2015 Posts

Not that I’m complaining about moving. No, these are not complaints, but merely observations of annoyances, the type that could crop up at any time, not just when disrupting your life voluntarily. But they are annoyances none the less, and ...

I have found my new career: reviewing cat toys. I think it is a very underserved market. Surely I am not the only person who has bought perfectly good toys that languish in the toy basket because they have been ...

It was a simpler time back in the early 1970s. Or maybe that’s not true. Maybe it was just a different time. And in many ways it couldn’t have been a more different time than today. At least by then ...

This year marks 40 years since International Women’s Year and 30 years since the end of the momentous United Nations ‘Decade For Women’. Luckily, these events were all it took to bring those of us with two X chromosomes on ...

I have not yet seen a crocus nor a rosebud or even a robin on the wing, but it appears that spring is here. Spring is a season that struggles with its identity. Unlike fall, which flaunts its brand of ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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, ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...