As I said yesterday, I find the spectre of the hectoring free-marketeers at Sun News demanding government regulation to coerce consumers into buying their product hilarious. Contrarian reader Ritchie Simpson thinks I'm out to lunch: I mean really, Parker, what a scurrilous attack on Sun News, complete with quotation marks in the title to suggest that someone, supposedly [Sun News VP Kory] Teneycke, actually said that. I’m forced, in Eastlink’s basic package, to pay for all 3 major American networks, all other Canadian news channels, including the Ontario centric, slightly pinkish, tax gobbling, bureaucracy-bound CBC in several guises, two CTV channels,...

25 April, 2013

Contrarian reader Ritchie Simpson asks: What is it with civic politicians in the Maritimes? They’ve jumped on the concert bandwagon with abandon and are flinging money around the way Keith Moon used to fling furniture. The long serving and long suffering mayor of Summerside is a tad closer to the chopping block than HRM’s potentate but it’s troubling the ease with which processes are ignored and checks are written. The Roman circuses were used to keep the civic populace quiet, peaceful, and accommodating. Maybe it’s time we threw a few politicians to the lions....

24 March, 2011

Contrarian reader Ritchie Simpson upbraids me for whining about prime ministerial ivory tickling to the tune of John Lennon's Imagine. If you don't our political system to be reduced to an unending morass of partisan sniping and snide asides where nothing is accomplished because it may benefit the other side, then please refrain from making small minded comments. The shadow of pettiness covers more than just our politicians. if you want our politics raised out of the morass of point scoring then you must judge yourself as you judge others. I hate to sound like some overly pious prig or worse your...

22 December, 2010
Reader Ritchie Simpson challenges me to consult a mathematician on my assertion that "one should always be sceptical of surveys that show heterosexual men had more partners, on average, than women, since this is a mathematical impossibility."
While I do not fundamentally disagree with your observation about "heterosexual men," I am dubious about your math.
My go-to guy on matters arithmetic is retired Cape Breton University professor Doug Grant, now living in exile in Kitchener. His response after the jump.
30 October, 2010