2016 – Page 12 – Scripturient

De Officiis: Cicero on Political Obligations

No phase of life, whether public or private, whether in business or in the home, whether one is working on what concerns oneself alone or dealing with another, can be without its moral duty; on the discharge of such duties depends all that is morally right, and on their neglect all that is morally wrong in life. Cicero wrote that in 44 BCE in his last work in his last year of life: De Officiis, or in English: On Obligations. The translation from Book 1.4 above comes from the Perseus Project (the 1913 Miller/Loeb translation). In the 2000 edition (Oxford University Press, reprinted ……… click below for more ↓

Reading Pablo Neruda

2016-02-03 2016-02-03 Books & Reviews / Literature / Poetry & Lyrics / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

One hardly expects poets to generate spirited debate in the media these days*, but they did, not that long ago, well within my own lifetime. Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) was one of those who sparked great, passionate emotions in people, for both his writing and his leftist politics. And in his own country, Chile, he was the equivalent of a rock star for many years. Even his 1971 Nobel Prize for Literature was controversial: the award noted Neruda was a “contentious author” about whom the debate still raged. His death, shortly after the coup by the right-wing general, Augusto Pinochet, was ……… click below for more ↓

More secrecy, more witch hunt, less accountability

2016-02-03 2016-02-03 Collingwood / Council / Development & Growth / Ethics and behaviour / Planning & PoliciesOne Comment

“Those who gain a good reputation should be commended.” So starts the Lay of Guigemar, by Marie de France. It seems like mere commonsense, doesn’t it? We should laud those who achieve good things, who accomplish feats and goals, recognize with thanks those who work for our greater good. But it ain’t necessarily so, Marie warns. The 12th century French poet and fabulist known only as Marie de France wrote fables and poems with stories and morals – the earliest woman in France to do so. And what she wrote still has resonance in today’s world. She continued: “But when ……… click below for more ↓

Collingwood’s Finances: Great Shape!

2016-01-29 2016-01-29 Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / Planning & Policies / TaxesLeave a comment

There’s been a lot of doom-and-gloom bandied about over Collingwood’s alleged dire financial picture this term. There have been the-sky-is-falling presentations and nightmare-inducing consultants’ reports that paint a bleak picture of the town’s debt and financial status. Hand-wringing and hair-pulling. These jeremiads are enough to make a taxpayer wake up in the middle of the night and weep. If it were true. Fortunately, it isn’t. I’d like to think that someone got his or her numbers wrong, read someone else’s information, added or subtracted when they should have been doing the opposite. Or maybe was just pulling our collective legs. A practical ……… click below for more ↓

The Swimmer

2016-01-25 2016-01-25 Humour & Satire / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

The swimmer stood on the dock, contemplating the lazy current in the river. The warm spring, followed by the sunny days of early summer, had warmed the water enough to make the crossing less a challenge than a few weeks back, when he had first done it. It was still early enough in the day that the boaters weren’t on the water yet. The morning was calm and quiet, the sky clear and bright. The perfect time for a swim. He dropped his robe on the dock beside his towel, and prepared to dive. “Just a moment!” a voice from the shore interrupted ……… click below for more ↓

The Flat Earthers Respawn

2016-01-24 2016-01-24 Balderdash & Hoaxes / Conspiracy Theories / Critical Thinking / New Age Codswallop / Pseudoscience & Quackery5 Comments

While flat-earther might be a metaphor for a certain kid of myopic, political stupidity (think of your local council…), I learned this week that it’s also a thriving online subculture of rabidly pseudo-science wingnuts. A couple of entertaining articles about the flat-earthers appeared on the UK’s Guardian paper site (here and here) this week (and in the HuffPost, too). They surprised, but also disturbed me. I hadn’t actually believed in flat-earthers as a modern reality: while I knew of their former existence, I thought the concept was simply a trolling mechanism to expose the silliness of other pseudo-science like creationism or anti-vaccination ……… click below for more ↓

The Rational Gods of Iceland

2016-01-21 2016-06-06 Christianity / Creationism / Critical Thinking / FaithOne Comment

While 61% of Icelanders say they believe in God, according to a recent poll, absolutely none under the age of 25 believe that their personal hairy thunderer created the world: Less than half of Icelanders claim they are religious and more than 40% of young Icelanders identify as atheist. Remarkably the poll failed to find young Icelanders who accept the creation story of the Bible. 93.9% of Icelanders younger than 25 believed the world was created in the big bang, 6.1% either had no opinion or thought it had come into existence through some other means and 0.0% believed it ……… click below for more ↓

What Would $101 Million Buy?

2016-01-18 2016-01-18 Balderdash & Hoaxes / Christianity / Creationism / Critical Thinking3 Comments

The answer to that question could be very long. I’ll bet among all the things you thought of buying with that much, you weren’t even once thinking it could buy a 510-foot replica of the mythological Noah’s ark. But that’s what it is buying the folks who run the Ark Encounter theme park in Williamstown, Kentucky. You can see video “encounters” of it being built. Sort of (they wouldn’t work for me, but I’m an evolutionist, so their god probably stopped me from seeing them…) The park will open in July and, its creators promise, it will attract 1.4 million people annually. ……… click below for more ↓

Decoding Alice in Wonderland

2016-01-18 2016-01-18 Books & Reviews / Literature / Scifi and fantasy / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

It is tempting to suggest author David Day’s lush new book, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Decoded is the final word on the mysteries and secrets behind Lewis Carroll’s iconic children’s fantasy, but alas, it would be an over-reach. Surely others will follow, perhaps even Day himself will extend his research to a sequel. Aside from the difficulties of probing the motives of a man dead more than 125 years, there comes the question of interpretation, which is more like opinion than it is fact. Looking back 150 years at possible explanations for a reference or a character sometimes involves guesswork. But even from its original publication, ……… click below for more ↓

Monday’s Limited Choices

2016-01-17 2016-01-17 Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour2 Comments

Here are the choices Collingwood Council faces, Monday night, when dealing with the unethical, immoral and probably illegal actions of the two renegade members of council. You’ll recall that these two sent out an unauthorized, and what I and others believe was a highly inappropriate media release late in December, without showing them to council first, bypassing the mayor, and pimping their own personal political agendas, while disingenuously presenting them as town positions. This also implicated staff in what looks like inappropriate, partisan actions on behalf of the two council members. This violated the town’s code of conduct, council’s oath of office, ……… click below for more ↓

Kanile’a Islander GL6

2016-01-17 2021-05-15 Culture / Music & Reviews / Personal Reminiscences / Ukulele: instruments & music2 Comments

What a difference two strings make. Late last week, I traded my Jupiter Creek steel-stringed baritone, solid-body uke for one of these Kanile’a nylon-stringed GL6 “guitar-leles” which the company calls a “guilele.” It’s really a short-scale guitar tuned like a ukulele: a fourth higher. More like a requinto than a uke. Kanile’a says of the GL6 line: Our GL6 is a hybrid instrument that we developed bringing the convenience of the ‘ukuleles’ size with the playability that guitar players love. This instrument has our unique Super Tenor body in combination with our 20 inch scale, joined at the body on the ……… click below for more ↓

The Political Agnostic

2016-01-16 2016-01-16 Canadian Politics / Critical Thinking / Politics / Provincial Politics / US PoliticsLeave a comment

Watching the American political debates, especially the increasingly vituperative and acerbic Republican debates, reminds me again why I am a political agnostic when it comes to party politics. I simply cannot believe that any single political entity, any party or person, has all the answers or can dig us out of whatever hole we’re currently in. And America, with its rigid, two-party system, has seen its electoral options, choices and opportunities reduced to caricature status. On one side, a group of frighteningly racist, homophobic, xenophobic, gun-fanatic Christianists. On the other, a woman with no clear policies but a sense of entitlement. And ……… click below for more ↓

Where Have all the Readers Gone?

2016-01-16 2016-01-16 Books & Reviews / Culture / E-books & E-readers / Literature / Media / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

No, it’s not a remake of Pete Seeger’s famous 1955 anti-war song. That’s the title of an article that appeared in the Globe and Mail this week, by Peter Denton, lamenting our overall slide into image-based information with the “…intellectual attention span of squirrels…” * It grabbed my attention from the headline, but I stand at odds over his conclusions and his figures. Denton worries that people are reading less and sliding towards “personal illiteracy”: It’s not that e-books are taking over, either. People hardly buy books any more. Even fewer read them. My e-book sales are almost non-existent and ……… click below for more ↓

Oh, Ann, You Do Make Me Laugh

2016-01-15 2016-01-15 Critical Thinking / US PoliticsLeave a comment

Ann Coulter, that spewing harridan of hatred, bigotry, malevolence and xenophobia makes most thoughtful people cringe. Hell, she makes even rabid, right-wing frothers cringe. She makes the Westboro Baptist morons cringe. She makes the Duck Dynasty wingnuts cringe. She out-froths them all. Coulter represents the worst of human behaviour and thought in so many areas, blackening the eyes of even the most fervent right wing, which she alleges to defend. But you have to admit this thick-as-a-brick viper is sometimes good for a laugh. Coulter recently endorsed Donald Trump as the Republican presidential candidate. Which isn’t surprising: they are siblings in vehement hate speech. But I ……… click below for more ↓