Ben Buckley
We are living in a post-post 9/11 world
September 16, 2013The image of the burning towers was the first thing on television when I woke up on September 11, 2001. Being nine years old at the time, I didn’t fully understand the significance of the event; I knew it was an attack on a famous building, and I knew that it was bad, but I also knew that a lot of bad things happened on the news. What made this event so special? It seemed to my naive nine year old self that all the adults around me were overreacting. I remember my parents telling me that people would still…
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Uncertainty should be approached logically
July 29, 2013In past columns, I’ve talked a lot about logical fallacies, and I know what you’ve been thinking: “Ben, this talk about logic is all fine and dandy, but the real world is messy, and we have to make decisions based…
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Turn and face the strange
July 15, 2013Sometimes it’s important to step back and ask yourself: “Why are we here?” Not in the cosmic sense, of course. What I mean is, why am I writing for a newspaper, and why are you reading one? The standard answer…
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Keeping to the middle is not always wise
July 1, 2013By Ben Buckley Photos by Ben Buckley Here’s a hypothetical scenario for you. Three people named A, B and C are talking. Person A says, “The sky is blue.” Person B says, “You’re wrong! I know for a fact that…
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SFU’s debate clubs put rhetoric in its place
June 24, 2013By Leah Bjornson Photos by Ben Buckley I think we all have that one friend we end up bickering with. These are the types of debates where no matter how logical you feel your argument to be, it’s usually the…
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Cherry-picking does not equal confirmation
June 17, 2013By Ben-Buckley If you want to know the truth about something, you should look at the raw facts and figures with as little bias as possible, and allow your conclusion to emerge naturally from the data. This may seem obvious,…
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Let’s talk about sex, baby
June 17, 2013By Ljudmila Petrovic Photos by Ben-Buckley I was recently out shopping when Bruno Mars’ “Locked Out of Heaven” came on the radio. Now, one of the lines of this song is, “your sex takes me to paradise,” except in…
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Convocating doesn’t seem worth its hefty price tag
June 10, 2013With all the hidden fees, you'd think we could at least get financial sponsorship from Capital One By Rachel Braeuer Photos by Ben Buckley A post-secondary education may be the ticket to higher earning potential, but not before your institution…
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Don’t let questions get the best of you
June 3, 2013A case for questioning all questions By Ben Buckley One of my favourite clichés in televised news is the way they present stories not as complete sentences, but as questions: “Could eating carrots be slowly killing your children? Details at…
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Violent anarchists not helping the fight against gentrification
May 27, 2013There's got to be a better way than burning down the house By Joel Mackenzie Photos by Ben Buckley Self-proclaimed “anarchists” have taken responsibility for the recent burning of a housing development in Vancouver’s downtown Eastside, all in the name…
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