Block Nine Revisited

Collingwood / Council / Development & Growth / Ethics and behaviour / Planning & Policies5 Comments

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I went down to the harbour today to take a couple of photographs of the piece of town land known as “Block 9.” I wanted to show my readers just how little a piece it is and what condition it’s in now. The aerial photo above shows the property outlined in orange (the photograph is several years out of date, but the property lines remain the same). The photograph below shows the land from the northwest corner, looking southeast. Notice the water that has collected because the land lies much lower than surrounding properties and has no drainage (no, it isn’t ……… click below for more ↓

The Slow Path to Happiness

Buddhism / Critical Thinking / FaithOne Comment

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If 15 minutes of stillness change the 23 hours and 45 minutes left in your day, including your sleep and your human relations, it seems to be worthwhile. So said Matthieu Ricard, a Buddhist monk who has spent the last 45 years in the Himalayas pursuing the goal of mindfulness. Ricard was interviewed in January, following along the lines of a TED talk he gave in 2007. You can watch that video here. Slowing down is gaining more attention as the world speeds up in part because it’s becoming increasingly evident that we collectively find it more and more difficult ……… click below for more ↓

Update: expanding my pasta making

Food & Drink / PastaLeave a comment

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I’ve just ordered a pasta extruder – the Marcato “Regina” pasta machine, which I expect to arrive in another week. This will allow me to make hollow pasta types like penne and rigatoni, not just the flat varieties I’ve been making to date. The machine got fairly good reviews online at various cooking sites. These extruders work much like a meat or dough grinder: a corkscrew gear forces the dough through a cutting die that determines the extruded shape and diameter. In fact, they can also be used for making other dough products like biscuits. This one is made from ……… click below for more ↓

This week’s reading

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

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Going Clear by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Lawrence Wright is an expose of the Church of Scientology. Fascinating, scary stuff and it makes you want to keep looking back over your shoulder to see if someone is watching you. A great read, though, and a real eye-opener if you’ve ever wanted to know the inner workings of this group (they hate to be called a cult but it’s hard to think of a better name as you’re reading this). The New York Times called it “essential” reading. It’s also the inspiration for an HBO documentary of that name, apparently not (yet?) ……… click below for more ↓

How Many Virtues?

Atheism & Spirituality / Buddhism / Christianity / Ethics & morality / Faith / Philosophy / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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The Greeks had but four cardinal virtues: prudence, justice, temperance, and courage (or fortitude). To this, many centuries later, the Catholic church (notably Aquinas) added three theological virtues: faith, hope, and charity (or love). These are the seven basic virtues of Western culture. But they’re not the only ones. In 410 CE, Aurelius Clemens Prudentius listed seven ‘heavenly’ virtues in his religious poem, Psychomachia: chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, patience, kindness, and humility. Writing in the New York Times recently, David Brooks said. It occurred to me that there were two sets of virtues, the résumé virtues and the eulogy virtues. ……… click below for more ↓

Creating a New Citizens’ Group

Collingwood / Council / Development & Growth / Humour & SatireLeave a comment

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Recently, I’ve been told that what this town needs is a new citizen’s action group. I imagine it will be a group of residents concerned that the precedents set by the last council might spread to this one. That’s clearly a worrisome trend to some folks. Like progress, good ideas must be nipped in the bud. What this town needs, it seems, is a group of citizens who will eagerly file OMB challenges to stop any chance at growth, development, prosperity and jobs before they become endemic. Citizens who will fight to retain our brownfields, to ensure we have store closings, half-finished developments and the slow withering away of the ……… click below for more ↓

The Paleo-Fantasy

Diet Fads / Food & DrinkLeave a comment

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[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMOjVYgYaG8] Perhaps the best – and certainly the funniest – description of what happens to your life when you pursue pseudoscience fads like the “paleo” diet is here on Popsugar. It’s laugh-aloud funny and too good not to be shared. I loved so many lines it’s hard to pick one or two, but from the description of making inedible “paleo” cookies: The cookies look exactly the same before they are digested as after. They are eternal and unchanging. As time passes, they don’t decline in quality or taste because they can’t. They’ve already started out at theoretical zero on that ……… click below for more ↓

Thirty Seven Days

History & Biography / TV / War & Military / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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Back in the mid-1970s, the BBC launched a dramatic, 13-part series called Fall of Eagles, about the last decades of the 19th century and the lead-up to World War One. It also chronicled the end of the royal dynasties in the aftermath of the war. It was a brilliant series, sweeping in its broad brush across the royalty and politics of Russia, Austria, Germany, and England. France got a mere cameo role because France was not ruled by any of the dynasties which form the central cast in the series. Viewers got from the series an image of the complex network ……… click below for more ↓

Another Archy Poem

Culture / Language & Grammar / Poetry & Lyrics / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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Most of Don Marquis’ Archy pieces were written in lowercase. The literate cockroach, we learned, would stand on the typewriter and dive, head first, onto the keys. But this way, he couldn’t use the shift key to get capital letters or punctuation (he did get capital letters, once, when Marquis left the shift-lock on the machine one night; Archy wrote about it in a 1933 piece called ‘CAPITALS AT LAST‘). But I’ve always felt one of the best pieces to come from the mind of Marquis was Archy’s commentary on criticisms about his grammar and punctuation from readers, in a ……… click below for more ↓

Sit on Your Hands

Collingwood / Council / Development & Growth / Ethics and behaviour / Planning & Policies2 Comments

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Sit on your hands and don’t do anything. That’s in essence the advice in the editorial of the Enterprise-Bulletin, June 3. It’s a strongly anti-business message: telling the business community, the municipality, developers, and everyone around us that Collingwood is, once again, closed for business. Which coincides with the anti-business attitude of several members of the current council, but is hardly good for the community’s economic health. The editorial concludes: By all means, let the waterfront plan and the strategic plan pursue their course and hold off any decision’s (sic) on Assaff’s Block 9 ask until after that time…* Hold off developing ……… click below for more ↓

Atheist Spirituality?

Atheism & Spirituality / Faith / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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Andre Comte-Sponville’s elegantly-written book, The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality, has occupied much of my thoughts and reading time these past few weeks as I try to grapple with his message. I find I need to re-read sections of it, perhaps more than once, to digest and weigh all of the ideas presented. I’m more accustomed to the polarizing polemics of Hitchens, Harris and Dawkins, and their militant atheism; French philosopher Comte-Sponville’s reasoned and gentle approach quite threw me off guard. Hitchens, Harris and Dawkins may be right (and righteous) in their arguments, but they can be caustic and grating. ……… click below for more ↓

Late Spring Pastas

Cooking / Food & Drink / PastaLeave a comment

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I’m still working on a formula for the perfect pasta dough, trying different mixes of flour and other ingredients to get both the best consistency and taste. And to experiment with texture so the pasta has the best mouth feel. I make fresh pasta once or twice a week now. My efforts so far have been pretty damned tasty and all but one – a notable one – have been a success as dinner. However, I just got a new book on making artisan pasta, so I have a lot more things to try in the coming weeks. It’s a ……… click below for more ↓

Waterfront No-Brainer

Collingwood / Council / Development & Growth / Ethics and behaviour2 Comments

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Two terms ago, the public and media often referred to council as “the gong show” – no doubt from the number of inane comments and witless questions made at the table. One wonders if that nickname should not be revisited for this term. This week’s gong for inanity goes to Deputy Mayor Brian Saunderson for his comments after a public presentation by a local developer about purchasing an unused bit of town land. Saunderson clearly hasn’t grasped the procedure by which council members should not comment on or to delegations, and only ask questions of clarification. But why should he ……… click below for more ↓

Killing Our Culture

Collingwood / Council / Culture / Development & Growth / Ethics and behaviourOne Comment

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Collingwood has killed Jazz & Blues at the Station – a popular, long-running, local cultural event second in audience only to the Elvis Festival. It brought some of Ontario’s top jazz and blues talent to play at the Museum. The hundreds of people assembled every Wednesday for the free concert – sometimes more than 400 in a single night, many of them coming from Blue Mountain, Clearview and Wasaga Beach – will be disappointed. As are the organizers, who have been trying unsuccessfully since late last year to get the town to commit to promised funding. All those people who came downtown ……… click below for more ↓

The Story of Chicken Little

Collingwood / Humour & SatireLeave a comment

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Chicken Little was out one morning walking around town. It was a fine morning, and he decided he wanted a cup of coffee. He wanted one so much could even smell the coffee in the air. So he walked into a local restaurant. But then he stopped and his mouth fell open in horror. He saw three horses sitting together at a table. Chicken Little didn’t like horses in general, but these were the Three Horses of the Apocalypse. The Three Horses he hated more than any other horses in the whole wide world. The most evil, nastiest, ugliest, horses he had ……… click below for more ↓

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