Alan M. Shen

Forget everything you think you know about the devil. Before the shadowy villains and horned tempters of modern pop culture, there was John Milton’s Satan—a character so compelling, so tragic, and so fiercely heroic that he has captivated and troubled readers for over 350 years. In his epic 1667 poem, Paradise Lost, Milton set out to “justify the ways of God to man”, but in the process, he created literature’s greatest anti-hero. He crafted a fallen angel who is far from a simple embodiment of evil, but rather a complex, noble, and courageous figure who defies the Almighty. ...

The personalized nature of our online experiences, driven by algorithms on social media and news platforms, often leads to a phenomenon where individuals primarily encounter content that aligns with their existing interests and beliefs. This is commonly referred to as a “filter bubble.” This curated information environment is increasingly a subject of academic and legal scrutiny, both in Canada and internationally. At their core, the algorithms powering these platforms aim to maximize user engagement by learning from online behaviours—such as clicks, likes, and shares—to deliver more of what appears to resonate with the individual. While this tailored content delivery can enhance user experience, it also presents a significant challenge: the creation of an insular information space. When individuals are predominantly exposed to content that reinforces their pre-existing perspectives, their exposure to diverse viewpoints diminishes. ...

Imagine you’re in Canada and you buy a handmade leather jacket from a small shop in Italy. The payment is processed through a bank in Ireland, and the jacket is shipped from a warehouse in Germany. It arrives damaged. You decide to sue. But whose law applies? Canada’s? Italy’s? Germany’s? This maddening puzzle is the daily work of “private international law,” and for centuries, the answer was a chaotic mess. That is, until a 19th-century German legal scholar named Friedrich Carl von Savigny came along and gave the world a revolutionary new way to think—a kind of GPS for finding the law. He didn’t just propose a new rule; he changed the entire way we approach cross-border legal problems. ...

Every revolution begins with a beautiful dream. On Manor Farm, the dream was sparked by the noble hog Old Major. At his call, the animals, long suffering under human exploitation, vowed to overthrow their masters and create a world where all animals were finally equal. They succeeded. But the brave new world they envisioned never came. Instead, their dream curdled into a nightmare of increased persecution, proving George Orwell’s timeless point: the road to hell is often paved with the best intentions. ...