This past Friday two big names on the Toronto newspaper pundit scene explored the sudden surge of New Democratic support in Canadian federal politics, during a key election year. In the Globe and Mail Jeffrey Simpson asked “Can a third orange wave splash across Canada?” And he finally answered : “The failure of the Conservatives […]

I don’t have a lot to say about David Letterman. (Ed NOTE: Mr. Dominic Berry then goes on for another 750 words or more, but hey… it is the end of an era.) I think I have watched his late night TV show since it began, not exactly always but often. Though, like others it […]

Freeman Dyson’s recent interesting note on Albert Einstein and the old  “dualistic philosophy” of quantum mechanics – masquerading as a New York review of Stephen Gimbel’s Einstein: His Space and Times – has also made some of us think about what ought to be another big issue in this year’s Canadian federal election. (Believe it […]

Just seven days after Anthony Henday set out on his summer explorations in the far north, a British American force from Virginia was defeated by a rival Canadian, French, and Indian alliance, at a marshy clearing in what is now western Pennsylvania called Great Meadows. The defeated force was led by the 22-year-old, six-foot-two-inch Lieutenant […]

I don’t believe in “types” of human beings. But if I did, the new Ontario PC leader Patrick Brown would remind me of a certain type of hard-working grass-roots activist, outside the established political party system. Yet it also seems that Mr. Brown has spent almost his entire life since the middle of high school […]

Six days ago under the heading “British election” I wrote “I’m waiting for John Lanchester to tell me what is finally going to happen here in the LRB blog …” I also noted that “even though the Scottish independence referendum lost last September, the UK is nonetheless changing …  So far at least this 2015 […]

I can’t think of another election where what I wanted to see happen has actually happened to quite the same extent as in Alberta on May 5, 2015. (It’s almost scary.) See, eg, “Alberta Election: NDP surges to majority government” and “New Democrats crush Progressive Conservative dynasty.” As one Conservative Albertan pointed out on CBC […]

[UPDATED MAY 8.] Tonight (Sunday, May 3, 2015 at 10 PM ET) will bring what the on-air promo somewhat confusingly calls the second-last episode “before the finale” of Matthew Weiner’s still quite excellent US TV series Mad Men. In plainer language it’s the third-last episode. The last one will air on Sunday, May 17. And […]