Using our powers for good, not evil.

The University of New Brunswick Institute of Biomedical Engineering has established a little center of excellence here in Atlantic Canada. It's one of our best-kept secrets, but it's respected worldwide.

Here's one reason why.

ronnie

Now if the Finance Minister could just find a nice young man and settle down.

Parliamentary reporter Kady O'Malley has the scoop on a parliamentary slip of the tongue from a Minister in a most unlikely party.

ronnie

From the "If it ain't broke" Dept.

Husband (after watching eHarmony ad): "So, what if we both signed up for eHarmony and they didn`t match us up with each other?"

Pause

Me: "Well, that's why we're not going to sign up for eHarmony."

ronnie

Silence

I walked home deaf today; that is, when my battery died at around 4:45 as I left work, I chose not to put on a fresh one and instead made the walk home in the pleasant silence of voluntary deafness.

I like being voluntarily deaf by times. You can hear yourself think. In fact I was reminded of a passage I read recently in Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion", which I am close to finishing:

"[American psychologist Julian] Jaynes notes that many people perceive their own thought processes as a kind of dialogue between the 'self' and another internal protagonist inside the head. Nowadays we understand that both 'voices' are our own..."

I had been vaguely aware that my interior thoughts seemed to consist of some kind of dialogue, an ongoing conversation between - who? Me and me? - but had never seen it explained - or at least expressed - before.

So I had a nice, silent internal dialogue with myself on the way home, about silence and the nature of internal dialogue and Julian Jaynes and the Dawkins book.

How ironic that after all these years, this is where peace lies.

ronnie

Toronto [UPDATED]

24 hours in Toronto. Touched down at 10:30 pm, went to hotel, all-day meeting next day, headed to airport, wheels up at 9:15, touch down at midnight (there's a time-zone change), back at work the next morning. I didn't get to see a lot more than the view from my hotel room (here's mine of the TorStar building - but the view also included docks and a big chunk of Lake Ontario - I was on Queen's Quay) and the windows of the good ol' Airport Express.

I still take the good ol' Airport Express from the airport to downtown and back whenever I can on a trip to Toronto. It's a habit from back in the days when I was always traveling on my own nickel, and every nickel was squeezed until the beaver and the Queen were intimate acquaintances. $32.50 gets you a round-trip ticket to downtown and back (whenever you're leaving - tickets are good for up to a year), dropping you off in a big gaudy yellow tour bus at the lobby of most of the major downtown hotels and within walking distance of dozens of others. Now in the days when I travel for work and nobody would blink at reimbursing me $55 or more for cab fare each way from and to the airport, I still prefer to walk up the stairs to that high-up tour bus view, and settle into a comfy seat for the long, scenic, and meandering wander to, and (depending on where you're exiting) sometimes around, downtown Toronto.

It's certainly not an extravagance. Let's call it a nostalgic indulgence.

ronnie