PEREGRINE PULP

I take in a lot of food-related content. This week I was just watching a BBC documentary from 1957 about French peasants working as travelling salesmen across the Channel in the UK. Their wares? Onions. Men would leave their families in Roscoff , a commune in the Finistère département of Brittany, on the north end of the most westerly corner of Franc, and travel across to Portsmouth in ships carrying hundreds of tonnes of copper and rose Oignon de Roscoff . There they would

There’s been a lot of discussion about Greenland the last few weeks. Other than the Norse arriving there and going on to Canada a thousand years ago and Greenland’s melting ice sheets dumping tremendous volumes of fresh water into the North Atlantic and disrupting thermohaline convection , I know almost nothing about the world’s [second] largest island. (I don’t know why we pretend Australia is not an island…) My favourite story from my recent readings is about a hydrogen b

The Federal Court of Appeal confirms that the federal government’s invocation of the Emergencies Act was unreasonable and ultra vires [beyond their legal authority], and that it infringed paragraph 2(b) and section 8 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

I keep hearing folks in Europe and the United States dunking on wind power, claiming it has been a total failure, and offering this as strong evidence of the lie that always was alternative/renewable/green energy. Of course, in the current atmosphere, the alternative commonly presented is nuclear. Great. That gives us something relatively simple to compare to see if there's any truth to that. The most recent nuclear reactors built in the US were Units 3 and 4 at the Vogtle El

Probably the biggest and most lasting news story of 2025, even here in Canada, was the pending total economic collapse of the US and, as a result, likely that of the world. US consumer spending and GDP was supposed to crater. The imposition of tariffs and general Trumpist chaos was going to further worsen global trade and result, at the very least, in a global trade war — but perhaps translate into a world war — by the end of 2025. These were the predictions of the moderate p

John W. Trinkaus (not to be confused with John P. Trinkaus, the embryologist) is a hero of mine. Born in 1925, Trinkaus served in the US Air Force during WWII, studied electrical engineering after the war, and then worked as an engineer for a few decades. With graduate degrees related to engineering and management, he eventually took up a professorship at a CUNY's Baruch College business school and would come to be a Professor Emeritus and the school's dean. Trinkaus also c

Because of light pollution, many birds around the globe sing almost an hour longer today than historically or those birds who reside in more remote areas. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adv9472 Hunted to near extinction, since the 1980s green sea turtles were listed as 'endangered.' Decades of sustained conservation has just resulted in their status being lifted to 'least concern'. https://www.popsci.com/environment/green-sea-turtles-not-endangered The volume of

Last summer I was writing about my continuing confusion around pandemic-related matters and my feeling that there remains a serious lack of dialogue around any of it. No one liked that. So, let’s try this again. A TIMELINE - 2020 - January 22 - The WHO convened an emergency meeting about an outbreak of a novel coronavirus called 2019-nCoV. The committee could not reach consensus on declaring a global emergency. J anuary 25 - Ontario confirmed Canada’s first case. British C

There are many crosswalks in this town. Some of them are extra-special, truly un-pedestrian, crossings, if you will. Like most others, these crosswalks have zebra stripes in the road and the signage you would expect. Here these extra-special variety, found in several different neighbourhoods of the city, have a little more signage than usual (or necessary) as well, with one sign on each side of the street facing in both directions and an additional pair of double-sized signs

While we were all distracted with wars and pandemics, politics and social change, our basic understanding of the universe sprung a whole bunch of leaks; or, that's how I'm choosing to read this while knowing some experts may disagree. Starting roughly around 1998, our best model of cosmology, that branch of astrophysics concerning itself with the universe at its largest scales, has been something given the obscurifying acronym ΛCDM (lambda cold dark matter). But since the ad

Writing about income had me thinking about housing. I’m really not sure why anyone talks about anything else. Curiously, even when I find the matter being discussed, what's presented is seldom anything more than current rental rates or home prices and sales volumes. Pretty rare is something offering any context of any kind. As far as I can tell, adjusted for inflation, a median single family home in Victoria, BC in 1980 was around $400,000. Two decades later the median was ro

Someone online was explaining how if one earns $250,000 annually in Ontario the average tax rate is over 37% and the marginal tax rate is 50%, meaning $94,220 is taken and you are left with just $155,780. This was framed as a crime. I was attempting to propose that earning $44,000 in Ontario, around median income and far higher than full-time minimum wage, would mean tax deductions leave a person with only $32,500 — in a province where typical rent is between $26,000 and $32,

I keep reading about proposals for more pipelines to the BC coast from Alberta. Not only is all of this politics getting pretty interesting but I actually studied Alberta's oil and gas industry a little in college (and even held bitumen in my hand) and have also lived in Alberta, too, among the office towers of the oil giants. So, what comes to mind for me when there’s any talk of pipelines is what isn't commonly mentioned. That's just the little bit of history and economics

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 assu

I never knew anything at all about Halloween, other than the fact that folks in different places celebrate differently or not at all. The details are pretty interesting. The pagan festival of Samhain (pronounced SAH-win ) originated with the Celts of ancient Britain and Ireland. Samhain was the festival marking the end of harvest time and the beginning of winter. Halfway between autumn equinox and the winter solstice, marking a transition between the lighter half of the year

I’ve had some wonderful moments out on the quiet of the reef with green sea turtles. (If you’ve never done so, it’s really something you must seek out, even just once. I can recommend some spots.) Because they were abundant where I was, and knowing they’re found all over the planet , throughout the tropical and subtropical regions of every ocean, I never appreciated how threatened they were as a species ( Chelonia mydas ). Accidental catches (mostly fisheries bycatch and aba

I was just listening to a jolly gaggle of middle-aged Irishfolk. As happens four pints in, they started talking about their recent doctor visits. With a couple of males involved, the conversation inevitably turned to the digital rectal exam. One declared he'd never had the procedure done and had no interest in ever having one. All the others barked and howled, exclaiming he was foolish at best and what he really needed to do was have his head checked. I couldn't believe all t

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