PEREGRINE PULP

Though I don't think of myself as being passionate about nuclear energy, I do try to learn what I can about it. I take book recommendations and watch informational videos, read the latest about new reactor plans and completions, and try to keep track of the state of the art in experimental fission and fusion. Knowing anything at all (some details about the performance and problems with existing reactors including the latest builds) results in discovering plenty of curious ass

I keep being sent, and encountering in the wilds of the internet, essays from social commentator and professor of American history Heather Cox Richardson. She has a Substack with millions of subscribers, titled Letters from an American , a daily newsletter, and the requisite podcast , too. All those deliver her scholarly, history-informed take on current events to a nations-worth of inboxes and feeds. My first real encounter with the professor was some years ago when I was c

Because it needs reiterating: nearly a millennia after the first known European settlement in present-day Canada, well over two centuries...

EARLIEST VISITS? Almost eight centuries after Norse arrival in the east and two-and-a-half centuries after the start of the Columbian...

I just wanted to say something, something vaguely accurate, about the land that is now Canada. I thought I knew something and the textbooks and encyclopedias, electronic and digital, make it look so easy. Turns out the encyclopedias and textbooks have entirely different aims. I don’t know what those are but if I had to guess I would say their guiding mission includes brevity, avoiding any interesting details, and manufacturing a weird set of narratives. Though I passed throug

The subject of the peopling of the Americas was always messy and it’s getting even more interesting all the time. Some will insist folks...

Terry Fox was a kid who developed bone cancer and at age 18 had his leg amputated. In 1979 (a real great year) he revealed his plan to...

Like so many places, until recently there were trolleys and trains zooming people all over Victoria and beyond. From 1888 to 1923, a foot...

Other than the city of Victoria and a few other places being named after her, I realized I knew little more about Queen Victoria. Even...

Though I've been following along, I haven’t written at length about Ukraine since the opening weeks of this most recent Russian invasion. At that time, in late Winter and early Spring of 2022, knowing almost nothing about the conflict or what precipitated it, I was studying the previous decade of local and regional history with a focus on politics and ethnic violence. Doing so, most annoyingly, I was finding plenty that contradicted what I was hearing in the popular press and

What’s the deal  with the measles? ( Offered in the tone and tempo of Jerry Seinfeld, of course. ) Measles outbreaks are taking up a lot of time and space, even here in Canada, in the traditional and new press. Along with that, I keep reading that RFK Jr, the new head of America’s Health and Human Services, is promoting things backward and upside down as preventatives or cures and generally making everything worse, as he's always so determined to do. So what do you suspect I

I was wanting to learn about and write something on how leaded gasoline became a thing. But then I came upon the biography  of its inventor.  Thomas Midgley, Jr. was born in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania in 1889. He grew up in Columbus, Ohio and studied engineering at Cornell, earning a Master’s of Engineering in 1908 and a PhD in mechanical engineering in 1911. Five years later he was working for General Motors, at their Dayton Engineering Laboratories (DELCo) subsidiary in Ohi

Narendra :  They’re not trying to hide anything from you, though. Adrenalina :  Aren’t they? Narendra :  They would if they could. For...

In their ongoing effort to frame everything Palestinian as benevolent and peace-oriented, CBC sought once again to amplify the voice (and fabulous fabrications) of reporter and associate producer Keena Alwahaidi. Like so many before her, at the beginning of July Alwahaidi gleefully pushed the Gaza famine myth. That, of course, only came after this fiction had been debunked many times and on many fronts by anyone able and willing to muster the sympathy to look into the situat

On April 12th, 2001, Donald Rumsfeld sent George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Condoleezza Rice and email titled “Predicting the Future.” The...

I’ve been shocked by the response to Israel’s declaration of war and actions in Gaza. Of course, I’m not talking about the masses making...

Between 1892 and 1954 around 12 million people immigrated to the US via the immigration station at Ellis Island, New York. And any scan...

A FEW BASIC FACTS AND THINGS I NEVER HEAR Choose the answer that best fits your understanding of the situation If you don't know the...