"There is no significance to the sound and fury of his [man’s] life, as of a stage tragedy, unless something is being affirmed by the complete action."

Richard Weaver Ideas Have Consequences p. 20.

My segment with Mark Sutcliffe on CIWW 1310 in Ottawa on my National Post column on the worrying speed at which AI is getting away from us. (Also some discussion of Doug Ford and the Ontario PCs.)

In my latest National Post column I say the breathtaking pace at which artificial intelligence is developing is more important than politics... and even scarier.

"I am put in mind of a little book, titled Manners, that my own grandmother gave me as a child…. printed in 1912…. which I have sadly misplaced… good for a laugh when I was a teenager…. It was a noble little book, as I came to see later…. Implicit within every statement in the book was a conception of civilization, an aspiration to raise ourselves up. Not simply to ‘get ahead,’ but to rise out of the slovenly condition of being barbaric."

David Warren in Ottawa Citizen April 9, 2002 [reflecting on Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother]

“In Mr. Arcand’s film [Les Invasions Barbares], there are many suggestions that, like Rome, our culture has become decadent enough to be vulnerable to barbarians, however unworthy they may be. Most barbarians have the vigour of their appetites, if not the courage of their convictions. The barbarians who savaged America on 9/11 had the courage of their convictions, too."

William Thorsell in Globe & Mail August 30, 2004

"Half his power lay in a conciliating trick of sinking the commander in the leader."

E.W. Hornung, The Amateur Cracksman gentleman thief