Recent Blog Posts - In This Corner

Skip the hip, Olympics, and stick with real sports
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Skip the hip, Olympics, and stick with real sports
The Tokyo 2020 Olympics are nearing the half-way point. A few of you will be bleary-eyed from watching synchronized three-man fencing at 4 a.m., or something like that. Most of you will be saying, “Wait, how is this the 2020 Olympics? This is 2021, right?” Very astute observation. Yes, this is of...
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Is it time to cleanse yourself of the ‘news’?
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I am currently reading an epic book called Humankind (subtitled A Hopeful History) by a Dutch historian and thinker named Rutger Bregman. OK, I realize that sounds incredibly boring, but stay with me.  In Humankind, Bregman posits that the conventional wisdom that humans are by nature selfis...
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Oh, Baby! Female names for 2020 are U’nique
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When last we met – if you can call one person writing and another reading an actual meeting – I was discussing the more intriguing and downright weird names Albertans gave their baby boys in 2020. This week, let’s look at the distaff side.  There were fewer girls than boys born in 2020 (25,1...
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Baby boy names in 2020: From Aabid to Zyron, with plenty of Jaxs
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Back when I was a youngster – literally in another millennium! – most kids had names that were pretty solid and stolid. Everybody knew a John or a Jim or a Tim or a Phillip or a Michael. Or a Diane or a Debbie or a Mary or a Janice or a Jane or a… Continue reading Baby boy names...
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Lessons from COVID … but will we learn?
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Did you celebrate Canada Day on Thursday? If so, shame on you! If you read the daily newspapers (which nobody does anymore) or watch the TV news (which nobody should do anymore), you might think that Canada is a horribly racist country with nothing to celebrate. No less a personage than national ...
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Battle of the butts: how we (almost) beat smoking
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While driving around town recently, I saw something that actually made me come up short. The guy behind me was not pleased. What did I see? Get this: there was a guy standing around a road project (the ratio of guys standing around road projects to guys actually working is usually about five-to-o...
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This just in … Father’s Day is Sunday
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This just in … Father’s Day is Sunday
I’ve got some potentially bad news for any of you who have a father: Sunday is Father’s Day. Your reaction to this news will vary from “Yes, I know it’s Father’s Day. I bought my gift weeks ago” (generally a female response), to “What? Father’s Day again! Why didn’t somebody tell me?” (generally ...
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Snips and Cuts of 1939 (2021 remix)
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While rummaging through my junk recently (and by junk, I mean scraps of paper, etc., not, well, my junk) I came across something I didn’t know I had. A yearbook. From Central High School. In Charlotte, North Carolina. From 1939. I know why I have it … it was my mother’s yearbook...
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Canada: home of the world’s most flexible constitution
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Is Canada a country? Yes, I know Canada is a country in the land-mass sense of the word. You really can’t miss Canada on a map. It’s that massive slab of land, quite often coloured pink to show we’re part of the British Commonwealth (the same reason I added a ‘u’ to ‘colour’). W...
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The world’s super censor brings John Cena to his knees
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The world’s super censor brings John Cena to his knees
Are you familiar with John Cena? If not, good for you; he’s not really worth knowing about. So for the uninitiated, John Cena is a former professional wrestler. According to the World Wrestling Entertainment website, he is a 16-time WWE champion, author and ‘actor’ (quotes are mine). To quote dir...
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I’m STILL confused …
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So-o-o-o-o … what’s new?  Well, the Stanley Cup playoffs have begun, so there’s that. I’m very excited, up until the Edmonton Oilers are eliminated which. After that, my interest in hockey falls to near zero, with the exception of a hockey pool I entered. When researching which teams to choo...
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An abundance of confusion
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So I’m at a pharmacy, getting a prescription filled. The pharmacy tech is behind a shield, of course. She is also wearing a mask, naturally. And, not so naturally, she is also wearing a face shield. That’s three layers of protection between us.  I’m thinking to myself that this is a bit much...
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Happy Mother’s Day … sorry, have I excluded you?
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Happy Mother’s Day … sorry, have I excluded you?
Happy Mother’s Day! Oh, I’m sorry. Have I offended you? Please accept my apology, especially if you are a student of Manchester University in England.  I came across a story on the internet a while back, with the click-bait headline ‘Manchester University bans the word ‘mother’ ahead of Moth...
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Sorry, UCP, but you’re stuck with Kenney
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When Jason Kenney assumed the leadership of the newly-hatched United Conservative party in 2017, he was no doubt expecting a long, unchallenged reign. Coupled with his resounding victory over Rachel Notley’s one-and-done New Spend-ocratics (oooh, good one) , it likely gave him a feeling of invinc...
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The pure comedy of Spam, a lot of spam
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Few crimes make me angrier than telephone or online scams.  But I don’t know who I am angrier at – the scammer or the victim. The scammer is a reprehensible sub-human, preying on naive elderly people. What’s worse than that? But I’m also angry at the naive elderly person.  Seriously, gr...
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