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Review: What is a Woman?
Change

Review: What is a Woman?

Hey, have you seen Matt Walsh’s documentary, What is a Woman? Me neither. I am curious. But Matt Walsh is an arch-conservative. He works for the Daily Wire, a news outlet founded by another notorious arch-conservative, Ben Shapiro. Plus, to see the documentary, I’d have to take out
01 Aug 2022 2 min read
Are You Inbred?
Change

Are You Inbred?

Before you start yelling, let me explain...
30 Jul 2022 4 min read
Are Your Thoughts Your Own?
Politics Featured

Are Your Thoughts Your Own?

Back when I was a student taking high-school English, the big literary question was free will. Do we have any? Or is everything we do predestined by God? Was Judas Iscariot really guilty of selling out Jesus? Or was he simply fulfilling a destiny over which he had no choice?
23 Jul 2022 3 min read
Announcing: The Disruptor
Change

Announcing: The Disruptor

The Disruptor is a new online newsletter arising from the ashes of my blog DisruptorBOK. While both are about change, The Disruptor takes a new direction. Our new tagline is "seizing the day in an age of learned helplessness." Learned helplessness is that sinking feeling when you realize
12 Jul 2022 2 min read
Moneyball, Activism, and Policing
Featured

Moneyball, Activism, and Policing

Every day, I wade through more anti-police rhetoric. After the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict, an article catches my eye on Twitter. I post a comment. And, as will happen, some random guy with an axe to grind finds my comment and replies. "Problem is," he says, "Rittenhouse never
14 Dec 2021 3 min read
Donglegate

Donglegate

While researching online hysteria, I came across an old story from 2013 which became prominent enough to enter the meme hall-of-fame with the nickname, Donglegate. It all started at a presentation at the tech conference, Pycon. It seems a couple of good-old-tech-boys got a little overexcited by the subject matter
08 Dec 2021 2 min read
Book Look: The Big Shift -- The changing Canadian political landscape
The Big Shift

Book Look: The Big Shift -- The changing Canadian political landscape

Here's a question: Would you rather understand Canada's changing political scene before or after the next populist backlash? The Big Shift is a pollster's perspective that corrects many obsolete but still widely-held narratives.
07 Jan 2019 1 min read
Book 1st Look: You, Disrupted
book

Book 1st Look: You, Disrupted

It seems all I hear about these days is that the pace of change is accelerating, faster and faster. And if you don't get with it, you're going to get left behind. Well, I don't know about you, but I'm not getting
11 Dec 2018 2 min read
A Clockwork Orange for Radicals
A Clockwork Orange

A Clockwork Orange for Radicals

While reading Hegemony How-To: A Roadmap for Radicals, I got stuck on one particular spot because it conjured up an interesting example in the form of Stanley Kubrick's 1971 film, A Clockwork Orange.
10 Dec 2018 2 min read
The Liberty to Take a Knee
Colin Kaepernick

The Liberty to Take a Knee

It's utterly baffling to me that we humans waste so much time raging over manners, when we could be resolving real issues. Here's a short piece I wrote on the Colin Kaepernick knee-taking debate...
28 Aug 2018
Micro Book Review - Ghost Riders of Baghdad

Micro Book Review - Ghost Riders of Baghdad

While blasting through my summer reading list, I thought I'd better stop for a breathless minute and post something, even if it's scant and interim. I'll return later with a more extensive review on this fascinating book, written by a true disruptor. Finished Ghost
10 Aug 2018 1 min read
Today's Disruptive Thought: GDP as Defense-Spending Rationale
peace

Today's Disruptive Thought: GDP as Defense-Spending Rationale

Today, Veterans For Peace @VFPNational brought fresh news of Trump's NATO-shaming to my Twitter feed. Yet again, Trump wags his finger at NATO allies for not spending enough of their Gross Domestic Product on defense. How many times does he have to tell them, right? And I do
16 Jul 2018 1 min read
My back is mad as hell and it's not going to take bad chair design anymore
back health

My back is mad as hell and it's not going to take bad chair design anymore

I spent last Saturday at the Winnipeg Folk Festival. There's nothing I love more than being out in nature, on a fine summer's day, enjoying home-made music. But alas, I'm getting older and after several hours sitting, I was pretty crippled up. I'
12 Jul 2018 2 min read
How Karl Marx can make us better capitalists

How Karl Marx can make us better capitalists

I hang around Quora a lot. It's a great place to practice writing on a particular topic area and seeing how readers react. With an answer like this one, I'm sure to get a bunch of hate comments from folks. I've learned not to
11 Jul 2018 1 min read
How do I take a first step toward a more peaceful world?
peace

How do I take a first step toward a more peaceful world?

Here's another thought that originated on the Quora Q&A site. Someone asked me yet another question on how we can get to world peace. So, I got thinking about U.S. Representative Barbara Lee, a role model for peace, one who's example sent tears
29 Jun 2018 1 min read
Trump, master of distraction

Trump, master of distraction

Here's an answer I wrote on Quora. I'm posting it here because it captures something important about the times we're in -- that the people who should be in charge, the citizens, are being bamboozled by their elected representatives. It's time to
27 Jun 2018 1 min read
It's not impossible: my hopey, changey retirement plan

It's not impossible: my hopey, changey retirement plan

I admire people who, at a very early age, glimpsed their destiny and pursued it with passion and persistance -- built their visions into a life and career. I've known a few people like that. But I wasn't one of them. Oh, I had plenty of
25 Jun 2018 1 min read
On meliorism--the belief in progress
meliorism

On meliorism--the belief in progress

Meliorism is the notion that human progress is real and leads to betterment of the world. In other words, we humans, by applying our intellect and the better angels of our nature, are capable of improving upon the natural world. Enter Steven Pinker, Harvard professor, author, and meliorist who keeps
22 Jun 2018 2 min read
The Millennials: waste not want not
Millennials

The Millennials: waste not want not

Let's begin at the beginning, shall we? In the beginning, we were hunter-gatherers. Life was simple. Then we discovered fire and decided food tasted better cooked. So cook became a new occupation. Then we decided it would be nice to eat out once in a while, so we
10 Feb 2018 2 min read
Dedication

Dedication

This blog is for the disruptors, those restless subway riders, not content to live out their days as cogs in the wheel.
24 Jan 2018 1 min read
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