One minor consequence of the recent phone hacking scandal in England is an increase in the use of the term “blagging,” new to me. Thus, in The Register today:

News International journalists from multiple papers persistently tried to get gossip on the former prime minister Gordon Brown by ‘blagging’ access to his bank account, legal documents and even his son’s medical records, it has been alleged.

According to the Oxford dictionaries, to “blag” is essentially:

1. trans. To obtain or achieve [something] by persuasive talk or plausible deception; to bluff, to dupe or deceive by bluffing; to scrounge, esp.

. . . [more]

Human beings have a hard time living in the moment. And when we’re not rueing or re-writing the past, we’re envisioning the future. Though I haven’t kept score, I’d guess that on the whole we’re not very good at it, our favourite mode being the straight-line projection: tomorrow will be like today only more so — if you see what I mean. This means that our forecasts tell us more about ourselves and our times than they do about emergent folks or phenomena, which is why it’s fun, as a study in history, to see what the past has said . . . [more]

Now and in the coming months, members of the Canadian Forces will be returning from military service in Afghanistan in significant numbers. Many of them, Reservists, will be returning to civilian work. We all owe these soldiers a debt of gratitude for their service. Employers specifically owe them a number of legal obligations, under Employment/Labour Standards legislation in various jurisdictions.

As Toronto celebrates the 31st annual Pride Parade today, it’s worth remembering that Canada maintains some of the most progressive LGBT legislation in the world.

This year I joined the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) with a million people in what’s estimated as the largest parade ever.

The CCLA has expressed concerns about the continuing funding of the parade.

Daniel Dale of The Star caught us on Twitter. . . . [more]

Today is Canada Day, so we’re all off celebrating. But because it’s also Friday, I thought I’d schedule this fillip for the folks south of the border and those Canadians who have taken their CrackBerrys to the cottage. It’s just a bit of musing on that “best friend” of summer celebrations, the humble hot dog — the frankfurter, the wiener, and surely one of the “wurst” hits of nutrition going.

Western lit first records the hot dog in ancient Greece, marking even then the eagerness of the diner: in the words of Homer’s Odyssey,

[H]e tossed about as one who

. . . [more]

Unless you are a Canadian who has been spending a lot of quality time in a cave over the past month you are no doubt aware that Winnipeg has regained an NHL team by way of Atlanta causing a bit of a chain reaction. The Atlanta Thrashers have moved to Winnipeg to become the TBAs (but might have a name today by the time you read this). The reaction being that Winnipeg had a pre-existing AHL hockey team the Manitoba Moose which has now moved to St. John’s, Newfoundland.

On the surface many believed that “the Moose” would be . . . [more]

I’ve confessed here before to liking stuff. If you’re a maker or a mender, you’ll probably like stuff, too. And I’ve come across something that is likely to gladden the heart of any bricoleur: sugru. It’s a pliable, adhesive, coloured substance that sets at room temperature to become a heat- and wear-resistant rubbery object. Think silly putty + epoxy and you’re close. You use it to modify — hack — those things around you that weren’t made right in the first place, or to repair those things that have developed just a little fault.

It’s often the case that . . . [more]

Since the economic burden of mental illnesses in Canada has been estimated at $51-billion per year, with almost $20-billion of that coming from workplace losses, the Mental Health Commission of Canada (MHCC) has launched a collaborative project with the Bureau de normalisation du Québec (BNQ) and the standards division of the Canadian Standards Association (CSA Standards) to create a voluntary national standard for mentally healthy workplaces. The standard aims to help Canadian employers support the psychological health and safety of their employees. According to the government, Canada is the first country in the world to develop such a standard.

We’ve once again reached a remarkable point as the world wobbles on. Today — at 1.16 p.m. to be precise — is the solstice. Up here in the Northern Hemisphere it’s the summer solstice; for the folks South of the equator, it’s the winter solstice, of course: the longest and the shortest day of the year, respectively. And because we often remark on Google Doodles here on Slaw, I thought I might point out that today it’s a Google Twoodle, the particular one depending on where you find yourself, both being the work of Japanese artist Takashi Murakami:

The . . . [more]

…For Ice Cream or more properly “Iced” Cream, (this is one of those words that we have slang-ed much like Web Log to Blog). As we approach the Summer Solstice, the first day of summer, on Tuesday of next week, it’s time to celebrate our (all-too-brief) summer, notwithstanding that many of us have not experienced much summer-like weather yet. Nonetheless, I have already experienced more than one ice cream headache aka. brain freeze, cold stimulus headache or more accurately sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia (say that 3 times fast). It is generally agreed that the feeling of someone driving an ice pick into . . . [more]

This is a tale of two women separated in time by just about a century and in age by more than three decades — unlikely companions, you may think.

The first woman I might have come to know if I’d ever entertained 10,000 Maniacs, but for some reason, likely having to do with the badness of the eighties and maniacs of other sorts, I missed that group — and Natalie Merchant, the lead singer and, of course, the woman I’m on about. I’ve just now come across the latest albumn in her solo career, Leave Your Sleep (thank you, CBC) . . . [more]

No law here. Just a post to honour the fact that it’s Bloomsday, the anniversary of the day on which Leopold Bloom perambulated in Dublin. And I’m glad to say that it gets easier and easier to come to grips with Joyce’s Ulysses, something of a difficult beast for more than a few. So whether or not you’ve read the great novel, you might like to hear Irishman Frank Delaney (whom NPR has called “the most eloquent man in the world”) devote five minutes to each chapter of the first book. He’s just now finishing his first year of podcasts . . . [more]