Columns

Around AU – Convocation

Most of us are too busy to spend too much time poking around the Athabasca University website. Usually we glimpse only the front page as we log into MyAU in search of the important stuff like our grades, extension registrations, and maybe the Library. However, AU has a lot more dynamic content?including many student resources?that… Read more »

From Where I Sit – Not Spend a Dime

we’re about a month away from the launch of season three of TV’s Storage Wars on A&E. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you are in the minority. This original series is top-rated on the network in the 25-54 demographic. It even has a spinoff, Storage Wars Texas. The premise is simple. When… Read more »

Write Stuff – Book Demons

Databases aren’t the most poetic things. Their discrete pieces of information, often broken down to minimal parts, are a bit like the individual letters of the alphabet: building blocks waiting to be shaped into useful forms. Now, an entrepreneur is building a database of every person, place, and thing ever mentioned in a novel. But… Read more »

Write Stuff – Glistering Prose

This article originally appeared in volume 1939 of The Voice (October 14, 2011). LOL. ROFL. YMMV. If these initialisms have you scurrying for the comfort of your Strunk and White, You’re not alone. It’s popular these days to bemoan the falling standards of written language. Literacy, punctuation, and grammar have slipped into the morass of… Read more »

From Where I Sit – We Decide

As I write this, we in Alberta are on the eve of a provincial election. For the second time in my memory we are on the cusp of real change. The last time this happened, Peter Lougheed’s upstart Conservatives took Alberta by storm. Over 40 years ago. Since then the Conservatives have governed, and voting… Read more »

The Mindful Bard – Cave of Forgotten Dreams

Film: Cave of Forgotten Dreams (IFC Films 2011) Director: Werner Herzog Genre: Documentary The Chauvet-Pont-d?Arc Cave Drawings: A Faithful Originality ?Man is a creature who walks in two worlds and traces upon the walls of his cave the wonders and the nightmare experiences of his spiritual pilgrimage.? Morris West Once upon a time, before the… Read more »