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If you love action figures and medieval insanity (and who doesn't?), you need to make room in your display cabinets for these incredible recreations of figures from the paintings of 15th century artist Hieronymus Bosch. A famous late Medieval painter, Bosch's work focused entirely on Christian themes, often depicting heaven and hell in ( Read more... )

Photo taken at the CPSA plenary panel on the Harper government years. The panelists were Ian Brodie, Preston Manning, and Tom Flanagan. While I was attempting to get shot of the panel, a certain scene-stealer took the spot-light...

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It was 1963, and 16-year-old Bruce McAllister was sick of symbol-hunting in English class. Rather than quarrel with his teacher, he went straight to the source: McAllister mailed a crude, four-question survey to 150 novelists, asking if they intentionally planted symbolism in their work. Seventy-five authors responded. Here’s what 12 of them had to ( Read more... )

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"Now if for this purpose I were to say that the so-called philosophy of this fellow Hegel is a colossal piece of mystification which will yet provide posterity with an inexhaustible theme for laughter at our times, that it is a pseudo-philosophy paralyzing all mental powers, stifling all real thinking, and, by the most outrageous misuse of language ( Read more... )

When I reread the letters for around the fifth time, I became aware of a simmering tension between the two men. One obstacle to writing a book about a comic actor like Groucho is that you unwittingly absorb the enthusiastic, celebratory tone in which many entertainment figures are biographized. The screen persona is so strong that, no matter how ( Read more... )

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Frankly, it was a triumph. Eight hundred people had gathered in the Barclays MegaCash Pavilion at the Hay Festival to hear me talk about my latest book. I was a little nervous, as I am accustomed to speaking to gatherings of about a tenth of that size. However, after a few minutes and a few laughs, I managed to relax, and the talk seemed to go ( Read more... )