Don’t know about you, but from time to time I like to browse Facebook Marketplace. Just recently an advert popped up for an engagement ring, “brand new in box”! What a story I’m sure it could tell. As sad as the circumstances probably were, it’s always good to reflect on the “almosts” and “might have…
Words aren’t just labels. They come loaded with emotional and historical baggage. Take, for example, “witches and wizards”. To be sure, both words probably come from similar if not the same proto-European roots, and have not always been gender-specific. There used to be male witches and female wizards, but fairy tales and Hollywood have pretty…
I recently replaced the battery in our bathroom scales. Not that the sleazy, lying device deserved any courtesy, but perhaps the dying coin battery lay at the root of the outrageous untruths the scales told every morning. Unfortunately, not the case. Must be some other malfunction. That said, it took a razor knife, considerable ingenuity,…
A cute story, and true, is told of a road sign in Swansea, Wales. As you know, Wales is an officially bilingual country, and signage must be shown in both Welsh and English. A fine ideal, but sometimes the best-laid plans go wrong in the hands of the careless. As it happened, the city council…
In an era when the “Christian Right” owns the mainstream dialogue about what it means to be a Christian and tries to define the place of followers of Jesus in the public forum, it’s time for a reset. If I may be so bold, perhaps we might want to see what Jesus himself had to…
Just a while ago I chanced down a road I had not seen in years, and not much had changed. Except the junkyard. The old junkyard, a dark legendary horror-show of a place with rusty hulks, piles of old tires, sketchy and decayed steel barrels, and of course, the proverbial junkyard dog. The junkyard was…
Did you ever ask yourself about “free gift” offers? Like, what other kinds of gifts are there? “I’ll give you this present, but you have to pay for it!” Seriously? Let’s poke some fun at tautologies. What are tautologies? Very simply, a grammatical construction which unnecessarily duplicates a meaning. You’re saying something twice when you…
Ginawaydaganuc (pronounced jin-away-daga-nuk) is an Anishinaabe (Algonquin) word or expression which means, well, it means quite a bit. In fact, it’s more or less an entire world view. In simplest terms, it means that everything is interconnected in space and time, and that everything we do is impacted by what is already done, and in…
Some of us are truly excited about the potential of artificial intelligence to make our lives, our professions, and our businesses easier, richer and more fulfilling. And some of us are terrified. Even those of us who fall into the optimists’ camp admit to a little trepidation that AI will just keep getting, well, more…
Some wag, stapling together pieces of two Bible verses, has said, “A lie is an abomination unto the Lord, but a very present help in time of trouble.” As a race, we all lie, all the time, mostly of the “little white” variety, and often for innocent reasons. After all, are you going to be…