December’s begun. This time of year, we’re all pulled so many ways: shopping, work, Christmas parties, events at the kids? schools, volunteering, and the need to make the holidays more spiritual than stressful are all clamouring for our attention. And on top of our ever-lengthening holiday to-do lists, many of us have final exams and… Read more »
The scene: a parking lot. The time: this morning, before dawn. Although most us were still snuggled into our comfortable beds in our warm houses, tens of thousands of people across the United States were sitting out on the concrete, huddled against one another and wrapped in quilts and blankets to keep warm in those… Read more »
Stone Sour: Audio Secrecy Roadrunner Records (2010) Formed initially in 1992, metal quintet Stone Sour performed primarily across the bar scene of Des Moines, Iowa, for five years before temporarily breaking up as two of its members went on to a little band known as Slipknot. After reforming back in 2002, Stone Sour released two… Read more »
Last weekend, an article in an independent newspaper made waves in the academic world. The Chronicle of Higher Education published a personal account written by ?Dante,? a writer who makes a living composing custom university term papers. The catch: all those essays are paid for, and submitted to professors by, other students. The article and… Read more »
Last year, I celebrated Remembrance Day in Afghanistan, 20,000 km from my home in Vancouver, BC. We got up at five in the morning and left our Forward Operating Base to do a routine patrol, and at noon, when we came back dusty and soaked beneath our body armour, there was a short parade in… Read more »
“This thing all things devours: Birds, beasts, trees, flowers; Gnaws iron, bites steel; Grinds hard stones to meal; Slays king, ruins town, And beats high mountain down.” J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit Time: the very word is an enigma, and the concept has intrigued thinkers and artists since the dawn of history. Writers, poets, and musicians… Read more »
Evening falls. You’re settling down to a quiet night in front of the fire, when a couple of masked thugs show up at your door. You open it, and they accost you with demands and threats: give us what we want, or you’ll be sorry. Do you slam the door? Do you call the police?… Read more »
When my friend began dating her now-husband, the first thing she and I did was run an Internet search. What kind of a guy was he? Short of waiting to find out?and who wants to do that??our next best bet was to check out the online trail he’d left. He passed muster, and now they’re… Read more »
As a horror fan, I’ve bemoaned the recent spate of huge-scope, quasi-horror flicks that focus too intently on action and external forces. For me, the demarcation line between horror and sci-fi is clear: horror is intimate, often uncomfortably so, while sci-fi is broad and sometimes aloof. Most of the great horror masterpieces (there are many,… Read more »
Ever felt as though the weight of the world rested on your shoulders? It happens oftener than we’d like. The closed-in world created in part by our obsession with online media frequently makes us feel as though we’re operating in a vacuum. One area in which this is particularly discouraging is the environmental movement. It’s… Read more »