Uninhabited Spaces

In her provocative paper "A Pornography of Birth: Crossing the Moral Boundaries", New Zealand geography professor Robyn Longhurst asserts that "The moral boundary between what is considered ‘normal’ and what is considered ‘perverse’ is constantly struggled over and is temporally and spatially specific. [U]nderstanding sexualized acts and spaces is multifaceted and contradictory since (hetero)sexuality does not stand alone but is entangled with gender, race, ethnicity, social class, age and so on." I am intrigued by philosophy and geography intersecting in a converation about the role of space in our epistemologies, and the impact that very understanding may have on our moral claims and subsequent (un)ethical behaviour. We often talk about "Other" as a conceptual term, but it appears that we really see "Other" as a physicality as well. I think this helps explain how it is that our control of our behaviour in our day-to-day spaces becomes affected...

In June 2002, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfield delivered the following speech to a crowd of reporters who were asking about the progress of the war on terrorism: "The message is that there are no 'knowns'. There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also known unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know. So when we do the best we can and we pull all this information together, and we then say well that's basically what we see as the situation, that is really only the the known knowns and the known unknowns. And each year, we discover a few more of these known unknowns...There's another way to phrase that and that is that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". History now affords us the truth behind Rumsfield's sophistry; that the WMDs of Iraq were imagined and that the so-called "war on terror" is a fu...

March 9 marks the 20th anniversary of the release of U2's iconic album "The Joshua Tree". The album stood out among its peers for its imagery, lyrical allusions (hope remains yet in the moral, spiritual, and economic desert of America) and for its singular sound. Amidst the banality of 1980s synthezised pop this album yearned to mean something more. In a 2001 VH-1 poll of 40,000 voters, "The Joshua Tree" was named the top all-time greatest album, beating out some outstanding work from the usual competition such as The Beatles, Radiohead, Oasis, Stevie Wonder, and Nirvana. A lovely tribute to the staying power of what is for me a very special album. And just this week, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame released its list of 200 essential rock albums, and "The Joshua Tree" came in at #5 (after "Sgt Pepper", "Dark Side of the Moon", "Thriller", and "Led Zeppelin IV"). A longtime U2 fan, I do consider "The Joshua ...

Starbucks chairman Howard Schultz has caused a minor earthquake for arguing in a recent memo to company executives that the ubiquitous coffee merchant has lost its way. Asking that the company look in the mirror and reflect on the decision it made to grow from 1000 stores to 13,000 over the last decade, Schultz contends that Starbucks has been watered down and commoditized. I say "Bravo, Mr Schultz!" If only more companies took stock at the concept of unbridled growth. This reminds me of a conversation I had with 1-800-GOT-JUNK founder & CEO Brian Scudamore last year here at Queen's. He said he wanted to take his rubbish and debris removal company from a $120-million to a $1-billion company over the next decade. I asked him what consideration he had given to the environmental footprint a $1-billion company would have and whether he felt the service & experience that now defines his company could be sustained at that level of sales. Sadly, he had no real answers t...

The rapid proliferation of organizations and related web sites touting family values should be of great concern to anyone who truly cares about the protection of minority rights, equal rights, and equality of opportunity. The collective power of said organizations is serving to sway legislation in the United States--the self-declared beacon of democracy--toward the actual limiting of human rights. Hinged on Puritanical moral arguments about the nature of sex, sexuality, and marriage these organizations are advancing an image of family not seen since "Father Knows Best". America presents a great paradox: the billions successfully spent on marketing centre around the objectification of young women and, increasingly, young girls. And yet, rampant censorship of words and images reflecting basic nudity and sexuality is carried out by network television and even some cable channels--many owned and operated by the very same entities spending the marketing dollars. It is a shame that...

Last night I had the privilege of attending a very special event hosted by the Ottawa branch of the Queen's School of Business alumni association. The reception was in the Senate Foyer and we had 120 guests attend. There were some good nibbles and a cash bar. I turned around and there was our guest speaker, former Prime Minister Paul Martin . He saw me and immediately came forward and stuck out his hand (what a great political tactic--it made me feel special). We chatted a bit. I was tongue-tied and stupid. After about 45 minutes we moved into the Senate Chamber (see attached image) and we all took our seats. I was rather emotional, as it is a great privilege to be able to go past the brass bars and actually enter the Senate. In fact, as "Commoner" (a member of the House of Commons), Paul Martin is allowed to enter but not to speak in the Senate Chamber. Last night an exception had been made, and he noted that the event was also a privilege for him. Interestingly, our Hea...

A new report by Maclean's magazine highlights that 53% of all Canadian university students admit to serious cheating in written work, 56% of all business students admit to cheating, and 44% of profs said they didn't report students caught cheating. Let me give you a moment to let those figures settle in...................Doesn't leave you with a very good impression for the future now, does it? It's worrisome that such a large percentage of those entrusted to uphold our standards of academic honesty aren't doing so. One has to wonder what has changed in the university and our culture for such alarmingly high incidents of cheating? On the silver-lining side of things, at least these cheaters honestly self-reported for the study!! [Illustration: Zanne DeJanvier ]

In his 1982 book Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism Philip Kitcher argues that despite their appeal for balanced treatment and tolerance, Creationist's theory (a.k.a. "Intelligent Design") has no place within scientific curriculum as it cannot offer any advancement of knowledge nor any viable predictions more successfully than Evolutionism. Now I am not so much interested in the did-He-or-didn't-He? debate as I am in Kitcher's thesis that ideas have to earn our right to respect . He believes that not all views are deserving of our attention because some theories are better than others. In case this smacks of an infinite relativity, Kitchers strongly emphasizes that we need not "abandon our intellectual standards but that we use them to examine the credentials of the ideas that others espouse". Still, we have to determine what grounds we have to claim that some views (moral or scientific) are better than others. Kitcher suggests that some vie...

Imagine the following headline: "Majority Democratic Congress passes act to withdraw all funding of foreign government". The quoted experts would forecast that the withdrawal of American military would de-stabilize the foreign country's economy, lead to an OPEC oil embargo and a subsequent world economic recession. Sound familar? This is, in fact, what happened in 1975 to South Vietnam. I am not a historian nor a political scientist, and I was only four years old in 1975, but I can't help but think of the striking parallel to our times. The American body politic, disenfranchised under the disgraced Nixon, embraced Reagan's optimistic, down-to-earth persona and "government is the problem" ethos. Reagan's administration would go on to raise the national debt to 41% of the GDP, turning the United States into the world's largest debtor nation. Fast forward to the good-old-boy, "compassionate conservative" persona cultivated for G.W. Bush. T...

As soon as the love relationship does not lead me to me; as soon as I, in a love relationship, do not lead the other person to themselves, this love, even if it seems the most secure and ectastic attachment I have ever experienced, is not true love. --Leo Buscalia, Love February is the month where we are pushed by powerful marketing forces to celebrate those we love, those we consider most important in our lives. I encourage you to open your love to not only the person that you share Call Answer with, but to also celebrate that pursuit which reminds you of who you really are. Either way, the loved-thing is strongly attached to your chest. For when you are away from it, you ache. That aching, of course, is a profoundly visceral response that drives us into states that confound logic and sensibility. And so it should. This physicality gives meaning to our lives, when such a commodity is rare and precious. The need to love is omnipresent in our lives and is infinitely powerful. True lov...

In 1996 the Agnes Etherington Art Centre presented a remarkable exhibit called "Wisdom, Knowledge and Magic: The Image of the Scholar in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art". I remember being struck by the notion that there was no real demarcation between fields of study in the 17th century as there exisits today. I imagine the idea of obtaining a degree in a specific field would be very odd to the 17th century scholar, who did not place such arbitrary boundaries between the study of the just life, for example, and the study of the laws of physics. If you consider the study of Philosophy, you learn that it encompassed moral philosophy (which begat ethics, applied ethics, etc), natural philosophy (which begat the physical sciences), and the classic Mediterranean languages. The point is that the scholar examined things holistically; that understanding the art of an era is just as important to its history and its politics. How sad that our contemporary business students aren't req...

During my studies in philosophy at Queen's in the late 80s/early 90s I literally stumbled upon an outstanding book by Gaston Bachelard entitled "The Poetics of Space". In essence the book was about the phenomenology of space (i.e. our relationship to and understanding of space and how we should/could/ought to inhabit it). While some readers have interpreted Bachelard's arguments in terms of being something about architectural concepts I saw it as much more philosophical in implication. Certainly the ideas he presents have a place in a theory (or philosophy) of architecture but I was struck on an inner chord about how I relate to the built environment. A gift Bachelard provided in his text is the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, a 20th century German poet for whom I have developed a great affinity and whose poem "The Fourth Elegy" inspired my blog's title and theme.

This was an op-ed piece I wrote for the Queen's Gazette about the creation of an association for queer staff at Queen's. It can be read on page 6 at http://qnc.queensu.ca/gazette/452d310668f35.pdf