Looking at life through a funhouse mirror
I’m sure I’m not the only person who thinks that New Year’s Eve is a very strange construct. In fact I know I’m not because there was an article about this very thing in the paper today and there is probably a similar one published every December 31st. With apologies for bandwagoning, here are my …
Apparently George Boole has a crater on the moon named after him. But that is not his key claim to fame. Without Mr. Boole, Google would not exist nor would the internet itself because computers wouldn’t exist, which is perhaps why they recently honoured his 200th birthday with a doodle. Despite my dubious relationship with …
The third most quoted collection of written works, behind the Bible and Shakespeare’s oeuvre, turns 150 this year. Although all of these contenders feature stories that stretch the boundary of credulity (Walking on water? Fairies doing matchmaking?) , Alice in Wonderland (and her further adventures on the wrong side of the looking glass) surely wins …
So now we begin our forced march towards winter. There is no choice but to put one foot in front of the other and soldier on into certain peril. November’s gloom looms on the horizon and March won’t enter the frame until six months from now. It’s almost time to pack up the cans and …
This just in: recent research has shown that the most significant rise in shopping dollar expenditure in the past 10 years has been at big box and warehouse stores, not via online retail purchases. At the risk of dating myself, I remember when the word ‘ecommerce’ was coined and the time when our firm’s nascent …
About 60 years ago the world changed. And not because that was when Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine was brought to market, almost eradicating the danger of juvenile paralysis or because it was when the St. Lawrence Seaway opened up commercial shipping between Montreal and Lake Ontario. It’s because that’s when ‘rock and roll’ was officially …
I have always been fascinated with flamingos. Really, who can resist something that pink? Something that is real but looks fake. Kind of like what Donald Trump claims about his hair. But I digress. Maybe the reason fake flamingos are so popular is because flamingos are so inherently bogus themselves. And speaking of fake flamingos, …
There are apparently only 20 Fridays left until Christmas, although I must admit I didn’t count them myself because I draw the line at self-inflicted punishment. Why is it that winter seems endless even though it lasts (from a calendar perspective anyway) exactly as long as summer, while summer zips by like a BMW convertible …
It is hard to believe that it was thirty years ago – almost to the day – that I sat in Convocation Hall to receive my MBA degree. Imagine, if you can, completing finance and accounting courses without Excel or preparing a 50 page strategy paper without a word processor. That’s how we did it …
I first encountered a Norton Anthology in first year University. It was the poetry edition, rather than the English Literature version but I think both were edited by M.H. Abrams. Mr. Abrams died this week at the ripe old age of 102. This makes him a shining example of ‘that which doesn’t kill us makes …