I read recently that the iPhone has more capacity than computers did at the time men were first sent to the moon. The author then went on to cite the Apollo 13 mission when the astronauts spoke those scary words: “Houston, we’ve had a problem.” As it turns out, Houston didn’t turn to any computer for help, they used slide rules to right the wrong. The slide rule has been around in one form or another since the 1600s. My father was an engineer; I used his slide rule to solve Physics problems in Grade Thirteen. But both the slide...
A few months back I wrote about the statue of Queen Elizabeth II that would soon be installed at Queen’s Park. The statue has been mired in disputes for several years. Something to do with donors, unpaid bills, and who knows what else. But that’s not what caught my eye. No, it was the dimensions of the statue. According to a newspaper article, the statue plus the plinth it would sit on was going to be thirty feet high. That’s like three storeys of a condo building. It was supposed to be placed to the left of the main door...
I think enough time has passed since the end of the Blue Jays’ baseball season that I can write something about the team without grinding my teeth right into the gums. They scraped into the wild-card round, scored one run in two games, and were gone. In similar circumstances, someone among the higher-ups in such a moribund organization would be fired. Not so with the Jays. Club president Mark Shapiro, general manager Ross Atkins, and manager John Schneider all remain firmly ensconced despite making the most bone-headed decision I’ve ever seen in baseball. That brains trust decided prior to the...
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