On politics, religion, ideas, the culture, the history.
I have fallen in love with Sophie Cunningham, and even though she is a basketball star (I loathe basketball), and more than six feet tall (which is surely excessive). She excels also in every other sport, can beat the boys if they will let her play with them, and can dance and sing and drink. [ ]
My mysterious South Australian correspondent, writing from a location precisely north of the absolute South Pole, shares these comments from the esteemed Friedrich Nietzsche: Modern, noisy, time-consuming, proud industriousness has extinguished the religious instincts, so that people no longer have any idea of what religions are about and, as it were, just register their presence [ ]
Grouse are adapted not merely to an environment, but also to being grouse. There is something remarkably grouse-like in their overall design, many constituent parts, and in each of their responses to stimuli. They even seem to know that they are grouse; to be contented with that identity, willing to live and even die in [ ]
It is some time since I tried to read Polybius (c.202 120 B..C.), the ancient historian. It was a memorably difficult, and fairly rewarding experience, which I kept mostly to myself. Part of the difficulty was from the man s style. Though a Hellenistic Greek, he gives a good and admiring account of the Roman Empire that [ ]
Despite my near-allergy to Hawaiian shirts, and to those children born in the West since the fall of the Soviet Union, and even though I am fanatically opposed to abortions, regardless of birthdates, I have formed something of a male crush on Palmer Luckey, and his Anduril company. I am also, incidentally, disgusted by mullet [ ]
If I may be boastful for a moment, and I may, it was glorious to remember Roger Smith, although I could not be present at his coffee shop tribute in the dark interior of mountainous British Columbia recently. This dear companion of my childhood and youth left a musical and meteorological legacy among those lucky [ ]
Not having believed in the crisis of overpopulation, when it was in style back in the seventies, I have little trouble not believing in the crisis of underpopulation now. Neither will make our societies any better or worse. Making them better has always been an end in itself, quite distinct from statistics. Without such non-statistical, [ ]
As an indigenous Canadian my father, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers were all born here I am naturally ashamed of how this country is grossly misgoverned. This goes beyond questions of political party, for all parties, though especially the Liberals, have contributed to our dive into a seemingly bottomless shithole (a technical term in economics). [ ]
The year nineteen hundred and ninety-three was of some personal significance, for at least two persons. Ann Widdicombe became a Roman Catholic which did not necessarily advance her political career in England. I almost became one, while my journalistic career, as publisher of the Idler magazine, was also characteristically failing. Indeed, in December of [ ]
There are arguments to be made against AI (artificial intelligence). They are not true economic arguments, however. According to one of several rare intelligent economists (Mario Loyola by name), the great chain of being runs in this way: 1. technology increases the productivity of labour; 2. which increases the amount of investment and wages; 3. [ ]
What an idiot I have been! This is something one perhaps thinks, increasingly, as one grows past the age when any of one s mistakes are retrievable. It certainly is the case with moi. At first, one became acquainted with the face-grabber. This was something spontaneous, and could not be concealed, though with practice one learnt [ ]
It does not seem an appropriate day to dwell on one, or on any, of my old U.E.L. themes. I might have made the subject the omnipresent, and not very well-meaning, bullshit that filled the Declaration of Independence. We might have examined it phrase by phrase, while asking of each: Is, or was this, entirely [ ]
I learn from the Internet that it will be the 250th anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence, on July 4th, which is tomorrow. It was incamminated by Thomas Jefferson not a man I would trust, then or now, although my own mother was a fan of his. The Continental Congress adopted this resolution, [ ]
In an Idlepost entitled Proudly unCanadian, published on the 4th of July last year, I expressed my shame in our national existence. This year, as well as repeating it, let me add my very low opinion of Charles III, our reigning monarch. He has proclaimed himself the defender of our multiple faiths. This includes those [ ]