Recreation: A Poem
D. S. Calgary, 2022. Featured Image
On Life in the Universe
It seems like a philosophical question to ponder what life is. Although much of biology informs us of how life operates on Earth, this science also confines itself to Earth. The only “life” we know of is the life on this planet. It is the product of a suitable environment, a series of serendipitous accidents,…
On Typography
There’s an adage about design that goes something like, “we only notice good design when it’s no longer around.” And no more is this true than in the design of readable materials: typography. Amateur typographers and typesetters have a whole host of options these days for mucking about with how their documents and papers look.…
Housing and Home Ownership This Decade
These days, it’s all too common to hear discussion about the housing crisis. The rising rent, the sky-high house prices, the decline in home ownership—they’re all symptoms of a growing dynamic. From the mid-2000s, right around the time of the subprime mortgage crisis, several shifts have conspired to make cities increasingly unaffordable. First, many cities…
To Philosophize on the Future
Predicting the future is messy business. “Futurology” is the art of speculating about the future and, in practice, it’s an optimist’s game. Indeed, few want to think poorly of their own—or humanity’s—future. There will doubtless be innumerable innovations in the coming years. Today’s vision of the future incorporates the idea of a continued advance of…
A Fuel Tax Break Is Not What Consumers Need Right Now
Last Friday, a new fuel tax break came into effect in Alberta. The policy, championed by Premier Jason Kenney, would dispense with the existing 13 cent per litre provincial tax on gasoline and diesel. It seems like a straightforward strategy: help reduce the burden of soaring fuel prices from consumers. It’s also immediately visible. Perhaps…
The Phonemes of Linguistics
The study of linguistics is frequently about language in its most theoretical form. Syntax and morphology focus on the form of words and language; semantics are about meaning. However, none of these fields exist in a vacuum. In fact, linguistics as a whole tries to observe and understand language in a social context—as the central…
Sunday Mornings: A Memoir
The best part of a weekend is naturally Friday evening. There’s this sensation that you have all this free time before you. In fact, I think it’s quite remarkable how far my mind is willing to stretch in thinking about the ways in which I could leisurely spend the weekend. (Of course, the converse is…
The Psychology in Economics
Basic economic theory as we know it today is based heavily on a series of generalizations about how people act. That looks like describing the movement of prices in response to changes in supply. It also looks like looking at how government spending would affect the unemployment rate. Today, the models economists use to predict…
Two Novels of Black History
For this February, here are two novel recommendations, each with its own distinctive qualities and characters, each compelling in its own way. First is a twentieth-century classic: Invisible Man Set roughly in the 1930s, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man follows an unnamed African-American narrator as he recounts his early years—from growing up in the American South…
A Personal Memorandum
To the person I will be tomorrow: You inherit these memories of mine and every fibre of my physical self. You are like me. I too have inherited the persona and body of my predecessors, and my experiences will become your experiences in a mere few hours. Yet you—and subsequent you’s—will have experiences I—and preceding…
Lying with Statistics
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. Mark Twain wrote that in 1907. And over a hundred years later, it still seemingly holds true. There’s something disarming about numbers—something irrefutable. Statistics: “the most objective, analytical form of evidence anyone can give”—so people say. Statistical evidence can make for compelling arguments. Yet…
Four Russian Authors: Book Recommendations
There’s something characteristic about Russian literature that I love. I can’t fully describe it. But I feel it has a lot to do with the nation’s complex history and—in my mind, at least—some stereotyped notion of its culture. Regardless, there are four authors I want to highlight here. They have produced some of the most…
Tapes and the Unending Archive
We live in a world defined by an abundance of information. Our phones and computers continually collect data about us. Similarly, posts and photos and videos—all of which have to “exist” somewhere in the real world—flood the internet. We call it the cloud, but the actual information up in the cloud ultimately still has to…
Woolf, Words, Wonder: A Creative Memoir
I am awake at eleven in the evening holding Woolf’s To the Lighthouse open in my left hand as I sit with my right leg crossed over my left, uncomfortable, still staring down at the pages mindlessly—what a strange book this is, I wonder. Words glide before my eyes and what is the point of…