Letter to the Editor: Crossing the line
Unlike the Fatwa against author Salmon [sic] Rushdie in 1989, or the murder of Theo van Gogh in the streets of Amsterdam in 2004, the attack on Charlie Hebdo has …
Articles by Chris Robertson
Strangled with protection
Our system of justice is a series of checks and balances in which everyone is held accountable in some way. We could imagine it as a web where everyone is …
The Weekly World: Two Obamas?
My appreciation for some of President Obama’s policies is a veritable wellspring of debate and disagreement with some of my more conservative friends. I frequently cite his soaring defense of …
Is there a reason for white guilt?
Some of the most athletic leaps in logic I’ve experienced have been in discussions about race and gender. Lines become blurred as differences of personal perspective become synonymous with “fascism” …
The Weekly World: In defense of courage
In 1963, Stanley Milgram verified with empirical observation what historians and philosophers have postulated for centuries. In his experiments on obedience to authority, he found that 65 percent of …
What do we mean by “safe”?
One of the most common of logical fallacies is that of “equivocation.” In the narrow sense, equivocation is the use of a word with more than one meaning in a …
The Weekly World: Small step for Britain
South Park slipped in a joke aimed at the United Kingdom in its famous Scientology episode where, after Stan calls the religion a scam and deems Tom Cruise’s acting to …
The Weekly World: “Accountability” in Syria
It’s been nearly a year since Obama’s famous “red line” comment about the use of chemical weapons in Syria—that any use of agents like sarin or mustard gas would …
Counter point: The perils of equivocation and bombs
Thinking is hard work. Sometimes it’s unpleasant. Often it forces us to admit we’re wrong, but worst of all, it occasionally necessitates disagreeing with other people. This is never more …
Weekly World: Defending Thatcher
Perhaps the corollary to the old truism that “well-behaved women rarely make history” is that women who make history rarely go without being accused of not behaving well enough. One …
The Weekly World: Toronto’s “misogynists and white-supremacists”
Sometimes it is difficult to see where our biases blind us, but occasionally, some group will brazenly step into the spotlight and enlighten us all with a dazzling display of …
The Weekly World: New CDC study won’t change minds on vaccines
Purity, sanctity and self-righteousness are normally the attributes of the moral compass we associate with the reactionary right—religious zealots and gun toting, flag-waving ideologues who battle against science and reason. …
The Weekly World: Rand Paul’s Filibuster
Most students here have probably heard bits and pieces about Kentucky Senator Rand Paul’s filibuster of John Brennan’s CIA nomination, or the #StandwithRand meme circulating Facebook and Twitter. Ordinarily, ceaseless …
Learning to live, thrive and perform surgery in an indifferent world
Sometimes shifting perspectives is difficult. Admitting you’ve not only done something wrong, but are systematically continuing to do things wrong is hardest of all. It can be incredibly empowering though. …
The political correctness screw makes another turn
Pop tarts are dangerous—or at least they seemed that way to faculty at Park Elementary School in Baltimore and ended up as such for 7-year-old Josh Welch. He was suspended …
The Weekly World: How bad is the sequester?
On March 1, the day the dreaded sequester budget cuts took effect, President Barack Obama prophesized that the cuts will “hurt our economy, they’ll cost us jobs, and to set …
Getting the “college experience” at BC
When I ask older generations about what made their college experiences so great, the nearly unanimous consensus is always something about the community and intellectual immersion they went through during …
Remember, the medium is the message
The student rally at Olympia last week was great. We all met with legislators and their assistants and appeared to make generally positive impressions. They seemed to agree with us …
Overpriced and overrated: Learning without textbooks
Four hundred dollars goes a long way if you’re a college student. I slipped into an experiment in my own education last quarter by forgetting to buy my course textbooks …
The Weekly World: Haunting silence about Lars Hedegaard is a problem
Sometime in the early afternoon on Feb. 5, a foreign-looking man in his 20s, dressed as a postal deliveryman, rung the doorbell of 70-year-old Lars Hedegaard, a conservative Danish journalist …