Quest for a Good Staple Remover

Recently, I’ve been scanning boxes of documents recently on my Fujitsu ScanSnap document scanner. The scanner feeds documents through very quickly, a sheet at a time. It can’t handle staples, though. If one gets through, it will drag the next page after...

The Worms are Coming!

When the topic of invasive species comes up, you might think of killer bees or zebra mussels or giant hogweed. But one of the most widespread invasive species is the earthworm. Ontario has no native earthworms. It’s only been a few thousand years since the...

How to eat a planet

I always assumed that modern humans, living in industrial societies, did most of the animal extermination in the world. After all, there are billions of us, covering a good portion of the planet. Everyone knows that Europeans wiped out the dodo in the 16th century,...

The term “Story Arc”

If you work in TV or film, you’ll often hear the term “story arc”. It’s often used as a slightly pretentious way of saying “story”. I have to say, it never made much sense to me why a story should be described as an...

Emotional Options

Emotional Options is an improv game where two performers act out a scene on stage, while a third acts as a “caller”, occasionally freezing the action, and asking the audience for new emotions for one or other of the players. It’s a funny game to...