Not that it takes much encouragement, but, as it's Sunday night and I don't have to report to work for at least another 10 hours, I'm pleased to enjoy an extra whisky in honour of the 250th birthday of Robert Burns: About 4.2 million Canadians claim heritage ties to Scotland, so it's no surprise that there are a dozen statues erected to Burns across the country.... My dad's dad hailed from Edinburgh; my mom's dad sailed from Greenock, near Glasgow, a month before the Titanic left Southampton and arrived in Halifax a few days after Titanic was supposed to have arrived in New York.

James Grant has some economic advice for President Obama: In the long run, nations consume and produce in roughly equal measure; they have no choice.... A strengthened American currency, of course, may be th best thing in the short-term, or even the medium-term, for those, like Canada, who depend heavily on selling lots of stuff to Americans every year.