This summer has been a good one for fireflies. A couple of weeks ago we got spectacular natural fireworks. And the cicadas are literally drowning out the after-dinner traffic noise in my backyard, or garden as the English would say. But the master of them all here and everywhere, is the mosquito. This little insect has, as described in the book Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator, killed billions of us over the centuries. And they haven’t stopped trying. Rode

GM has brought a mid engine Corvette to market. Blasphemy say some, about time sat others. They have sold the entire first year of production already, so I think the ‘its time’ brigade has won the day. It is hard not to be impressed by this machine. It is Ferrari fast and manoeuvrable at a top of the line Ford Mustang cost. If I had the disposable income, I would get one. It still has enough Corvette DNA for me. I am reading a book about the assassination of Julius Caesar. I

Attended the staff end of the year party last night and made the speech I avoided doing during the more formal occasions I attended previously. It went well I thought, and I didn’t tear up once. Although It is hard to say goodbye to people who aren’t there and there were so many throughout the last three decades that I owed so much too. I just asked God to bless them and keep them because that is all I could do. The finality of the decision is becoming more real this morning

Shane, a western classic that was made into an iconic film starring Alan Ladd was the novel this week. It was a strange read. I enjoyed it, but the love, for lack of a better word, shown by the writer for the violent acts and the attractive man involved in most of them was odd. It was a ‘the gun and the man became one and it was beautiful’ kind of thing. The plot was traditional, homesteaders and the lone gunslinger versus ranchers, but there was enough character development

It was 75 years ago yesterday that the Allies crossed the English Channel and launched an assault on Nazi occupied Europe. Being Canadian and born in 1961 to a mother whose father spent six years overseas training and fighting, it was always a big deal to me. I had models of the weapon systems and the popular books. I studied the history of the conflict as an undergrad and at the graduate level. Popular movies and programs like Saving Private Ryan, Band of Brothers and The Pa

This edition makes a full year I have been writing a weekly blog. I have enjoyed it most of them time as I hope you have. It is remarkable how fast some weeks go and others how long they drag. I have read that time passes more quickly for those stuck in routines with little variation in their day to day. That rings true to me as the years where I have been busy but have done new things have seemed longer and fuller. The hope for my next life stage is that there will be variet

Lilium is back in the news. I wrote about this company a year ago and now they have their five-seater electric jet built and tested. Well built anyway. This video shows the limited extent of the testing. I am not an engineer or a pilot, but it seems to me that these Germans are on to something. Nonpolluting, cheap to fly, incredibly safe due to multiple redundant engines, vertical take-off, long range and fast. Quite a list. If it wasn’t privately held, I would invest. I have

Picture removed. This is remarkable. The face you are seeing is computer-generated. It is a result of a new approach to programming which provides a database of celebrity images and then directs an artificial intelligence program to correct its mistakes, for lack of a better phrase, as it refreshes the image over and over in the process of creating a completely new persona. It gets better at it (because it judges itself) and thus makes the image less fake looking over time. U

I’m listening to a novel I read long ago, ‘Shogun’ by James Clavell. The audio recording is horrible, because it was done before that was a priority, but the novel itself is fascinating. It is set in 17th century Japan, when the Western world was just coming into contact with medieval Japan. Historical fiction at its very best. The plot roughly parallels the actual events that led to the closing of Japan to Western influences for more than 200 years. The portrayal of the simp

There is a 9-year-old girl living in my city who was on the front page of the only newspaper in town this morning. It seems that she wants to change the name of Plantation Street, where she lives, because of slavery. Plantation Street is in the middle-class suburb of Oakridge Acres in London, Ontario Canada. Canada never really had slavery. Or plantations. It’s a 1950’s designed subdivision, so the streets meander in circles and crescents and dead ends. There are plenty of ma

My wife and I went to the Art Gallery of Ontario to see the Impressionism in the Age of Industry exhibit last weekend. It was not disappointing. Colour, movement and life burst from the canvas wherever you looked. There is so much beauty in the juxtaposition of sky, earth and man’s works. Not exactly romantic but not a condemnation of it either. These men and women were pioneers in how they painted and what they portrayed. Did you know that they were castigated because of the

I was struck this week by several stories in the media about the growing crush of refugees/immigrants at the borders of the developed world, that is, the US and Western Europe. I recall that in 2006 I was teaching a senior level law class about international law. We studied an article written by Robert Kaplan titled “The Coming Anarchy”. In it he posited that scarcity, crime, overpopulation and tribalism will produce failed nation-states throughout the developing world, which

The Vice President of the United States has promised that the US will land astronauts on the moon by 2024. To a person of my age, that date seems impossibly distant, but its only five years away. His response to questions about this time frame were interesting. He said, 'We did it in 8 in the 1960's and we knew very little about the process. Now we do, so we do it in 5. And if we can't get NASA contractors to handle it, we'll get other ones that can.' Nice. I am one of those

Pushing through is something that a lot of type A personalities do. The concussion experience has taught me that there are some situations where that approach is the wrong one. Learning things like this well into your fifties is a surprise. It is very difficult, but real change is. I have struggled similarly with mental health. Which, in its recent form may be related to the head injury. Long term pain increases the frequency of the black dog as Winston Churchill referred to

We got a ‘snow day’ this week. There was freezing rain for about 12 hours and they closed the schools. I still get that little thrill when I read the email or hear it on the radio. No school work for you today little boy. You are free. However, I spent the day in an out of consciousness as I am fighting a brutal infection that has left me with clogged sinuses and a cracking headache. I have been writing in the new library not too far from me. It was not built in the tradition

I read an article this week that made me laugh. It wasn’t supposed to be funny, but it was to me in an intentionally ironic way. It was written 200 years ago by an Italian philosopher who was trying to answer the question ‘Is it good to seek literary glory?’ ‘Glory’ in the context it was used back then literally does not exist today. It had a sense of respect that is lacking. Now its ‘famous’, ‘well known’ or rich. Dan Brown or James Patterson famous and rich. Or JK Rowling,

Reading one of the Wild Card (https://www.goodreads.com/series/40686-wild-cards) books by George RR Martin. Very good. Creative smart and violent science fiction written in the 1980’s. Is there anything this guy can’t do? Started writing the third book of the Conor and Gray series. Just diddling with formats and pdf conversions with the other two now so I thought, what the hell? I have 7 pages. Can security cameras detect crime before it happens? Check this out: https://www.b

Its dark and cold and raining like stink. Has been all day. Got very wet at football practice, despite my attempts at layering. When I went to buy the trainer’s tape we use on the players’ various ankle and wrist injuries, I found the money in my wallet was soaking wet, just like the rest of me. Luckily a significant percentage of Canadian paper currency is plastic. No permanent damage. Playoff game tomorrow night. Hopefully the rain will cease by then. We are banged up, but

Lots of reading and writing this week. Most of the writing is the ‘get your book ready for publication’ kind. The blurb, a one or two paragraph summary of the novel which goes on the back cover and doesn’t give too much away (very hard). Here it is: One man’s journey One world’s fate Conor led the army that won the war against the Bonded. Prophecies seemed fulfilled and peace at hand. Yet the conflict brought hungry empires and forces far worse than those of men into the sout