“Social questions are the vital questions of today; they take the place of religion.”

Beatrice Webb in her diary in 1884, quoted in Gertrude Himmelfarb The De-moralization of Society

A brief excerpt from a chess instructional video by GM Ben Finegold. His comments on chess are great... if you like chess. (And you can find lots of them on YouTube.) But this is a rather wistful reflection on how much childhood has changed that I think is of far wider interest.

“that was like trying to teach a goldfish how to play basketball over the phone.”

Somebody posting as “TouchOGray” June 25 2008 (in an online thread about whether it’s OK to leave a bicycle in an unheated shed for the winter)

In Convivium I say the NAC production of Roch Carrier’s “The Hockey Sweater” is a surprising, delightful and morally intelligent improvement on the original.

In my latest Loonie Politics column I say the Trudeau administration’s $1.6 billion oil industry bailout is cunning politics driven by lousy economics.

“The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”

Archilochus, a 7th century BC Greek poet, quoted by Paul P. Streeton in Gerald M. Meier and Dudley Seers Pioneers in Development