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Ur Wisdom
Wisdom, as my Grade 5 teacher Miss Pollock use to say, is knowledge plus experience, and the judgment to be able to blend them together successfully -not the most scholarly way of defining it, perhaps, but useful nonetheless. I always took her to mean the ability to pick and choose from what was available -the…
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Dress Coda
I suppose it’s time for a confession, but I have to be covert about it; devious -labyrinthine, to the extent that my disclosure may fly in the face of current trends. I may be incorrectly accused of retrograde thinking -or, horrors, of prejudice. Discrimination. Well, perhaps there is a soupçon of babbling admixed in my…
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That way madness lies
To portray something -to make it believable- there has to be at least some understanding by the audience of what is being portrayed. Much in the sense, I suppose, that was suggested in the 1974 paper in The Philosophical Review by the American philosopher Thomas Nagel, asking what it would be like to be a…
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Give Sorrow Words
It is fairly intuitive to suspect that parental mental health has an effect on both infant and childhood development. Indeed there is a widespread attempt to address the issue with the use of evaluative tests such as the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale to identify or even anticipate and take action to ameliorate the problem. It…
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The Mom and Pop Team
From time to time, I think we all need reassurance that we matter. That our seat at the game has not been taken by someone else. Could not be taken… Maybe that’s why we’re given names -so there’s no mistake. And if we’re not there all the time, it’s only because we sometimes have other…
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Society is no comfort to one not sociable
The curse of modern society may be our need to discover patterns. Our need to explain everything could be an honest atavism, but the reasons we find may be way off the mark. Post hoc, ergo propter hoc, is a common fallback position that is often useful when the gun is not smoking -or when…
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Thy wish was father to that thought
I’ve been waiting for something like this -expecting it, in fact, although not holding my breath: an exploration of the neurochemistry of fatherhood. I mean, it seemed obvious to me -a man, a father, and also an emeritus obstetrician- obvious that there are changes in many, if not most fathers with the birth of their…
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Good wine needs no bush
I try not to become embroiled in oenophilic arguments -as a person who long ago switched to Rivaners or Rieslings with their reduced alcohol contents, I usually just smile and nod if the issue arises of whether the grape or the soil is the principle determinant of flavour. Both make sense, I guess, but my…