“A vacation is having nothing to do and having all day to do it.”
Robert Orben, quoted in Reader’s Digest Canadian Edition November 2004
“For Christmas is, as a matter of fact, the standing example of the proposition which I have lately been maintaining; I mean the proposition that without the superhuman we are not human.”
G.K. Chesterton debating newspaper editor Robert Blatchford in December 2003, quoted by Sean P. Dailey in “Tremendous Trifles” in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 7 #3 (December 2003)
“Tomorrow is Christmas! It’s practically here!”
The Grinch in Dr. Seuss How the Grinch Stole Christmas
“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.