I spotted a poppy pin lying on the ground today. Serendipitous! Poppies are a Canadian tradition — nobody wears them here — and the pin was probably accidentally dropped by a Canadian shopper taking advantage of the exchange rate. I’m excited to be able to celebrate Remembrance Day properly.
In the US it’s Veteran’s Day; in [...]
An article in today’s paper discussed your carbon footprint. They talk about some cars, and how each one gets an EPA “greenhouse gas score” out of 10 (higher is better). A GMC Yukon gets a 3 out of 10; a Prius gets 10 out of 10.
A perfect score? For a car which [...]
There’s an ad on the bus warning everyone to be vigilant of stray packages. These ads are sad and ultimately destructive of the society they’re supposed to protect. I wish we could learn to think more rationally about risk.
But anyway, that’s not what prompted this post. The ad has a picture of [...]
Ruby had a good time. She loved her costume and walked from house to house like a pro. She quickly figured out that it was all about the candy, even though she’s never really had any candy before. “Trick or Treat” is still a mouthful for her, but at least she said please, thank you, [...]
Carving silhouetted pictures into a pumpkin is lame. Pumpkins should be faces.
Costumes which place a head on top of your head are not allowed.
Costumes which are not really costumes but instead just a big bag of walking product placement are not allowed. If you want to be a Power Ranger, then be one [...]
The NHL playoffs may be all-consuming up in Canada, but to get a sense of how far hockey has dropped off the radar here in the US, let me present the lineup for the channel that is showing the majority of the games:
4:00pm: major indoor soccer league
6:30pm: professional bull riding
8:00pm: NHL playoff hockey
11:00pm: professional bull [...]
We’re anti-pink in our household. It’s not just that we don’t like the color (which, for the most part, we don’t). It’s also one front in our battle against the princessification of our daughter. We want Ruby to be an independent thinker. We want her to experience every color of the [...]
Slate is reporting today on a new study from Cornell University that links increased television watching with increased autism rates. It’s nice to have some scientific backing for a philosophy Kate and I think is important just on the face of it.
Surprisingly, we have received a bit of push-back on our desire to not expose [...]
The season premier of Battlestar Galactica contained a noteworthy scene. In it a woman is lying on a cot, holding her baby. She’s having a conversation with her husband who is sitting behind her. During the conversation, she bends over and gives her baby a kiss on the cheek.
I immediately paused the Tivo and called [...]
Today the Washington State Supreme Court upheld the Defense of Marriage Act as constitutional.
One should note, however, that they explicitly did not say whether or not it was a good idea — in fact, they hinted otherwise. But their job is not to make policy, only decide if policy is constitutional, and they sided with [...]