I upset my grade 3 teacher, Mrs. Martin, when I announced that I didn’t care about the war in Vietnam. She kept me in at recess to plumb my psyche. Didn’t I think it was important to be informed, to bear witness? “Nope,” I replied with nine-year-old certainty. “If I[…]
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The Man Who Showed Me How to Beat the Devil
Maybe you are a woman who listens to music all of the time. You can easily rhyme off your top two dozen musicians and would have trouble choosing a favourite. That’s not me. When it comes to music, I am a one-man woman. I have revered the art of Kris[…]
Don’t Know What to Do? How to Make Better Decisions
I used to think I was hot stuff when it came to making good decisions. I didn’t realize that in my closed little world of work, work, and more work, I was committed to just putting one foot in front of the other. There really weren’t that many decisions to[…]
Bee Ball: One of the Most Awesome Defensive Moves in Nature
When an Asian giant hornet enters a beehive, cue the scary music. Asian giant hornets have thick exoskeletons that are impervious to bees’ stingers. A single hornet can kill thirty bees in one minute. Thirty hornets will destroy a hive of 30,000 bees in under four hours. It’s a massacre…unless[…]
Why the Dandelion Crayon is No More
“Who are we going to color the sun with?” “Why would you do this? Wrong, wrong, wrong!” Those were some of the plaintive and angry tweets when Crayola announced that it was retiring the Dandelion crayon. The dandelion crayon is the thirteenth colour to be retired by Crayola. The first[…]
Diary of a Fearful Puppy: Shylah’s First Month at Home
Shylah is the wonderful, fearful puppy from Mexico that I first wrote about here. In today’s post, Shylah will join me in summarizing her background and our first month together. My commentary is in italics. My First Two Months of Life It’s awfully tough being born and weaned on the[…]
Catatumbo Lightning: Our Most Electrifying Wow Note
It is unlikely that many of us will get to witness Catatumbo lightning firsthand. That’s a shame because Catatumbo lightning is world-renowned. It flashes over the mouth of the Catatumbo River where it empties into Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela. What’s So Special About Catatumbo Lightning? NASA has named Lake Maracaibo lightning[…]
Your World in a Six-Word Story
The Pythagoreans considered the number six to be a perfect number. In mathematical terms, it is perfect because when all of the number’s divisors are added together, the sum is the number (1 + 2 +3 = 6). As it happens, six also seems to be the perfect minimum number[…]
Flush It or Fix It? Ask Fish Vets
Five year old Monty had cancerous tumours behind his left eye. Testing revealed that cancerous cells had metastasized to Monty’s back. The forty-five minute surgery to save Monty’s life was nail-bitingly tense, but Monty made it through. In fact, he recovered swimmingly and it doesn’t get better than that for[…]
Dolls Outnumber People in Amazing Valley of Dolls
Nagoro, Japan is one of 10,000 towns and villages in Japan that are becoming depopulated as people die or move to big cities in search of employment. But Nagoro and the surrounding area is different from all of the others because it is has Ayano Tsukimi and the valley of[…]