“How can these people strike dignified attitudes, and pretend that things really matter, when the total ludicrousness of life is proved by the very method by which it is supported? A man strikes the lyre, and says, ‘Life is real, life is earnest,’ and then goes into a room and stuffs alien substances into a hole in his head.”
The king in G.K. Chesterton The Napoleon of Notting Hill
In my latest National Post column I say the American boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics was a much better idea than I realized at the time, and we should do it again over Beijing in 2022 for much the same reasons.
In my latest Epoch Times column I say the now-routine desperate improvisation to avoid fiscal ruin is not going to end well in Washington, or here in Canada.
“I couldn’t wait for success, so I went ahead without it.”
“Jonathan Winters (1925-), American comedian and actor” quoted as “Thought du jour” in “Social Studies” in Globe & Mail December 28, 2011
“The term nearest to being synonymous with pleasure is volition: what it pleases a man to do, or what he pleases to do, may be far from giving him enjoyment; yet shall we say that in doing it, he is not following his own pleasure?… A native of Japan, when he is offended, stabs himself to prove the intensity of his feelings. It is difficult to prove enjoyment in this case: yet the man obeyed his impulses.”
John Hill Burton, “Bentham’s editor”, quoted in I.A. Richards Principles of Literary Criticism and sourced to Jeremy Bentham’s Works, vol. I
In my latest Mercatornet column I say the mania for booster shots for vaccines that don’t work very well to stop a variant they may not work against at all is not science.
In my latest Epoch Times column I say if there’s really a burgeoning mental health crisis over hair loss we’ve lost more from our heads than just the stuff above our scalps.
“the humor of unleavened dough, the charm of a bag of cement, and the tact of a Mack Sennett rubber mallet.”
Frank Capra The Name Above the Title [the specific reference is to a Colonel in the Signal Corps that Capra was at one point obliged to deal with]