Monday, December 31, 2018

Jordan Peterson with Dr. Oz

My holiday binge on Jordan Peterson continued. This was long but well worth the time:

Sunday, December 23, 2018

Jordan Peterson: IQ - a highly reliable but controversial and misunderstood metric

Jordan Peterson: IQ, Race and The "Jewish Question"

Jordan Peterson: The Bible

The Death and Resurrection of Christ: A Commentary in Five Parts


Sunday, July 1, 2018

Supreme folly

In its decision of June 15, 2018 the activist Supreme Court of Canada ruled against Trinity Western University in its bid to establish a law school.

In doing so the Supreme Court turned the Charter on its head, running roughshod over the rights of a private institution.  The Charter was intended to protect private actors (TWU) from an overbearing state (the law societies and the SCOC).

These two excellent columns discuss this decision at length:

           Bruce Pardy: The Supreme Court's TWU ruling is a cruel joke played on all Canadians

           Chris Selley: Supreme Court strikes a blow against religious freedom


Jonah Goldberg on dogma and ideology

"When I hear people say that they don’t like dogma, what I hear is that they don’t like the dogma of people who disagree with them."

Tuesday, May 22, 2018

Carbon Tax smoke and mirrors

Raving Canuck’s Guide to the Trudeau Government’s Carbon Tax Smoke and Mirrors
by Graeme Gordon
"Naturally the Liberals won’t admit that this thing is meant to pump money into their coffers, so they’ve employed other methods of convincing the public that it’s a good thing."
An excellent guide.

As usual B.C.'s carbon tax, being the first in North America, is cited by various "experts" (proponents of carbon taxes) to be a fine example of the effectiveness of such taxes in reducing carbon emissions.  This has always struck me as a highly dubious claim for a number reasons:
1. StatsCan multi-year data show no significant differences in the pattern of fossil fuel consumption between BC and provinces without a carbon tax (the other nine). 
2. Fuel prices are notoriously inelastic.  Demand is relatively impervious to price changes. People use what they gotta use. 
3. BC's carbon tax (2.4 c/L in 2008 - 7.78 c/L in 2018) is utterly swamped by market price fluctuations. So, even ignoring point 2, trying to attribute consumer demand changes to the carbon tax is extremely difficult. From GasBuddy:

Saturday, May 19, 2018

The Canadian climate change and pipeline follies

Rex Murphy's recent, outstanding assessments:

Also this column by Queens professor Bruce Pardy:
Unless we can get rid of the Trudeau/Butts Liberals we will remain on track to becoming another Venezuela - energy rich but driven into poverty and political chaos by incompetent ideological extremists. Unless the Conservatives under Andrew Scheer can get their act together, and there's little sign they are doing so, WE ARE SCREWED.