I saw this in a glass cabinet at Queen's the other weekends when I was at an indescribably bad event not to be discussed (other than that it involved nose plugs and smiling) which required me to pace the hallway until it was over. A one hundred and eighteen year old hockey stick. It was amazing to …

The professional press is a wonderful thing, often taking to time to actually check things out before begining to type. This article in The Toronto Star provides useful background information to this week's protest by people of the Six Nations, including:  •  “In 1783, commanding Gen. Frederick …

In another in my continuing series of elemental considerations...who knew there was such a crunch on:  •  “The Chinese government is introducing a 5% tax on disposable wooden chopsticks in a bid to preserve its forests. It produces about 45 billion pairs of chopsticks a year, consuming millions of …

Unusually for me, I did the right thing and took Thursday and Friday off and never checked out the free on-line streaming internet version of the CBS coverage of March Madness last week during work hours:  •  “CBS Corp.'s decision to broadcast the annual March Madness college basketball tournament …

The caption on this photo at the BBC site reads:  •  “Miss Piggy dons a designer dress for a window display by London store Selfridges to celebrate 30 years of punk.”  •  I don't know what either Miss Piggy or Selfridges has to do with punk. But punk turning thirty has got me a bit, music of my …

The ever excellent John Gushue (no relation) notes today is the 383rd birthday of Samuel Pepys, the diarist and Minister of the English government in the 1660s. He also notes the live blogging of his famous diary. Yesterday, 344 years ago, Sammy had a bad day but one that interestingly illustrates …

That great voice of contemplative thought, the NYT op-ed, published a really interesting essay yesterday by Joseph J. Ellis, a professor of history at Mount Holyoke College. Entitled "Finding a Place for 9/11 in American History", it posed that interesting question from a historical perpective …

It's six years past that 24 hour show about people ringing in the New Year time zone by time zone. Six years after we found out that Y2K was meaninglessness and a bit of a consultant's dream. The could probably run that show again this year digitally adding a little stick to the final "0" making …

The Elemental Form  •  Red Ensigns. As I mentioned yesterday, I have been working on this edition of the Red Ensign Standard for a while. Some of my readers may have no idea about Red Ensigns so it is good that wikipedia has a good post about them. If I can take credit for being around at the …