If people want radically different things from their government, it’s unlikely there’s going to be enough political stability to produce much of anything. So it’s a sign of a healthy society that the distance between Liberals and Conservatives in Canada… Read More ›
covid
OBITUARY
It’s by no means a certainty, but it’s beginning to look like Trump isn’t going to win a second term. Some people think he’s going to find some pretext not to step down, but I think they’re just awfulizing. He’s… Read More ›
THE MEANING OF LIFE
In an entry I posted on March 30 entitled “A Walk in the Sun”, I predicted the Covid crisis would be over by the beginning of summer. I was wrong. There now appears to be no way to predict how… Read More ›
THE PIVOT
A servant serves a master. A public servant serves the public. Dr. Deborah Birx was quintessentially that. Note the ‘was’, because yesterday, May 7, she pivoted. You can tell she pivoted from public servant to servant of Donald Trump when,… Read More ›
COVID 19 AND PRIVILEGE
On the assumption things don’t get so bad that we descend into anarchy, those of us with protected incomes have a much better chance than those who don’t of coming out of this thing financially intact, but also physically intact…. Read More ›
WE HUMANS ARE ODD
They asked me to stay home for a couple of weeks, and I did what they asked. Then they asked me to stay home for another two weeks, and after that another, and then another, and now yet another. The… Read More ›
THE NO-END-IN-SIGHT CLAUSE
All the epidemiologists and politicians are talking about flattening the curve, by which they don’t mean– at least not necessarily – reducing the total area under the curve, i.e. reducing the number of people who’ll eventually contract Covid 19. Even… Read More ›
THE REAL COST OF COVID 19
Here’s a well-known fact, or at least it would be well-known if it were given a moment’s thought. Most of the people who work for a living, at least in the so-called developed world, don’t actually produce anything. They don’t… Read More ›
A WALK IN THE SUN
There’s a remote possibility that … Hang on. To assert that something is highly unlikely – for example that civilization as we know it will come to an end as a result of this Covid 19 pandemic – presupposes a… Read More ›
ONLY BAD PEOPLE ASK BAD QUESTIONS
I guess this is a case of in for a penny, in for a pound. How so? Because once one’s asked – as I have in an earlier post – how many lives have actually been saved once we include… Read More ›