hiver.” Over three weeks in early January, temperatures dropped across Europe to levels not seen in 500 years. The Mediterranean Sea froze. Trees exploded. Livestock died in the barns. In Switzerland, wolves prowled…
When I was a kid, there was a Bigfoot movie. I remember this because I saw the commercial for it just once – and slept wearing a hockey helmet for about five weeks afterwards. I remember my dad, sitting at the foot of my bed, explaining that being attacked by a mythical forest monster in…
When I was a kid, my dad would disappear into his study and close the door. From inside, you could hear the steady clack-clack from the old manual Underwood typewriter as the letters slammed against the cylinder, punctuated by the occasional “ping” at the end of each line and a waft of pipe smoke from…
No empire lasts forever. That’s the thesis of The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers by Paul Kennedy. Kennedy, a historian, says that all empires have this in common: militaries that make them great and also lead to their downfall. Eventually, the resources needed to keep a military powerful become a drain on the nation, and it begins to decline.
In the politically charged early decades of the 21st century, there is a new term to describe the public performance of righteousness. These days, it’s called “virtue signaling.” Virtue signaling is when you share your opinion on a social or political issue simply to get praise or acknowledgment from people who share that point of view. It’s the social media equivalent of praying in public.
There’s a reason Jesus told stories. We human beings are hardwired to see the world through the lens of stories. A couple of psychologists, Fritz Heider and Marianne Simmel of Smith College in Massachusetts, proved this in 1944. They showed 36 college students a short film, which showed two triangles and a circle moving across a two-dimensional surface.
You’ve probably never heard of Richard Demsick. On May 9, 2020, Richard Demsick went for a two-and-a-half mile run in his neighbourhood in Vero Beach, Florida. Demsick was running shirtless, with a ball cap on backwards and was carrying a flat-screen television under his arm. Although the neighbourhood had recently had a series of break-ins, no one stopped him to ask what he was doing. You’ve probably heard of Ahmaud Arbery.
When phones first came along, people didn’t say “hello” to start the call. In fact, Alexander Graham Bell suggested using the word “ahoy” as a greeting. In the 1920s, people in Britain were advised to skip the greeting to save time. I remember when email was first becoming a big deal back in the 1980s. In university I sent an email to a fellow student in Holland, and actually sat and watched my computer for an answer to come back. That seems silly now, of course.
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