Musings on Grammar, Usage, and Garner’s

Books & Reviews / Language & Grammar / My Writing / Style & usage / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

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Be honest with me: how serious are you about the serial comma? Do you wade into discussions on language forums and social media brandishing citations from your favourite authorities? Do you dismiss dissenting authorities as heretics? Are there style and usage guides on your bookshelf with sticky notes and bookmarks in them so you can immediately find your references should anyone post a contrary opinion? Do you haughtily refer to it as the Oxford comma instead of the serial — or, the gods of language forbid, the Harvard — comma?* Do you rail and wail over comma splices? Does a ……… click below for more ↓

Another Housing Debacle in Cwood

Collingwood2 Comments

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A recent story in CollingwoodToday leads me to believe Council has made yet another misstep in its fumbling and bumbling efforts to deal with affordable housing. As the story notes, Council decided to sell an already affordable property near the downtown where people are currently living in rental units, and to sell another piece of property at the edge of town far from every service and shopping, to create an “affordable ghetto” there. Bad ideas, as I’ll explain, and a poorly-considered decision. And, in another facepalm-WTF-were-they-thinking moment, council decided to sell both properties after initially rejecting one of the sale ……… click below for more ↓

Why Local Media Has Failed Us

Collingwood / Local media / Media / Media Issues8 Comments

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The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2024, released this week, identifies the biggest short-term risk to the planet is from misinformation and disinformation, even above extreme weather events. The risk is highest during the next two years when “more than 3 billion people due to head to the polls in 2024 and 2025, including in major economies like the United States, India and the United Kingdom” where rightwing dictators and fascists like Trump, Putin, Poilievre, and Modi will be on the political stage.* What has the WEF report got to do with local media? Trust. We need to trust ……… click below for more ↓

Musings on Atheism, Belief, and Statues

Atheism & Spirituality / Critical Thinking / Culture wars / Religious intolerance2 Comments

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The website godchecker.com lists roughly 4,000 “weird and wonderful Gods, Supreme Beings, Demons, Spirits and Fabulous Beasts” which have been worshipped since the beginning of recorded history. Many are still being worshipped.  It’s quite an amusing and exhaustive collection of deities, demons, and demigods like saints. All gods and demons are, at least to me, weird, albeit not wonderful except as expressions of our limitless imaginations. Ditto with the rest of the supernatural baggage that comes with deities: reincarnation, ghosts, angels, an afterlife, souls, saints, and miracles.* Seeing these lengthy lists of gods and their underlings underscores the point made ……… click below for more ↓

Musings on the Post-Xmas Days

Atheism & Spirituality / Christianity / Culture / Culture wars / Festivals & EventsLeave a comment

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I am glad to have reached the first week in January of 2024 without telling a lot of people to simply fuck off and leave me alone during the past month. The urge is, I’m afraid, great and growing stronger every year. The Xmas season does that to me, beginning as it does in early September, when Canadian Tire and other box stores start putting Xmas lights and decorations on display for sale. The selling season continues through the late fall when suddenly every radio station, box store, and most retail outlets seem to play the same, endless loops of ……… click below for more ↓

Review: The Banshees of Inisherin

Culture / Film & ReviewsLeave a comment

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I had expected comedy. Maybe not laugh-aloud, rib-splitting stuff. Not slapstick and pratfalls. But humour of the British sort. Oscar-Wilde-ish witty dialogue. Banter like that from Fry and Laurie. Joycean innuendo and joie-de-vivre. And a resolution that brought an appropriate closure to the end. Instead, what I got was a Greek tragedy of unresolved pathos, violence, poverty, and misery that left the story — and audience —hanging. Not what the trailers of The Banshees of Inisherin had led me to expect. One Guardian review called it a “flawless tragicomedy of male friendship gone sour.” I couldn’t make out the comedy ……… click below for more ↓

Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics

Books & Reviews / Politics / Shakespeare / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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You might think, while reading Henry VI Part 2, that Shakespeare was writing about recent events, the writer merely masking them in archaic historical dress. Okay, even if you have read some of the Bard’s plays, the three Henry VI plays probably aren’t among the ones you read in university or high school. They can be a slog to read in part because they were among his earliest, and the story meanders a lot. But bear with me. They were the lead into Richard III, a moving and powerful play about politics and personality, one of several in the canon. ……… click below for more ↓

Accuracy, Licence, and the Death of Stalin

Books & Reviews / Culture / Film & Reviews / History & Biography / PoliticsOne Comment

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One of my favourite movies in my collection — seen three times already on DVD or Blu-ray but likely to be seen more — is the 2017 satire, The Death of Stalin, directed by Armando Iannucci. Wikipedia describes it as depicting: “…the internal social and political power struggle among the members of Council of Ministers following the death of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in 1953.” That’s a bit vague; it doesn’t include the antics, the scheming, the occasional slapstick moment, the brutality of those members, nor what happens with the people outside the Politburo whose parts are also brought into ……… click below for more ↓

Councillor Shits on Democracy

Collingwood / Council / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Entitlement / Staff and administration / Taxes2 Comments

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In a recent story in CollingwoodToday, Councillor Jeffrey is reported shitting on the democratic process. Rather than respecting a previous decision of council as policy requires, she chose to bring back a vote to add another staff person to our already overstaffed townhall. In doing so, I am confident she was well aware that she was voting to further burden taxpayers, simply because she didn’t like the way the vote went when she wasn’t at the table. Coun. Kathy Jeffery noted that the Nov. 20 meeting occurred while she and Doherty were absent. The two Saundersonite councillors who feel they ……… click below for more ↓

More Oppressive Budget Bullshit

Collingwood / Council / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Entitlement / Taxes4 Comments

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Council is still eyeing a massive hike to Collingwood property taxes, proving they lack any concern about the problems facing seniors and others on fixed incomes, low-income earners, and the many working-class people simply trying to make ends meet in an increasingly expensive town. Every tax increase, every utility increase, every user fee increase makes their lives harder. No one at the council table seems to have the spine to stand up to staff demands for more money, more employees, more stuff in their offices and parking lots. In a time of inflation, the town should be trimming costs and ……… click below for more ↓

Council’s Affordable Housing Con

Collingwood / Council / Housing / Planning & Policies / User fees and costsOne Comment

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A recent story in CollingwoodToday has the headline, “Town considering increases to development charges.” Everyone knows that increasing the development charges (DCs) adds to the cost of a new home, making housing even more expensive and less affordable. Right now, it’s extremely difficult to find anything even close to “affordable” in Collingwood. Apparently, the town wants to make it even harder and more expensive to buy new homes… unless, of course, you’re already a millionaire with money to burn.* The proposed increases include (emphasis added): For urban rates development charges for single/semi detached dwellings will increase by $2,653 to $42,855, ……… click below for more ↓

Reading the Iliad

Books & Reviews / Classics / Translations & translating / What I'm Reading Now4 Comments

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There was a moment when I was reading The Iliad that I thought to myself, “This is it. This is what the epic is really all about.” Somehow it all seemed to come down to one particular scene and all the rest was just leading up to it. Why I had that epiphany, I’ll explain in due course. But what struck me is that the real message of this epic poem was almost hidden by all the thousands of lines that came before it. I don’t get that many such bright moments when I read, although I read a lot. ……… click below for more ↓

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