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...
Erin O'Toole has what it takes to clobber Trudeau in the next electionMonday May 25th, 2020
He was out. Then Jim Karahalios thought he was back into the CPC leadership race. But last week the LEOC (Leadership Election Organizing Committee) determined that he is definitively disqualified.Karahalios has a following, and they will be disappointed, but let’s remember the good reason he was shunned in the first place. He had, as leadership competitor Erin O’Toole framed it,...
Canada Beware the Steely Claws of the Chinese RegimeFriday May 15th, 2020
The Calgary Zoo is sending Panda bears Er Shun and Da Mao, originally slated to remain through 2024, home to China. I say “home” because Pandas are never sold to zoos. China leases Pandas out in order to control their scarcity and to ensure China is the sole supplier of bamboo, Pandas’ principal source of energy (about 18 kg a day each).
Given the five-fold profit China stood to make on...
Terry Mosher's face mask/niqab cartoon misses the markThursday May 14th, 2020
Quebec premier François Legault now “strongly recommends” that Montrealers wear a mask out in public, and he underlined the message by himself wearing a medical mask when he announced it. I knew it wouldn’t be long before he became the butt of ridicule that ironically linked his mask to Quebec’s infamous Bill 21, which precludes the wearing of the niqab&mdas...
Barbara Kay on COVID-19: We have to get the kids back to playing sports againWednesday May 13th, 2020
As a grandparent who hasn’t had physical contact with my five granddaughters since mid-March, I’m naturally eager to see the end of the lockdown. But if I can only receive that benefit at the high cost of my grandchildren sacrificing their most beloved activities, I prefer to FaceTime with them indefinitely.My demographic is the one at high risk, after all, not theirs. As the dat...
Forget everything you think you know about single-use plasticTuesday May 12th, 2020
With air and car traffic reduced so dramatically during the Covid-19 crisis, the salutary knock-on effect of lowered carbon emissions and pollution must be a solace to locked-down eco-warriors.
But their mellow from that outcome is likely harshed a bit by the return to the use of plastic bags in supermarkets for the sake of virus-inspired hyper-hygiene. The once-ubiquitous plastic bag is a sta...
Conservative newspapers must not succumb to cancel culture
Thursday August 13th, 2020
Could Push Come to Shove in US Effort to Rein in Beijing?
Friday July 17th, 2020
From free society to fear society in the halls of higher learning
Tuesday July 14th, 2020
