Category: Musings

Collingwood’s Mystery Councillor

Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / MusingsLeave a comment

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Who is Ian MacCulloch? We were only told by the town that he’s the newly-appointed councillor, chosen this month by council to fill the seat vacated by Brandon Houston, who quit his responsibilities and resigned back in January. But unless you dig deeply, you won’t know anything more about the newbie other than his appointment. The town’s announcement about him was vague and insubstantial, although not surprising for a townhall that prefers secrecy over openness. In fact, the town said nothing about MacCulloch’s experience, his … click below for more ↓

Chaucer’s House of Fame

Chaucer / Musings / Poetry2 Comments

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Recently, while I was reading in bed — as is my nightly habit — I came across some lines (641-660) from Book II of Chaucer’s early poem, House of Fame, in a recently purchased book on his prologue to the Canterbury Tales (a small 1960 reprint of a 1903 original picked up at the local used book store). I’ve seen the 2,158-line poem (Wikipedia says 2,005 but that’s wrong) in my Riverside Chaucer, but never paid it much attention and can’t recall ever reading it … click below for more ↓

Home on the Open World Range

Culture / Games & Gaming / MusingsOne Comment

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A recent article in the Journal of Internet Research described a study that came to the conclusion that open-world games (OWGs) “may offer unique cognitive escapism opportunities, potentially leading to relaxation and enhanced well-being.” Well, duh! Pretty much everyone playing OWGs has known that for the past three decades since those games were published. After all, isn’t escapism the whole point of gaming? People have played games for millennia: to gamble, for intellectual challenges, for entertainment, learning, competition, and often for simple solo pleasure. But … click below for more ↓

Blue Skies, Nothing But Blueskies…

Musings / Social media issues / Social Order & Disorder3 Comments

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Enshittification is a delightful neologism coined by author Cory Doctrow in 2022 to describe how things decline in quality and service. While it initially meant to describe how vendors would gradually change their services to move the focus from users to business interests, it has expanded to include the way Elon Musk has turned Twitter-aka-X-aka-Xitter into a fetid swamp of rightwing toxins: racism, misogyny, Russian disinformation, lies, and, of course, his conspiracy-addled pronouncements from the throne, which no user is allowed to block. Ever click … click below for more ↓

When I’m 64…

Daily life / Music & Reviews / Musings / Personal ReminiscencesOne Comment

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Will you still need me? Will you still feed me? When I’m sixty four… it seemed cutely remote to consider being that old when the Beatles sang “When I’m Sixty-Four” back in 1967 on their Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album. Sixty-four seemed so far away then. My father wasn’t even that old in ’67. Sixty-four was to my teenage self somewhere in the distant future, like science fiction or The Jetsons. Old age was somewhere in the time zone of my grandparents, an … click below for more ↓

Democracy or Fascism?

MAGA cultists / Musings / Politics / US Politics10 Comments

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We are, today, watching the most momentous decision that Americans have had to make in the entirety of their — and my own — lifetimes. Compared to the choice between Harris and felon Trump, all other elections seem almost inconsequential. That’s because never before was the whole fabric of democracy at risk. Never before has an openly racist, misogynist, totalitarian, cognitively-addled felon come so close to winning the presidency. Never before has the entire American experiment been on the scales. The choices are stark: between … click below for more ↓

How Did Democracy Come To This Sorry State?

Canadian Politics / Ideologies / MAGA cultists / Musings / US Politics5 Comments

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My wife and I are members of the Boomer generation. That means our parents, their families, and their friends, their neighbours and their communities were impacted by World War II. In our family, our parents  — British and Canadian — fought against the Nazis, fought against fascism, fought to keep the world safe for democracy. They endured six years of hell and deprivation so Susan and I could live a normal life. Many millions who fought for our freedoms died, often in horrible, lonely, and … click below for more ↓

Meta Doesn’t Like Me

MAGA cultists / Musings / Personal Reminiscences / Politics / Rightwing claptrap / US PoliticsLeave a comment

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The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,/  Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit/ Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,/ Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it. That’s how Edward Fitzgerald translated the 51st quatrain of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam in his first edition of his book (1859). Fitzgerald might have done that translation differently had he known of our modern social media. Social media firms can “wash out” not just words, but posts, threads, and even … click below for more ↓

Jurassic Park: Some Thoughts About the Franchise Part 2

Culture / Evolution & Paleontology / Film & Reviews / MusingsLeave a comment

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Charles Darwin knew the score. In Chapter 11 of his famous and brilliant book, The Origin of Species, published in 1859, he wrote, “We can clearly understand why a species once lost should never reappear, even if the very same conditions of life, organic and inorganic, should recur.” But despite Darwin’s warning, the evil, greedy corporations of the Jurassic Park films kept bringing species of dinosaurs and other extinct lizards back to life. In many of the films, Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) plays the … click below for more ↓

Jurassic Park: Some Thoughts About the Franchise Part 1

Culture / Evolution & Paleontology / Film & Reviews / MusingsOne Comment

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There’s one particular scene in the first Jurassic Park movie, about twenty minutes in, when Dr. Alan Grant and Dr. Ellie Sattler see the dinosaurs walking wild in the open for the first time on Isla Nublar; that still chokes me up, every time almost bringing me to tears. Even on my fourth or fifth viewing of the film last week, that scene still moves me. The kid in me is still agog with wonder when I see that brachiosaurus… even though my knees tell … click below for more ↓

Review 9: Son of Godzilla

Culture / Film & Reviews / Godzilla / MusingsLeave a comment

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I‘ve hesitated to write this review because, of all the films in the Godzilla franchise, I dislike the campy-cute, family-friendly Minilla, the so-called “son” of Godzilla. Minilla appears in three films: Son of Godzilla, Destroy All Monsters, and Godzilla: Finals Wars, but the most saccharine of them is this one: Son of Godzilla. And it is, by my standards anyway, one of the worst of the franchise in many ways, not least of all in the remade Godzilla suit, but also in the cheapness of … click below for more ↓

Musings on Sourdough Starters

Bread & Baking / Daily life / Food & Drink / MusingsOne Comment

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For many, many years, I owned and maintained my own, private zoo.* I fed and watered the creatures in it, occasionally neglected them, moved them from place to place, and when their population threatened to explode, I took out a large quantity and killed them. That’s what, in a nutshell, every baker does with their sourdough starter. A sourdough starter is a SCOBY: a Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast; a complex colony of living creatures. It’s also what bakers call a preferment, like (but … click below for more ↓

Seven Faces of Marcus Aurelius

Books & Reviews / Classics / Musings / Philosophy / Stoicism & classical philosophy / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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I am going to assume that you, dear reader, already know who Marcus Aurelius Antonius was. I have respect for both the intelligence and education of my readers, enough to feel I can avoid making pedantic explanations and reiterating his biography that is more fluently available on dozens or hundreds of better, more encyclopedic websites. No, this is not a treatise on him, or even on his Stoic philosophy. It’s a look at how six different translators rendered some parts of his book, Meditations. But … click below for more ↓

Review 6: Ghidorah, The Three-Headed Monster – 1964

Culture / Film & Reviews / Godzilla / MusingsLeave a comment

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Toho didn’t waste any time cashing in on the popularity of the latest Godzilla movie, and released two G films in quick succession that same year (the only year to ever see two Godzilla films released). But this time, they went all-out in a throw-in-the-kitchen-sink manner because they were rushed to get the second film out. By this time, they must have realized Godzilla wasn’t just a character, but was the keystone of a growing franchise and one that could link Toho’s other monster films … click below for more ↓

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