Little brother’s birthday

Yes, it has been hot in Toronto this week (over 37 degrees plus humidity) but that is true all over the continent except for the west coast, where we’ve scarcely had the opportunity to remove our winter jackets. I went for a 20 minute stroll, not too fast. Here is what I found on the…

Niagara Falls

This week I spent some time in Niagara Falls. Having grown up in Canada, outside Ontario, I always KNEW that Niagara Falls was not a desirable place to go – impossibly tacky, commercialized, only visited by foreign tourists, and disappointing.

Fowler’s Modern English Usage; Bryson’s The Mother Tongue

A linguist’s blog on the most annoying grammar mistakes has inspired me to review two of my favourite books (see my page called Favourite Things). I am surprised by how many language fans are not familiar with the classic by H.W. Fowler – Modern English Usage, and I am dismayed because they are missing a wonderful thing . I…

Classified ads that make us curious

Here’s an ad from the intranet at work: FOR SALE: CASELOT OF CHAPSTICK (200), 1987. SPECIAL EDITION “CYNDI LAUPER – GOONIES MOVIE THEME” ASKING $75 The punctuation suggests that the Chapstick is 24 years old. I wonder if it has a best-before date. It is an interesting combination – the Chapstick caselot plus Cyndi Lauper.…

Hyperbolic crocheting

So many things to do, so little time… Thanks to a Canadian blogger living in Uruguay for the link to Hyperbolic crochet. Hyperbolic crochet was “discovered in 1997 by Cornell University mathematician Dr. Daina Taimina… The basic process  for making these forms is a simple pattern or algorithm, which on its own  produces a mathematically pure shape,…

Book: Sideways on a Scooter, by Miranda Kennedy

The city library has an email newletter for which you can select categories of interest. This book was featured in the ‘travel’ category. Subtitled “Life and Love in India,” it is written by an American journalist who lived in India for several years in her 20s. The book is not a a funny-style travel memoir…