Education, Information and Democracy

 Fretting about the health of democracy has recently moved from being an esoteric activity of academics to a widespread preoccupation across much of the developed world. We treasure the ideal of democracy for good reason. While there are many forms of democracy, some more direct than others, some more secular

Funding Scientific Research: Sometimes targeted research is the best approach, but not always

 The huge concentration of scientific effort to create, verify and supply a vaccine to protect against Covid-19 and towards improved therapeutics for those who fall ill are perfect examples of appropriate targeted research.  Fans of novels or films about crime know that the iconic enablers of a crime are means,

Free speech and academic freedom in universities: Challenges and a solution

 Our universities are designed and funded to be more than institutions for teaching. They have long served as the incubators and testing grounds for ideas. But now, in much of the developed world, the universities are experiencing some challenges in maintaining the practices of free speech, open debate and academic

Science and politics: always a stormy marriage

 The global Covid-19 pandemic seems an all-consuming issue these days, but it is by no means the first of a burgeoning new class of public policy issues. In trying to make sense out of the important issues public policy issues today, one must accommodate two important new facts of life.

Covid-19: Reflections on the end game

 Part 1: The Time Before a Vaccine Now half way through 2020, having spent a few months with the drawbridge raised, most of us are becoming deeply curious about how the Covid-19 crisis ends. There have been flocks of somewhat superficial articles about how the world will be different after,

Covid19: Telling half-truths never ends well

 Canada’s handling of the first phase of the Covid-19 pandemic, up to late May, has been moderately good compared to other developed nations. I would rate it at perhaps just at the lower edge of the top 20 per cent in that comparison, if taking into consideration testing, public health

Coronavirus: Two nations, two systems, one pattern

 To no-one’s very great surprise the United States of America handled the first few stages of the Covid-19 pandemic badly. After a period of dithering, denial, and poor attention to expertise, the various levels of government began to act, but unevenly, with poor messaging, fulminating partisanship, and the disadvantage of

Gun Crime, Gun tragedies and a plan for real gun control

 Will the new Canadian initiative in banning certain styles of semi-automatic rifles reduce gun crime and gun tragedies? The best answer, based on data and logic, is maybe, but only slightly, and only if the measure reduces overall gun ownership, which is not necessarily a predicted outcome of the change.

Carbon Taxes: Fine Idea, Terrible Marketing

 Photo credit: Thomas Millot on Unsplash “Carbon tax” is a bit of a misnomer. It is in fact a carbon combustion tax. Or more precisely, a tax on the combustion of carbonaceous fuels recovered from beneath the surface of the earth. The idea behind such taxes is that, by increasing the fuel cost,

The curvature of political space

 One of the triumphs of 20th century physics was the proof that space is curved. But whilst the great swaths of interstellar space are indeed seen to be curved, on the smaller earthly scale, political space of the 20th century was routinely viewed as linear, with left and right being

The Archduke Game

 My PhD supervisor was an elegant Hungarian who had grown up in the wreckage of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He completed his advanced studies by the late 1940s and fled Hungary during the revolution. Arriving in Canada in 1957, he joined the faculty at Toronto. He was a terrific mentor and

Why ISIS and its friends must be opposed

 On the eve of the outbreak of the Second World War, and even for a while in its early stages, many in Canada were opposed to going to war. While amongst them, there were a few proto-Nazis and Nazi sympathizers, the vast majority were merely isolationists, pacifists and some on

How Lt Gen Currie turned the Canadian Corps into a national army

 Ask the average Canadian student about the origins of our nation and you will likely hear about Confederation and how Canada became a country with the passage of the British North American Act (BNA) in 1867. The fact of the matter is this is not actually the case. The BNA