A downward comparison is a psychological/philosophical phenomenon in which a person evaluates the goodness of some object by contrasting it with an object he/she deems to be worse (or, in all technicality, “less good”). This is useful in ethics when evaluating “the lesser of two evils” or even in economics when trying to make a …
Monthly Archive: February 2010
Feb 25 2010
Nova Scotia Cross Burning – Why Indeed?
Two Nova Scotia men have been remanded to police custody for erecting and burning a cross on the lawn of an interracial couple. From the article: The brothers are accused of erecting a two-metre-high cross, with a hanging noose, in front of the home of Michelle Lyon, their father’s cousin, and Shayne Howe and yelling …
Feb 11 2010
The Placebo Effect
This post originally appeared on Facebook on January 27th, 2010. Those of you who are not scientists may not be familiar with the term “placebo.” It is often equated in common language with “sugar pills”, or some sort of fake drug that doesn’t do anything. This is a reasonable proxy for what a placebo actually …
Feb 06 2010
Gluten-free Jesus discs
Right straight out of the gate we’ve got some grade A crapitalism brewing in… where else… the Catholic Church. The Canadian Celiac Association has expressed concern to the diocese of P.E.I. over the fact that communion wafers contain wheat gluten. This was, I gather, in between sessions of having real issues to spend their time …
Feb 05 2010
The foundations of the manifesto
After many years of absence, I am returning to the “blogosphere”. Those of you who have known me for a while may remember that for a couple of years, I collaborated with a friend of mine named Poromenos to create “Porocrom’s Crappaper”, a mostly humour-based blog that lasted for about 2.5 years. Sadly, Porocrom ran …
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