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.

Just Six Songs?

2014-04-26 2014-04-26 Culture / Music & Reviews / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

Author, musician and neuroscientist Daniel Levitin says all music can be classified into a mere six types of song. That’s part of the premise in his 2009 book, The World in Six Songs. I recently started reading it and it has opened some interesting areas of thought for me.* A mere six fundamental themes in song, Levitin writes: friendship, joy, comfort, religion, knowledge and love. And he provides a chapter for each in what is a literary combination of sciences, music, social commentary, cultural anthropology and personal reminiscence. And he offers a lot of conjecture that, while not necessarily provable, ……… click below for more ↓

Pseudo-patriotic madness

2014-04-26 2014-04-26 Critical Thinking / Media Issues / Politics / US PoliticsOne Comment

This is news, right from the CBC, not April Fool or The Onion: The Massachusetts House of Representatives has finally granted initial approval to a Bill naming the Fluffernutter the official state sandwich. The bill was filed in 2006 by then Representative Kathi-Anne Reinstein, in response to a motion by State Senator Jarrett Barrios limiting school Fluff servings to once a week. She thought that motion was, ‘nuts’. The Fluffernutter is a peanut butter and Marshmallow Fluff combination and has been a staple in Massachusetts diets for generations. Okay, for anyone with any shred of common sense left, that isn’t ……… click below for more ↓

Me, Myself and I

2014-04-25 2015-04-25 Grammar / Language & Grammar / Style & usageLeave a comment

At council meetings across the province, you will hear someone say “Moved by myself…” when presenting a motion at the table. To me it’s like nails on a blackboard. The grammatically correct way to present a motion is, of course, to say, “Moved by me…” So why the mistake? Common misunderstanding and discomfort, it appears, according to the grammar sites I read today. People often (and incorrectly) think “me” is incorrect or even coarse (well, it is when you say something like “Me and my friends are going dancing” of “I got me a pickup truck…”). That unnecessary caution is why some ……… click below for more ↓

The difficult art of reading poetry

2014-04-20 2014-04-20 Books & Reviews / Culture / Poetry & LyricsLeave a comment

Synecdoche. Metonymy. Not exactly words that trip lightly off the tongue. Unless, I suppose, you’re Harold Bloom. Those are two of the four fundamental tropes in literature, Bloom tells us. Identified originally by Kenneth Burke, who, as Bloom calls him, was a “profound student of rhetoric.” Bloom references Burke in his introduction to The Best Poems of the English Language (Harper Collins, 2004), which he both edited and selected. I’ll get back to that book, in a separate post, and discuss whether they are actually the “best” or in fact whether anyone can make such a claim for another reader. ……… click below for more ↓

Lost Shakespeare play found?

2014-04-18 2014-04-18 Books & Reviews / History & Biography / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

Cardenio. Written by William Shakespeare. Based on an episode in Miguel Cervantes’ novel, Don Quixote. The novel was translated from Spanish into English in 1612. The play was known once, but lost. Performed by the King’s Men in 1613, the same year Shakespeare penned Henry VIII, or All is True and The Two Noble Kinsmen. Performed before June 29th, the day the Globe theatre burned down during a performance of Henry VIII. Cardenio was entered in the Stationer’s Register in 1653 as a collaboration by playwrights Fletcher and Shakespeare. The Guardian explains: In 1653 the leading English publisher of plays ……… click below for more ↓

Spoon River: Smith, Goodman and Masters

2014-04-18 2014-04-18 Books & Reviews / Music & Reviews / Poetry & Lyrics / What I'm Reading Now3 Comments

VERY well, you liberals, And navigators into realms intellectual, You sailors through heights imaginative, Blown about by erratic currents, tumbling into air pockets, You Margaret Fuller Slacks, Petits, And Tennessee Claflin Shopes— You found with all your boasted wisdom How hard at the last it is To keep the soul from splitting into cellular atoms. While we, seekers of earth’s treasures, Getters and hoarders of gold, Are self-contained, compact, harmonized, Even to the end. Edgar Lee Masters: Thomas Rhodes; from Spoon River Anthology, 1915 What is is about poetry or musical lyrics that moves us so differently than just prose? ……… click below for more ↓

Tudor politics: Elizabeth’s struggle

2014-04-17 2014-04-17 Books & Reviews / England and Britain / History & Biography / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

David Starkey’s book, Elizabeth: the Struggle for the Throne, is the best book I’ve read on the period of Elizabeth’s life between the death of Henry VIII and her own coronation. It gives a clear, richly detailled picture of the machinations, the politics and the society that she lived in during the 25 years before she became monarch – 1533 to 1558. And what a life it was. In and out of favour, imprisoned, in fear of her life, threatened, cajoled, living on her wits, political puppet and Machiavellian instigator… Elizabeth emerges as a canny, quick and lively actor in ……… click below for more ↓

What do we know about Bell’s Palsy?

2014-04-17 2014-04-17 Health & Medicine / Personal Reminiscences / Science & TechnologyLeave a comment

Bell’s Palsy is one of those rare ailments, and one that annoys more than threatens, but can be difficult and socially awkward for sufferers. It’s also one that still baffles researchers as to its cause. And also for an effective treatment. According to facialpalsy.org, The name ‘Bell’s palsy’ comes from 19th-century Scottish anatomist and surgeon Sir Charles Bell, who discovered that severing the seventh cranial (or facial) nerve causes facial paralysis. It has no vaccine, no known method for prevention, and the treatment is still uncertain. [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxVHFJs1uJ4] Wikipedia tells us: Bell’s palsy is a form of facial paralysis resulting from ……… click below for more ↓

Oooh, shiny….

2014-04-09 2014-04-09 Culture / Musical Instruments / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

Religious texts are full of admonitions about avoiding temptation. The Lord’s Prayer tells God to “lead us not into temptation.” Fat lot of good that does. We can find the way ourselves, thank you. Not only do we lead ourselves there, we go willingly and eagerly. Pushing and shoving aside those who stand in our way to reach temptation. Ever see the crowds in the mall on Boxing Day? Psychological texts, magazines and sites are full of secular advice on resisting temptation, too. It’s our brain’s “executive control” functions that fail use when we succumb to our impulses. And fail ……… click below for more ↓

The dangerous idiocy of the anti-vax movement

2014-04-08 2014-04-08 Conspiracy Theories / Critical Thinking / Pseudoscience & Quackery / Science & Technology2 Comments

Measles is on the rise in Canada. There have already been many cases in 2014: in PEI, London, Ottawa, southern Alberta, Regina, Qu’Apelle, Calgary, Fraser Valley (320 cases), Hamilton, Halton, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Waterloo, Nanaimo and other locations. Eleven cases in Ontario this year alone. Nine in Alberta. That ancient, deadly foe we recently believed we had conquered, is coming back. And it’s going to kill children again, this time with the complicity of their parents. Fifty years ago, science found the cure and made a vaccine for it. In 2000, the United States optimistically declared ongoing measles transmission had been ……… click below for more ↓

April’s early breads

2014-04-07 2014-04-07 Bread & Baking / Food & Drink / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

April has begun with three loaves of bread; generally successful efforts, although there’s still some tweaking to do with the recipes. As always. But I’m encouraged to try more – and of course experiment more with recipes and ingredients. The first loaf of the latest batch was an artisan loaf made at the tail end of March. Started with an overnight poolish and the standard artisan recipe I’ve been using for a while now (derived from one found online). All unbleached white flour in the mix. A little less salt than was called for, but otherwise pretty basic bread. The ……… click below for more ↓

Is this the end of the gluten-free fad?

2014-04-01 2014-04-01 Bread & Baking / Critical Thinking / Food & Drink / Pseudoscience & Quackery4 Comments

Last November, when I first wrote about the gluten-free diet fad, I bemoaned how an everyday protein, a staple in human diets for many millennia, had become demonized by the diet fad crowd. In fact, the gluten-free fad rapidly grew into a multi-million-dollar industry in Canada to accommodate that vulnerable intersection of consumer fears and gullibility.* Back when I was writing my piece, the National Post had a piece that indicated while nine million Canadians were allegedly on a gluten-free diet or avoided gluten for non-medical reasons, only 1% of us – about 330,000 people – actually have Celiac disease ……… click below for more ↓

Feetish or Fettish?

2014-03-30 2014-03-30 Language & Grammar / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

I was surprised to recently read in David Crystal’s book, The Story of English in 100 Words, that fetish – which I pronounce “feh-tesh” – was once pronounced “feetish.” In fact, in the 1920s, Crystal writes, the BBC had that pronunciation in its guide for radio broadcasters.* It makes sense, of course, when you think about it. Usually when there is a single consonant before a vowel, that vowel is pronounced long. It usually takes two consonants to shorten it. For example: Holy and holly; Mater and matter; Scared and scarred; Hater and hatter; Pater and patter; Diner and dinner; ……… click below for more ↓