The English language reached 1 million words yesterday. It’s a bit of a humbling realization if you’re intent on developing your vocabulary. It means, if you want to know every English word, you will need to learn a word an hour for the next 114 years, which means you’re probably already too late. That’s also […] More »
What does “free” look like? This was the prompt sent out to a group of local Toronto artists around two months ago. The results, which were hung along the fourth-floor hallway of the Case Goods Warehouse in the Distillery District last weekend, elegantly captured a word that is part economic reality, part political manifesto, and […] More »
At a yuppie-friendly health food supermarket, Helen Goode pushes her shopping cart down the produce aisle. She reaches a mound of green apples reading “Conventionally Harvested $3.99/lb.” Just beside these lies another mound of apples, labeled “Organic $5.49/lb”, followed by a selection of “Sustainably Harvested Organic” apples, then “Locally Grown Sustainably Harvested Organic” apples, then […] More »
This might be old news to some: Burger King’s “Whopper Virgins” ad campaign has been running for a while. Here’s the promo: I felt intuitively icky about the whole thing before but couldn’t quite define why. Luckily, blogger Evan Calder Williams has articulated that feeling very nicely already, so I’ll just let him take it […] More »
A Dutch design firm has released a new computer font, Ecofont, that they say uses less ink, and can therefore reduce the e-waste that results from depleted toner cartridges. It’s a regular-looking font except that it’s riddled with holes, and the firm, Spranq, claims this reduces toner use by up to 20 per cent. Their […] More »
Happy Holidays, bloggers. It’s less than a week until Christmas and Kwanzaa, and Hanukkah is coming even sooner, which means it’s just about time for me to start proselytizing about how much I despise the term, “Happy Holidays.” I have a couple reasons for this, and none of them stem from how my love for […] More »
So there you sit, frustrated with Canada’s current political situation and wondering how you can show the country what you think of this whole mess. Sure, there’s rallies you can attend, Facebook groups you can join or letters to the editor you could write but for you, none of those things are quite right. Well […] More »
In a statement published on international peer-to-peer news site p2pnet.net, the NDP’s Charlie Angus has brought the net neutrality issue into the federal election campaign. He begins by outlining what he calls the ruling Conservatives’ ignorance toward digital innovation and the recent axing of the New Media Fund. The Harper government falls into line with […] More »
Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten, a recently-released film about the Clash front man who died in 2002, opens with a young and fierce looking Strummer in the recording studio. Headphones on, he starts spitting out the lyrics to White Riot: “An’ everybody’s doing / just what they’re told to / an’ nobody wants / […] More »
Oscar nominations are out! In keeping with the spirit of the event, I would like to personally thank the Academy for its inclusion of the powerful and timely Persepolis, which has been nominated in the Best Animated Feature category. The hand-drawn cartoon, directed by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud, is adapted from Satrapi’s graphic novel […] More »
While the tidal wave of F/W 07/08 floods retailers with fresh stock, inciting everyday consumers to buy and accessorize for this seasons latest must-have fashions, there is a growing concern of the whitebreading of fashion to levels not seen since the 60’s. Paris, long the bastion of pomp and pretension, recently presented the latest collections […] More »