Islander

Ryan Thirlwall is putting on a pink tutu and walking non-stop from Nanaimo to Victoria — again. Four years ago, the Victoria dad put on his eye-popping costume to walk 125 kilometres in 28 hours to raise funds to fund anti-bullying initiatives.

With Canada already past its target for accepting 25,000 refugees from Syria, university academics are exploring whether video games can help.

Experts in the emerging field of “personalized medicine” will examine the promise of a new reality where doctors and researchers can better devise treatments for the individual.

Prepare to laugh. Prepare to gasp. Prepare to be amazed and astonished as University of Victoria chemistry professor Alexandre Brolo and lab instructor Corrina Evans show that science can be fun.

Molecules matter. “The smallest molecules make the biggest differences in controlling cancer,” said Fraser Hof, associate professor of chemistry at the University of Victoria.

Detailed information available at uvic.ca/ideafest Monday, March 7 Graphic ideas @ UVic Noon - 2 p.m.

As its name suggests, Ideafest is a University of Victoria event showcasing the birth of new thought, its inspiration, its incubation and its ongoing transformation.

Did you hear the one about the three girls who walk into a Victoria bar and, after a cocktail or two, thought they were in New York? “It’s The Last Martini,” declared one, Patricia Sims.

Last year, the Special Collections of the University of Victoria’s library received the papers of Victoria artist (and UVic graduate) Glenn Howarth. Amid the sketchbooks, diaries and photo albums was a cache of old-style floppy discs.

This column first appeared in the Victoria Daily Times on March 11, 1939. I took a day off yesterday. It was the yellow morning sunshine coming in through the window where I sat reading the paper that suggested the idea.