On Ben Affleck and Slavery

Originally posted on Matthew Barlow:
A few years back, I was contacted by the producers of Who Do You Think You Are?, a popular TV genealogy show, to help them with an episode.  The show was predicated on tracing the ancestry of celebrities, attempting to capitalize on the boon in genealogy amongst the masses, and was…

A Brief Walk Through the Circles of Hell

Originally posted on Duck Pie:
Albert Camus isn’t light vacation reading. He also penned the least likely passage to make it into Amsterdam’s tourism promotional materials. When I travel, I try to pack fiction about the place I’m visiting. But I’d forgotten to do my research before a planned long layover in Amsterdam that would…

Are We in a New Era of ‘Re-Wilding’?

Originally posted on Longreads:
The contrasting conditions of the resurgent Föritz and the depleted forests of Albania are a microcosm of the planet. We are living in the Anthropocene, a time when human activity, more than anything else, shapes the earth’s climate and ecosystems. Our hunting, fishing, deforestation, overgrazing, and pollution have created a period…

First Nations Art – A Small Piece of the Picture at the AGO

A small, but exquisite exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario, which positioned a large collection of prehistoric and more recent First Nations and Inuit material as an artistic tradition, rather than just a collection of historical objects.

If I Had a Dollar (Why I Am a Feminist)

Originally posted on girl in the hat:
image courtesy Devil Doll Because my mother was a painter and a beauty when artists had patrons and a woman like that needed a man to take care of her, so she married a money man. Because my mother’s mother was a beauty and her mother was, too,…

Love and hypocrisy in Iran

Originally posted on dianadarke:
In Iran, they say, there are two books in every household  – the Koran and Hafez. One is read, the other is not. To understand this joke you need do no more than join the millions who regularly throng the tomb of Hafez, 14th century poet of Shiraz and Iran’s national…

Finding Focus In Different Media

Originally posted on The Daily Post:
The main medium for my creative energy is writing — whether I communicate with bloggers and editors, draft a post, or jot down something just for myself or a handful of close friends. When I get stuck, though, one thing I almost always find useful is to stop thinking with and through words.…

The Programmer’s Dream (A Ramble)

It’s never simple, it’s not the answer, but I love it anyways. Nick Bradbury Programmers dream of new code. We spend a good deal of our time working on code we didn’t write for software we didn’t create, much of which we believe is horribly written (or, at least, could be done much better). We…

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