The pandemic not only sent us all home, it threw us onto our screens. Here we dutifully started watching videos – not just by streaming movies and TV series, but by watching vastly more videos than we ever did before. Now that we can be outside on weekends, this likely won’t change. We’ll just watch […]
Streaming or Screaming? Read More »
Technology didn’t miss a beat during the pandemic. Before COVID, computer voices sounded fake and HAL-like. Now, you can hardly tell if you’re talking to a person or an AI impersonator. The same boldface-progress holds for facial recognition, electric cars, anti-Semitism, online shopping and loneliness. We know loneliness (like race, gender, income and access to
Hell is other robots Read More »
Years ago we were walking through the Doge’s Palace in Venice and stumbled into the Map Room where, as far back as the 16th century, the Serenissimo Principe could view the vast reach of his Venetian empire. I got close to one of the two huge globes set into ancient rollers, and saw the crude
“You can’t use an old map to explore a new world.” Read More »
It’s her weekend and are we planting our gardens without fear they’ll freeze overnight? Are we opening our cottages, swatting the blackflies, gassing up at Tim Horton’s? Well, we are more than last year when we were all locked up with no place to go. But compared to 2019 and every other year we’ve been
Queen Victoria is not amused Read More »
Just as a Smith & Wesson beats four aces, so too does a 10,000-a-day vaccination site beat even these last few days of sunshine to lift our mood and signal that finally, oh my gawd, sumer is icumen in. But the oddest evidence that the end could be near is Tuesday’s Globe and Mail editorial
Canada has more fresh water than any country and more lakes than the rest of the world combined. So is it too much to ask that our least advantaged citizens, the elderly in long-term care homes, don’t die en masse of thirst, and that our Indigenous people don’t have to boil their water to keep
Odds are, you’ve had at least one shot, and if you’re American or British, both. But if you’re like me, you’re still suffering from vaccine-envy. Why can they barbeque, worship and travel and we can’t? And do we have to lose two summers when they’re only losing one? Don’t they know how short and gorgeous
Saturday soul-searching –and soul-selling. Read More »
Donald Trump repeatedly called it “the failing New York Times.” It sort of was until Trump took office. Then it went on a tear, fuelled by an endless supply of Trump-induced stories, and today, the Times’ stock price, circulation and reputation are close to all-time highs. In fact, the fastest-growing international market for nytimes.com is ….Toronto.
Newspapers, not oldspapers Read More »
I went to boarding school back in the 60s when most of the ‘masters’ had degrees from Oxford or Cambridge and spoke with upper-class British accents. I was 12 and in my ‘formative years’. One lesson that’s stuck with me for over half a century is what a sucker I am for that accent. So
Old toffs. Old tricks. Read More »
Scientific research has two roads: curiosity-driven and problem-solving. In the first, you get to ask: “Gee, what would happen if?” In the second, you’re asking: “How can we invent a COVID vaccine?” What’s amazing is how so much curiosity-driven research ends up solving all kinds of problems. So I urge you to exercise your curiosity
Time to stretch the parts of you that other days don’t. Read More »
“Whatever field you are in, if it uses language, it is about to be transformed.” That’s the subhead of last week’s New Yorker article by Torontonian Stephen Marche. This is not just a big claim; it’s a stupendous and even preposterous one But the headline explains why it’s happening, and ultra-fast: “The computers are getting
Wayne LaPierre is under fire. The head of the National Rifle Association used to lead America’s most powerful and well-funded lobby group. He still does, despite using the NRA as his ‘personal piggy bank’, which forced New York’s Attorney General to move to dissolve the NRA, and for it to declare bankruptcy in January. Oh,
Hemingway would weep Read More »
