Or am I just REALLY bad at delayed gratification?

At the beginning of this month I was forced to clamp down on a habit of mine. Yes, after a month or so of overdoing it, I was forced to get tough with myself and restrict my beer purchases to once a week.

And by beer, I’m of course referring to Grolsch non-alcoholic beer. I have, after all, been sober for more than three years.

Here’s the thing. I don’t doubt that I fit the bill for a capital-A alcoholic. For nearly two decades of my life I drank very regularly…

10 Reasons Why Japan Should Join The EU

#Brexit, meet #Japenter.

On February 1, 2020 the United Kingdom officially parted ways with the European Union — exactly one year after the EU signed a historic free trade agreement with Japan. Could it be that since the UK announced its intention to divorce from Europe in mid-2016 that Brussels has been on the dating scene with a very specific “type” in mind: a large, economically prosperous island nation with a checkered imperialist past and an awkward relationship with “the continent”?

If so, it most definitely found one — one with better…

When it comes to controversial historical figures we should “add, not subtract.”

There’s something about our society’s recent move to rename buildings, neighbourhoods, and other monuments long named after historically problematic figures that I find troubling. The question arose most recently in Edmonton in 2017 over a push — which thankfully subsided — to remove the name of former member of parliament Frank Oliver from the downtown neighbourhood that continues to bear his name.

Frank Oliver, for those who don’t know, was a 1900s era Edmonton politician who, as a member of Sir Wilfrid Laurier’s turn-of-the-century Liberal government, was instrumental…

Nikolai Bukharin’s 1938 show-trial “confession” demonstrates the importance of choosing your words wisely for the history books.

Imagine you find yourself in the following situation. You’re on trial for a crime you not only didn’t commit, but on charges that don’t even make any sense. The entire trial process is rigged and a guilty verdict is 100 percent guaranteed — the penalty for which will be death by firing squad. You also know that if you do not produce a satisfactory confession, then the authorities will either torture you some more and/or do similarly grievous harm to your immediate family.

…

King Sejong, the neon signs of Ginza, and a potential indigenous-futuristic vibe for Edmonton’s city streets

There’s something about big Asian cities that virtually every westerner finds completely electrifying. A lot of this is the sheer volume and energy of the crowds and the mystifying mishmash of ancient and ultramodern, but for me — and for many I would imagine — a big part of the appeal is the dizzying array of neon signs, most of which feature written characters whose roots date back to the Neolithic.

The Chinese characters employed by both the Chinese and Japanese languages (and to…

The language I learned in school no longer seems so European these days.

When I was a high school student enrolled in the French Immersion program, I always looked forward to my French language classes — if for no other reason because there was always a good chance that our teacher would put on a French movie, most of which were notable in their copious amounts of nudity.

In those days, the French language was, to me, synonymous with all things European. Sure, most of my instructors were Québécois who were culturally far more North American than French and spoke…

How Canada’s cities can decolonize through language revitalization.

Anyone looking for a good news story about Indigenous cultural revitalization need look no further than New Zealand. Since 2015, the country has embarked on a serious campaign to revive and promote the use of the Māori language after a long period of decline. While Māori has enjoyed official status since 1987, less than four percent of New Zealanders report being able to converse in the language fluently. …