Kara’s Blog

I love this country, and I love our politics.

Canadian politics are often not as exciting as American politics. And that's true--due to the two-party system in America, the political landscape is a vast minefield of polarized partisanship. In Canada, while we do have two major parties, we have two other parties who exert a strong influence in Parliament.

But this is why I love Canadian politics: it may not be as exciting as American…

With the first term nearing its end, here's a little review of my second year so far.

That is the best way to describe how I spend most of my time now. With three math classes, I spend nine hours a week listening to math lectures. I have three assignments due each week, so I work on those in my time between school and work. Every second week until the middle of November, I went…

Compared to the rest of the week, Monday and Tuesday play host to an inordinately large number of cultural attractions. Yes, there's Doctor Who on Friday nights and Smallville on Saturdays, but

Ever since school began in September, I've been cooking dinner on Mondays to practise my rudimentary cooking skills. While preparing dinner, I like to listen to podcasts. This schedule works nicely, because The Vinyl Cafe podcast is up by Monday at the latest,…

It's already been over a year since we moved into our new house. Since moving in, although I've been very happy with my room on the whole, I have wanted to do three things: get new curtains, get rid of the wallpaper, and paint the white walls.

Classes end next week, and my exams are over by December 12, which gives me a nice break before the start of next term. This is a perfect…

I have previously talked about how amazing I consider the human body, and my opinion hasn't changed. Yesterday, a 14-year-old girl finally left the hospital after living for four months on an artificial heart.

This event reminded me how amazing the heart is. Your heart is the one muscle in your body that, if you are lucky, never takes a break for your entire life. It keeps pumping, whether you are awake or…

For the second time this year, anti-gay group Westboro Baptist Church is planning to come to Canada to stage a protest, and people want to put a stop to it.

Every time this sort of controversy comes up in the news, I have to stop and consider it carefully. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Section 2) guarantees us the following basic rights:

• freedom of conscience and religion;
• freedom of thought, belief, opinion
…

Back in June, my friend blogged about people showing off their Wikismarts to him. I envy him, because on the other side of the coin, there seems to be a plethora of people with zero initiative.

You know who I'm talking about. The people who seem to have no filter in their brain and ask you every question that bubbles up to the murky surface of their minds, even if the current discussion has…

Today in Canada, as well as in many other countries around the world, we celebrate the end of World War I and remember those soldiers who gave their lives serving their countries. In Canada, we wear a poppy to show our respect for those who have fallen; the Royal Canadian Legion makes them available in return for small donations. It is of course associated with the Remembrance Day poem "In Flanders Fields" by…

I'm sitting here, still full of endorphins after SNL's Presidential Bash, watching a rerun of Stargate SG-1--"Line in the Sand," one of the final nine episodes of the series. And watching it, I'm coming to this realization that I may have given the final two seasons of Stargate SG-1 shorter shrift than they deserve.

I mean, yes, the storyline sucked and the themes were flimsy and transparent. The injection of two actors from …

Lately Merlin Mann has been helping Spark listeners build their "Digital You." Implicit in this new series is the fact that technology is now an ingrained part of us--how we appear online is as important as how we dress in public. Your online presence, like your personality, can be diverse: open and inviting, cold and formal--whatever works for you and gets you the audience you want.

The era of ubiquitous technology is upon us. Smartphones…