BC father may face jail for not acknowledging child's gender transitionFriday September 11th, 2020
You cannot get married in Canada unless you are 16 years old, and in most provinces that is only with parental consent. The "full age of consent" is held to be 18 or 19, depending on the province, the age at which point neither parents or a court may stop you.
Have you ever wondered why that is? Why don't we take a 13-year old's word for it when she says she is madly in love with her boyfriend...
Drug addicts do not benefit from 'harm reduction,' but from rehabilitation and treatmentFriday September 11th, 2020
On Aug 25 the BC government announced there has been a shocking rise in street drug deaths this year, 175 in the last month and, to date in 2020, more than 900 people, a 136 percent increase from July, 2019. Illicit drug-related death number "surpass deaths due to homicides, motor vehicle incidents, suicides and COVID-19 combined," according to chief coroner Lisa Lapointe. The chief culprit is ...
Close Finish in US Election Could Mean Greater Civil UnrestThursday September 10th, 2020
Commentary
My progressive friends and I, normally at odds politically, are united in dread of the fallout from a photo finish in the U.S. presidential election.
In 2016, the Democrats and their media allies grudgingly accepted Trump’s official win, but immediately undertook a campaign to unseat him by every means possible. A great swath of Americans believe his presidency is illegitimat...
Betsy Devos restores much-needed due process to American campuses with Title IX reformsWednesday August 19th, 2020
Before she was appointed Secretary of Education by Donald Trump in 2017, I had never heard of Betsy DeVos. My Trump-loathing friends immediately dismissed her as unworthy of the role: a socially conservative billionaire’s wife with no professional experience in the educational system, and the poster girl for political cronyism.
As I soon realized, that was an unfair judgment. The h...
Orwell’s ‘Crimestop’ Alive and Well in 2020Friday August 14th, 2020
Commentary
True story. My eight-year-old granddaughter and her mother were working on a jigsaw puzzle, an image of a cat’s face surrounded by black background. We adults were complaining about the difficulty of joining up so many all-black pieces. My granddaughter said, without a shred of irony, “This feels like racism to me.”
Well, her remark felt like “Crimestop” to me. In George Orwe...
Conservative newspapers must not succumb to cancel cultureThursday August 13th, 2020
"Newspapers have turned into colleges. Boardrooms have turned into colleges. Graceless corporate pseudo-macho American sports have turned into colleges."The quote comes from Mark Steyn’s July 27 obituary of Mike Adams, the 55-year old University of North Carolina, Wilmington, professor who, long shunned by his colleagues and vilified by students for his spirited political heterodoxy...
Why I'm leaving the National PostThursday August 13th, 2020
It’s been two decades since my first byline appeared in the National Post. For a woman who already was well into middle age when her career began, the experience has been a thrill and a privilege. Perhaps more importantly, it’s been lively, energizing and fun. The National Post was conceived in 1998 as a safe haven from the stale pieties that dominated (and still dominate) the...
REVIEW: The End of Gender by Debra SohFriday July 24th, 2020
Most authors dedicate their books to loved ones or inspirational teachers. Debra Soh, sexologist and neuroscientist, dedicates her new book, The End of Gender: Debunking the myths about sex and identity in our society to “everyone who blocked me on Twitter.”
It’s a fitting tribute, since aggressive opposition to Soh’s spirited defence of science against the prevailing t...
It turns out cognitive differences are as simple as a game of chessFriday July 24th, 2020
The lockdown has had disparate effects on people, depending on their preferred activities. If a daily squash game was your routine before COVID-19, the days have stretched out endlessly. But if you love bridge, as my sister does, and you don’t mind remote play (she loves it: less socializing), you haven’t skipped a beat.
Considering who else might be equally happy with remote play,...
Now the woke army is trying to cancel classical music for 'racism'Thursday July 23rd, 2020
The COVID-19 lockdown has been a catastrophe for the world of live arts—theatre, music, dance—but it has given some deep thinkers in these domains a lot of time to ponder the state of their industry, and to wonder what their particular genre will—or should—look like in its post-virus incarnation.
Combine that circumstance with the swelling anti-racism momentum of the la...
Could Push Come to Shove in US Effort to Rein in Beijing?Friday July 17th, 2020
Commentary
President Trump is juggling three critically important domestic fronts: COVID-19, proliferating protest with concomitant rising crime in the wake of the George Floyd killing, and a re-election campaign tethered to low approval figures. The Chinese Communist Party is doubtless pleased by these distractions. In their ongoing zero-sum competition with the United States, they see...
From free society to fear society in the halls of higher learningTuesday July 14th, 2020
My editor, a man in his prime, recently tweeted bemusement that his older readers often preface their emails to him with allusions to their age (“as a 75-year old man …” “I’m an 82-year old woman …”).
I know these readers. Or others like them.
When my oldie readers introduce generation markers in their emails, it’s generally a semaphore ...
Why are teenage girls afraid to become women? A new book explains their flight from biological realityFriday July 10th, 2020
Only once (so far) has Twitter suspended my account, and then just for 24 hours. About two years ago, I foolishly lost my temper in a furious Twitter exchange with a Toronto lawyer about radically escalating gender dysphoria rates. This lawyer was (may still be) a frequent contributor to CBC panels on gender issues. He is a firm trans ally who tends to preface any and all gender-related s...
Learn from the best while you canThursday June 25th, 2020
Last week — for another publication — I recounted the story of Tomas Hudlicky, a Brock University professor of organic chemistry who has endured an in-house “swarming” by an ad hoc confederacy of administration, graduate students and journal publishers for allegedly incorrect views he expressed in a peer-reviewed article.
Hudlicky was blindsided by the multiple att...
Show Trial of Brock Professor Over Essay A DisgraceTuesday June 16th, 2020
Commentary
Thirty years ago, chemistry professor Dieter Seebach, now 83, wrote a scientific article on the state of affairs in his specialty of organic synthesis. On June 4, the prestigious German chemistry journal Angewandte Chemie published an homage to Seebach’s paper written by Brock University’s Tomas Hudlicky, a Tier 1 Canada research chair in organic chemistry.
In his own peer-re...
Show Trial of Distinguished Professor Over Essay a DisgraceTuesday June 16th, 2020
Commentary
Thirty years ago, chemistry professor Dieter Seebach, now 83, wrote a scientific article on the state of affairs in his specialty of organic synthesis. On June 4, the prestigious German chemistry journal Angewandte Chemie published an homage to Seebach’s paper written by Brock University’s Tomas Hudlicky, a Tier 1 Canada research chair in organic chemistry.
In his own peer-re...
Homeschooling emerges as a viable alternative to ideologically driven public education.Friday June 12th, 2020
Harvard University was supposed to be hosting a by-invitation-only conference next week, billed as a “Homeschooling Summit.” The official description stated that “the focus will be on problems of educational deprivation and child maltreatment that too often occur under the guise of homeschooling.” Or, in laymen’s terms, “Homeschooling is evil, and we ha...
U of A professor holds the line on free expressionTuesday June 9th, 2020
Kathleen Lowrey, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Alberta, ascribes much of her intellectual formation to Marxism and radical feminism. Not, I think my regular readers would agree, someone with whom I would normally have a great deal in common. And yet, in this strange cultural moment, Prof. Lowrey and I find ourselves amicably united in the service of a mutually reve...
The diversity, inclusion, equity movement (DIE) is now taking over the STEM fieldTuesday June 2nd, 2020
It used to be that students—mostly men, mostly white in the past, now increasingly diverse—who went into Science, Technology, Engineering and Math—STEM—thought they were safe if they kept their heads down. But they aren’t safe anymore. Having successfully suppressed the numbers of white males in most other departments, the diversity, inclusion and equity movement (...
Innovative camps look to save the summerThursday May 28th, 2020
In Ontario and Quebec, day camps have permission to open, but not sleepaway camps. This will come as a blow to many kids who have for months have had to forgo seeing their friends and participating in organized sports, but clung to the anticipation of their annual camp sojourn, where they could be blissfully immersed in both.I understand the better-safe-than-sorry spirit that guided the deci...
BC father may face jail for not acknowledging child's gender transition
Friday September 11th, 2020
Close Finish in US Election Could Mean Greater Civil Unrest
Thursday September 10th, 2020
From free society to fear society in the halls of higher learning
Tuesday July 14th, 2020
