Bed and Breakfast in Full Effect

We’ve got a steady stream of visitors coming until mid-month. But I’ll try and keep it together. In the meantime, tV reminds me that if you were wondering about the Harper administration’s agenda for higher education, their initial big idea is a plan to make Canada the first country ever to pull out of the …

Hot Weather Thoughts

–I always notice that the internet connection is slower when there’s bad weather. Lots of rain, lots of heat, whatever. What’s up with that, sympatico? –It is always hotter by at least one magnitude when you’re walking around on a sunbathed sidewalk downtown in the middle of the day. Bad idea #157 –There is something …

A New Series: On Books, “The Book,” Writing, Etc.

So I’ve decided to start using my “category” function and start doing “series” on various things. The topic that’s been on my mind a lot lately is publishing — the state of the book, the way publishing works, debates about open access and the public status of scholarship, etc. I’ve also been collecting some odds …

3 Banal Thoughts on 10-Digit Dialing

For those who don’t know, Montreal went to 10-digit phone dialing this month. 1. When I moved here, I enjoyed the 7-digit phone number as kind of rustic. There’s some kind of threshold between 7 and 10 numbers on the phone. Or maybe that there was a tactile distinction between local and long distance calling, …