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The Last of the Group of Seven
As a young foreign service officer with the Canadian Embassy in Washington D.C. during the mid-1970’s (post Nixon, during Ford and Carter), I had responsibility for several of our (the Public Affairs Bureau) outreach activities. One of these was promoting Canadian arts and culture. That job included every discipline, including music, literature, art, etc. Not Read more
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1909 (or The Cousin From Canada)
1909. It wasn’t a particularly memorable year when one thinks of grand, sweeping world events. It certainly wasn’t – to borrow from The Tale of Two Cities – the best or the worst of times. Not like 1900, the beginning of a new century, or 1914 and 1918, the beginning and end of the Great Read more
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Truth Takes Time
On President’s Day (Family day in this part of Canada) I was listening to an NPR (National Public Radio) program about Lyndon Johnson’s biographer, Robert Caro. Caro’s monumental biography of the 36th President has already evolved into four mammoth books (the first two published by Random House; the latter pair by Alfred A. Knopf), the Read more
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AI (Part 2): ArtificiaI Intelligence Tries Its Hand at Writing and Drawing
In part one of this series on artificial intelligence, I talked about the increasing interest in using AI as a tool for writing (and other things). The idea has been greeted with anticipation by some (“Microsoft Bets Big on the Creator of ChatGPT in Race to Dominate A.I.”, Jan. 13, 2023, NYT), dread by others Read more
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AI (Part 1): Have You Already Read Your Last Original Story?
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become the latest new thing, almost rivalling Holland’s 17th century Tulipmania, the United Kingdom’s 19th century railway bubble and the 1920’s Florida real estate boom and bust (an oft-repeated scenario, sadly to say). Things are moving so fast that it’s proved necessary to rewrite this post several times before publication date; Read more
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One Year Later: What do Vladimir Putin and the UBC Farmers’ Market Have in Common?
A year ago I published a post on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I doubt few expected we’d be here a year later, still with no end in sight. The spirit and resilience of the Ukrainian people can only be admired and applauded. Now that February – cold, wet and grey (at least on the Read more
