Psychics 2013: the silly, the scams, the failed predictions

Atheism & Spirituality / Balderdash & Hoaxes / Media Issues / Pets & Animal Behaviour / Pseudoscience & Quackery / Social Order & DisorderOne Comment

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Action News, an ABC affiliate, ran a late-year story with the headline “Psychics interpret pets’ thoughts.” No, it’s not April Fools’ Day: this was December 26. Yet the reporter treated it seriously; just like it was a real story; actual news, rather than a steaming heap of superstitious dung. That reporters for any media outlet treat would such codswallop as “news” calls into question their ability, their competence and their education. Lorrie The Pet Psychic has been tuning into the thoughts of animals for 18 years, appearing on Oprah after she helped locate a local dog who was blown away ……… click below for more ↓

The last loaves of 2013

Books & Reviews / Bread & Baking / Food & Drink / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

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As my stock of bread dwindles, I’m contemplating what breads to bake this weekend, as well as what I may want to try before the New Year. I’m also pondering my baking successes and failures these past few months. Mostly successes, although a few have been “qualified” successes – edible but not optimal. First my levain – sourdough – mix got dumped last week. It went off and really stank. Unpleasant. I suspected it was struggling for a couple of weeks, ever since I tried – and failed – to make a decent sourdough bread with it as a starter. ……… click below for more ↓

Makes you feel happy, like an old time movie

Arts / Culture / Music & ReviewsLeave a comment

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There’s something touching about a classic film, something magical about a B&W movie, about a film shot between the wars in that period of recovery and optimism; a film that was new when my parents were young, full of life and hope. A movie from the days before CGI, before green screens and 3D. Before slasher films, before graphic sex and graphic violence. It’s a combination of art and innocence, of technology just starting to blossom, of storytelling finding new avenues for expression and sometimes not quite sure about it. Others are bold statements about style and expression; avant-garde art.* There ……… click below for more ↓

Dictionaries: Concise, Compact, and dacoit

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

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Dacoit: noun; one of a class of criminals in India and Burma who rob and murder in roving gangs. A member of a band of armed robbers in India or Burma. A bandit. Origin: Hindi and Urdu. I love dictionaries. I like opening them up to a random page and just reading, discovering words and uses that I didn’t know. I love finding origins of words and phrases; linguistic connections between past and present. I will happily spend hours reading through Samuel Johnson’s dictionary, or a glossary of Shakespeare’s or Chaucer’s words. I’ll open any dictionary at random and read ……… click below for more ↓

Salt and bread making

Books & Reviews / Bread & Baking / Food & Drink / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

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Salt is one of the four essential ingredients in making bread, along with flour, yeast and water. Nothing more is needed, although often a lot more is added. Salt is listed in all the recipes. Only one bread I’ve ever read about is salt-free (a Tuscan specialty mentioned in William Alexander’s book, 52 Loaves). We tend to assume salt is simply for flavour, but it is also part of our basic biology: I find it easiest to think of salt as one half of the body’s water-regulation system, the other half being potassium. The membranes of every cell in the body ……… click below for more ↓

How hot is your oven?

Bread & Baking / Food & Drink / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

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Seems like a silly question: the answer would be it’s as hot as I set it to be. Isn’t it? Well, no, it may actually be rather different from what you expect, based on my recent tests. I was reading on several bread-baking forums about oven temperatures and the effects on baking. Specifically on the crust: higher temperatures (450F and up) lead to crunchy crusts as the sugars caramelize rapidly. Then there’s “non-enzymatic browning:” the Maillard reaction that happens at a range of temperatures: The reactive carbonyl group of the sugar reacts with the nucleophilic amino group of the amino acid, ……… click below for more ↓

American belief in evolution is growing: poll

Atheism & Spirituality / Balderdash & Hoaxes / Evolution & Paleontology / Faith / Pseudoscience & Quackery / Religion / Science & Technology / Social Order & DisorderLeave a comment

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A new Harris poll released this month shows that Americans apparently are losing their belief in miracles and gaining it in science. The recent poll showed that American belief in evolution had risen to 47% from its previous poll level of 42%, in 2005. True, it’s not an overwhelming increase, and it’s still less than half the population, but it is an improvement. Belief in creationism dropped 3% during that time, to 36%. Good news, of course, but don’t break out the champagne yet. There’s other data and it’s not all so good. At the same time more Americans are believing ……… click below for more ↓

Selling the electric upright bass

Arts / Musical Instruments / Personal ReminiscencesOne Comment

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My first experience playing a bass guitar came when I was asked to join a local garage band in the mid-1960s. I was learning rhythm guitar back then, inspired by the Beatles and the wave of British pop bands that flooded the airwaves from around 1962. But they already had two of those. They didn’t have a bass player, though, so I became the bass player. Not a terribly good one, mind you, but it was a fun experience. As soon as I left, a year or two later, I went back to rhythm guitar. But bass stuck with me ……… click below for more ↓

Council’s second strategic planning session

Collingwood / Municipal PoliticsLeave a comment

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Although there were no media reporters present to cover it, Collingwood Council held its second strategic planning session this term, on December 4. This was an important, all-day session for council because it set priorities for 2014, the last year this term. We also collectively agreed upon a list of our many accomplishments this term. Based on the goals set in our first strategic planning session, we have accomplished almost everything we set out to do back then, as well as many other things that arose since that session. The meeting was a formal council meeting and open to the ……… click below for more ↓

Canada Post writes its own obituary

Canadian Politics / Municipal Politics / Provincial Politics / Social Order & DisorderLeave a comment

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Headline news this week: Canada Post moves to end home delivery. End home delivery? For me, both as  a writer, a lay historian, and growing up in an era where letters were important for communication, business, family and for art, that’s just crazy. I mean really, seriously, way-more-insane-than-the-OLG crazy. But, in an age of declining letter writing – where the tyranny of the Twitterverse is reducing our literary skills to hashtags and cryptic abbreviations- it may be inevitable.* Charlie Gillis wrote in MacLean’s wrote about the accelerating slide to digital communication back in  March, outlining both the challenges the postal service ……… click below for more ↓

Art, Science & Baking

Bread & Baking / Food & Drink / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

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You gotta love breadmaking. It’s an opportunity to get the right and left hemispheres of the brain working together, not racing about in different directions like they do most times. The logical and the creative sides working in lockstep. Bread making combines the logic of science with the freedom of expression in art. Well, that’s really true of all cooking, but it seems more evident in baking. You get your hands into the mix, with bread. It’s a visceral thing to do. Like pottery. Breadmaking combines four sciences, too: physics, chemistry, biology and botany. They all come into play when ……… click below for more ↓

Pyramids in the Ice: Hoax

Balderdash & Hoaxes / Conspiracy Theories / Memes; Internet & Social / Pseudoscience & QuackeryOne Comment

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What is it about pyramids that excites the imagination? Their shape? Their size? Height? Age? The complexities and difficulties in their building? Or the sheer grandeur of them? And what is it about them that get the cranks and conspiracy theorists so fired up? What is it about these  constructions that convince some folks they’re made by – or for – aliens? Or that there’s some bizarre coverup by governments to keep people from knowing the “truth” about them? This week I noticed some odd search terms showing up in my stats page: “antarctica”  and “pyramids” in the same line. ……… click below for more ↓

Ah, Hubris…

Bread & Baking / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

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Annabeth: My fatal flaw. That’s what the Sirens showed me. My fatal flaw is hubris. Percy: The brown stuff they spread on veggie sandwiches? Annabeth: No, Seaweed Brain. That’s HUMMUS. Hubris is worse. Percy: What could be worse than hummus? Annabeth: Hubris means deadly pride, Percy. Thinking you can do things better than anyone else… Even the gods. Rick Riordan, The Sea of Monsters You think you know it all, and so you try to show off your talents. That’s when hubris makes you fall. So today, with company for the weekend, in between chess games, ukulele songs and great conversation, ……… click below for more ↓

The Weird World of Plotto

Books & Reviews / Language & Grammar / Literary pretensions / My Writing / What I'm Reading Now11 Comments

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I came across Plotto a few years back – references to it in other works, rather than the actual book. it sounded strange, complex and wildly over-reaching. I couldn’t find one – it was long out of print. It wasn’t until I got my own copy that I realized how really odd, clumsy – and delightful – it is. Plotto was first published in 1928, and not reprinted until recently as far as I can tell, which is why it’s not been readily available to read and comment on. But it has been lurking in the background, a collector’s item. ……… click below for more ↓

Six Rules for Politicians Using Social Media

Internet & Social Media / Media Issues / Municipal Politics / Personal ReminiscencesOne Comment

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This is an updated version of the talk I presented at the the eighth annual Municipal Communication Conference in Toronto, November 2013.   I use social media regularly and frequently. As a politician, that makes me either very brave or very stupid. But I’ve been doing this for the last 30 years, long before I ever got elected. Social media isn’t new to me.* It may be slicker than it was in 1983, but it’s essentially the same text-based, monologue, just with chrome added. In fact, the tone of the conversation seems to have gone downhill since the 80s. Back then ……… click below for more ↓

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