Every autumn, I join tens of thousands of people in an annual run to make breast cancer history. I run for my mom, a cancer survivor, and for the millions of other people who have faced this terrible disease. Every year, I spend hundreds of dollars and hundreds of hours to keep this website and […]
cancer
Help! Let’s kick cancer’s butt together
Let me be blunt. Cancer sucks. So let’s do something about it. This is the fourth year my daughter and I are participating in the Run for the Cure (October 2) to make cancer history (aka to kick cancer’s butt). If you appreciate this blog I hope you’ll consider donating at our fundraising site here. […]
C.A.N.C.E.R.
I love discovering new bands: some are new new; others are just new-to-me. This weekend I discovered Architects, a new-to-me UK metalcore band that remind me a lot of Underoath (an American metalcore band which is one of my favorites). Now before I go further with this whole metalcore thing, let me point out that I also […]
A Child Dying of Cancer Should Change Us All
A few weeks ago grieving father Andy Whelan posted a photo of his beloved four year old daughter Jessica in the midst of agony from the cancer that would soon take her life. Whelan posted the photo so that the world could appreciate the horror of childhood cancer and be motivated anew to fight it. […]
If you appreciate my blog, please make a donation to fight cancer
I have never asked for a donation to sustain this blog. Nor have I ever received any money for advertising (save a very modest kickback from Amazon.com). As a result, I invest over $1000 of my own money per year running this website in addition to hundreds of hours writing and producing content. Here’s what I […]
Ran for the Cure
This morning I joined my daughter and Ran for the Cure at the annual Run for the Cure event in Edmonton to raise money to fight breast cancer. It was an inspiring event, with more than 10,000 people participating to kick cancer in the teeth. I came to the event thinking that the run was […]
Running to make cancer history, one step at a time
In his magisterial book The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, Doctor Siddhartha Mukherjee tells the story of a dreaded disease, and the indomitable human spirit that has fought it throughout our history. Cancer is a hydra-headed beast, and our struggles with it will only increase in the future. As the fight continues, […]
Will there be deafness in heaven? What about cancer?
Chapter 8 of my book What on Earth do we Know About Heaven? (Baker, 2012) addresses the topic of the Deaf in heaven. In the chapter I point out that we need to distinguish between being deaf (an auditory deficiency) and being Deaf (a member of Deaf culture). Deafness in the latter sense is not […]
On the passing of Christopher Hitchens
I saw Christopher Hitchens speak once at a book convention in Dallas in March 2009. He was put on a platform against five Christian theists (!). Count ’em: five! I blogged about that here. It looked rather ridiculous, but I can undertand why. Even if Hitchens wasn’t much of a technical philosopher, he was a master rhetorician […]
Michael Douglas on the upside of cancer
It came as a shock to many last August when Michael Douglas, in an appearance on David Letterman, announced that he had been diagnosed with stage four throat cancer. And the Letterman public appearance would be the last one before disappearing down the black hole of seven weeks of intense radiation therapy. Douglas has since […]