Different premises

When James Boswell brought Samuel Johnson to Edinburgh, he proudly showed his city to the distinguished man of letters. As they strolled into a close off the High Street, they saw two women shouting and shaking their fists at each other from windows on upper floors of tenements facing each other across the close. "They will never agree," said Dr. Johnson to Boswell, "They are arguing from different premises." So it is with my brother and me from time to time, recently in discussing the biases of Rupert Murdoch's "quality" newspapers. Despite hearing on CBC Radio an eminent professor of journalism at Columbia University echoing my opinions and citing similar facts, I've exercised my editorial prerogative and closed that correspondence thread.

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Last night just after Rebecca & Richard, and Jonathan, had left here after a pleasant dinner, we had another sudden very violent wind storm. I watched from my picture windows with a mixture of fascination and alarm as debris flew past in the 'gulley' between this tower block and the low-rise building next door. Along with all the other bits and pieces, a sheet of corrugated metal roofing tumbled past, fortunately not hitting my windows. It's hard to judge speed but my guess that gusts exceeded 100 Km/hour was confirmed in this morning's news. I saw at ground level not far away some brilliant electric flashes as downed power lines short-circuited; one of these spectacular electrical short circuits that I watched took place when the outdoor stage for summer music festivals was demolished, injuring three people, one seriously. Unsurprisingly, there are widespread power outages today. This was, I think, the third sudden violent wind storm this summer. I don't recall any that came even close in violent severity in all my previous years in Ottawa. I suppose this was another manifestation of climate change. I wonder how many more such violent weather events will be required to persuade those who continue to deny that climate change is real and is happening, happening right now, not at some remote future time when we are all safely dead.