Recently, I have acquired Netflix and been enjoying access to the limited spread of television shows and movies available to Canadian consumers (Akkad, August 29th, 2012). For a light and brainless activity in the evenings, shows like Community and Futurama suit quite well. Trends in viewing amongst young people are increasingly oriented towards this form…
Category: Life Thoughts
Social Intelligence and Talking to People
Over the past week, I haven’t been required to interact with too many people. I’ve not had to go to a job, nor have I had that many social gatherings to attend. When this happens I tend to forget how to talk to people – even, sometimes, how to write coherently. My internal monologue gets…
How to Tell if You’re Being Tracked Online
Last night, I had a disturbing experience online. My partner found a website called BlueKai, which deals in big data for marketing companies and offers customers with a registry so that they can see what information data companies collect and distribute about them. The blurb on BlueKai explains that your preferences “may be used anonymously…
Issues of Space and Time in the Working World
These past two (has it really only been two!?) months have been the first in several years where I’ve not had classes, school assignments, employment, or other major time commitments filling up my daytime hours. You might expect that this kind of freedom would be a glorious state of relaxation and euphoria for me. I…
Happy Halloween! And Why I Can’t Compete
Happy Halloween, everyone! I hope that you all survived last night – whether you were hiding out from vandals in Ontario or Michigan (i.e. Devil’s Night), or fearing a rather serious prank from a neighbor in the United Kingdom (i.e. Mischief Night). Although October 30th does go by many names depending on where you live,…
We’re Unemployed Because…..
As I sit down to write this post, I struggle to formulate the words needed to properly frame the three news stories that I am about to present to you. These stories have all been published today – Wednesday, October 30th, 2013 – from the context of three separate countries (Canada, the United Kingdom, and…
Living Life Online
Every time I click the little “Publish” button on this WordPress website, my writing zips through cyberspace and lands in various social media feeds – Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Linkedin. It’s amazingly interconnected, and a fascinating psychological phenomenon to watch myself eagerly evaluate the stats on website visitation levels, clicks, and page views. I have…
Insert Issue [Here]
This generally goes without saying, but there are a lot of causes to which you can give your attention, time, and money on any given day, month, or time of year. Yesterday I was reading about diabetes – a group of metabolic diseases that affect the balance of sugar and insulin in the body –…
I Dream of Adventures
There is a dangerous thing that can happen to an unsuspecting person when they are out running mundane, everyday errands. ‘It’ happened to me recently. I was out getting an oil change for my car, and to amuse myself while the mechanics were doing their thing, I stopped in at a Canadian Automobile Association (CAA)…
Your Citation, or Mine?
Over the last two days, I have brought the final (or, at least, second-to-last) set of edits on my thesis to a resounding finish. I now feel much more confident about the coherency and readability of everything that I was trying to say throughout the roughly 165-page tome. In the first few versions of the…
It’s that Time of Year Again!
What time of year is it, you might be wondering? Let me paint you a portrait: when you peek out your window in the morning from your warm, cozy nest of pillows and blankets, the landscape is coated in sullen, dark-grey ice and perhaps a bit of snow (though there’s never enough snow to make…
On Friends, Employment, and the Two-Option Falsity
As I sit down this week to hammer out the flaws in my final thesis draft in preparation for my oral defence, I have a lot to reflect on from my graduate school experience. I feel that in terms of real knowledge (i.e. number of journal articles read or new technical skills earned), I have…
Maria Legault 