In a move to cut costs, optometrists are using cheap eye charts made by illiterate children in sketchy print shops in third world countries. In my younger years the letters used to be crisp and sharp, all the way down to the last line. Not these cheap substitutes – the blur begins on about the…
When we first acquired our little acreage on the Tay River, there were trees. Of a sort. Certainly we had several majestic old maples and white oaks and a few dozen white pines that had been planted perhaps twenty years before. The green ash were just starting to show the depredations of the emerald ash…
Most of the strife and disharmony in our world flows directly from too many rules being made without regard to the Tweeches Zone. Let me explain and illustrate. “Ukrainians,” says Putin, “have no separate existence outside Mother Russia, and should just settle down and accept that fact.” “Women,” say the mullahs “need to keep covered,…
Finding your Giftings, even well into your career, can be difficult, leaving many of us feeling rather aimless and dissatisfied in our work. It would therefore be lovely if there were a Giftings Fairy who could come along and sprinkle a little bit of Perception Dust on you, and you would then know instantly what…
On this day thirteen years ago two of my favourite people made a promise to each other. On a cold and rainy Saturday, they stood in front of all their friends, their parents, and their seven still-living grandparents, looked each other in the eye, and promised they would stand together and look after each other…
I remember it like yesterday, the horrible cold clinging black cloud of frustration and humiliation of “not getting” calculus. To that point in life, math had always been easy for me, trivial, “do-it-in-your-head” easy, tangible, nice, chunky, visual, everything fitting precisely and predictably. And then came calculus. Calculus. Slippery, slidy, imprecise, it seemed more like…
No action movie would be complete without a scene of the earnest young lieutenant intoning desperately into his microphone as his craft rocks in the darkness, “Mayday! Mayday! Going down at 42.0539 and -47.7730!” But why exactly do we call out “Mayday!” when we’re in dire straits? Surely there are 364 other days on which…
No, this is not a screed for or against immigration. It’s a discussion of the real issue, which is ignored because it’s awkward. In our big, empty, beautiful country there’s actually plenty of room for newcomers. Heck, all Canadians except for First Nations are newcomers, and even their ancestors came from somewhere else, albeit 30,000…
What do you say to a woman on her 70th birthday? What do you say to the woman who promised to share a life as long as we both shall live? To a woman who has been a steadfast friend and partner through thick and thin in life and in business? Who has suffered sorrow…
Just over sixty years ago we came within a hair of global nuclear holocaust. I was a young high schooler and remember it like yesterday. Radios played non-stop news and we’d listen late into the night as the mighty militaries of Russia and America stared one another down, ready to fight humankind’s final battle. The…