In Wretched Outcomes, The Devil Is In

There Are Dangers In Sentimentalizing Nature. Most Sentimental Ideas Imply, At Bottom, A Deep If Unacknowledged Disrespect. It Is No Accident That We Americans, Probably The World's Champion Sentimentalizers About Nature, Are At One And The Same Time Probably The World's Most Voracious And Disrespectful Destroyers Of Wild And Rural Countryside.

There Are Two Ways You Encounter Things In The World That Are Different. One Is Everything That Comes In Reinforces What You Already Believe And Everything That You Know. The Other Thing Is That You Stay Flexible Enough Or Curious Enough And Maybe Unsure Of Yourself Enough, Or May Be You Are More Sure Of Yourself - I Don't Know Which It Is - That The New Things That Come In Keep Reforming Your World View.

Everybody's Got A Worldview, Whether They Know They Have It Or They Don't. They Might Even Get It When They Are Little Tiny Kids. Suppose They Get It When They Are In College, Which Is Often The Case, Or In High School, Whatever. Everything They Learn After That Or Every Thing They See After That, They Fit It Into That Worldview. And They Are Making Coherence Of What's Good, What's Bad, What Will Work, What Won't Work, What's Noble, What's Ignoble, And So On... All Through This Filter.

Cities Are An Immense Laboratory Of Trial And Error, Failure And Success, In City Building And City Design.

Expanding The Toronto Island Airport Will Undermine The Downtown's Economy And Liveability And Intensify Pollution And Smog From Oshawa To Oakville. I Urge Torontonians To Close Down This Dangerous Trojan Horse And Get On With Planning Constructive And Delightful Ways Of Using Our Magnificent Lakeside Assets.