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Canada
There’s a reason certain aphorisms become tired-out clichés, and usually it’s through mere overuse or that they just don’t make any sense at all. ‘A friend in need is a friend indeed’? Well, actually, the friend indeed is me, if I choose to help the needy loser in question. Tsk. And please don’t get me…
It’s 1976. I’m five years old and perched on the stairs of our London semi-detached. The phone on the wall rings. My mother pensively answers. It’s bad news from my father, calling long distance from Toronto. He’d gone out there searching for a better life for us, as Britain economically staggered punch drunk from beyond the…
The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as one of your citizens; you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I the LORD am your God. – Leviticus 19:34. It’s initially hard to see how a deep knowledge of the Jewish Torah would lead to major…
Homer Simpson, when told he must visit Canada, let’s out a particularly powerful ‘D’oh!’ and asks, ‘Why should we leave America, just to visit America Jr?’ Free health care and a ludicrously high standard of living aside, it’s hard to get excited about the Maple, on a cultural level. But there are some historical reasons…
Cognitive dissonance is a discomfort caused by holding conflicting cognitions (e.g., ideas, beliefs, values, emotional reactions) simultaneously. Like admiring David Cameron for his attempts to bring Etonian, bloody-good-chap decency to the pragmatic horrors of governing in a coalition, yet suspecting him of being nefariously on the side of the privileged and ancestrally elite. Tricky. Pop…