The Observer

Dear reader, On Monday January 9, 2017 I was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, which has already metastasized to my liver. The primary tum...

During my youth the song Rocking Red Wing  (1960) was a big hit. Much later I encountered the original, titled  Happy Farmer  (1830), when m...

A friend asked me if I could provide a list of all the satirical , hoax , and fake news websites on the Internet.  There are thousands of s...

Canada has just (Oct 2015) held a federal election that saw Party A, which became the Government at the 2011 election, slip to Opposition st...

There are at least two sides to every story, but the “progressive” side now dominates our media, educational institutions and levers of powe...

Some count their lives in years, Some in tears, Some in conquests, some in fears. I count in socks. Eight pairs; one worn today, Seven ...

More than a year ago, I noticed dirt or gravel being shaped into long piles at the low end of a sloping triangle of land cut off between Hwy...

A family member just bought a new computer. It's  30 years since he and I bought new computers together. Compared to the computers we bo...

We've recently been watching reruns of the old Bonanza TV series from the 1960s. The story concerns the Cartwright family, who supposedl...

After recent federal byelections in Canada there is fresh talk about electoral reform to prevent vote-splitting and strategic voting . Vo...

I keep seeing this puzzle on Facebook, so I'm posting my systematic solution here. There's a pattern of 16 basic squares in a re...

Here's something new: describe your life on a single page by writing single-sentence snapshots of your life at 5-year intervals. Here...

I just found in my archive the  talk I gave on Wednesday 26 October 2005 at Heritage Christian School's Grade 12 Leadership Retreat. I ...

A friend sent me this 1956 photo with the heading "Guess What This Is?"  I recognized it immediately as some kind of data stora...

For all those who think engineers can't write poetry! - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - The Aeroplane (c) 1962 Alan T. Chatt...

Each month after reading the latest issue of Consumer Reports , I shelve it and discard the oldest copy on the shelf. Today, before recycl...

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is campaigning to force Canadian cable TV companies to pay TV stations for the privilege of carrying ...

From the National Post, February 01, 2010 (summarized) ( http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2010/02/01/adrian-macn...

A lot of products these days seem to be impractical and have features designed strictly for "showroom appeal". A case in point is...

We usually associate the commandment "you shall not commit adultery" with unfaithfulness to one's marriage partner. However, ...

Yesterday I drove my 1993 Plymouth Acclaim (odometer reading 392,540 km, equal to 244,000 miles) to the scrapyard, which gave me a certific...

The first rule for communicating in English with someone whose native language is not English is: avoid idioms . Idioms are those sayings t...

When Kathy and I were married in May 1969, the minister who performed our ceremony challenged us to re-think the function of the various tra...