Category Archives: PopCulture

10 Reasons I’m Supporting @ryanMeili for #skndpldr – #6 – He Dropped Out of Sutherland (But Kept His Beard)

I was recently reminded by a long-time NDP member that, in the interests of unity, it’s important not to ascribe negative motives to candidate’s actions, especially during a Leadership race. I don’t think I was particularly judging anyone negatively in the circumstance. But it was a timely reminder given that I was planning to write […]

10 Reasons I’m Supporting @ryanMeili for #skndpldr – #7 – He Grew Up On A Farm

Since the 2009 race, Ryan’s gone from being the youngest candidate to the oldest. There’s also been another less obvious but equally drastic shift in the dynamic this time around… In the last race, my memory is that three of all of the four candidates had strong rural connections – Ryan grew up on a farm, […]

10 Reasons I’m Supporting @ryanMeili for #skndpldr – #8 – His Book

This reason strikes particularly close to home for me. When I convocated from the U of R with a BA – English way back in 1996, I lived in great fear that I would only find work in the “French Fried Arts” as was the stereotype for Arts grads then (and probably now too…if there […]

Saturday Snap – Manitoba Children’s Museum

During our trip to Winnipeg last weekend, we visited the Manitoba Children’s Museum.  One of the highlights for me was seeing that every single exhibit area had picture books scattered around that tied into the theme of that exhibit – the train that you could climb on had transportation books, the exhibit that let you […]

Friday Fun Link – Which Fan Theories Blew Your Mind With Their Logic?

Fan theories are alternate ideas/interpretations for movies, music, books, etc. One of the top-rated AskReddit threads of all time asked for people’s favourites.  That got responses including this one which blew my mind.  (Warning: these fan theories often will change your perspective on beloved pop culture items in a way that you’ll never be able […]

The Cowboy Junkies Have The Right Idea…

My Facebook feed was filled with people talking about the weather, posting screen grabs of The Weather Network (did we really hit-50 with wind chill?  Was Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan really the coldest place on the planet today?  Was the average temperature in Saskatchewan closer to the surface temperature on Mars than in Toronto?  Yes to […]

Top 10 Things I Use As A Bookmark

A discussion on Reddit about who uses dust jacket flaps as bookmarks leads to all kinds of other related anecdotes… English Prof here: Want a great way to boost reading comprehension? Don’t use bookmarks! It’s weird and counter-intuitive, but what this does is force you to go back and quickly skim over what you read […]

Saturday Snap – I Hope Overdrive Isn’t Recommending E-books Based on My Personal Reading History…

…otherwise the following could be quite embarrASSing! 😉

The Day Obama Won The Internet: The Inside Story of His Reddit AMA

Very interesting behind-the-scenes look at how Obama’s Reddit AMA was proposed, how it happened and how it impacted his campaign. This was a day of political-campaign and Internet firsts, the sitting president subjecting himself to a free- for-all question-and-answer session with a hardcore community of pot-smoking freedom junkies who hated drones and loved porn and […]

Friday Fun Link – 2012 in Four Minutes

I’m not sure whether to be proud or sad that I caught the vast majority of the references in this video…  (If you prefer text links, this one has many of the same memes in the video.  And here’s a summary of the year from a Canadian perspective.)