Pre-budget jitters

Posted by ianadmin, Nov 13 2008, 08:02 AM in Collingwood's Municipal Madness

It may seem somewhat hypocritical, but I am worried that council is seeing an increasing number of pre-budget-approval requests these days, along with significant pressure to make an immediate decision.

I say hypocritical because I presented the motion to approve the funding for the new library as a pre-budget request during the last council session. But I believe there were compelling reasons at the time to do it that way. First among them was the timing of the budget - usually presented in late winter, crawling through the approval process in the spring to final acceptance in late spring or early summer.

There have been years when the budget didn't get approved until mid to late summer of the year it was supposed to represent. That's madness. It caused all sorts of collateral problems with scheduling and budgeting when it was so late. Most of this council was dedicated to seeing the town budget presented in November for the subsequent year, with discussion through the remainder of the year and approval in January. There was a certain logic in presenting a pre-budget approval under that old system because it cut the delays by upwards of six months and allowed the library to take advantage of the time to...

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The Visitor

Posted by ianadmin, Nov 3 2008, 01:32 PM in Movie & music reviews

The Visitor should probably have been called 'The Visitors' because the 2008 movie is not just about one person, but rather a couple, and eventually a third person whose lives intersect on different levels with the protagonist, a milquetoast professor, Walter Vale in the twilight of his career (played by Richard Jenkins).

Filmcritic.com gives the basic idea of the plot as it unfolds at the start: "Forced to travel from his new home in Connecticut to his old apartment in New York City to present a paper, he discovers two strangers living there. As illegals, Arab Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) and African Zainab (Danai Jekesai Gurira) have no real place to go, so Vale reluctantly lets them stay."

Vale's dull life as an undistinguished university professor, treading career water, trying to find himself after his wife's death makes him an unlikely hero. But, when confronted with the strangers in his apartment, he shows he still has a conscience and a compassionate heart, albeit initially buried in self-absorption. He lets them stay. We don't really get the back story about his two guests, only slivers that suggest their personal lives and problems BV (Before Vale).

What could have been a light,...

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Cats...ah, the joys of cats.

Posted by ianadmin, Nov 2 2008, 10:00 AM in Personal reminiscences

I found this video on YouTube and thought I'd share it with readers. If you have a cat, you'll know what it's all about...

Susan and I laughed until we cried because we have a cat who does almost exactly this every morning. She stands on my chest and purrs, kneads, then pats my face - claws ever so slightly distended - and meows. Just like the cartoon cat. Matter of fact, they're similarly shaped...

Another cat, Max, stomps up to the top of the bed, between us and LOUDLY meows. Ollie, a huge male, will walk along the edge of the headboard, back and forth, not quite balancing so one of his feet thumps down on the pillow beside your head. or sometimes on your head itself. Abby, meanwhile, jumps onto Susan's dresser and flails rapidly away at the mirror attached, her little claws making that teeth-hurting chalk-on-blackboard screech every now and then.

They'll all keep this up until we're awake. So far, none of them have discovered the baseball bat. Yet...

Cats. They don't have owners, they have staff. And we love them all.

PS: Watch the other cat cartoons he's done. You can see links to them at the lower part of the screen when the first video finishes.

40 Days and 40 Nights

Posted by ianadmin, Oct 31 2008, 02:01 PM in Book reviews

Real courtroom drama is always much more interesting than fiction. Among many books I'm reading at present, one of the most interesting is one of the best true tales of the courtroom: 40 Days and 40 Nights by Matthew Chapman. The subtitle for this 2007 book is, "Intelligent Design, God, OxyContin, and Other Oddities on Trial in Pennsylvania." That gives the reader some idea that this isn't merely a dry narrative.

This is Chapman's second book about the same issue. The first book, Trials of the Monkey, is about a re-enactment of the 1925 Scopes' trial, in Drayton, Tennessee. It's a mix of personal narrative and reporting, travelogue and musings on society and religion.

40 Days and 40 Nights is more pointed, but is also wry, sometimes laugh-aloud funny, sometimes sad in the way willful human ignorance and pigheaded ideology can be, but always insightful and probing. He didn't merely sit in the box through the trial: he met with and interviewed most of the players on both sides, including their lawyers. It's mostly about the people, rather than the science or the theology (in fact, anyone looking for a detailled description of why creationism or "intelligent"...

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Palin and the Flies

Posted by ianadmin, Oct 29 2008, 06:29 AM in Cultural, social & political grumblings

Sarah Palin, one of the most outstanding wingnuts to ever hold office, took on fruit flies last week. She was commenting on the 'earmarking' of budget items as pet projects for Congress and the Senate - $18 billion out of a $3 trillion budget according to Palin and pulled fruit fly research out of all that money as an example of wasted funding.

In her first policy speech - a speech about her government's promised commitment to special needs children by fully funding the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) - Palin cited the need to do more for children with disabilities such as autism: "For many parents of children with disabilities, the most valuable thing of all is information. Early identification of a cognitive or other disorder, especially autism, can make a life-changing difference."

That might seem a motherhood statement that would have gone undistinguished in the media, it was dripping with unintended irony because during that same speech, Palin made this off-the-cuff foot-in-the-mouth comment that exposed her ignorance about the subject and the science to a much wider audience of Sarah Palin watchers eager to pounce on her every gaff (and it seems to be...

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Where are the guilty bystanders?

Posted by ianadmin, Oct 27 2008, 05:56 AM in Literary musings, reading, books

An innocent bystander was shot in Toronto yesterday, the local news announcer said on the radio this morning. The CBC news yesterday proclaimed "Innocent bystander shot dead outside Toronto bar." The story from today's Toronto Sun paper is similar: "A 24-year-old man with a violent criminal history is being hunted by police for the Saturday morning shooting spree that left an innocent bystander dead and four others injured. "

Earlier this year, the UK paper, The Independent had a similar headline: "Shop shooting victim was 'innocent bystander'".

Does this mean the guilty bystanders were missed in the shooting? Or that there is some other way to be a bystander other than innocently? Or is it mean to differentiate the innocent bystander from the innocent victims? Or the other innocent bar patrons? Or that the victims were the guilty bystanders?

A person is either a bystander or a participant. There is no need for any qualifier. Innocence is a matter for the courts to decide, not the reporter.

It's an awful phrase. Simply hideous; flesh-crawlingly bad. It's one of many well-worn and highly annoying clichés that should NEVER be used by any credible news...

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2008 WCC at Game Nine

Posted by ianadmin, Oct 26 2008, 08:46 AM in Dark mutterings

As game nine of the 2008 World Chess Championship approaches, Indian Grandmaster and current world champion, Viswanathan Anand was in the lead against Russian challenger, Vladimir Kramnik. The score in this 12-game series at the end of game eight is 5.5 - 2.5 for Anand. Game 8 of the World Championship ended with a draw after 39 moves.

Kramnik would have to win the next three games to even tie Anand and force the match into a tie breaker game to have a chance of winning.

The 2008 WCC hasn't been the most exciting chess match I've ever followed (nothing in the last 50 years can beat the 1972 Fisher-Spassky match for excitement, drama and great chess). Most of the games in the 2008 match have been draws, but that's not unusual for chess tournaments at this level. But the games are nonetheless worth watching and recording, even if the theory behind them is at the stratospheric level.

As it notes on Chessbase:

QUOTE

And, after taking a crucial lead, even the eventual champion is generally reluctant to take unnecessary risks. Hence draws are common in the last quarter of the World championship matches

.

What's most interesting is the combatants. Kramnik represents a long line of

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The Big Chill, Finance-wise

Posted by ianadmin, Oct 25 2008, 08:43 AM in Cultural, social & political grumblings

For all the soul-searching analyses over the continuing economic slide, and hand-wringing over efforts to save the financial industry from its self-inflicted wounds, the collapse of the world's economies can be ascribed to one simple word: greed.

There are no mysterious laws of economics at work here. What's happened is the result of an uncontrolled market, unfettered capitalism and the complete lack of accountability among tens of thousands of executives and CEOs who have controlled the various firms simply as vehicles to reach their own wealth. And no government stepped in to stop them.

Top execs took home millions in salaries and bonuses, even while their companies were making unsound and often plain stupid financial decisions. And will a single one be called to account for their mistakes or be asked to pay back those performance bonuses we can now see were clearly unmerited?

Nothing in the financial world will get better until the rules are changed and these people are made responsible for their actions. But that's unlikely because the cronyism runs far too deep between top execs who finance political shindigs and prop up parties, and their pet politicians who benefit from turning their heads and...

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Another reason to dump the GG

Posted by ianadmin, Oct 24 2008, 11:40 AM in Cultural, social & political grumblings

The office of the Governor General has been a sink hole for public money for decades and seems to be getting worse. Although the GG is supposed to be an honourary role that retains the formal link between Canada and Great Britain, the last few GGs have seemed to confuse the difference between being royalty and royalty's pet.

The outrage over the exuberant spending and lush lifestyle habits of former GG, "Queen Adrienne" Clarkson were headline news across Canada during her reign. She was arrogant, aloof and the prime argument for dumping the GG from Canadian politics.

But then Canadians calmed down when a new GG, a young, presentable and pleasant - but relatively unknown - Michaelle Jean was appointed to the position after Queen Adrienne's term expired (to the great relief of many). We thought Michaelle would undo the tarnish Queen Adrienne had put on the GG's position.

Imagine the lack of surprise - but our great disappointment - when we learned that Michaelle has followed in the 'let them eat cake' style of her predecessor and is using your money to get away from it all.

According to a story in the Ottawa Sun today,

QUOTE

The Queen's representative in Canada has...

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No debate on the EDC battle

Posted by ianadmin, Oct 21 2008, 05:55 AM in Collingwood's Municipal Madness

I was disappointed, but not surprised, that council would not reconsider its spending of public tax dollars on the education development charges battle, and debate the issue publicly last night. After all, it's been an in camera process since it began, a secretive expense that has spiralled from its initial cap of $50,000 to $400,000. It will likely rise considerably higher before it's done.

The legal battle has been a personal favourite of the mayor - he was its champion when only a councillor and lobbied for the role of town representative for the group of municipalities which first took the fight to the OMB. This has been his fight from the start. So one hardly expects his circle of supporters at the table to allow someone to challenge that.

What I wanted was an open, public discussion on whether we should be proceeding right up front. Let the taxpayers know what we're doing with their money and why we need to spend more of it. Then, had council voted to continue, we could hear the lawyer's comments on our future strategy.

But no, we went in camera first to hear the lawyer's persuasive arguments. Personally, I think asking a lawyer whose salary depends on legal activity if we should...

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