Tim Moen

Malcolm Gladwell came to Fort McMurray last night and I was definitely excited to hear him speak. I've read three of his books 'Blink', "The Tipping Point' and 'Outliers' and found his lecture last night was more of the same; insightful, engaging, witty, and exuding a sort of gentle intellect. The thrust of Gladwell's speech was to give us McMurrayites some insights into community building based on a number of stories and case studies he had come across. One of the case studies he used was Roseto a small community of 3000 people located in the isolated hills of Pennsylvania. Roseto is remarkable according to Gladwell because in the 50's while other Americans were dying of cardiovascular and other diseases, in Roseto people were dying of old age despite bad diets, smoking and lack of exercise. Gladwell suggests that this is because of the strong sense of community that he painted a beautiful picture of with his prose. I have no reason to doubt hi...

Every time there is a tragic shooting somewhere we have the same debate occurring between people with a left wing brain and people with a right wing brain. Essentially a left wing brain was exposed to a primarily matriarchal family environment and the right wing brain was exposed to a primarily patriarchal family environment. Understanding this about oneself is important, political preferences are usually formed by our experience of family rather than reasoned out from first principles. Predictably the debates that occur between people who do not understand this about themselves are emotionally charged and irrational. On the left we have gun control advocates who are scared of guns and want to exert matriarchal power over the family (the state) and want guns removed, and on the right we have those who want to exert patriarchal control over the family which means they want to be able to use guns to protect against tyranny. The debate that ensues is es...

I recently came across an online discussion on a libertarian site about what the libertarian view should be of a big Chinese state-owned corporation (CNOOC) owning a piece of the oil sands. For those that don’t know a libertarian is generally someone with a political position that revolves around the non-aggression principle (NAP) which says that no person has the right to initiate force against another person. It got me thinking about what development of the oil sands might look like if the NAP was adhered to strictly by a tipping point of people living in the oil sands region so here is my thought experiment. Please feel free to leave comments, suggestions or how you think things might work in an environment of adherence to the NAP. First of all strict adherence to the NAP means that government goes away and interactions are regulated by individuals engaged in voluntary relationships. Note this is slightly different than the typical libertarian position that concedes a cert...

The following is a letter to the editor of Macleans Magazine that I helped my step-daughter craft after she came to me for help (with her teachers permission) to write a response to an article about schools brainwashing children. Needless to say it was not published. Dear Editor, I agree that kids are brainwashed by their schools.   Schools should teach kids how to think or learn instead they teach kids what to think. H.L. Mencken said the aim of public school, “.. . is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality.” Public schools are this way by design, based on the Prussian model that was developed to create a class of obedient factory workers and military men. How else would you describe an institution where the people (yes us kids are people) are compelled to attend, required to sit still in desks oriented towards a power figure, required to learn what the aut...

In my last blog post I outlined why I think there is a prevalence of the zombie meme in pop culture; namely that there is an increasing anxiety about mindless, brain eaters. In the spirit of full disclosure I have a bias towards this metaphor because I have a fair amount of anxiety about mindless, brain-eaters but I do think it is a rational fear. This all started when I saw a video of a horde of Black Friday shoppers at a Walmart and I mistook it for an episode of ‘The Walking Dead’. I posted a tweet comparing the average person to a zombie and was challenged by a reader who did not think my comparison was fair or accurate. After my last blog post she still doesn’t think its fair or accurate to call the average person a zombie, so I feel the need to further my case for the metaphor before I delve into the origins and possible cure for what I think could aptly be called the zombie virus. The first thing I need to do is define my terms. For the purpose of this metaphor I will defi...

Zombies are mindless automatons that are neither dead nor alive, eat brains and are singularly focused on consumption. I hypothesize that there is a rational reason that the zombie is an increasingly popular figure in today’s culture, namely that it closely resembles what we fear most…our fellow humans. We’ve all seen the video's of crazed shopping mobs on Black Friday and faced the holiday throngs ourselves in crowded stores intent on pushing our way through and getting what we "need". These are the zombie hordes and we ourselves are part of what we most fear. Let us look at what defines a zombie. 1)       Neither Dead nor Alive Automatons – They are drifting through an existence that is mindless and seemingly never ending, unaware of their own motivating drive to consume. How much does this resemble our everyday lives? Get a job, work 9 – 5, watch TV, consume products, and repeat until death. Most of us have a nagging itch in our minds that somet...

     Imagine that there is a powerful thug who comes around every so often to rape you and your neighbours.  But he is a nice thug in the sense that he allows you to vote on the way he is going to rape you, you can choose which orifice and perhaps choose the sweet nothings he whispers in your ear as he violates you.  The people all around you activiely participate in their democratic right to choose how they are violated.  The fine and intricate details of rape philosophy are passionately debated as some prefer the mouth while others prefer the anus and so two groups form and the neighbourhood is collectivised and labelled in these terms...you are either a mouther or an anuser (right wing or left wing).       Advocates of democracy argue passionately that our ancestors fought and died to get this new rapist, remember the old rapist never gave us a choice.  They praise the qualities of our rape system and rave a...