In my latest for BOE Report I say it’s characteristically absurd to claim that global warming, if it is happening, makes it harder for people to live in the Arctic.

“Laugh, and the world laughs with you;/ Weep, and you weep alone;/ For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,/ But has trouble enough of its own…. There is room in the halls of pleasure/ For a large and lordly train,/ But one by one we must all file on/ Through the narrow aisles of pain.”

Ella Wheeler Wilcox, “Solitude,” in William Bennett The Book of Virtues [beginning and end of the poem]

Regarding a Bible Ukrainian Christians had secretly copied by hand under Communism, “Would similar risks have been taken and similar loving care have been expended on copying out, say, Magna Carta if for some reason it had become unobtainable? Or the American Declaration of Independence? Or the Communist Manifesto? Or Lady Chatterley’s Lover? Or The Thoughts of Chairman Mao? Or, descending to what Dr Johnson called unresisting imbecility – the recently acclaimed Helsinki Declaration?”

Malcolm Muggeridge in a 1976 speech in Ian Hunter, ed., The Very Best of Malcolm Muggeridge

“‘What is it that I don’t know?’ Sir Humphrey feigned ignorance. ‘Minister,’ he said, ‘I don’t know what you don’t know. It could be almost anything.’”

A Jim Hacker diary entry in Yes Minister Vol. I

In my latest Loonie Politics column I say whatever valid grounds might exist for criticizing Conservative leader Andrew Scheer, a soft spot for bigots isn’t one of them and it’s absurd for the press to say otherwise.

“Men go abroad to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars; and they pass by themselves without wondering.”

St. Augustine, quoted on title page of John Stewart Collis Living With A Stranger: A Discourse on the Human Body.

NB this interview was done before the government said it would pay Admiral Norman’s legal bills. But I stand by my claim that the ordeal he went through, including having to fund the case himself while it was in progress and with no reasonable expectation that his bills would be covered, constitutes a powerful deterrent to anyone rocking the boat or, in this case, the supply ship..

“When experience is not retained… infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

George Santayana, quoted in Leonard Read Let Freedom Reign [I know you all know the 2nd part, but the 1st is also important]