Anyone who reads this blog regularly knows what my position is on “intent” when it comes to things like racism and misogyny. Intent lies on an orthogonal axis to racism – someone doing something intentionally racist just adds bad intent to bad action. If we are of the opinion that racism is harmful in and of …
Category Archive: music
Jan 25 2013
Movie Friday: Voices United for Mali
Music has been, and continues to be, an integral part of my life. I picked up my first musical instrument at age 6, and since then there hasn’t been a time when I wasn’t doing something musical in my free time. I went through private lessons, string ensembles, chamber orchestras, symphony orchestras, rock bands, solo gigs, string …
Jan 18 2013
Movie Friday: Where I Get it From
A year and a half ago, I got an e-mail out of the blue from my father, telling me that he had started learning the saxophone. Dad’s in a gradual state of growing retirement, meaning that he still works but on a purely opt-in basis. He does a number of things to fill his time, …
Nov 16 2012
Vanity post: Even Handed Odds
Some of you may know that I played in a band called Even Handed Odds for a while. The band has since broken up (meaning that we no longer play our own music), but we still play covers on occasion down at the Copper Tank, a bar in Kitsilano, on Friday nights. Here’s a video …
Nov 02 2012
Movie Friday: Back for Good
As part apology, part self-aggrandizing vanity, here is a bonus movie on this Friday, to reassure you that my Friday movie posts are back for good. Like this article? Follow me on Twitter!
Jul 17 2012
Is this racist? You can bank on it.
Part of the challenge of incorporating anti-racism into mainstream skepticism is that skepticism has been primarily focused on developing techniques of inquiry honed in material sciences (by which I mean the study of physical systems like cosmology, biology, and physics – not materials science which is an entirely different thing). Ask most mainstream skeptics, and …
Jul 17 2012
“How come there’s no post today?!”
Because instead of doing the responsible thing and staying home last night, I went and did this: Talib Kweli is an unbelievably skilled emcee, and when I saw he was coming to Vancouver I thought there must surely be a mistake. My reflexive skeptical cynicism notwithstanding, I bought a ticket and went to Yaletown to …
Jun 11 2012
Songs in the key of H(umanism)
As you may know (and should certainly know if you followed my Blogathon Songathon yesterday), one of the many hats I wear is that of musician. I am no great talent, to be sure, but I’ve got some moderate game. I’ve been a musician as long as I can remember – somewhere there exists a …
Jun 08 2012
Movie Friday: Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos
Public Enemy was the very first rap group I ever heard (aside from Hammer, but even at age 6 I wasn’t particularly a fan). My own internal conversation about race was between me, my father, a nearly-monochromatic mountain town, and Messers D, Flav, and Griff. In light of the theme of ‘othering’ and black Americans’ …
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