I want to explain! A few years ago, a picture of a dress went viral. When people looked at it, they saw it coloured a combination of black and blue or white and gold. How is that possible? Folks got into online fist fights over their respective views of this dress. Thanks to neuroscientist Pascal…

I want to be sure you realize the title is not a typo. I meant to say ‘Times.” I was looking at pictures that randomly appeared on my digital frame. The frame has a database of about 10,000 photos from which it chooses. Most shots bring back memories shared with others, happy times.  The one…

I have noticed the increasing use of folks telling me their preferred gender pronouns. I see it sometimes on Zoom meetings and as part of a signature block in emails. For example, it is often written as she/her or they/them/their. Recently I came across a one-pager from my city explaining all this. I thought I’d…

I came across this title in an article. It caught my eye, and I wondered how it applied to me. Many years ago, I was having problems fitting in at work. At least my employer thought so and decided to have me take some sick leave to get better. Nothing could have been farther from…

I was skimming the newspaper recently and arrived at the book section. I usually quickly check out the reviews, reading first the headline, title of the book, and perhaps a cutline, if there is one. I don’t have time to do everything, so I am careful to pick and choose where I spend my time…

I know that time is marching on. Those ahead of me were right. It goes by so quickly. I compare it to a roll of toilet paper – the closer to the end, the fast it goes. So planning is more important to me than ever before. The two best times to plan are twenty…

I try to listen carefully to what is written or said. I try to pause and think about what wasn’t written or spoken. During the past NHL play-off rounds, I was caught up in the excitement of critical games and specific shifts on the ice. I heard the announcer call the play that led to…

I was listening to a radio program that started with a mystery and travelled down a fascinating Sherlockian rabbit hole. Come on in, and let’s journey together. I couldn’t retain the details sufficiently, so I Googled the keywords and found the original eight-page scientific abstract. Off we go. Some researchers in the USA were banding…

I watched a YouTube video the other day about a draft dodger I knew. It is a story worth telling and reading about. I’ll call him Claude. This young fellow was struggling to make a living. He had been conscripted into the military and sent to a foreign land to fight for the cause. His…

I was reading an article about cars, or rather automobiles, in the very early days in Canada. What a hoot. The rhetoric I hear today is still the same. Let’s take a walk or, rather, a ride down memory lane. Alberta had its first automobile in 1901. The province joined Confederation just four years later….