I forgot to update the last post. Or post at all for that matter, ha ha. Sorry for the ha ha, but I'm reading Something Happened by Heller, and it's very…Salingeresque. I never read Catch-22; is it similarly styled ( Read more... )

In contrast the earlier post, here my one experience with the American health care system since moving to Canada. Earlier this year, I was in the US and I cut my index finger with a kitchen knife. I went to the emergency room, saw a PA, and got three stitches ( Read more... )

The plural of anecdote is not data, so the singular of anecdote must be…nothing worth reading. Nevertheless, I feel compelled to share my experiences with the Canadian health care system, which consists mostly of one bout of appendicitis in October 2007 ( Read more... )

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Positive feedback: bad. Negative feedback: good.

Once upon a time, in the halcyon days of my imagination when men were Lincoln Steffens and women were Edward R. Murr-No, forget that. This won’t be a cane-shaking get-off-my-lawn kind of post; let's go with prescriptivist utopia contre exaggerated dystopic present careering toward unavoidable apocalypse, but with enough cussin’ to convey ( Read more... )

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Not to rain on a parade, and I do love a parade-in fact the President doesn't enter office until 73 high school bands have played The Washington Post (it's in the Constitution)-but what's up with the obsequiousness shown the executive from the legislature? I mean in general, not just DiFi's "bestow" rhetoric today ( Read more... )

Upon reflection, I am a twin to Edwin Markham, who clung to the awkward personification and turgid verse of the previous century while around him Ezra Pound remade the very language. Can I make the absolute judgment that lively metaphor using carefully chosen words is essential? In an endeavor with no absolutes, the only innovation is radical ( Read more... )

Various people on my friends list have been complaining about their kids' school districts closing for the cold. You'll be happy to know it's a cross-cultural and -climate phenomenon. The parents that I know here were complaining because the schools closed-and their cutoff is a windchill of −45ºC ( Read more... )