Author: Ian Chadwick

Retired writer, editor, reviewer, media relations & communications consultant, municipal politician. Ukulele player. Aficionado of Shakespeare, Horace, Machiavelli, Chaucer, Cicero, Homer, socialism, science, Godzilla, ERB, & tequila. Curmudgeon, skeptic & cynic. Lay historian. Community volunteer. PC gamer. Avid reader. Woke socialist. Loving husband. Companion to one dog & three cats. Passionate about my small town. Perennially curious about everything. My writing is copyright © protected.

Smoking = Stupidity

2015-02-21 2015-02-21 Critical Thinking / Health & Medicine / Science & Technology2 Comments

I don’t know how to sugar coat this in some politically-correct, sensitive, caring way that doesn’t overtly offend anyone, but if you haven’t already figured this out by now, here it is: smoking is stupid. Really stupid. Even worse, smoking makes you even more stupid while you do it: Researchers tested the IQs of more than 20,000 healthy men between the ages of 18 and 21 who were either serving in the Israeli military or who had recently completed their service. Twenty-eight percent of the men in the sample smoked, while 3 percent were former smokers and 68 percent had ……… click below for more ↓

Whitewash

2015-02-20 2015-02-20 Collingwood / Council / Municipal Politics / Planning & Policies5 Comments

In early January, Council was presented with a report by outside consultants on the state of the shared service agreement between Collus/Powerstream and the town. The report, however, was rejected by council as flawed – wisely, it turns out – and the following motion was made (emphasis added) that night: THAT the motion be deferred for one month to allow the president and CEO of Collus/Powerstream to review and comment on the report, and that the report be further circulated to the interview participants and CPUSB to provide any corrections/clarifications that may be reflected in an updated report. This report, however, ……… click below for more ↓

Open for Business, But Not For Your Input

2015-02-11 2015-02-13 Collingwood / Council / Municipal Politics / Planning & Policies / Politics4 Comments

Did you happen to read the town ad on the inside page in the Enterprise Bulletin this weekend? February 6, top of page D7? I’m betting you didn’t because no one I’ve spoken to seems to have read it. And since you can’t find the ad on the EB’s website, you won’t have read it online, either. But you should because it likely affects you and possibly in a big way. It may change your life and not in a positive manner. It’s on the town’s website, buried under a user-unfriendly URL here: www.collingwood.ca/node/11875. It looks innocuous enough at the start: ……… click below for more ↓

Happy Talk

2015-02-10 2015-02-10 Culture / Language & Grammar / MediaOne Comment

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBWjNlBko70] A recent study proved an old notion – the Pollyanna Hypothesis – that there is a “universal human tendency to ‘look on and talk about the bright side of life’” according to a team of scientists at the University of Vermont. The story was reported on Science Daily recently. Reading through newspapers, magazines, websites, music lyrics and movie titles in ten languages, the researchers concluded that “probably all human language skews toward the use of happy words.” That struck me as counter-intuitive. Maybe it’s just my own experience with local media and bloggers, but I would have thought they’d find more negativity, especially ……… click below for more ↓

The Maxims of La Rochefoucauld

2015-02-08 2015-02-08 Books & Reviews / PhilosophyLeave a comment

Certain good qualities are like senses: people entirely lacking in them can neither perceive nor comprehend them. You might think that was written about local politics, or a comment on the local blogosphere. But no, it was written in the mid 17th century by Francois, du de La Rochefoucauld. It is number 337 in his famous book of Maxims, a work that stands beside other timeless classics of advice, reflection and epithets; like Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, and Balthasar Gracian’s The Art of Worldly Wisdom. I found a copy in a local used book store recently and have been digesting his words of wisdom. ……… click below for more ↓

The Hypocrisy Starts

2015-02-07 2015-02-09 Collingwood / Council / Municipal Politics / PoliticsOne Comment

It didn’t long for the hypocrisy to start at council. Monday night, council approved a five-year contract for an unsolicited proposal from the town’s only (monopoly) taxi service without going to an open bid process. Yes that’s right: this council approved a sole-source contract in its first two months of this term. No tender. No RFP. No public input. It wasn’t advertised. It just came in, unsolicited.* And the contract lasts five years – beyond the term of this council. Yes: the same people who loudly lambasted the previous council for sole-sourcing a contract for Sprung (although staff recommended it because ……… click below for more ↓

Professional Politicians? Not Here…

2015-02-03 2015-02-03 Collingwood / Municipal Politics / PoliticsLeave a comment

There’s an editorial in the January 29 edition of the Collingwood Connection that underscores how little the local media really understand local politics, and how biased it remains. Which is unfortunate, because buried within this vitriolic screed was a nugget of wisdom; a salient point about local politics.* First, it begins with an essential error by criticizing councillors for not showing “…they’re willing to work as a team -as they’ve been elected to do.” In non-partisan municipal politics, only individuals are elected. Not teams. Yes, there was a slate of candidates with similar ideologies who ran and many of whom were ……… click below for more ↓

Weaponized Aryan Jesus?

2015-01-31 2015-01-31 Culture / Faith / Film & Reviews / History & Biography2 Comments

The term “weaponized Jesus” comes from an article I read on politicsusa.com, from November 2013, titled “The Religious Right With Their Weaponized Jesus Are Not Christians.” It’s worth a read, if you enjoy the political-religious debate. I eventually traced the phrase back to a 2010 story in Mother Jones. It’s a good description of the way some fundamentalist Americans are taking their religion. But that’s not at issue right now. It’s the guy on the left of the movie still that I want to write about. Someone on my Facebook stream recently posted the picture above and talked about how she ……… click below for more ↓

Internet TV and Roku

2015-01-26 2015-01-26 Culture / Personal Reminiscences / TVLeave a comment

I picked up a ROKU streaming stick this weekend at the local Staples store to get access to some internet TV. The box advertises 500+ channels, while the boxes for the upscale models 2 and 3 offer 450+ and 1,000+, respectively. However, the official webpage for Roku says you can get more than 1,800 channels in the US on these devices. The Canadian site suggests it’s closer to 1,000 – Canadians get shortchanged by this and similar services, it seems. But by my count on the screen, the actual number of possible “channels” tops 1,300. Before you shout “woo hoo” and rush out ……… click below for more ↓

The Book List Game

2015-01-07 2015-01-07 Books & Reviews / Culture / Film & Reviews / Music & Reviews / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

In a recent story titled “Neil deGrasse Tyson Selects the Eight Books Every Intelligent Person on the Planet Should Read,” the eminent astrophysicist listed his top eight book titles – from a Reddit conversation that was going on back in December, 2011. Here are the books he chose back then (check the linked story above for his comments on why he picked these titles): The Bible; The System of the World, by Isaac Newton; On the Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin; Gulliver’s Travels, by Jonathan Swift; The Age of Reason, by Thomas Paine; The Wealth of Nations, by Adam ……… click below for more ↓

The WOW Factor

2015-01-05 2015-01-05 Games & Gaming / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

After two years away from the game, I was recently convinced by a friend to return to World of Warcraft again and play in the fantasy universe of WOW. At 10 years old, WOW remains the biggest, most-subscribed, most popular MMORPG, with around 10 million subscribers. By technology’s rapid-aging standards, WOW is a grandfather game; maybe even a great-grandfather. It has certainly spawned a lot of offspring, although not all are legitimate. I started playing WOW back in 2005. although I didn’t play it seriously and attentively until a little later, after the first expansion. Then I got heavily into the ……… click below for more ↓

47 Ronin Reviewed

2015-01-03 2015-01-03 Film & Reviews / Pop CultureLeave a comment

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8cKdDkkIYY] This week, after watching the 2013 film, 47 Ronin, starring Keanu Reeves, I had to wonder why Hollywood felt it necessary to take a powerful story, a great historical drama, and mess with it. And, of course, why they would put Keanu Reeves into a film about 18th century Japanese samurai. Or, for that matter, into any film. I’m not an actor, so my appreciation of their talents is only as an outsider. But Reeves seems to be pretty much a one-dimensional character. It worked in the Matrix, albeit less so in the sequels, but in films like the ……… click below for more ↓

200,000 Thank Yous

2014-12-30 2021-05-15 Blog & Blogging / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

It seems that only yesterday I was saying thank you to my first 100,000 unique visitors at this blog after just over two years of writing. That was at the start of March. Now, 10 months later, I want to say thank you to more than 208,000 visitors for coming here and reading my humble efforts at writing, at philosophy, politics, history, science, reviews and – very important to me – music.* In 2014, I wrote 220 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 527 posts. I’ve written almost 840,000 words – more than 350,000 of them ……… click below for more ↓