Author: Tim Platnich Date: January 18, 2026 As the title of this post suggests, the following is meant to be tongue-in-cheek. For more serious readers, see the links in the notes. Just the name 'ultra-processed' sends a shiver down one's back. But should it? Did you know that the following foods are considered in some of the literature to be ultra-processed:[1] sweetened orange juice low fat yogurt, especially flavoured yogurt virtually every type of bread but especially whit

Author: Tim Platnich Date: January 5, 2026 There is much press these days concerning provincial use of the 'notwithstanding clause'. This clause is part of the Canadian Constitution. It is section 33 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms . It is as much a part of the Constitution as are the sections of the Charter that can be overridden with its use. Section 33(1) says: "Parliament or the legislature of a province may expressly declare in an Act of Parliament or of t

Author: Tim Platnich Date: October 31, 2025 On Tuesday, October 28, 2025, the Alberta government passed Bill 2 - Back to School Act. [Please note that the link provided is to the Bill before it was assented to. I was unable to find the actual legislation online]. This legislation has three main components for our purposes in this post. First, it orders the teachers back to work. Second, it imposes a four year collective agreement between the various school boards (defined as

Author: Tim Platnich Date: October 23, 2025 In this post I question whether the rule of law in Canada is a fiction. In law, according to Black's Law Dictionary, a fiction is "an assumption that something is true even though it may be untrue .... ". Legal fictions are used by legislatures and judges when they deem it necessary to do justice. Here, the untrue assumption may be that in Canada, we are ruled by law and not by capricious decision makers. I am talking about posit

Author: Tim Platnich Date: October 12, 2025 Revised: October 13, 2025 Alberta K-12 teachers have grievances which include: pay and working conditions. Regarding pay, they argue they are underpaid. Let's analyze that a bit. Teachers argue that their pay has not kept up with inflation. Their existing pay scale was negotated and set by a collective agreement ratified in June, 2022 covering the school years of 2020/21 to 2023/24 (three years). According to a news article by CBC ,

Author: Tim Platnich Date: October 10, 2025 It strikes me that 'right-wing' and 'left-wing' are weaponized labels used to smear someone...

Author: Tim Platnich Date: October 6, 2025 I suppose it is not surprising that people support cancel culture provided that, and this is a...

Date: October 4, 2025 Author: Tim Platnich In 2023 about this time I posted Alberta Wildfires 202 3 . A question posed in that post was...

Author: Tim Platnich Date: October 3, 2025 Do you feel, from time to time, that political parties seeking election pull a bait and switch with their campaign? They make promises that, when elected, they make no effort to put into effect through legislation or otherwise. If elected, we will eliminate the GST? Hmm, GST. Too lucrative to give up. Elbows up! Where are the elbows? Or, they omit to mention a planned policy, say a carbon tax, in their campaign only to implement the

Author: Tim Platnich Date: October 3, 2025 In this post, I will propose, perhaps a bit tongue in cheek, that judges who are overtuned on appeal should be subject to potential cost awards against them. Oy. This is crazy talk. Let me explain. When a party is successful in court, the default rule is that costs are awarded in favour of the successful party against the unsuccessful party. The unsuccessful party, is, in effect, penalized for putting the successful party through the

Author: Tim Platnich Date: October 3, 2025 I am in the process of writing a book on the history of the English Common Law with a Canadian context in mind. In the course of researching and drafting the book, it struck me how the law has evolved slowly and cautiously over at least 800 years. Principles recognized during the Norman period of English history still operate within our legal system today. William the Conquerer, rather than imposing law from Normandy upon his new sub

Author: Tim Platnich Date: September 4, 2025 In ancient times, rhetoric was taught as a necessary skill for public debate. The skill was to be persuasive in speech. The skill was deemed necessary for democratic government. It was also deemed necessary for philosophical debate and the pursuit of truth. Over time, rhetorical speech acquired a structure that we would now call logical argument with an introduction, a narrative, an argument section and a conclusion. In medieval ti

Author: Tim Platnich Date First Published: August 16, 2025 Republished September 4, 2025 with substantial revisions. In this post I will...

Author: Tim Platnich Published: June 20, 2025 The US Supreme Court released its decision in United States v. Skrmetti, et al, on June 18,...

Published: June 10, 2025 Author: Tim Platnich Alcohol consumption, of any amount, is now reported to be akin to playing Russian roulette....

Author: Tim Platnich Orignally published: May 24, 2025 Revised: May 28, 2025 The fight between President Trump's administration and...

Author: Tim Platnich Dated: February 23, 2025 On Friday, January 24, 2025, the Alberta COVID-19 Pandemic Data Review Task Force (the...

Author: Tim Platnich Published: January 10, 2025 It is often reported in the media, in pejorative terms, that non-renewable energy...

Date: October 10, 2024 Author: Tim Platnich Last year about this time I posted about Alberta Wildfires 2023 . A question posed in that...

Date: August 24, 2024 Author: Tim Platnich I am not a fan of the 'left' and 'right' dichotomy. These days, the media typically express...

Author: Tim Platnich Date: August 12, 2024; Updated August 19, 2024 What I mean by reasonable people is people who think critically about issues. What I mean by thinking critically is explored in my previous post, here . For our purposes in this post, reasonable people are people who have formed opinions on issues after some research and analysis. Their opinions are tentative in that new research or demonstrated errors in their analayis may change their opinions. At the other

Author: Tim Platnich Date: May 18, 2024 Why are people homeless? I am sure there is a lot of data on this point. Without going into that data, analytically, there are four possible types of people who are homeless: 1) those that elect a homeless lifestyle; 2) those that are homeless due to mental illness; 3) those that are homeless due to drug or alcohol addiction; and 4) those who are involuntarily homeless due to financial or other causes. It may or may not be important to

Author: Tim Platnich Published: April 27, 2024 A tribe, in the most general sense, is a group of people who identify with the tribe's...

Author: Tim Platnich Publish Date: April 18, 2024 There are two fundamental pillars of progressive ideology. These are: critical theory and post-modernism. In a nutshell, critical theory divides people into two classes: the oppressors and the oppressed. This division applies in many contexts including: the rich oppressing the poor capitalists oppressing the proletariate white people oppressing everyone else men oppressing women successful people oppressing unsuccessful people

Author: Tim Platnich Published: April 5, 2024 In this post, I will talk about three ways science is used to magnify the risks faced by...

Author: Tim Platnich Originally Published: February 19, 2024; Revised February 25, 2024; Further Revised April 4, 2024 One merely needs to google 'attacks on science' to find numerous articles concerning people that are said to be anti-science. What does it mean to be anti-science? What is science? The term 'science' has two contexts. On the one hand, it refers to a method by which knowledge of the empirical world is obtained. On the other hand, it refers to the body of knowl

Author: Tim Platnich Original Publish Date: February 5, 2024; Updated April 5 and 12, 2024 On January 31, 2024, the Alberta government...

Original   Date:   January   28, 2024; Revised February 21, 2024. Author:   Tim   Platnich This post discusses the assertion that climate...

Original   Date:   January   25, 2024; Revised February 25, 2024 Author:   Tim   Platnich It is often reported in the media that a given...

Original Date: January 17, 2024; Revised February 25, 2024 Author: Tim Platnich The data supports the proposition that the average...

Original Date: January 10, 2024; Revised February 25, 2024 Author: Tim Platnich This post will deal with the presentation of temperature...

Original Date: January 10, 2024; Updated: January 14, 2024 and February 25, 2024. Author: Tim Platnich Following up on Post #2, I want to...

Original Date: January 10, 2024; Updated: January 14, 2024 and February 25, 2024 Author: Tim Platnich In the Post on Climate and Weather,...

Original Date: January 10, 2024; Revised February 25, 2024 Author: Tim Platnich Climate change is in the news daily. Over a series of...

Original Date: December 6, 2023 Author: Tim Platnich To answer this question, it seems logical to start with some understanding of what it means to 'colonize'. People migrate. The earliest homo sapiens migrated from Africa to the Middle East, Europe and Asia in repeated waves. Was the first migration a form of colonization? What about the subsequent migrations? Did homo sapiens colonize the Neanderthals who arrived in Europe first? What about the first-peoples of the Americas

I submit that rioting is always wrong. Let me explain. First, I will define what I mean by rioting. Rioting is a non-peaceful...

Let's say a 'critical thinker' is presented with a statement like 'X causes Y'. What does the critical thinker do with the statement? The...

Original Date: November 17, 2023; Updated January 14, 2024 Author: Tim Platnich In the recent Federal Court decision: Responsible Plastic...

Original Date: November 5, 2023; Updated: January 14, 2024 and August 24, 2024. Author: Tim Platnich In June, 2020, Prime Minister Justin...

Thomas Sowell, in his book "Notes on Social Justice Fallacies", makes some very interesting points about income brackets and the movement...

Date: February 22, 2024; Updated August 21, 2024 Revision: Substantially Revised: June 20. 2025 Author: Tim Platnich I am sure hundreds...

Tim Platnich Originally Published: October 22, 2023 The title is meant to be a double entendre . The elites I am referring to are those...

There are many popular environmentalists in the media that are resolutely anti-nuclear. David Suzuki comes to mind. Let's take a closer...

Governments have done a poor job of communicating what is involved in achieving Net Zero and the costs associated therewith. An article...

The Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) has just released its decision concerning the constitutionality of the federal Impact Assessment Act...

Original Date: October 13, 2023 Author: Tim Platnich The Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) released its decision in Reference re Impact...

Unfortunately people confuse a cause with the actions taken in support of a cause. Regardless of what one thinks about the cause of the...