Books shelved under “Culture”

The feedback cycle that exists between technology and society is an interesting one. I took a Philosophy of Science course in university, and one of our two textbooks discussed the “evolution” of technology and whether it is accurate to say that certain technological innovations are inevitable consequences of previous ones. While I agreed with the book’s author when he dismisses technological development as deterministic, it is so interesting to see how a society’s response to…

There is a school of thought rising in popularity which wants coding to become a mandatory subject in schools. I have some thoughts on this, but that is neither here nor there for this review. Rather, it’s just interesting that for all the talk of teaching kids to code because it will lead to “better jobs”, there isn’t much emphasis on teaching about the way Big Data is redefining our lives. From data mining…

The same friend who lent me Decoded asked me if I wanted to borrow Men Explain Things to Me, which is great, because it has been on my list for a while now. When I went over to her house, she handed me the book. A mutual friend who was there and only in town until early the next week then said, “Can you read it really quickly so I can have it?” So…

Sometimes you see a book and you just know that it’s the book you’ve been waiting for. That was my reaction when Chelsea Vowel, who blogs and tweets as âpihtawikosisân, announced Indigenous Writes: A Guide to First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Issues in Canada. You really should read her blog and follow her, because she her writing is clear and informative, and she is excellent at providing further resources. This continues in her…

A friend lent Decoded me after I expressed a desire to “get into hip hop”. This is not a whim on my part but a recognition of a gap in my otherwise wide musical listening. Although I would say that my “favourite” music tends towards a fairly narrow swath of sound, and my tastes are decidedly more pop than hard rock in later years, I appreciate a lot of different sounds, albeit perhaps not equally.…

Money is one of humanity’s most clever and enduring technologies. It is a brilliant way of transferring value across vast distances and decentralizing our economy. Barter makes sense on a hyperlocal, neighbourly scale, but you can’t run a vast industrial economy on it. As Niall Ferguson chronicles in his excellent The Ascent of Money, increases in numismatic sophistication were vital in increasing the range of trade and our abilities to innovate and provide services…

I hate listicles. I’ve gotten to the point where I just don’t click on any post that starts with a number in its title. I know, I know, #notalllisticles, some are well-written and informative.

A Little Gay History is, when you think about it, a listicle; you could retitle it “82 Objects from the British Museum Related to Gay Sexual Desire”. Listicles were around before the Internet, and I suppose they will outlive the Internet…

Back in Grade 4, a small group of peers asked me if I was a virgin.

Not knowing what a virgin was, I said no. Well, that certainly got them laughing. And I got very upset.

This incident has stuck in my memory (which is otherwise very much a sieve through which most details inevitably fall) for a few reasons. Firstly, it was one of the few times I ever felt bullied in school,…

This book was an indulgence: its price is US$60, which means in Canada it’s closer to $80 (although Chapters was selling it online at a considerable discount, so I didn’t pay even close to that). But it’s totally worth it. This book is as gorgeous as you would expect. It’s a coffee-table book, oversized and weighty, its pages thick and glossy and covered with colour photos of costumes, stills, and concept art. I mean, it…

Are you a perv? Of course you are, you pervy perv, you. At least, that’s the explicit (pun intended) promise in Perv: The Sexual Deviant in All of Us. Jesse Bering grapples with that truism that the only normal is that there is no normal. He catalogues, comments upon, and otherwise investigates the various types of sexual behaviours that are or have previously been labelled as deviant. The purpose of this exposé (pun intended),…

This review is lengthy and also gets quite personal, since I can’t help but examine For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood …and the Rest of Y’all Too in the light of my own experiences as a teacher.

TL;DR: Christopher Emdin is awesome, and this book is too. It’s short and accessible, but it has such staying power. I wish this were mandatory in teacher training everywhere. Also, minor spoilers for Anne of Green…

“But what about the men?” It’s a common refrain heard from people who have misinterpreted, or been misinformed about, the aims of feminism and its related movements. So-called “meninist” and “men’s rights activists” encourage the question, because they want to push the view that feminists want to attain women’s liberation and equality at the expense of men. As one men’s rights activist discovered, when one engages with the actual critical theory underlying feminism,…

I read most, if not all, of the Anne of Green Gables books as a kid (of course). I was very moved by Anne’s journey and transition to adulthood; even then, I was pretty sure I wanted to be a teacher, and so I was fascinated by her career path. While the details of the story have blurred with time, one memory continues to stick with me. In none book, Anne and a friend are…

What happens when you meet someone online and you’re struck by a sudden need to help them, but they live on the other side of the world and don’t speak English? Jen Wang and Cory Doctorow ponder the intricacies that teenagers have to deal with, often on their own, in our globalized world. There’s a lot to like about In Real Life, so let’s get into it.

Firstly, the obvious: this is a story…

Just last week, CBC News announced it was closing comments on articles about indigenous peoples, because at the moment, it cannot guarantee sufficient moderation to sustain polite discourse. In addition to the usual trolls, some people were writing hate speech motivated by a misconception of the state of indigenous peoples in Canada. And while this is reprehensible, it probably shouldn’t be surprising. We white people are very good at ignoring indigenous people—until we want their…

Election time is just around the corner, and boy am I … not excited. I would dearly like to see a change in the party that forms the next government … but I am somewhat sceptical we will manage to bring that about. But this isn’t about how much I dislike what Stephen Harper has done to Canada. I wrote a blog post about that for Canada Day. This is a review of Dismantling…

Last week’s Last Week Tonight (at the time when I wrote this review, though it will be last last week’s Last Week by the time you read this) had a segment on chicken farming, and specifically the impact that corporate-controlled factory farming has on farmers and their quality of life. I thought that was an interesting take on it. As I watched this segment, I already had Eating Animals sitting on my shelf, waiting…

I read the first 78 pages of this book so you don’t have to.

I was trying to make it to at least 100, but I’m sorry. The body is willing but the mind is weak.

I added this book to my to-read list after reading The God Delusion; it somehow coming up as a counterpoint to Dawkins’ atheistic arguments. I just went back and re-read my review of that book, and I’m pleased…

Well, don’t I feel all unoriginal. Here I was, prepared to critique this book’s extremely dry, technical style … only to read some of the other reviews on Goodreads and discover it is almost universally remarked upon. There goes that approach!

To be fair, I was going to moderate my criticism by pointing out that if you are studying linguistics or have anything more than the passing interest in it that I do, then The…

The human body is weird. I mean, it’s a wonder we function at all. We’re fragile bags of mostly water that support a strange and wonderful organ that seems to give us consciousness. All this happens through a complex set of interconnected systems that work to keep us alive. I’m really not down with the ickiness of my biology: bring on the robot bodies! Until that happens, though, I’m forced to agree with Lawrence Hill: …