Year: 2016

Flat earthers? Must be a spoof…

Conspiracy Theories / Critical Thinking / New Age Codswallop / Pseudoscience & Quackery7 Comments

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At first, I thought a story on Tech.mic titled “Meet the People Who Believe the Earth Is Flat” was satire. You know, a parody of those zany conspiracy theorists who believe in such nonsense as chemtrails, gluten-free, the government staged the 9/11 attacks, homeopathy, vaccines cause autism, Trump is a good presidential candidate, astrology, creationism, climate change is a hoax, Collingwood Council has ethics, and the rest of the rampant silliness and stupidity that haunts the Net. And it would be easy to write: wingnuts are almost too easy to lampoon. But no one can really believe the earth is flat, ……… click below for more ↓

Wolf Hall reviewed

Books & Reviews / England and Britain / History & Biography / TV / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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I have just finished watching the six-part BBC series, Wolf Hall, based on the two novels by Hilary Mantel. I am also about halfway through my reading of the first of the two, Wolf Hall (with Bring up the Bodies waiting in the bedside pile). The series conflates the two novels into six one-hour episodes. Given the length of the novels (Wolf Hall is 650 pages itself), compacting them and retaining clarity, plot and drama is quite a feat. Normally, I would argue for the written word over the adaptation. Any adaptation. As good as they may be, it is rare ……… click below for more ↓

Deputy mayor & interim CAO missing in action?

Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviourLeave a comment

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The headline in the Connection story reads, “Collingwood meets with provincial ministers about waterfront plan.” Well, that’s incorrect: it wasn’t “Collingwood” – it was Mayor Cooper and two staff members at the Association of Municipalities of Ontario conference this month. Notably absent from the reporting of these important meetings were the deputy mayor, Brian Saunderson; our interim CAO, John Brown; and senior administrative staff. Why? Saunderson was at the AMO conference. Was he not invited? Or did he simply disdain to attend? I don’t know. I doubt the interim CAO attended AMO. I suspect he was too busy hectoring Collus ……… click below for more ↓

A brief update on Collus-PowerStream

Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / Planning & PoliciesLeave a comment

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Just a brief note to give my readers the opportunity to examine two documents related to Collus-PowerStream and our council’s secretive efforts to sabotage our utility. Both are in PDF format, linked below. First is the presentation given by the Electricity Distribution Association (EDA) to AMO delegates earlier this month. I referred to this in a recent post about the opportunities this council has thrown away in their headlong rush to fulfill their petty little vendettas. Collus-PowerStream was mentioned during the presentation (page 14) as one of the leading innovators in LDCs in Ontario. Bet you’ve never heard The Block say anything like ……… click below for more ↓

No consultation with customers or neighbours

Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviourOne Comment

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Did you know Collus-PowerStream serves thousands of customers in Stayner, Thornbury and Creemore? More than 4,000 residences, businesses, restaurants, stores, churches, municipal facilities and farms are on the Collus-PowerStream distribution network, along with almost 12,200 in Collingwood. Do you know how many times Collingwood has consulted with the councils of Town of the Blue Mountains and Clearview over its plan to sell our utility to Hydro One that will crucially and negatively affect those customers in their communities? Right: none. The same number of consultations they have had with local customers. It’s all been done furtively: behind closed doors with high-priced, ……… click below for more ↓

It’s not the town doing this: merely staff

Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour4 Comments

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“Collingwood laywer (sic) says town won’t sign confidentiality agreement regarding Collus employee information” says the headline in a story in last week’s Collingwood Connection. Yes, it really does say “laywer….” (ah, proofreading…) Well, that’s wrong: it’s not “the town” that won’t sign, but rather merely three members of the administrative staff. The Block recently replaced the town’s experienced, democratically-appointed members with staffers in order to push through The Block’s destruction of the relationship with PowerStream. But it’s not “the town” behind it at all. They would sign it if instructed to by council. But council is controlled by The Block. So that ……… click below for more ↓

Opportunities Collingwood has lost

Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / Planning & PoliciesOne Comment

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I spent two days in the trade show at the AMO conference this week, looking at the booth across the aisle from me. It constantly reminded me of the opportunities for Collingwood this council has thrown away, of what great opportunities we have lost this term. The booth across from me was announcing the upcoming merger of four of the province’s top utility companies – Horizon, Enersource, Hydro One Brampton and PowerStream. This will make it the largest LDC (local distribution corporation) in Ontario. The four most innovative, customer-oriented, conservation-minded, efficient and forward-thinking utilities are merging. You remember PowerStream? They are our ……… click below for more ↓

Why is this man still working for Collingwood?

Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour3 Comments

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I am appalled and disgusted, and you should be, too. In what seems only minutes after council and staff received a remedial presentation on roles and responsibilities that emphasized the MAYOR speaks for the town, no one else, the interim CAO was at it again. Speaking out about town issues and events when it is the mayor’s role and responsibility to do so. Not his. This breach of etiquette should not be tolerated. It shows no respect for the mayor, or her office, let alone the actual events. Such insubordination undermines her authority. In a story in this weekend’s Collingwood Connection, interim ……… click below for more ↓

What did the former council ever do for us?

Collingwood / Council / Humour & Satire / My WritingLeave a comment

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TIM: What exactly are the demands? BRIAN: We’re giving Powerstream two days to dismantle the entire apparatus of the Collus utility, and if they don’t agree immediately, we execute the shotgun clause. TIM: You mean, cut their nose off? DEB: Cut all our noses off. To spite our collective faces. Show them we’re not to be trifled with. BRIAN: Also, we’re demanding a ten foot mahogany statue of the former mayor with his conflicts hangin’ out. KATHY: What? They’ll never agree to that, Brian. BRIAN: That’s just a bar– a bargaining counter. And of course, we point out that they bear ……… click below for more ↓

Time for council to learn the rules? Nah…

Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviourLeave a comment

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Being a councillor is hard work. You have to scurry around in dark corners looking for places in which to hold secret meetings, you have to plan the destruction of town facilities and services, you have to spend whole minutes calculating how much to raise taxes, you have to wrack your brain for hours trying to determine the best way to discourage business, offend developers (except those who are your in-laws), you have to spend countless hours listening to staff drone on and on and on about boring stuff like planning and finances before you can get back to figuring ……… click below for more ↓

The destruction of Collus

Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / Planning & Policies3 Comments

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There’s a story in the online Connection that highlights how much this council has spent on lawyers and consultants to further its vendetta against Collus-Powerstream: more than $400,000 so far. Half of it was spent in 2015 (I have seen a document that shows more than $249,000 spent in 2015) and the cash register is still ringing. By the end of this year it may well top $750,000-$1 million. That’s $400,000 of your tax dollars already spent for nothing. Not in town, not on local companies or services. We got absolutely no benefit from that expense. It wasn’t spent on anything for the greater ……… click below for more ↓

Fowler for the 21st Century

Books & Reviews / Grammar / Language & Grammar / Style & usage / What I'm Reading Now / Words & etymologyOne Comment

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On the desk of every writer, every reporter, every editor, every PR director and every communications officer is a small library of reference books. A good dictionary (Oxford, American Heritage, Merriam Webster, Random House but gods forbid, never a generic Webster’s). A thesaurus (likely Roget’s). A style guide (CP for Canadians, or AP for Americans… Canadians likely have both).  A dictionary of quotations (because the print version is reliable as a source, and the Internet isn’t). And a usage guide. That’s de rigeur for these professions, and the very minimum that they likely have in front of them every time ……… click below for more ↓

These Old Bones

Literary pretensions / My Writing / Personal Reminiscences / Poetry & LyricsOne Comment

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These old bones; You wouldn’t think they’d cut a rug jitterbug dance between the rain drops but once I could. Once I did. Danced to the music, lover in hand, that time in the park when we didn’t care laughing in the face of the storm. The rain, the wind, splashing in the grass. The music was all in our heads, our breath, our hearts beat with the tunes we sang inside. I remember every line, every lyric. These old bones knew music. These old bones knew the hotcha rhythm of the dance. You wouldn’t think them spry enough, not ……… click below for more ↓

Where is Che now that we need him?

History & Biography / International politics / Politics / Social Order & DisorderLeave a comment

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Maybe it’s simple nostalgia, but it seems to me the world was a lot better off when the Soviet Union was around. Really. Bear with me while I explain. When the USSR was the main enemy of our loudly-proclaimed free and democratic society, we struggled to measure ourselves against its yardstick. If the USSR claimed to have the best chess players, we had to beat them with Bobby Fischer. If they claimed to have the best students in math or science, well we had to show we had the whizzes. If they claimed their medical system was better, their workers ……… click below for more ↓

Designing Type

Fonts & Layout / Typography / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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Karen Cheng’s 2005  book, Designing Type, is the third of the recent books on typography I have received*. Of the three, it is the most technical, appealing to the typophile and design geek more than the average reader. But it’s also a reference for layout and graphic artists looking to choose a specific font for a work. If your goal is to actually design a typeface, she helps appreciate the subtleties of design that differentiate and separate typefaces and letterforms. But it’s not a book about design. Most books on type and typography focus on the result: working for the combination ……… click below for more ↓

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