Category Archives: Lifes Lessons

Lifes Lessons, Sport

A Boxing Death In 2025

We are not evolving as human beings. I suspect we are actually regressing in intellect and in conscience. I have never paid to see a boxing match except for Rocky in the theatre as a child. I did see a nephew once in bout. I don’t understand an effort of beating someone up as sport. If I was accosted physically by someone on the street, I would see this as a perfect place for inflicting utter harm on another but not in a ring surrounded by spectators. The martial arts have a strong modicum of respect and conduct entrenched and disciplines are oriented around self defense. In other words, boxing and martial arts are two different things.


In a core subject within my Physical Education discipline back in the early ’80’s we had taken up the merits of boxing in a debate. My position then was as it is now. Don’t do it. Don’t support it. It doesn’t serve society or the individual. There are so many other ways to compete physically and mentally which don’t have the end goal of uncivilly harming someone else’s good health.


Why do we pay to watch? Why do boxers pursue the sport? Do men and women box and pay to watch boxing because of some neanderthal like instinct of survival where fighting is perceived as a means for self sufficiency and perhaps expressive toward the onlooking female as way to gain favor. Of course, this motive contrasts with the cooperative ideal of a civil society whereby conscience in a higher form may morally restrict unleashing unnecessary physical harm on another human being.


In our quest for freedom, do we act beyond the conscienable? Do we exempt moral suasion in the face of a perceived overriding freedom and quest for profit? Do we actually possess intuitively the capacity to empathize wholly with the plight of another when another is carried from a ring on a stretcher? Can an individual be guided intuitively at all by an awareness of spirit extending beyond the self or is any effort only fictionally derived from parent / teacher coaching? If we are more than blood, bone, and water….where from do emotions such as guilt, greed, and love manifest? What must we think of the love lost by the death of a boxer? Having paid to watch boxing where a person dies, what are we to think of ourselves?


The fellow who recently died was an Irishman named John Cooney aged 28. It’s very sad. Thinking of all who knew him today and all his good deeds throughout his 28 years.

Lifes Lessons, Philosophy, Politics

Donald Trump – I Told You So

Finally those Canadians with financial and social stature have come to the table wholeheartedly to denounce Trump. If it’s taken you this long….we needed you in 2014/ 2015. We needed you to speak out emphatically that a man of deviant morals and conduct unbecoming of political party leadership could not ascend to a position of political power. However; most of you were mute. You didn’t want to ruffle feathers. You didn’t want to leave any kind of perception with others that you empathized with his policies and that you could rationalize his character in favor of Republican ideals. You may have been fearful of retribution. I say this emphatically now if you were mute – shame on you!!


Shame on you if you bought into some conspiracy theory about the “deep state” without presenting proof. Shame on you if bought into his lies and deceit. Shame on you if you were so naive that he had nothing to do with the Capitol attack on January 6th, 2021 especially in lieu of his conduct on that day and a reference to a vigilante group of whose name he was familiar. Shame on you if you thought that all women alleging sexual assault conspired together for financial gain by falsifying claims of sexual assault. Shame on you if you discounted the 3,500 – 4,000 lawsuits for which he or his companies were cited in lawsuits as standard practice for business. Shame on you if you believed that he had every right morally to withhold presentation of his tax returns upon request given a quest for the Presidency. Shame on you if you had normalized in your mind a fabrication of Barak Obama’s birth records. Shame on you if you normalized a a man with a tawdry record as his 2016 campaign manager. Shame on you if you had watched episodes of “The Apprentice” and had not picked up samples of his character flaws. Shame on you if you hadn’t surmised that bankrupting companies would correlate with mismanaging a government. Shame on you if you were indifferent by his indifference toward Russia invading Ukraine. Shame on you if you believe that the fabrication of real estate’s market value is an innocuous clerical mishap in the context of a loan application. Shame on you if you believe that paying money to a pornstar in order to conceal a perceived character flaw is all good campaign practice. Shame on you if you believe that engaging in acts of deceit is what can be expected of a Presidential candidate.


Now Donald Trump near the date of his second inauguration has appeared before the media handling a question about whether he would annex Canada by force. Imagine that. Here we are. Canada’s relationship with the U.S. has been severely damaged by the imposition of tariffs and the abrogation of the North American Free Trade Agreement. He is referencing Canada as a “failed state”.

Lifes Lessons, Lifestyle

Canadians Goin’ Broke

Half of Canadians are $200 or less away from not being able to pay their bills. Accounting firm MNP has been watching an “insolvency” metric a claim that it is up 8 per cent in Q4 2024 vs Q3 2024.

Why is this? Let me postulate.

  1. Acquiesce to desires of spouse despite financial condition.
  2. Absence of household budgets
  3. Excessive expense on:
    • Alcohol
    • Restaurants
    • Travel
    • Automobile
  4. Luxury items
  5. Spontaneity versus good planning.
  6. Too much house
  7. Interest and penalties on tax

Lifes Lessons, Lifestyle

Fly The World In Faith

Fly the world in faith. It’s one segment of society where statistically we’ve improved. It’s never been safer to fly partly because of absolute attention put on “internal controls” having learned lessons from past accidents. This isn’t to say that those controls can’t be compromised when parties have self interests to serve. I think the Tenerife disaster was monolithic in producing necessary regulation. If I recall from an episode of “Mayday” or something similar way back…..the attitude of the most senior pilot of one of the two planes and the circumstances surrounding events produced the kind of impatience and poor decision making which culminated with the collision. The thing about life is that nothing is for certain despite man’s good intention and effective execution. We can all look to recent events whereby expectations were met with far differing results.

Naturally, we go about our business and take a plane when the need or responsible desire arises. We are aware of the privilege and we play by necessary rules. There is a bigger chance of getting struck by a vehicle while walking to work than there is of dying on an airplane. Pilots have check and balances every time they walk into a cockpit. The driver of a 4×4 pick up truck unsettled by matters at home and potentially distracted by a phone is a much bigger risk.

However; at times like this when we learn of an air disaster, it gives us pause to reflect on the delicacy of life and how none of us are immune from one very bad move from another. Despite some obvious cocooning arising from the pandemic and otherwise, all of us look to adventure in some way, shape, or form as a means to elicit happiness. Unfortunately, a price can be paid via risk in the quest for adventure. It’s a price which keen happy hungry humans are rightfully willing to pay and we honor those lost in pursuit.   

Lifes Lessons, Sport

Canadian Soccer Cheaters

If you spy on your opponent by flying a drone into their practice, you are a cheater. Cheaters should be disqualified from competition. Any Olympic medal arising having been caught being a cheat would forever hold an asterisk should the governing body deem that the act could be rationalized in a way to impose only a penalty instead of a disqualification. This is the situation currently with the Canadian women’s soccer team at the Paris 2024 Olympics. Yes….there would be honest committed women soccer players hurt because of an unethical coach. These young women would come to learn that life isn’t always fair in that honest committed athletes would come to pay a price for their unethical leader(s). Of course it will be complicated when it shouldn’t be because of the enormity of sacrifice of so many involved. There is also the backdrop of our new age of failing to be resolute and absolute. We’ve become so good at turning a blind eye due to the work involved in producing accountability. Send the Canadian women’s soccer team home. They have cheated. They have also stained Canada’s image on the world stage at a time when we should be rebuilding it.