Tag Archives: language

Calgary Flames Fans Debate Vaccine Requirements

This thread may be the biggest shit show in the history of CalgaryPuck, a Calgary Flames fan site/message board I’ve been reading since 2001. What starts as a discussion of the Jets announcing they’ll require proof of vaccination devolves as a series of antivaxxers keep popping up to make all sorts of logically and factually […]

Music Monday – “Whereas some of us weren’t always fair/To the Native kid on borrowed skates/Chippy Goolies and Ukrainians/In the corners with our elbows up”

Goolie was originally a derogatory term referring to people of Icelandic descent who settled in Manitoba. The derivation of the word remains a mystery. The most plausible origin I encountered while researching When Falcons Fly was that the first Icelandic settlers had thick Norse accents and pronounced the word “goalie” as “goolie.” Interestingly, the word […]

Secular Sunday – An Addiction Model May Explain A Lot of Our Current Societal Issues (That Don’t Normally Seem Like Addiction Issues)

This is a fascinating thread which encompasses a lot of interesting ideas – tribalism, how people get sucked further into wilder conspiracy theories, and even whether QAnon is showing signs of moving from a fringe political theory into a full-fledged religion. it’s conceivable to conceptualize political tribalism (& perhaps even cultism), through an addiction model […]

Friday Fun Link – Fair Dealing Decision Tool (Maybe?)

Somebody sent this tool around at work so I thought I’d post it here (though if you know how I feel about copyright, you’ll know that I’m also not the best person to ask about whether something falls under copyright or not as I have a *very* generous understanding of what constitutes “fair dealing”!) 🙂

107 Year Old Irish Farmer Reflects on Changes He’s Seen (1967 Interview)

The single best presentation I did in library school was on the evolution of streaming video online and how it’s biggest benefit was how online video eliminates constraints of both time and distance that all previous dominant mass communications mediums – radio, television – suffered from. Like most 70s kids, I was pretty obsessed with […]

Music Monday – “Let’s get friendship right/Get life day to day/In the forget yer skates dream/Full of countervailing woes”

“It’s A Good Life (If You Don’t Weaken)” – The Tragically Hip with Feist

Secular Sunday – Common Proofs of God’s Existence

Friday Fun Link – How Long Would It Take To Hack Your Password?

You don’t have to submit your password – just type it into the box on this site and it will tell you how long it would take a computer to guess it. If you’re nervous about testing your own passwords, use something similar eg. instead of “password”, use “massward” or whatever.)

RIP Mick Burrs (Steven Michael Berzensky) 1940-2021

PICTURES OF THE DEAD (from “Dark Halo”) The dead leave us only images of themselves: souvenirs in washed out colours, dried petals pressed in family albums, shadows that stain our papered walls.  They abandon us in our rooms, teach us how to converse with dust, will not let us forget them. But in our glistening reeds […]

Friday Fun Link – The Jeopardy Archive

A comprehensive archive of every question ever in the history of Jeopardy is nerd-paradise. (Librarians are 14th in lifetime winnings by career-type though I’d like to see this graph on a per capita basis too.)