54 Years ago !! A few weeks before Christmas, after dithering for a couple of years, we took advantage of a seasonal offer at Best Buy and bought a new (Sony OLED) TV. This afternoon I finally got around to hooking up a DVD player - I mean, who uses DVD anymore? - [...]
Computer Translation ... of a sort I am more and more coming to appreciate the wilder shores of the Facebook computer language translation system ... so much more fun than relying on Google to do the job. They discover brand new and unrecorded species every day. Here is the original French : [...]
Is it as bad as all that? Recent revelations about the sins of social media and especially the Facebook/WhatsApp/Instagram empire have caused me to pause and think. I wonder if you agree with me? Undoubtedly, there is a lot of scope in a profit-driven organization like FB for misuse, even if due to [...]
This quotation from a book J and I are currently reading is directed at Yorkshire friends who will, I hope, instinctively know the lady in the last sentence. For everyone else, even those poor souls who do not know where Yorkshire is, I am sure that you will be amused. The book [...]
Saving the planet, one electron at a time About six weeks ago now, we got rid of our very low mileage (kilometrage?) Honda Civic with only 16,500km on the clock after four years driving in exchange for a spiffy all-electric cross-over Hyundai Kona. We get 460km out of a battery full of electrons [...]
White Poppies There has been much in the Canadian press this week about the 215 bodies found at a former indigenous residential school in the west of the country. Last week the Israelis and the Palestinians were hurling rockets at each other and the beastliness of the Chinese in Xinjiang province doesn’t [...]
Terry Pratchett wrote a wonderful book under the title of “Wintersmith” that mentioned the essential role of the annual silent performance of the Dark Morris in ensuring that winter arrives as it should. I was reminded today, the winter solstice, of this tradition and, as a former morris dancer/musician myself felt the need [...]
I happened, thanks to the internet, upon this article from the London Review of Books that I felt was worth sharing with my friends, many of whom will understand. I am a huge user and fan of all that the internet has brought us, I don't yearn to go back to blotchy pens [...]
Common Experience 2020 A couple of days ago, a friend in England posted this short piece on her Facebook page. She got it from a friend who had it from a friend and we have no idea who composed it. But it is so clever, and so apposite, I felt it was [...]
So that's where it came from! J brought to my attention the following short poem by Longfellow. It is quite striking just how many clichés and common sayings we all know he managed to pack into these few lines. I have highlighted a few examples in bold. Actually, it's good stuff. read on. [...]