If you are a certain age—before the Internet was a “thing”—you probably remember reaching for and thumbing through a cumbersome volume of an encyclopedia to help you with an assignment or essay. During the mid to late 1990s, encyclopedias evolved by appearing on CD-ROM. Jumping ahead a bit more, traditional printed encyclopedias became a relic… Read more »
It’s my first Friday the 13th, and I’m clinging to the back of a motorcycle. It’s a hot day and it feels great to escape the city’s heat. Through my leather jacket and jeans I can feel the temperature drop as the highway slices through farmland. Even with a bulky helmet on, I can discern… Read more »
The history of Friday the 13th goes back, likely to the middle ages. There are all sorts of speculations about where this belief came from. But it is just that, a belief. The mind is a powerful thing and is something we don’t fully understand. It is entirely possible that this myth of Friday the… Read more »
Today is not only Friday the 13ths, but is also international plain language day. This is a day to bring attention to how so much of what we read (and sadly, write) is anything but plain language. From business reports and sales pitches filled with buzzwords that mean nothing, to laws and contracts that have… Read more »
What do people mean when they ask that their nation be made great again? The phrase is pregnant with conjecture. It assumes, for one thing, that the nation was great once, but also that it can be made great again and that making it great again is worth our effort. It also suggests an awareness… Read more »
Values, morals, and social expectations differ between communal cultures and individualist cultures, each camp believing it has solid justifications for being what it is. But this doesnt stop loners from longing to join communities, or disgruntled collectivists from seeing the distant individualist culture as a utopia where all dreams come true. But theres always that… Read more »
Thanksgiving is upon us already. I don’t know about you but I somehow thought there was still another week left. It seems kind of incongruous when coupled with the recent events in Las Vegas. At least four Canadian families will be having a hard time feeling terribly thankful this weekend, and sometimes it seems like… Read more »
Why did Margaret Atwood write a book that no one will read until long after she is dead? It sounds like a bad riddle, but it’s true. In 2014, Canadian author Margaret Atwood completed a story called Scribbler Moon. The story has been sealed in a vault in Norway and will remain unpublished and unread… Read more »
“The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!” – William Wordsworth, from the sonnet “The World is Too Much With Us” Wordsworth might well have been describing the… Read more »
