PEREGRINE PULP

This is what I understood my ancestry to look like: My father’s family name is extremely English and my mother’s maiden name is a sort of anglicization of an Austrian surname, as I understand it. My maternal grandmother’s maiden name is also extremely English while my paternal grandmother’s could only be Scottish. And all of those folks and some of their parents and grandparents, like my parents and myself, were all born in Canada. Everyone else on the family tree I’m aware o

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

A pair of revelations have surfaced relating to the pandemic. I didn't catch these being widely reported when they took place many months ago, they did not land anywhere in my news feeds, and neither were being shared or commented on by anyone I know. Instead, I accidentally stumbled upon one of these long after the fact and then the other while looking for more information about the first. DP (DURING PANDEMIC) In 2021, the US FDA was posting messages on social media and the

Folks seem to think people (other people) believe nonsense due to poor intelligence, low educational attainment, or lack of knowledge....

NON-FICTION Today, August 22, 2024, a fellow recorded a video on his phone as he witnessed the Marinovka air base, on the Don river in...

You wake up on the floor of a small windowless room. Disoriented, you sit up. You're not sure where you are or how you got there. In front of you is a desk. Hanging on the wall behind the desk is a tattered old poster under glass in a modern frame. The poster reminds you of something from some war you learned something about. In thick black type, the artefact reads: DON'T WORRY YOU'RE FAR TOO SAVVY TO BE MANIPULATED BY PROPAGANDA The image accompanying those words is the head

In 2020 a massive wildfire, known as the CZU Lightening Complex Fire , broke out in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Initially, several small fires were sparked by lightening. Those fires eventually grew and coalesced into one much larger conflagration. Part of that fire surrounded and consumed the ancient old-growth forests of Big Basin Redwoods State Park , along California’s central coast, just south of San Francisco and north of Monterey Bay. Though ignited by an unusual lightn

You’ve heard about the devastations to the world’s reef ecosystems. Most notably, the Great Barrier Reef off Australia’s east coast saw...

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

Deborahlis : Yeah, I’m calling it ‘goldfishing.’ Cephorrhoea : Goldfish? Deborahlis : Gold-fishing. Not the cracker. Cephorrhoea : ...

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

I was hearing about all this stuff around Trump-related court cases and some being consequential far beyond those cases. Knowing nothing...

With a couple of communication degrees, I think of it as my job to comment on media matters. But at this point the relentless barrage of infelicity — from serious reporters and journalists at all our leading news outlets — has become pretty overwhelming. To be honest, I find it tiresome, too. But it's also hard to look away. Aside from how I feel about all this, folks also like to tell me this “obsession” of mine is both pointless and overly pedantic. All I can offer in respo

Guy : What's been your favourite output from Santa Clara Valley? Maël : I'm pretty into illegal-taxi-company and...

I want to love nuclear. I really do. But there’s so little to like and proponents continually refuse to win me over. Here’s just one more...

Some folks really hate Jared Diamond. And those folks love hating Jared Diamond. As any good polymath (with backgrounds in physiology,...

MI-CHAEL:  I dunno. It’s like how I play this game. It’s a kind of World War II simulation. The creators have attempted to faithfully...

I don’t know how I got here. Somehow I developed this crazy belief that firefighters fought fires. Crazy, right? My bad.  Per capita, Vancouver is one of the country’s busiest fire departments, and getting busier all the time. But almost none of that fire service activity involves firefighters marching into buildings, masks on and hoses over their shoulders, to beat back flames. As a matter of fact, if you eliminated calls for service that weren’t for fires or false alarms (w