In my latest National Post column I say the inability to vaccinate in a pandemic isn’t isolated, it’s part of an overall crisis of governmental competence made worse by self-satisfaction and complacency.
In my latest National Post column I warn that the robots are coming faster than you think and CGI and AI spell big trouble.
“Invited to choose between two bad poets, Dr. Johnson said he declined to adjudicate the precedence between a louse and a flea.”
Mark Steyn in National Post June 28, 2001
“when we scrape away the varnish of wealth, education, class, ethnic origin, parochial loyalties, we discover that however much we’ve changed the shape of man’s physical environment, man himself is still sinful, vain, greedy, ambitious, lustful, self-centered, unrepentant, and requiring of restraint.”
Barry Goldwater With No Apologies (though elsewhere in the book even he said new technologies and ideas might make the world way better in the 21st century)
“The failure of modern culture lies not in its principle of individualism, not in the idea that moral virtue is the same as the pursuit of self-interest, but in the deterioration of the meaning of self-interest; not in the fact that people are too much concerned with their self-interest, but that they are not concerned enough with the interest of their real self; not in the fact that they are too selfish, but that they do not love themselves.”
Erich Fromm Man for Himself
“When you have nothing important or interesting to say, don’t let anyone persuade you to say it.”
H. Jackson Brown Jr. quoted on BrainyQuote (www.brainyquote.com/quotes/h_jackson_brown_jr_386408)
“In this cult of the pessimistic pleasure-seeker the Rubaiyat stands first in our time; but it does not stand alone.... The same lesson was taught by the very powerful and very desolate philosophy of Oscar Wilde. It is the carpe diem religion; but the carpe diem religion is not the religion of happy people, but of very unhappy people. Great joy does not gather the rosebuds while it may; its eyes are fixed on the immortal rose which Dante saw. Great joy has in it the sense of immortality; the very splendour of youth is the sense that it has all space to stretch its legs in. In all great comic literature, in ‘Tristram Shandy’ or ‘Pickwick’, there is this sense of space and incorruptibility; we feel the characters are deathless people in an endless tale. It is true enough, of course, that a pungent happiness comes chiefly in certain passing moments; but it is not true that we should think of them as passing, or enjoy them simply ‘for those moments’ sake.’ To do this is to rationalize the happiness, and therefore to destroy it. Happiness is a mystery like religion, and should never be rationalized.”
G.K. Chesterton Heretics
In my latest Loonie Politics column I say the mind-numbing vulgarity of Doug Ford’s comments about vaccine availability was just the beginning of their mind-numbing qualities.