Day 101: The Universe Is A Dick – The Mary Nissenson Story

originally published April 10, 2012 After spending a day clawing through a hundred Wikipedian subjects, counting every word by hand and trying to remember what it felt like to breathe outside air, it’s nice to welcome Mary Nissenson into my consciousness for a pleasant, normal kilograph. Except Mary’s story is anything but normal. She is […]

Day 100: 100 x 10

originally published April 9, 2012 Every day I try to sum up some great concept (like stacking plastic chairs) in a thousand words. Today, in honor of my one hundredth consecutive day of stretching my fingers at the whim of Lady Wiki, I am trying something different. 100 subjects, each summed up in exactly ten […]

Day 99: The Great One – The 1968 Columbia Occupation

originally published April 8, 2012 Today’s article is about apathy. I attend one of Canada’s premium universities (I consider us ‘premium’ because we have two Starbucks on campus), and apart from a handful of tiny anti-tuition-raising protests, we never really see any demonstrations of mass solidarity against an oppressive ill in the world. Things weren’t […]

Day 98: Thought Experiments, And Other Ways To Hurt One’s Brain

originally published April 7, 2012 Any physicists reading today’s article (and I’ve been told that my site is tremendously popular among physicists, especially when I write about stacking chairs or old Andrew Dice Clay movies) should stop now. I’m about to make an ass of myself, trying to understand a handful of ‘thought experiments’ that […]

Day 97: The THEA Awards Travel-Book

originally published April 6, 2012 Is there a better job for a writer than writing travel articles? I suppose if one hates to fly, or thinks that foreign people are “gross”, then travel writing may not be for them. But for someone like me, who enjoys portioned packages of peanuts and thinks that all people, […]

Day 96: Where Were You In 4000 BC?

originally published April 5, 2012 Depending on whom you ask, history’s starting date is up for discussion. First off, you have your scientific-minded people who will tell you that the universe is billions and billions of years old. I’m just going to discard that nonsense right away, because it doesn’t fit in with today’s topic, […]

Day 95: Who Do Jamu? Do You?

originally published April 4, 2012 It’s only a matter of time before we’re all hopped up on jamu. My Indonesian fanbase (and according to the figures before me, you all constitute a whopping 0.37% of my adoring millions) will no doubt agree with this. Jamu is old-school medicine, once (and still) sold by the Indonesian […]

Day 94: Mitch Williams & The Agony Of Defeat

originally published April 3, 2012 As we all know, it is mandated by law that every American boy grows up dreaming of wanting to play professional baseball, just as it is written that every Canadian boy must dream of becoming a professional hockey player. As a lifelong rule-breaker, I instead grew up with aspirations of […]

Day 93: Hollywood Scandal #1 – The Fatty Trial

originally published April 2, 2012 Long before the Tragic Fat-Guy stories of John Belushi, Chris Farley, and (almost) Artie Lange, Hollywood had one that could top them all. This was a man whose talent arguably eclipsed all three of those guys, and whose tragic fall was uglier and more heartbreaking. I’m talking about Roscoe Arbuckle, […]

Day 92: Some Light Reading At The Beinecke

originally published April 1, 2012 I don’t often write about architecture, mainly because I’m unfamiliar with a lot of the terminology, and writing that some aspect of a building is “cool”, while another feature is “bitchin’” will not provide much in the way of satisfaction with my work. When Ms. Wiki’s random skeeball landed in […]