I was clicking through various links and news stories and such this morning and I came across this Dear Abby letter that made me stare and ask myself, “What the hell kind of snowflake are these people raising?” If you don’t feel like clicking, here’s the letter:
Dear Abby: I have a beautiful wife, a dog and an 8-year-old son with whom I love to watch sports. My son loves sports, but he has trouble accepting a loss. He takes out his disappointment by beating the dog. Continue reading
I am working on a writing project at the moment and I have come to the conclusion, once again, that I am going to make every effort possible to try to move back into using “his”, “hers”, and “its”, instead of “their” to encompass all three. That’s my goal, anyhow. I know I have a few friends who are feminists who may get upset by this. I know a couple of other women who will be livid because they were of the group who worked toward gender-neutral language. Now, I can sort of understand the issue, but as someone who works as a writer, albeit sporadically, I don’t have to like it. Continue reading
I’ve been reading quite a bit about the latest dispute between the BCTF (British Columbia Teacher’s Federation, the Province’s teacher’s union) and the BC Provincial government. Sadly, the government is threatening to legislate an agreement again and the sticking point seems to be all about the salaries. The BCTF had originally included a (in my opinion) outrageous demand that teachers be given the option to take a 26 week paid leave for compassionate care among other things that I didn’t think were necessary, but they have pared all of these away. They do, however, want a 3% increase in salary each year (http://bctf.ca/publications/bargainingbulletin.aspx) for cost of living an additional 3% market adjustment in years 2 and 3. Continue reading
About a decade ago there was talk of protecting innocence and appearances by introducing a specific domain TLD (top level domain) for pornographic websites. A TLD is the series of letters that come last in a web address. They include .com, .net, .org, and many others. Most of these are government or organization exclusive (.gov and .museum) or country exclusive (.ca, .us, .uk). A full list of TLDs is available here at the IANA Root Zone Database. Continue reading
I was perusing Facebook this morning to see what I could see and I noticed that my niece and a few others posted the following. I also have received it in no less than a dozen emails over the last week and there was a straw and it broke the camel’s proverbial back, as it were: Continue reading
After a week of no power, I have come to appreciate the way I grew up in a manner I never thought I would. When I was young, my grandparents didn’t have electricity for a while. I vaguely recall when I was very young the wiring going in, but it wasn’t the most reliable system. There was also no running water in that house until I was around 17. That wasn’t that long ago. I have fond memories of that house on Telachick Road. (Near Prince George, BC, Canada.) Continue reading
I was talking with my cousin on the phone the other day while down at the little health food/local market shop at the bottom of our hill. I was in to pick up some blue cheese for use in some of the dishes I make for my husband. He likes the stuff and I don’t care for it except once in a while. Continue reading
I am not going to condone the posting of spam comments, but I am going to offer you spammers a little advice. Continue reading
I just watched Flock of Dodos: The Evolution-Intelligent Design Circus. It’s probably the first documentary on the subject that I’ve seen that manages to give pretty much equal time to those who promote evolutionary theory and those who want intelligent design to be taught along side it or in place of it in schools. Continue reading
This is probably going to annoy a bunch of people, especially those who’s “experience” with BDSM is constrained to online dealings and just about nothing else, but I would like to know if anyone has any idea who started the “I/i”, “H/him”, “S/she” nonsense. I think my study of language has me constantly getting annoyed every single time I see this. Continue reading