"Let’s start this brief review of 2014 on the positive side, with a quote from the new head of TD Bank, Bahrat Masrani, about the wonderful diversity of Canadian business. Comparing himself with his predecessor, Ed Clark, Mr. Masrani noted: “I was brought up a Hindu, Ed was brought up a hippie.”" ...
... One prediction for next year: The great climate policy meeting in Paris will come to an agreement. To keep talking.
JAMES: “Rape Culture" ... If you want to know what “Rape Culture” really looks like, just pay a visit to Islamic-State-held territory in Iraq and Syria.
... Now compare and contrast with the confected, faux grievances of the West’s oppressed female Social Justice Warriors, as they battle against such appalling injustices as: their insufficient representation on bank notes ... not having been given as many Nobel-prizes as men have ...
MILO: "GameGate" ... Gamers are the only fandom ever to mount a sustained revolt against social justice warriors riding in to “save” their hobby from “misogyny” and other invented offences.
... GamerGate, indirectly, had a huge effect on feminism in the popular imagination this year, because it showed third-wave feminism up for what it is: a hateful, bullying, authoritarian creed of funless cultural Marxism. ...
JAMES: “Torture” ... can you not see something effete, decadent and self-defeating in our enthusiasm first for washing our dirty linen in public (as the Democrat Senate report was so eager to do)...
In a recent interview with National Public Radio, .... Google Chairman Eric Schmidt said his company “has a very strong view that we should make decisions in politics based on facts. And the facts of climate change are not in question anymore. Everyone understands climate change is occurring, and the people who oppose it are really hurting our children and our grandchildren and making the world a much worse place. We should not be aligned with such people. They’re just literally lying.”It's not surprising that an Obama advisor+bank-roller and green philanthropist would take a leftist climate hysterical position. But it is disturbing that a company that has such huge propaganda power at its disposal has openly declared such blatant political bias.
... Pope Francis steeped his Christmas message to the world Thursday in sadness for those with little cause for joy — abused children, refugees, hostages and others suffering from violence in the Middle East, Africa, Ukraine and elsewhere. ...And, from the Prime Minister - pray for our soldiers killing ISIS barbarians in Iraq
Looks like an excellent read. I'm buying it.Making the world a better place — by using more fossil fuels
Wrapping our minds around climate change
The sustainability myth
... Jurors may have split into bitter, screaming factions. They may have been trapped for days by a single, stubborn holdout. In the close quarters and high stress of sequestration, they may even have been tormented by simmering sexual tensions. ...
Anthony (A.M.) Daniels (born 11 October 1949), who generally uses the pen name Theodore Dalrymple, is an English writer and retired prison doctor and psychiatrist. He worked in a number of Sub-Saharan African countries as well as in the east end of London. Before his retirement in 2005, he worked in City Hospital, Birmingham and Winson Green Prison in inner-city Birmingham, England. ...Daniel Hannan's take:
... The doctor’s oeuvre takes pessimism about human nature to a new level. Yet its tone is never patronising, shrill or hectoring. Once you get past the initial shock of reading about battered wives, petty crooks and junkies from a non-Left perspective, you find humanity and pathos.Essays.
... It’s striking that many of those who are the most relentlessly upbeat about the perfectibility of man ... are in person sour and humourless. Theodore Dalrymple, by contrast, is gloomy in theory, but sunny in practice. Perhaps conservatism is the secret of inner peace.
