The fact that it is now the last day of December is vaguely amazing to me. The time that has passed since returning from Turkey on the 16th has been the extended equivalent of deciding to have a nap after lunch and waking up at 8:00pm.
I suppose the winter break last year was similar, though [...]

Having just made my last stir-fry of the year, I realized that my relationship with spices is much like that of a curious ten-year old with her mother’s cosmetics. Most things are in essentially the right places, but often in the wrong amounts and positioned there without gracefulness of natural effect.
As with the makeup example, [...]

About once a week, someone finds my blog while searching for a review of this jacket. As far as I can tell, there are none on the internet so far. The following is meant to serve as a correction to that.
Today has given me a good opportunity to try out the Mountain Equipment Co-op (MEC) [...]

Apparently, the University of British Columbia is now hosting the world championships for intercollegiate debate. I remember being at the executive meeting where the idea of bidding was first proposed: back in the Beanery coffeeshop in the Fairview residence. That was in February 2003, during my middle year as the Debate Society treasurer. I still [...]

The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.
Charlie Chapman - “The Great Dictator“
Saddam Hussein’s sentence, discussed here previously, has been carried out. I maintain that it was immoral to kill him, [...]

By the standards of the break so far, today has been surprisingly productive. I read half of Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions, wrote 1000 words for the introduction to my thesis, made some progress on the Dobson book on the environment and political theory, nearly finished up my foreign aid paper, and revised my CV [...]