Tom Toles hit it on the head yesterday, and that dovetails nicely with the article Unhappy Meals by Michael Pollan in the New York Times Magazine awhile back (thanks Elizabeth!), which starts with a handy rule of thumb: …if you’re concerned about your health, you should probably avoid food products that make health claims. Why? …
Category Archive: Thoughts & Musings
May
02
Mar
27
Time/Toles
Interesting comparison of Time Magazine covers for this week [whoops—they’ve changed issues already]—all the international editions feature a cover story on the resurgence of the Taliban; the U.S. cover features a story titled “Why We Should Teach the Bible in Public School”. Reminds me depressingly of a Tom Toles cartoon from two years ago.
Mar
22
OneZone digression
We were hoping that the downtown free high-speed wireless internet network (Toronto Hydro’s OneZone) would allow us to make hospital blog posts, check our mail, etc., from our laptop. Here is my review of the service (written from my at-home computer, for reasons that will become obvious): In the O.R. waiting room our MacBook found …
Mar
16
Lee’s Candies Aftermath
This article from the Vancouver Courier updates the story of the Lee’s Candies fire, with a photo of Valeria in front of the outpourings of love surrounding what was formerly her store. Obviously other people cared about Valeria and her shop—someone actually started a fundraising drive to help her until Valeria put a stop to …
Mar
10
Whither the watch?
Just as my ancient, beaten-up watch (a high-school graduation present!) does its annual “change my battery” stoppage, I read an interesting (though highly speculative) article in Slate that suggests that what with the proliferation of electronic devices with clocks on them (video equipment, kitchen appliances, computer, PDA, phone, etc), people are less likely to actually …
Mar
08
Adieu, Lee’s
A part of my childhood has just died… A few blocks from our house in Vancouver was an old chocolate shop called Lee’s Candies. The shop was founded in the 1950s, and became a time-capsule of that era, with unchanged décor, moulds and scales from the 1920s, and an equally-ancient cash register that went “ka-ching!” …
Oct
24
Sneak peek: Doodle of the Week
We’ve been busy working on things for the past few weeks, and now’s the time to spill the beans about it. It’s a couple of projects that will go under the collective banner of Doodle of the Week, related to our past lives as kids’ science authors. While we work on the main event for …