RE: Give us a break
I’m also not a fan of calling attendance pathetic or voicing frustration at the student body for not attending. Using that kind of language and…
Articles by Comment Editor
Raging on Roslyn
There is predictable opposition to the erection of a new seven-storey, 78-unit condo tower on Roslyn Rd. As usual with almost any development proposal, the opposition comes mostly from local residents offended at the idea of any change, with a smattering of know-it-alls who assume that their personal opinions constitute sound urban planning polic
The reactionary Pope
The papacy has never enjoyed as glowing a reception as today, and notably among progressives. Pope Francis has been met with praise for his strong condemnations of “unbridled capitalism” and the visible inequities and environmental degradation it has produced. This focus on social justice, the pontiff’s seemingly humble, compassionate persona, has convinced many on the left that he is to be considered a “radical pope” and a force for institutional change. I think caution needs to be urged in applying this label, largely because many of the moral positions of the Catholic Church are fundamentally conservative in nature.
Give us a break
When I learned that Bison Sports is dismayed that their best-attended football games draw a mere quarter of the student body out to Investors Group Field, it brought tears to my eyes. The sky became suddenly overcast, and out of nowhere I heard the plaintive strains of the slow movement from Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto ringing out from the world’s tiniest violin.
In an article in the Sept. 30 issue of the Manitoban, Mike Still wrote, “while Bison Sports is working hard to create an optimal fan experience, it’s still up to the students and fans to do their part and actually show up.”
He expressed a similar view in an editorial back in March, describing attendance at Bisons home games as “abysmal” and “pathetic.”
Speak no evil
There was a time when you could call something evil and people knew what you meant. They understood that you were not speaking in hyperbole. They understood that evil is one of the central players in the human drama, a thing that will not perish from the earth. Nowadays, to call something evil is to invite scorn and a sniggering assumption of provincialism. To be labelled as “religious” or “spiritual,” words which have of late gained a patina of ironic contempt.
The slow-motion disaster that has been our culture’s embrace of post-modernism, in which no viewpoint enjoys special privilege or validity, has robbed us of the language needed to discuss even the concept of evil, which presumes certain immutable truths. What we do not discuss, we are prone to forget exists. Men who do not believe in evil cannot believe that they (or anyone) serve it. They are perhaps the most likely to do evil.
The trouble with transit
Like any regular rider of buses in this city, I’ve come to hold a constant low level of loathing for the form of transit that I’m dependent on. The perennial lateness, overcrowding, and poor service to many areas of the city is just a fact of life that I’ve made my peace with.
When I heard that service was going to be reduced on several routes due to maintenance issues with the bus fleet my reaction was a study in indifference. It’s still nice out (warmest year on record, folks!), and I can still avoid buses by biking or walking. Come winter all bets for anything resembling regular service are off in a normal year, so I figured this year couldn’t possibly be worse.
But then I read that our mayor had said of the reduction in service that “The service level expectation needs to be more realistic than they were,” and my reaction was considerably more colourful than indifference.
Blood politics
By highlighting MSM as an exposure category, current data collection and reporting methods support Canadian Blood Services’ screening practices. If UMSU wants screening practices to focus on specific high-risk behaviours, it needs data collection to also focus on specific high-risk behaviours.
The death of innocents
The Syrian civil war has been raging for four years. Hundreds of thousands of people have died, surely including many toddlers. Certainly no shortage of refugees meeting tragic ends. But we weren’t confronted with the image of their lifeless bodies; the thought of these innocent deaths was not in our collective mind.
Putting the eSports dispute to rest
Games are not art. Games are not sports. Games are games. They’re their own thing, and all this arguing over what else they might be betrays a secret anxiety as to whether they’re a pursuit worth spending time on. Private inferiority complexes don’t make a good foundation for aesthetic debates.
‘That’s not fair!’
It seems to be something of a trend with people my age to confuse their own interests with the common good. The idea that it is somehow unfair for us to not have all our desires (and a lot of what we call needs are really just desires) met is not a healthy mindset, though it is increasingly widespread. Seeing unfairness as a state of discontent is a big part of why we live in such an unjust society: we are willing to put up with a lot, so long as things seem “fair” for number one.
It’s not just young people, of course – though I think that as digital technology permeates more and more of our lives, we are more likely to be susceptible to it. The social media we use is designed to show us the things we like to see; algorithms track what we click on and deliver more of the same. We get a false idea of how much the world agrees with us and of how important we are in the grand scheme of things.