As IF Times

link  Right-wing U.S. firebrand Ann Coulter will file grievance with rights panel.

Ann Coulter: you either love her or you’re a liberal.  While there is no doubt that she views things from a conservative perspective, it’s interesting that the article is already imposing a bias to the reader by labelling her a “right-wing” firebrand.  Oddly, you will seldom see the label “left wing” firebrand to such pundits as Rachel Maddow or Bill Maher.  You will never hear the adjective “inflammatory” applied to them either.

Canadians are smugly proud of their image of being a fair and compassionate people.  That’s all fine, but in reality, are we?  It’s a bit like the girl holding a mirror who has to tell people how pretty she is  and people are too polite to disagree.  Years ago, a sitting Prime Minister was fond of referring to “da Canadian values”, whatever they were.  The implication of course is that if you don’t hold such “values”, you weren’t Canadian or at least not a good one.  How could you fight that if you were in opposition to a particular policy?

While the words “true north strong and FREE ” are inscribed in our national anthem, the words ring hollow.  In fact, maybe we should change it to “the true north strong and politically correct” except that finding a rhyme for the next line would be iffy.  Zealots like this Francois Houle have appointed themselves as gatekeepers for what a free and intelligent populace should be allowed to hear.  Certainly, he is not alone as many like him have been trying to muzzle opinions that don’t happen to align with their own version of what’s acceptable.  Years ago, a provincial human rights commission launched a case against “inflammatory” comments by Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn, which thankfully was unsuccessful.  Meanwhile, truckloads of money were spent by the defendants to fight for their rights of free speech.  The lesson is, don’t veer too far off the PC path or risk paying college tuition for the kids of lawyers.

Here’s the bottom line, if we only tolerate opinions that match our own, then it is not a free country, it’s a cult.  Maybe we should put the mirror down and look at ourselves as we really are.

link Flowers losing scent due to climate change.

Ok, now it’s getting serious.  For lands to flood, habitats to disappear and glaciers to melt are bad enough.  But now for flowers to lose their scents?  An abomination.

Kudos to these scientists for uncovering yet another major calamity about to befall mankind as a result of global warming.  The discovery of this new phenomenon now edges out some others on the list of issues of urgent importance to mankind.  More specifically, it comes in at a firm 187,778th position after smelly feet syndrome and before excessive nasal hair. 

Special mention should be made of the scientists’ acuity of reasoning which enabled them to attribute the loss of floral scent directly to global warming. The confidence with which they were able to conclude this surely qualifies them for some kind of award or at the very least,  a fancy floral arrangement.

The article goes on to describe the ‘butterfly effect’ of this condition, leading the reader to conclude that massive impacts on food production will result unless science steps in to modify genes in plants to avert catastrophe.  While I’m all for the application of science to help out with issues that affect mankind, history has shown that the earth’s ecosystem has its own  order and means of working out excesses and shortages.  Amazingly this happens even without the input of humans.

Fairly recently, in Canada’s north, someone concluded that wolves were endangering the caribou population and therefore justified targeted killings to cull the wolf population.  There are those who believed that doing so would upset the natural predator/prey balance and that the caribou population would grow larger than would otherwise be naturally sustainable.  So? Well, it turns out that caribou and certain deer are carriers for parasites that are lethal to boreal growth, which of course creates a whole new set of problems. 

If we believe modern science, organisms have a way of adapting to their environments though not always in a way that is considered favorable.   If there were scientists around a few million years ago, they’d be fretting that fish were sprouting legs and were adapting to land life. If the global warming crowd were around then, they’d be panicking that all fish would evolve themselves out of existence.  In any event, with regard to the ‘defragrancing’ of flowers, maybe the scientists can work on the smelly feet problem.