The clock struck midnight. And the second hand ticked past. Fireworks exploded in city-lit skies. And people yelled, “Happy New Year!” Fingers tapped out texts to far-flung relatives, and phones rang everywhere with exclamations of joy and promise to come. Some twittered their resolutions to each other, and older somes with a smile, avoided…
Category: Essay
Happy Canada Day 2012
The Monarch for me is Canada. I don’t remember when I first learnt about or first saw the Monarch butterfly, but she’s fascinated me always. Imagine: the endurance to migrate the length of an entire continent; the beauty to attract the eye wherever she flies; the fealty to milkweed and the fragility of that choice;…
Amazon, Apple, Big Publishers Frustrate Readers
I’m a writer, but I’m also a reader. My favourite format is the mass paperback — until recently. I received my Sony Reader (touch model) a couple of Christmases ago, and then when I bought the iPad, I loaded on several ebook reading apps: iBooks, kobo, Bluefire Reader, Stanza, Kindle. As a person with a…
CBC’s Marketplace Posits A Theory About COLD-FX
Bad science: have a pet theory, manipulate the results to suit it. Marketplace mimicked bad science well this past week. Their theory: COLD-FX does not work. Their results: don’t fit. A little manipulation was in order using panning camerawork, fun quizzes, people-on-the-street interviews journalists are addicted to, jerky camerawork as they follow some poor target,…
Baked Good Deliciousness at the Vegetarian Food Fair: A Few Reviews
The Vegetarian Food Fair down at Toronto’s Harbourfront this year was a cornucopia of good food, good-looking food, fake grass, and lots and lots of sunshine and people, unlike previous years I’ve been. I grazed my way from booth to booth, filling myself up on free samples and emptying my wallet on specials and baked…
Identity
Identity. What is that? With the 9/11 anniversary imminent, Muslim identity is one of the hot topics on talk shows. With school starting again, African or Caribbean identity in our education system is on some minds although not as dominant as last year. And in cyclical fashion, First Nations identity is discussed amongst some Canadians.…
Paradise, Your Name is Canada
Though not my native land, Canada is my home. She was the place my grandparents first felt settled after being kicked out of Burma by the Japanese during WWII and wandering India for decades. She was where my mother’s mother learned about “ice hockey” in her 60s and became an aficionado of Hockey Night in…
Medicine Admits Concussions Bad but Still Doesn’t Understand
I read an article in The Toronto Star recently titled “A Blow to the Head is a Big Deal” by Megan Ogilvie (8 April 2011), and I knew I had to read it. It wasn’t long before I was grumbling and had to comment on it. So here are some excerpts with my thoughts. ““The…
From Paper to Pixels
This is from a talk I gave to my fraternity on their Career Day. We are in an age of transition. Like those who went from calligraphy to the Gutenberg press, so we are going from pen and print books to tablet computers and ebooks. Up until early last century, manuscripts were written by hand.…