Category: pop culture

I grew up out in the countryside listening to the national broadcaster of Japan, NHK, on the shortwave spectrum. In the 1970’s, international broadcasting was about to enter its peak before a swift decline in the 1990’s. Inasmuch as I knew about Japan, from what I was taught in school, watched on television (with the…

In a time rife with disasters, simmering regional conflicts, global warming, and out of control fires, when more people than ever can find an audience online, conspiracy theories seem to be growing more silly by the day. We’re also more prone to believing such things under heightened stress, and there is no shortage of troubling…

I was talking with Brad Plothow, VP of communications at Womply.com in Lehi, Utah this morning. Womply, in its simplest terms, is a company that analyses market trends based on transactional commerce data – you know, credit card and debit transactions – who’s making them and what they are buying or selling. And do they…

I was sitting with my lovely wife Andrea at the Fernwood Coffee House today at noon. Between bites of a breakfast egg bagel and sips of black coffee (and her sampling her London Fog…) we reflected on the passage of time – and how we grow and change. Cutting to the chase: “What’s with the…

Perhaps more than life itself, I love breakfast. If I fail to start my day with lots of carbs and a bit of protein, I might as well stay in bed. Welcome to a re-boot of my level best most popular blog post ever! The Waffle Special! What do I eat for breakfast? The most…

Living on the West Coast of North America in an area dominated by coffee culture, I cannot imagine not having the best of cafe culture within an easy walking distance. And in my 25 years of writing about the bean scene in Canada, I have traveled from the West Coast to the East Coast, with many stops along the way, looking for the best of the best in the brewed cup of joe.

Revelstoke: Where the worlds of the living, dead, and extraordinary collide. Brennan Storr, of Revelstoke, British Columbia, a rustic, rugged and alpine town in Western Canada, considers his hometown something of a magical place. But that was not always the case. Brennan was not a believer in much of anything in the spirit world apart…

25 years ago the World wide web was born. In the beginning it all seemed simple enough: Web pages were 100% information. Eventually they would include photos and multi-media. At that point the entire resource became limitless as a medium for knowledge deployment, information sharing and instant global communications. I am fortunate enough to have…

I heard a TED Talk not too long ago on CBC radio and I would like to track it down and listen again. It was all about how social media (as good as it appears to be on a surface examination) has robbed us of creativity and productivity. How our addiction or dependance on Facebook,…

When Michael Kaeshammer sits down at a grand piano worthy of his dynamic range, the genuflection towards the likes of Albert Ammons, Meade Lux Lewis, Big Joe Turner and Pete Johnson (the Grand masters and caretakers of the Boogie Woogie music genre of the 30’s and 40’s…) is immediate, respectful and unmistakeable. Born in Germany,…