Losing the world, and some sleep, but enjoying it

Games & Gaming / History & Biography / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

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  Brave New World – not the novel of a dystopian future by Aldous Huxley – is the name of the latest add-on for Civilization V, following after Gods & Kings, released in 2012. BNW was released last Tuesday, and I was at the local EB Games store to get one on launch day. Over the weekend, I took a look at it, playing for several hours in learning mode. Civilization, if you don’t already know, is a turn-based 4X (explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate) computer game/simulation created by Sid Meier, originally in 1991. It has gone through numerous releases ……… click below for more ↓

Small glitch, please stay tuned

Theme & Coding / UncategorizedOne Comment

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Oops. Seems there’s a coding glitch in the latest WordPress update. Comments are getting attached to a header image rather than to the post they’re supposed to be associated with. And it’s not a new glitch – the WP support forums have discussions on this that go back at least a year, albeit an earlier version of the software. So I suspect there will be a solution that involves changing one of the PHP modules. Just not sure which one yet. I’ve posted a request on the WP support forum for some help and will try to get things fixed ……… click below for more ↓

Putdownable books?

Books & Reviews / Language & Grammar / Literary pretensions / My Writing / What I'm Reading Now2 Comments

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A recent article in The Independent said that J.K. Rowling’s new book and the abysmally-written 50 Shades of Grey were among the books most put down by readers as unfinishable. Putdownable. A description no author or publisher relishes. They joined titles like Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Ulysses, Lord of the Rings, Moby Dick, Atlas Shrugged and Catch 22 as books readers gave up the struggle to finish. Personally, I hesitate to put 50 Shades in the same category as anything even vaguely literary, let alone the likes of Joseph Heller and J.R. Tolkein. But we’re talking statistics here, not ……… click below for more ↓

Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde

Arts / Books & Reviews / Language & Grammar / My WritingOne Comment

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After reading the play by Shakespeare last week, I decided to tackle Chaucer’s epic 8,000-line poem about the Trojan lovers, Troilus and Cressida (or Criseyde as Chaucer writes it). It’s a long, somewhat meandering piece that begins, in the Online Medieval Classical Library version: The double sorwe of Troilus to tellen, That was the king Priamus sone of Troye, In lovinge, how his aventures fellen Fro wo to wele, and after out of Ioye, My purpos is, er that I parte fro ye. Thesiphone, thou help me for tendyte Thise woful vers, that wepen as I wryte! To thee clepe I, ……… click below for more ↓

Casinos redux

Collingwood / Conspiracy Theories / Municipal Politics / Provincial PoliticsOne Comment

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First let’s clarify the terms. A “casino” was never really in the discussion, although just about everyone used that term. What the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp. (OLG) offered was a “gaming facility” as they euphemistically called it. A gambling joint, others said. It was to be a warehouse-like, windowless building with up to 300 slot machines. No keno, no gaming tables for poker or blackjack, no roulette. Up to (and maybe less than) 300 slot machines. No guarantees on the number, just up to 300. The OLG decides how many: not the town, not the operator. The town can’t ……… click below for more ↓

Believing is Seeing

Books & Reviews / Canadian Politics / Critical Thinking / Faith / Municipal Politics / Psychology & Sociology / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

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“He who permits himself to tell a lie once,” wrote Thomas Jefferson (in a letter to his nephew, Peter Carr, from Paris, France, 1785), “finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world’s believing him. This falsehood of tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions.” Anyone following the ups and downs of federal and provincial politics would have no trouble believing Jefferson’s words. We often believe – without any evidence to ……… click below for more ↓

A Sneak Peak Inside Our New Fire Hall

Collingwood / Municipal Politics / Personal Reminiscences / PhotographyLeave a comment

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Councillor Lloyd and I took a tour through the new fire hall, at the corner of High and Third Streets, today. It’s still under construction, but the main components are finished and the firefighters have moved in. It’s an impressive place. Well-designed, well-built (using a lot of local builders and materials!). Make sure you attend the open house when the building is officially completed, this fall. We should all be proud of this place: it sets standards not only for this town, but for other fire services across the province. Here are some images to whet your appetite for visit. ……… click below for more ↓

Centennial Pool Gets Finishing Touches

Collingwood / Municipal Politics / Personal Reminiscences / PhotographyLeave a comment

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A sneak peak into Centennial Pool a few weeks before it re-opens. Councillor Lloyd and I took a look around today (July 9) at how it’s progressing. We were very impressed. It’s going to be fabulous! Collingwood residents will love this place. It is really a stunning facility and we will be proud to host events here. The first image, at the top, shows the therapeutic pool at the bottom, with the ramp for accessibility, then the pool and the new electronic scoreboard. Feels like a cathedral inside, it’s so large! And light galore: bright and open. Warm, welcoming place. ……… click below for more ↓

Troilus and Cressida

Books & Reviews / Municipal Politics / Provincial Politics / Social Order & Disorder / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

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I’ve always found Troilus and Cressida a difficult play. The characters all seem jaded, cynical, opportunistic, stuffily sanctimonious, lecherous or simply underhanded. Some are merely unpleasant, others are despicable, reprehensible. All seem self-serving, more concerned with their own gains and goals than that of the greater war around them. It’s difficult to understand why it was listed as a “comedy” (although oddly placed in the folio, between the histories and tragedies). Even Harold Bloom calls it “difficult” and “elitist” (although he later qualifies it as Shakespeare’s “most sophisticated” and “intellectualized” play). And Joyce Carol Oates called it, “…that most vexing ……… click below for more ↓

Racism and the US Civil Rights movement retold

Conspiracy Theories / Media Issues / Personal Reminiscences / US Politics3 Comments

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As I read through Rick Perlstein’s book, Nixonland, about American politics and life in the 1950s and 60s, the Civil Rights movement and the reaction to it by white Americans, the narrative astounds me. Such anger, such violence. Such sadness. It seems like such an alien place, dystopian, almost fictional, like an Orwellian novel. I was, it seems from my reading, not really aware, not fully cognizant of just how bad it was. But then, it looks eerily familiar – some of the photos look just like those taken during the Occupy Wall Street protests. Am I merely juxtaposing my ……… click below for more ↓

Why are Pickup Trucks so Anti-Pedestrian?

Environment / Politics / Social Order & Disorder / Urban Design & Growth / US Politics2 Comments

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Take a look at the back of any of today’s pickup trucks. Notice the exhaust pipe, under the vehicle? It points to the right. The same side of the road that pedestrians and cyclists use.* Notice the bike lane in the photo – that’s where cyclists will be when this truck passes by them. No place to move to avoid the fumes. Yet I have seen vintage trucks with that design, as in the photo to the right (even here in town). Several, in fact in just the past week. I don’t know the date of the change from rear to ……… click below for more ↓

Reading, Writing and Memory

Books & Reviews / Critical Thinking / My Writing / Social Order & DisorderLeave a comment

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“Memory,” he read the headline as he settled into the armchair, resting his elbows on the wide arms to expand the National Post paper to its fullest, “declines much slower in people who read, write throughout life.” Ah. Interesting. He peered closer. “Reading books, writing letters and working on crossword puzzles throughout life may help preserve the brain’s memory faculties and fend off Alzheimer’s disease and early-onset dementia, according to a recent U.S. study published in the the journal Neurology.” Hmmm. Well, of course. We knew that, he chuffed to himself. Coming from a family of avid readers who lived ……… click below for more ↓

The CAO Conspiracies

Collingwood / Conspiracy Theories / Humour & Satire / Municipal PoliticsOne Comment

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Collingwood has appointed an interim CAO, John Brown, former city manager of Brantford, St. John’s and Oshawa, to help the town’s administration and governance during the interim while we search for a full-time CAO. This will, of course, send the bloggers into a frothing tizzy of frenetic accusations and conspiracy theories. So to save them the effort of having to explain this, I have written some plausible conspiracy theories for them to consider for their own use: 1. It’s actually Paul Bonwick, cleverly disguised by cosmetic surgery to look shorter, older and bald. Paul was last seen boarding a plane to the ……… click below for more ↓

The Decline in Media Credibility and Profitability

Critical Thinking / Culture / Internet & Social Media / Media Issues / My Writing / Social Order & Disorder6 Comments

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Last August the Pew research Center released the results of its latest study on how much the American public trusts the media. This has been part of an ongoing study since at least 2002, and ever since the first report, the amount of trust in media has fallen. This has been a hot topic of discussion online ever since, and the source of much hand-wringing at each new release. Perhaps the mounting number of scandals in journalism has soured an audience accustomed to believing the media is honorable, trustworthy and upright. Perhaps it’s the growing politicization of (some) media that ……… click below for more ↓

Who Knows Where the Time Goes?

Critical Thinking / Culture / Personal Reminiscences / Social Order & DisorderLeave a comment

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I was thinking of the lines from that Fairport Convention song this week as we walked through Toronto on our three-day mini-holiday. I can still hear Sandy Denny’s wonderful, haunting voice singing the chorus of that dreamy, sad song, as vibrantly as the day I first played the album, back in the late 1960s: For who knows where the time goes? Who knows where the time goes? That song has stuck with me all these years, an anthem of the era, but strangely prescient. Who would have thought it would resonate in an entirely different way, 45 years later? Denny ……… click below for more ↓

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