Fun facts:

Top five countries exporting steel to the US

1. Canada 16.7 percent

2. Brazil 13.2 percent

3. South Korea 9.7 percent

4. Mexico 9.4 percent

5. Russia 8.1 percent…

     (This is a repost of something I wrote years ago for another website (Hello, Fictionique) and put up here some time later. I think it's still relevant.)

     When  James Chaney Palms showed up at the Essex Scottish Regiment's recruiting office one fine fall day to volunteer for the Second World War, he was wearing his riding boots.

     It might have been expected from an irrepressible young man who was the offspring of a…

Maybe you had to be there, but Tom Lehrer is to my mind the funniest song-writer-satirist who ever was.

Also the most cogent.

Despite rumours that circulated 40 years ago that he had died, he's still alive at 90, although he no longer performs publicly. Alas.

The quote in the headline, by the way, is what he said when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. That's when Lehrer tossed in the towel.

I vividly remember him from TW3 -- That Was The Week That…

If there is anything good to take away from the appalling tragedy in Toronto on Monday, it's the action -- or rather, non-action -- of one heroic patrol cop.

Const. Ken Lam, siren screaming, pulled his cruiser up near the rental van that had just run over more than 20 people, killing 10, in a mile-long rampage down Yonge Street sidewalks.

A man, later identified as Alek Minassian was standing next to it, shouting and holding something in his hand.

Lam got out of his…