2016 – Page 6 – Scripturient

Whatever became of that angry mob?

2016-07-29 2016-07-29 Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / Planning & PoliciesLeave a comment

Last term, council was presented with an angry, 14-page screed from the “Friends of Central Park” (aka “Build the YMCA a Taj Mahal at Taxpayers’ Expense,” later called Better Together Collingwood…yes, you know who was behind them both!). The mouthpiece attacked the honesty, the credibility, competence and the behaviour of the former council – all because we chose to build new recreational facilities that were not the expensive option a group of well-off residents demanded we build. And because we didn’t raise taxes or incur significant debt in our choice. I realize it’s not often one gets lambasted by taxpayers for not raising taxes, ……… click below for more ↓

Electing atheists

2016-07-28 2016-07-28 Atheism & Spirituality / Critical Thinking / Faith / PoliticsLeave a comment

A recent story on Religion News discusses the DNC’s concerns about former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’ religion. Not that he was Jewish, but that he might be a closet atheist. And that send the DNC-crats over the roof. Scary, eh? You can’t elect an atheist in America. You can elect liars, cheats, adulterers, misogynists and creationists (and sometimes all in the same person…). But not atheists. Even Donald Trump, whose murky religious beliefs remain cause for much speculation, overshadowed by his overt worship of power and money, hasn’t strayed into atheism, at least publicly. And it’s been that way since ……… click below for more ↓

Everything Flows

2016-07-24 2016-07-24 Books & Reviews / Culture / History & Biography / Literature / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

Tonight’s book-with-wine discussion is about Vasily Grossman‘s novel, Everything Flows (New York Review Book, USA, 2009). It was his final work, and left unfinished at the time of his death, in 1964. It’s not a difficult read, only 250 pages, but it isn’t easy. Readers unfamiliar with Soviet history, particularly the Stalin era, will not understand much of it. And it’s hardly a cheerful work. Not that everything Russian is a slit-your-wrist work, but it’s certainly Dostoevsky-like in its darkness. Grossman was a Soviet war correspondent during WWII and travelled with the Red Army through Moscow, Stalingrad, Kursk then into ……… click below for more ↓

Frutiger vs Palatino

2016-07-23 2021-05-15 Books & Reviews / Fonts & Layout / Typography / What I'm Reading Now2 Comments

In a recent review of Sarah Hyndman’s book, Why Fonts Matter, I casually commented that, You can no more adequately comment on the relevance and impact on the viewer of, say, Frutiger versus Palatino, without discussing the design and layout in which it is set… The point of which was not to single out those two typefaces as much as to suggest the debate between how readers respond to sans-serif and serif faces (respectively). Fruitiger is a modern, humanist sans-serif type designed by Adrian Frutiger in 1975. Palatino is a serif type designed by Hermann Zapf, in 1948, to simulate ……… click below for more ↓

Reading Letters: Designing for Legibility

2016-07-23 2016-07-23 Books & Reviews / Language & Grammar / Typography / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

The human brain is truly a remarkable machine.* We can see a bunch of lines and in that same brain turn them into an M and know it’s not a V or an N or a K or W. Yet M isn’t a ‘thing’ – it’s an abstract representation of a sound that itself has no concrete meaning outside the Mmmmm of meditation. When you mentally assemble a bunch of other lines and sticks and squiggles, those sounds form a larger abstraction: a word: MOON. Now we have substance. And that can be used to create even larger collections of ……… click below for more ↓

Why Fonts Matter

2016-07-21 2016-07-21 Arts / Books & Reviews / Fonts & Layout / Language & Grammar / Marketing / Typography / What I'm Reading Now3 Comments

The first problem I have when receiving a new book on typography is that I spend far too much time looking up the typefaces described or sampled therein, and searching for them online, instead of reading. Then I start looking at (and critiquing) the typefaces chosen for the book itself. It’s a trees-not-the-forest kind of wonderment that comes over me. As I am wont to do, I sit back on my deck in the evening sun, glass of wine in hand, and a large pile of previously-purchased typography books beside me, so I can make the introductions. Probably not necessary, ……… click below for more ↓

322 reasons why we’re better off with PowerStream

2016-07-20 2016-07-21 Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / Planning & Policies / Taxes / User fees and costs4 Comments

$322. More. Every year. $322. That’s how much MORE the average consumer household using 750 kW/month pays a year when connected to Hydro One, compared to the same household connected to Collus PowerStream. That means YOU will pay that much more, thanks to Collingwood Council. The Block, in particular. And it could be higher, if you have, say, electrical heat, air conditioning, electrical stove or dryer, or a family. A lot higher.* This council has been in secret negotiations to sell our utility to Hydro One, knowing that your bills will skyrocket. Not only will it mean higher utility bills, but you ……… click below for more ↓

A cunning plan

2016-07-19 2016-07-19 Ethics & morality / Logic and reason / Politics / US PoliticsOne Comment

I see Donald Trump’s plan to utterly eviscerate the Republican Party is working very well. Just look who he picked as his running mate: possibly the only white man more bigoted, vile, close-minded, racist and misogynistic than the passel of presidential candidates Trump bested earlier.* Brilliant. You couldn’t do more than that to alienate the remaining American intelligensia, the moderates, the women, the Latinos, the blacks, the Jews, the Muslims, the gays… now pretty much every social, racial, educational and cultural group has an opportunity to be offended by Trump and his potential Veep all at once. Now, although pretty ……… click below for more ↓

Thick as a brick

2016-07-16 2016-07-17 Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / Municipal Politics / Planning & PoliciesOne Comment

You really have to watch Rogers’ coverage of Collingwood Council, July 11, 2016. Start around 2:08:00. That’s when the discussion about the upgrades to the brick at the Collingwood Curling Club begins. Another comedic episode full of zany antics and madcap mayhem brought to you by The Block. Be prepared to howl with laughter as Councillor Ecclestone attempts to justify hiding public information from view. Let’s pause for a moment to remind readers that these upgrades and repairs were approved last term, in 2014 and should have been completed by now. But this council and administration dropped the ball for almost ……… click below for more ↓

Fake Ark, Fake Religion

2016-07-16 2016-07-16 Balderdash & Hoaxes / Christianity / Creationism / Critical Thinking / Cults / Faith / Religious intolerance4 Comments

Well, it finally opened: the $100 million-dollar Noah’s Ark theme park in Kentucky that features an allegedly life-size model of the mythological boat described in the Bible. It’s 510 feet (155.4m) long, 85 feet (26m) wide, more than three storeys (51 feet) tall, uses 3.1 million board-feet of lumber, steel and other modern materials, on a base of rebar-reinforced concrete.* The only two materials specifically mentioned in the Biblical tale are gopher wood and pitch. But this reconstruction doesn’t use gopher wood or pitch – curiously, both are conspicuous in their absence in this modern remaking. In fact, pitch isn’t even mentioned in the website ……… click below for more ↓

A little musical Canadiana

2016-07-15 2016-07-15 History & Biography / Music & Reviews / Poetry & Lyrics / War & MilitaryLeave a comment

Among my collection of many (many!) vintage song books and song sheets, I have a bundle of patriotic music from WWI. I was browsing through them again this week and found several songs written and published during the war, either as songs for the soldiers (usually cheering them on to war or hoping for their safe return) or songs for those left behind to express their patriotic fervour. I thought it might be appropriate to show some of them to readers as we approach our 150th national birthday, in 2017. Here are six covers from Canadian music of that era. If ……… click below for more ↓

The raison d’etre

2016-07-13 2016-07-15 Humour & Satire / My Writing / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

“Why do you do it?” A voice asked me, momentarily distracting my attention from deciding between the firm and silky tofu in the grocery store. I looked up to find a woman close to my own age in front of me. Well, perhaps she was a teensy bit older by about 20 years, but once you cross 60, age differences between seniors seem smaller. To my aging eyes, at least. I couldn’t easily disengage since her cart was wedged up against mine, and because I needed to find my way to the sweet potatoes across the aisle, I responded, hoping to ……… click below for more ↓

We’re Screwed. Royally.

2016-07-13 2016-07-13 Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviourLeave a comment

By now you know what I’ve been warning you about all along: Council is selling our public electrical utility. After harassing, bullying and hectoring our utility staff, they decided to simply get rid of a 150-year-old public institution that has served this town so well all this time. We’re screwed. And you’ve had how much input on this crucial issue? Right: exactly none. And council has no intention of giving the public a say. This is a fait accompli: an autocratic act so despicable that words fail me. These people are truly evil in the fullest sense of that word. Democracy ……… click below for more ↓

Transcendance

2016-07-12 2016-07-12 Culture / Film & Reviews / Memes; Internet & Social / Science & Technology / Social Order & Disorder / Technology & GadgetsLeave a comment

It’s not surprising that AI replaced the biological form in the popular Frankenstein monster trope. In fact the smart-evil-machine scenario has been done so often this past decade or so that I’m more surprised any film writer or director can manage to give it some semblance of uniqueness that differs it from all the others. Transcendence tries, tries very hard and almost makes it. But the brass ring remains out of reach. Still, it’s worth watching if you’re a scifi buff because, well, it’s scifi.* And even bad scifi is better than no scifi at all. Well, maybe not the Transformer franchise, ……… click below for more ↓

Reputation, reputation, reputation

2016-07-07 2016-07-08 Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviourLeave a comment

Real estate agents and retaillers have a saying: Location, location, location. But for politicians that can be amended to read: Reputation, reputation, reputation. The reputation of the whole community hinges on that of its politicians. After all, the tree is known by its fruit. Remember the Rob Ford scandals? Talk show hosts around the world used them to turn Toronto into a jokefest. People who had never visited, or never even heard of Toronto before knew about it through Rob Ford’s antics. And although it tarnished Toronto, Ford acted as if it didn’t matter. As Cicero wrote in On Obligations (De ……… click below for more ↓