Every day for the last five years I looked at the remains of my parents on the mantelpiece and wondered what to do with them. My mother’s ashes were in a vase-like silver urn, covered with a crimson velvet hood; my father’s reposed in a rectangular metal box wrapped with brown paper because he thought […]
The Ashes – and it’s not cricket Read More »
The Meta vs. Mass Media battle, or Bill C-18 as referred to by the Canadian Federal Government, has shown its ugly face. Before the law goes into force in December 2023, both sides have already staked out their positions. The Feds have decided that Meta is the bad guy. On the Meta side, links to
The Battle for Advertising Gold Read More »
I am a keen follower of the smaller wars, the “controlled burns,” that broke out post-WWII, because I have been trying to understand what went wrong with our collective declaration of “Never Again” that echoed in the wake of revelations like the Holocaust and the A-bomb, and after we finished counting the 85 million-plus dead
Controlled Burn – the strategy of modern warfare Read More »
I was recently invited to participate in an immigrant exhibition in my small town, featuring local residents who had moved to Canada from various countries. I felt honoured. I was also asked to speak about my experiences to the local audience, mainly comprised of people who had been settled in this country for multiple generations.
Immigrant Life – the untold story Read More »
In an era of intolerance, I have often wondered whether our opponent, the Other, also known as the Competition, actually helps to make us better? I was in Paris recently and attended an exhibit at the Musée d’Orsay on the paintings of Manet and Degas, two impressionist painters of the 19th century, who were friends
Does the OTHER make us stronger? Read More »
The land began to change after we left Midelt, the mid-point in our journey. We started to ascend into the Atlas Mountains, the domain of nomadic tribes who graze their flocks of goat and sheep between high altitudes and low in search of fodder. The Mid-Atlas is green and fertile compared to the more arid
Morocco – the South Read More »
I thought that travelling through Morocco during Ramadan would be as daunting as those “dry and hungry days” I faced in the Arabian Gulf during this period of fasting, but with the exception of local hotels, restaurants and food stalls being closed during the day, tourist hotels served food continuously (a couple of them even
Morocco – the Northern Cities Read More »
I’ve been coming to the Dominican Republic for over 15 years, but never had the chance to visit the capital, Santo Domingo. Why? It was always too far from the tourists resorts of Samana, Punta Cana, and La Romana where I usually ended up. The one time I dared to book a visit, food riots
Road to Santo Domingo Read More »
The world is agog with ChatGPT—the AI machine that writes for you based on the commands you give it—and the revolution it is going to cause in journalism and the arts. Essay and article writers will go extinct, say the pundits; graphic designers will commit hara-kiri and visual artists would have to take up house
This article is NOT written by a robot Read More »
There was a time when, if you had a problem with a new service or appliance you bought, you called an 800 number, spoke to a live expert, and got your issue resolved. Well, that’s history, right? As we entered the 21st century, as voice-recognition technology improved, as Big Data expanded to gather a myriad
The Extinction of “Customer Service” Read More »