“University of Hawaii researcher Lou Herman ‘has proved that dolphins are capable of complex problem solving, demonstrating prodigious feats of learning, memory and creativity,’ reports Reader’s Digest. ‘One well-known anecdote involves a clever aquarium dolphin who was rewarded by his trainers for retrieving one piece of garbage after another. It turns out that, in order to maximize his fishy rewards, the dolphin had stashed an entire newspaper at the bottom of the tank and was tearing off one small piece at a time.’”

“Social Studies” in Globe & Mail June 12, 2012

In my latest Epoch Times column I explain why I didn’t berate a guy over Ukraine just because he had a Russian accent.

“The secret of success is to do the common things uncommonly well.”

John D. Rockefeller, quoted in an RBC Financial Group ad in Globe & Mail February 7, 2004

“We deliberate not about ends but about means.”

Aristotle Ethics

“the great and awful book of human folly, which yet remains to be written, and which Porson once jestingly said he would write in five hundred volumes!”

1841 Preface to Charles Mackay Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

“Economists... conducted an experiment at a poor, minority school district near Chicago where they randomly assigned some teachers to receive end-of-year bonuses based on student improvement, while other teachers received upfront bonuses that could be revoked at the end of the year if student improvement was below average.... the only difference was the timing of the bonus. There were ‘large and statistically significant gains’ on math test scores when bonuses were paid upfront, but not when bonuses were paid at the end of the year.... the prospect of having to give back money they had already received was more motivating for teachers than the prospect of getting money.”

The Boston Globe, reprinted in “Social Studies” in Globe & Mail August 7, 2012

In my latest National Post column I say while politicians often hurt us by mistake, they boasted repeatedly that they would make gas unaffordable. So how’s it working for you?

“She didn’t wait for her ship to come in, she swam out to it.”

Letter from Maymar Gemmell in Maclean’s March 18, 1996 regarding the recently deceased Barbara Hamilton