“In Xanadu did Kublai Kahn a stately pleasure dome decree…” Coleridge
Our western view of oriental history really sucks, pardon the phrase. Western teachings are so self-centred. Canadian kids are forced to memorize a whole bunch of names and dates, as though that mattered, or would elucidate anything. Continue reading
A view from Britain by Jeremy Warner, at the Telegraph. Read the rest here.
McGuinty’s Men – Voter Beware
In two of the most prominent Ontario cities, Toronto and Ottawa, the McGuinty Liberals are trying to get their men in. In Ottawa it looks like a done deal for Jim Watson, a testimony to the short memories and fiscal imprudence of Ottawa voters. In Toronto, it is a tight race, with Ontario Minister of Health, George Smitherman battling it out with business man Rob Ford. Grab hold of your wallets, Ontarians, we are in deep trouble. Smitherman has overseen a flurry of scandals in the Minstry of Health, at a time when patients, not bureaucrats, could really have used the money. Instead it is gone – gone to consultants and used to pay ludicrous severances. Let us hope that at least in Toronto the McGuinty’s are foiled. Cities in debt, the province in debt, all that money is going to come out of our pockets eventually. Thank goodness provincial governments can’t print money.
Vote Today – even if you cannot prevent a Watson Mayoral victory, you can send a message. If you don’t vote, you lose your voice.
Ramesh Ponnuru & Rich Lowry have written a brilliant account of current American politics in National Review Online. Here is but a sample:
The liberal journalist Peter Beinart noted that for decades Democratic leaders had treated the American public’s latent conservatism as a sleeping bear: The chief imperative was to avoid sudden moves that would rouse it. But the Reagan era was now over, and Democrats no longer needed to live in fear. That’s what Obama’s “yes we can” slogan meant to liberals: Yes we can move past both conservatism and Clintonian triangulation. Liberalism was living in its favored political tense: the future perfect.
The full article can be found here.
I realize as I read news and think about it and talk about current events with others that there exists a conceptual gap between how I think about things, and how others might, particularly those with whom I disagree on process despite agreeing on desirable outcomes.
I want a peaceful political environment for my children to live in. I would like it if they could freely pursue their dreams and ambitions. I hope that our environment does not degrade, and that in particular we humans do not knowingly excessively degrade it. I hope that our economies will be sufficiently prosperous that we might not suffer hunger and cold. I hope the rule of law persists.
In all these objectives I find myself agreeing with almost everyone I meet. It is in the processes by which we might achieve these objectives that I find myself in disagreement with all but a small few (thanks Christy!). Yet I know I am right. How can this be? Continue reading
Our dog Mouse (our last was Wolf, son of Bear, dog of RedBeard) frequently gets walked at the Bruce Pit dog park in Ottawa. If you have a dog, you should know that they (and you!) are much happier and balanced when well-exercised. No-one reinforces this message in the public eye more and better than Cesar Millan, the “Dog Whisperer”, who will shortly be coming to Canada, and to Ottawa in particular. We would all do well to listen to Cesar’s messages of balance and humility, and to think more about what it all means in the grander context of humans who are in turn subservient to our “masters”, that is, our governments and their public institutions. Continue reading
It was a lovely sunny day, the wind was highly variable, oscillating between just to port and starboard of “right on the nose” from the Nor’west, as always seems the case when heading up through the shoals just outside the Thirty Thousand Islands of Georgian Bay.
Christy and I were in my Dad’s Catalina 22 sloop, a great boat for those waters: “The thing I love about the Catalina,”she noted wryly, after we were safely ensconced for the night, “is that you know you are in danger of hitting something when you can step dry off the bow,” which she had done just hours earlier. It is true. [ed: the photographic proof this can be done can be seen above] In the clear waters there, in that boat, if you can’t see it, you can’t hit it. We have come to rely on this feature when cruising, one that strangely remains unpublished in the manufacturer’s sales brochures. Continue reading
We are dog-people, and have had dogs pretty much all our respective lives. Our current hound is “Mouse”, a Bernese/Aussie rescue puppy from a pound in Alma, in northern Quebec. (We think we could have stumbled on a new breed, the Bossy 🙂
We thought, given the size of her paws when we first got her, that she was going to be Enor-mouse, but she stopped growing, and thus became simply “Mouse”. Continue reading
We are shortly heading off the to ski, snowboard and travel show to pick up some gear for the youngest lad, who has grown like a weed since last year.
Show opens at 10am this morning, at Lansdowne Park. Check it out!
ben
I often can’t properly remember how or why I arrive at any particular site on the web, but I also don’t often forget when I see something interesting, particularly if I feel strongly enough to comment on someone else’s blog. Back in 2008, after Tropic Networks was acquired by Alcatel-Lucent, I found myself in a very foreign environment, and asking, which is crazy, this place or me? I re-read Thomas Sowell’s A Conflict of Visions, amongst other works, to at least ensure that if crazy, I was in good company. Some improbable series of events must have occurred to land me on “lolife’s” site, but once there, I decided to comment, as I had already written up an odd experience, one that demonstrated the conflict of visions in action, in the specific area of employment equity. I was a blog-virgin up until that point, only ever before having posted comments to a few stock message boards on yahoo.
I clipped much of the discussion and place it below (sorry the format is a bit weird), but the original discussion can be found here. On our blog we will not resort to name calling, and expletives, but keep things civil. The discussion below relates to Lyle Rossiter’s assertion that liberalism/leftism (whatever that might mean) is a form of insanity. The bait looked just too tasty, so I bit. Enjoy.
