“IF AN AIRLINE PILOT CAN REMEMBER ALL THE BUTTONS… YOU TOO CAN USE THE TURN SIGNAL LEVER”
Graphic emailed by a friend without attribution
“BY his very success in inventing labour-saving devices, modern man has manufactured an abyss of boredom that only the privileged classes in earlier civilizations have ever fathomed.”
“Lewis Mumford in The Conduct of Life (1951)” – as “Thought du jour” in Globe & Mail Feb. 21, 2002
“The period during which light was ‘sometimes a wave and sometimes a particle’ was a period of crisis – a period when something was wrong – and it ended only with the development of wave mechanics and the realization that light was a self-consistent entity different from both waves and particles. In the sciences, therefore, if perceptual switches accompany paradigm changes, we may not expect scientists to attest to these changes directly. Looking at the moon, the convert to Copernicanism does not say, ‘I used to see a planet, but now I see a satellite.’ That locution would imply a sense in which the Ptolemaic system had once been correct. Instead, a convert to the new astronomy says, ‘I once took the moon to be (or saw the moon as) a planet, but I was mistaken.’ That sort of statement does recur in the aftermath of scientific revolutions.”
Thomas S. Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: 50th Anniversary Edition
In my latest Loonie Politics column I argue that most politicians and voters across the spectrum seem dangerously complacent in practice even on topics where their rhetoric is shrill and panicky.
This week on Juno News with Melanie Bennet I discussed my crusade against photo-radar speed tickets as a breach of the social contract and the rule of law.
“Compaq FAQ: Where do I find the ‘Any’ key on my keyboard? (FAQ2859) The term ‘any key’ does not refer to a particular key on the keyboard. It simply means to strike any one of the keys on your keyboard or handheld screen.”
http://web14.compaq.com/falco/detail.asp?FAQnum=FAQ2859 as of Jan. 6, 2002, forwarded by a suitably appalled friend
“I’m not sure I believe all this stuff about genetically modified food being bad for you. I just had a really tasty leg of salmon and I feel fine…”
Emailed by a friend October 31, 2024, as a graphic and without attribution
On Miracle Channel TV recently I spoke about our government’s pigheaded persistence in forcing EVs on us with Paul Arthur.