The Girl Guides of Canada dropped the name “Brownies” for reasons of political correctness. The action was well-intentioned, but the replacement name was unfortunate. The new name, “Embers,” is supposed to mean that the young girls have potential for the start of something big in the future. I have two problems with this: A far …
I really dislike it when people use unfamiliar words for something, rather than trying to use a familiar word that has more intuitive meaning. (Although worse is business jargon, where a familiar word is used in a completely unfamiliar way: case in point, almost every word used in the “Agile” business process.) This is how …
Continue reading ‘Please stop using the word umami for a flavour.’ »
First of all, I thought Arrival was a fantastic film. It worked for me on almost every level, and I ended up crying after the “reveal” at the end of the movie. Few movies (or books) cause me to react that way. It’s in my collection. I was tentatively looking forward to Blade Runner 2049. …
Continue reading ‘My disappointment in Denis Villeneuve and Dune.’ »
Naomi Osaka has said that she will avoid press interviews after any of her matches at the French Open. Participating in these interviews is part of contracts signed by players on the tour, and she’ll be fined $20,000 for each one she avoids. The response has been mixed. Most people say they understand, but that …
I’ve only just discovered this show in its second season. It’s similar to Kitchen Nightmares except that hidden cameras are used. But here’s my question: How can the owner of a restaurant not know that their restaurant is being filmed by hidden cameras? If the owner doesn’t know (and several episodes make it appear that …
Continue reading ‘Gordon Ramsay’s new show: 24 Hours to Hell and Back.’ »
I recently starting having a strange problem. Video on my computer became “jerky.” For example, things would look normal for about a second but then the video would “pause” for a fraction of a second before resuming. The audio was just fine, but I kept seeing this slight “jerk” in everything I looked at, including …
Continue reading ‘Did my computer drink too much caffeine?’ »
I turned it off after the first 10 minutes and stopped watching it. I almost never do this with anything (at least in the middle of a show), and I’ve watched every episode of every Star Trek series up until now. But I found the dialogue in the script so unappealing that it held no …
Continue reading ‘I found Star Trek: Discovery best left undiscovered.’ »
Strangely, despite what you would think, most browsers still allow popups—even if you’ve disabled them in the normal UI. With Chrome, you can download one of several different popup blocker extensions. With Firefox-based browsers, you can go to about:config, search for dom.popup_allowed_events, and remove all of the entries there. (This does not prevent new windows …
Some time ago, I reactivated my inactive Facebook account. I hate Facebook and pretty much everything it stands for. Even though I totally support social activity, I think Facebook is probably the worst example of how to not implement something. I think it encourages a belief in activity that’s mostly meaningless and superficial, and it …
When I was quite young, my family had one of the first telephones in our neighborhood. I remember well the polished oak case fastened to the wall on the lower stair landing. The shiny receiver hung on the side of the box. I even remembered the number – 105. I was too little to reach …