Monthly Archives: August 2007

I suppose by now it is old news that there is a correlation between children watching television and various ills such as more aggressive behaviour, lower reading skills, attention-deficit disorders, obesity, and so forth. But that’s from the standard televised … Continue reading →

One of the things one soon soon discovers when one starts studying some period in history is that half of the things popularly ‘known’ about that period are manifestly false. Often as not, these myths arise because polemicists can safely … Continue reading →

It’s a funny thing about being a grad student.  I feel that I work for a living (yes, I think reading and writing, not just teaching, count as earning my keep).  But when I’m going off to do work at … Continue reading →

1) I love my cat. I’ve been curled up for the last two days, going through roll after roll of toilet paper (yes, I know, the one time I don’t have any tissues) as I suffered through a nasty cold. … Continue reading →

For the past year I’ve calculated my students’ grades by hand, culminating each semester in a night of much anxiety and a very tired (and much scribbled-on) piece of paper.  Probably in the hopes that he won’t have to comfort … Continue reading →

I wasn’t too impressed with Michael Ignatieff’s recent campaign for the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada—there was a bit too much of the I’m-a-brilliant-professor-from-Harvard-so-I-know- all-about-the-problems-in-Canada-and-about-how-to-fix-them- even-though-I’ve-been-out-of-the-country-for-almost-thirty- years attitude, in my opinion—but I do find his recent piece in … Continue reading →

It’s been like Christmas around here recently.  Sydney got a couple of woodworking tools because when I oohed and aahed over wooden bowls at the artists’ market he told me he could make something like that . . . with … Continue reading →

I have a thing about beets.  To me, they taste like dirt, and I’m not thrilled about eating them.  At all.  Sydney seems to like them in as many forms as he can get them: pickled, roasted, in pasta sauce, … Continue reading →

A recent NYTimes article chronicled the shaming that some people experience when they tell their book book group that they haven’t read the book, but rather they listened to it. Audiobooks, according to many, simply aren’t books. The true literary … Continue reading →

ABC News has a story about a man cited by authorities after coming too close to a luxury liner with his replica of a 1775 submarine. I thought this quite interesting in itself. But the man also also happens to … Continue reading →