“If music be the food of love, play on!” I may have mentioned that I have a daughter who does things. Twelfth Night opens tonight!

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Touch Me Now: York Plays 2025

A cast of hundreds participated in a public medieval re-enactment dramatizing the Christian story from Creation through Final Judgement at the University of Toronto a few weeks ago.  I attended as the event videographer. I had at least three cameras running at all times — sometimes five — while a roving camera also caught the…

Pesky journalists, always showing up to document atrocities.

No Democratic president should send in troops trained for lethal combat into a pro-life rally, a worship service, a gun show, or any other peaceful gathering expressing solidarity on an an issue that rubs Democrats the wrong way, at least not in a land where people have first amendment freedoms (no establishment or prohibition of…

I MacGyvered myself a heat sink

I’m getting ready to record about 18hrs footage from four different cameras, and I noticed my new 4K webcam was heating up pretty fast. I’m settled in a dorm room at the University of Toronto, far from the junk drawers and tool boxes that would have aluminum foil and copper wire. I suppose I could…

Unemployment rates for recent college grads: Overall, 5.8%; Computer science, 6.1%; Computer engineering, 7.5%; Journalism, 4.4%

The market is rough for college grads, and especially rough for computer-related majors that the STEM-first mindset pushed as a guaranteed safe career track. According to a recent report, employment for journalism majors is not only better than CS and computer engineering, but also a notch or two better than the average employment rate for…

Why Even Try if You Have A.I.? Now that machines can think for us, we have to choose whether to be the passengers or pilots of our lives.

We’re drawn to activities that invite us to grow, by trying and trying again, because we want to evolve as people. Life is mostly repetitive—wake, eat, work, sleep, repeat—and each day can feel like an unsatisfying circle. But repetition with variation broadens us. It makes our circular days into spiralling journeys. “The spiral is a…

Spring 2025 Final Grades Submitted!

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‘Most Transparent’ White House In History Keeps Majority Of Trump’s Remarks Secret

On the White House website, there is no official record of about 80% of President Trump’s public statements.  The self-proclaimed “most transparent” White House in history, as it turns out, has little interest in making the vast majority of Trump’s speeches and interactions with journalists readily accessible to the public whose taxes pay for their…

Microsoft Publishes Garbled AI Article Calling Tragically Deceased NBA Player “Useless”

This is what we have to look forward to, as a torrent of AI-generated slop that’s good enough for the CEOs to monetize squeezes out the human-generated content that actually matters. Former NBA player Brandon Hunter passed away unexpectedly at the young age of 42 this week, a tragedy that rattled fans of his 2000s…

The Big Boy Graveyard

On road trips in my youth, watching the Bob’s Big Boy signs transition to Shoney’s Big Boy was often part of the adventure. As the franchises close, the cheerful burger-wielding statues have been rounded up and corralled, presumably for their own safety. Source: The Big Boy Graveyard Similar:My kids are in a tree. How's your…

Stop sharing those unsourced memes about “be woke” and “God doesn’t need soldiers” — here’s what Pope Leo XIV is actually saying.

Pope Leo XIV, in his first address to journalists at the Vatican, called for the release of imprisoned journalists, championed the free press, and urged caution about AI. My social media feed is full of memes that purport to represent the words of Leo XIV. Legitimate news sources have already published stories about Pope Leo…

A Simple Investigation #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 17) Odo falls for a femme fatale

Rewatching ST:DS9 A duo of knobby-faced macguffin-hunters, bantering like the crooks from Home Alone, rough up a bumpy-foreheaded alien, then vaporize him. In Quark’s, Bashir is happily casting his friends Dax and O’Brien in his next unnamed-for-copyright-reasons British superspy holodeck adventure, Operation Nudge-Wink. Odo declines, looking uncomfortable. I had never seen this episode before. What…