“If you're shopping in a Home Depot store, and someone who doesn't work there offers you assistance, you may live in Canada.
If you've worn shorts and a parka at the same time, you may live in Canada.
If you've had a lengthy telephone conversation with someone who dialed a wrong-number, you may live in Canada.
If 'vacation' means going anywhere south of Detroit for the weekend, you may live in Canada.
If you measure distance in hours, you may live in Canada.
If you know several people who have hit a deer more than once, you may live in Canada.
If you've switched from 'HEAT' to 'AIR-CONDITIONING' and back again, in the same day, you may live in Canada.
If you can drive 90 kilometers an hour through 2 feet of snow, during a raging blizzard, without flinching, you may live in Canada.
If you install security lights on your house and garage, but leave both unlocked, you may live in Canada.
If you carry jumper-cables in your car, and your wife knows how to use them, you may live in Canada.
If you design your child's Halloween costume to fit over a snowsuit, you may live in Canada.
If the speed limit on the highway is 100 km/hour, and you're going at 120, and everyone's passing you, you may live in Canada.
If driving is better in the winter because all the potholes are filled with snow, you may live in Canada.
If you know all four seasons: Almost-winter, Winter, Still-winter, and Road Construction: you may live in Canada.
If you have more miles on your snow-blower than on your car, you may live in Canada.
If you think of minus-2-degrees as being 'a little chilly', you may live in Canada.”

Complete text of that part of an interesting-item roundup email from a friend Nov. 22 2025

“Organizations must be based on many issues. Organizations need action as an individual needs oxygen. The cessation of action brings death to the organization through factionalism and inaction, through dialogues and conferences that are actually a form of rigor mortis rather than life.”

Saul Alinsky Rules for Radicals

“In 1925, one of the most popular cars in America was the 20-horsepower Ford Model T. According to the manual, the Model T tops out at 45 miles per hour. Not bad, but there’s a catch. The aerodynamics of the car are so poor that Road & Track likens it to a barn door. That’s a problem in 100 mile per hour headwinds.”

Cody Cassidy How to Survive History: How to Outrun a Tyrannosaurus, Escape Pompeii, Get Off the Titanic, and Survive the Rest of History’s Deadliest Catastrophes p. 191 [the context being could you escape the March 18, 1925 Tri-State Tornado in one and the answer being that in such conditions a Model T could barely keep up with a running man].

“The fourth rule is: Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity. The fourth rule carries within it the fifth rule: Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage. The sixth rule is: A good tactic is one that your people enjoy. If your people are not having a ball during it, there is something very wrong with the tactic. The seventh rule: A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag. Man can sustain militant interest in any issue for only a limited time, after which it becomes a ritualistic commitment, like going to church on Sunday mornings.”

Saul Alinsky Rules for Radicals [I quote the first part in large measure because I find it dismally relativist].

During the South Sea Bubble “‘Every fool aspired to be a knave.’”

Charles Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds [he provides no source or citation for that marvellous line, however].

“And in that glance [eye to eye] you see the sort of man: and chiefly there are two sorts. The one sort always brooding, always planning; mean, silent men, collecting properties and money; keeping the law on their side, keeping everything on their side; except women and heaven, and the late, leisurely judgement of simple people: and the others merry folk, whose eyes twinkle, whose money flies, who will sooner laugh than plan, who seem to inherit rightfully the happiness that others plot for, and fail to come by with all their schemes.”

Lord Dunsany Don Rodriguez: Chronicles of Shadow Valley [filed in my notes under “Scrooge and Cratchit”]

Re the end of apartheid then communism: “Communism, weighed in the scales of history, had been found wanting. To [F.W.] de Klerk, pious Calvinist that he was, all this had manifestly appeared the writing of God’s finger on the affairs of the world. This was not, however, how it tended to be seen by policymakers in America and Europe. They drew a different lesson. That the paradise on earth foretold by Marx had turned out instead to be closer to a hell only emphasized the degree to which the true fulfillment of progress was to be found elsewhere. With the rout of communism, it appeared to many in the victorious West that it was their own political and social order that constituted the ultimate, the unimprovable form of government. Secularism; liberal democracy; the concept of human rights: these were fit for the whole world to embrace. The inheritance of the Enlightenment was for everyone: a possession for all of mankind. It was promoted by the West, not because it was Western, but because it was universal. The entire world could enjoy its fruits. It was no more Christian than it was Hindu, or confusion, or Muslim. There was neither Asian nor European. Humanity was embarked as one upon a common road. The end of history had arrived.”

Tom Holland Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World

“STEVEN GUILBEAULT HAS RESIGNED FROM CABINET/ A TRAGIC DAY FOR MEN WHO CUT THEIR OWN HAIR IN THE DARK”

Standalone unattributed image emailed by a friend Dec. 1, 2025 showing Guilbeault with a bad ragged bowl cut.