4.25% Tax Increase! WTF Is Council Thinking?

Collingwood / Council / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Entitlement / Financial follies / Taxes5 Comments

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A story in CollingwoodToday says the latest draft of the town budget puts a 4.25% increase on property taxes for 2024! WTF is council thinking, adding more costs to residents during a period of high inflation? People are already struggling with rising costs for food, electricity (the Saunderson-privatized EPCOR got a 5.23% rate hike this fall*), gas (vehicle and natural), water, clothing, mortgages, transit, lumber, vehicles, and just about everything else. A property tax hike this size will send our already-steep rental prices soaring even more. This will be a huge burden to the most vulnerable residents: those working low-income jobs, ……… click below for more ↓

The Subservience of Council

Collingwood / Council / Ineptitude and bungling / Planning & Policies / Staff and administration / Wacky WTF ideasLeave a comment

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Late last month, council was presented with a revised, six-page council-staff relations policy, which, according to the story in CollingwoodToday, “seeks to formalize how council and staff should interact with each other.” The story notes the first draft of the policy, a 14-page document, was presented to council in mid-September, but approval was deferred while councillors considered if it meant their impending emasculation.* Councillors Jeffrey and Doherty, and DM Fryer expressed concerns about the policy when it was first presented, mostly about the size it had ballooned to. Jeffery commented, pointedly, the new policy was “building walls instead of (adding) ……… click below for more ↓

The Affordable Housing Myth

Collingwood / Council / Development & Growth / Taxes3 Comments

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Let me start with a few basic, uncomfortable truths about housing. It’s a myth that municipal politicians can, without a coordinated and regional approach that includes private developers and upper-tier levels as well as stakeholders and advocates, solve anything related to housing. And even then, it requires the involvement of provincial and sometimes the federal governments (as well as possible funding from them). Affordable housing is one of the biggest and most challenging issues for municipalities across Canada. A lot of councils (or at least politicians) have jumped onto the bandwagon and waved their hands. After a few pretentious promises, ……… click below for more ↓

Homer’s Odyssey Revisited

Classics / Poetry / Translations & translating2 Comments

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Tell me, O muse, of that ingenious hero who travelled far and wide after he had sacked the famous town of Troy. Thus begins the 1897 translation by Samuel Butler of Homer’s Odyssey. It’s just one of more than 60 translations of the book into English since the first in 1615, including one by T.E. Lawrence (aka Lawrence of Arabia) in 1932. Odysseus — Ulysses in the Latin form — mythical king of Ithaca, is a complex protagonist; sometimes hero, sometimes villain, sometimes noble, other times cunning and wanton. He is sometimes a smart, wary leader, other times seems incompetent ……… click below for more ↓

Let Them Eat Cake

Collingwood / Financial follies / Saunderson's Vindictive Judicial Inquiry / Taxes3 Comments

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The Continued Arrogance of Brian Saunderson Our gormless backbencher, the CONservative MPP Brian Saunderson, recently exposed his egregious arrogance in a comment to CollingwoodToday about the province again burdening municipalities by downloading more costs onto them. For Collingwood, that means another $615,000 added to our expenses.* He didn’t even bother trying to explain — let alone justify — the downloading, merely shrugged it away. That’s arrogantly disrespectful of how the town deals with spending and what burden it puts on our residents, Saunderson said the additional, unexpected costs were “not that big compared to the overall budget for Collingwood, which ……… click below for more ↓

The Social Contract

Ethics & morality / Ideologies / Philosophy / Political philosophy / Politics / Rightwing claptrapLeave a comment

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How shall we be governed? Philosophers have debated that issue since Plato and the question is more important today than ever, given the rise of right-wing extremism everywhere, especially in liberal democracies where there is an ongoing, concerted effort by several current political parties and non-government organizations (NGOs) like the IDU to subvert or overthrow Western democracies and replace them with authoritarian dictatorships; American Repugnicans and Canadian CONservatives among them*. Let’s look at the history, first. It was Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) who first tried to systematically explore the intersection of governance, morality, and ethics. However, because the Catholic church gave ……… 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 the sets, and the increasingly anthropomorphic kaiju. Unlike earlier films, Godzilla appears right at the ……… click below for more ↓

Review 8: Ebirah, Horror of the Deep – 1966

Culture / Film & Reviews / GodzillaOne Comment

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In 1966, the original director of the Godzilla series, Ishiro Honda, left to do other projects and left the next film — Ebirah, Horror of the Deep, aka Godzilla vs the Sea Monster — in the hands of director Jun Fukuda. At the same time, composer Akira Ifukube was replaced by Masuro Sato, and special effects director Eiji Tsuburaya was replaced by Sadamasa Arikawa. Names, of course, that mean little or nothing outside aficionados of the franchise or Japanese cinema, but for Godzilla watchers, it was a whole new crew at the helm. While they weren’t the originals of the ……… click below for more ↓

65: A Catalogue of Disappointments

Culture / Evolution & Paleontology / Film & Reviews / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

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Can a movie featuring aliens, dinosaurs, spaceships, one of the main actors from Star Wars, and a giant asteroid about to crash into the planet be bad? Sadly, yes. The movie 65 manages to take what could a been another Godzilla or Kong: Skull Island. instead, it’s a watered-down Jurassic Park. Severely diluted. I love scifi and fantasy. I’ve been reading it since the mid-1950s when I got my first Tom Swift jr book. I read Jules Verne at age 10, and Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom series by age 12. I read Dune when it was first released in ’65. ……… 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 not entirely the same as) a barm, levain, biga, poolish, sponge, and desem. And if ……… click below for more ↓

Seven Faces of Marcus Aurelius

Books & Reviews / Classics / Musings / Philosophy / Stoicism & classical philosophy / What I'm Reading NowOne 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 please humour me in allowing a little pedantry. Something must first be said about the ……… click below for more ↓

Review 7: Invasion of Astro Monster – 1965

Culture / Film & Reviews / GodzillaLeave a comment

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Godzilla films had already begun to move into the cultural camp mode from the second film, Godzilla Raids Again, and away from the monster-threat-to-Earth and Atomic-bomb-symbol of the first film. It was firmly planted into it by the time 1965’s Invasion of Astro Monster came along (aka Great Monster War). It’s a rollicking, madhouse of a movie. Camp — a term that entered the language in 1909 but remains notoriously difficult to define — was described by Susan Sontag in a 1964 essay as, “the spirit of extravagance.” She also said camp was playful, “anti-serious,” exaggerated, and artificial. Her analogy ……… 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 in a way no other films had ever done. I imagine a scene where all ……… click below for more ↓

Review 5: Mothra vs Godzilla – 1964

Culture / Film & Reviews / Godzilla / MusingsLeave a comment

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Toho was not about to let another seven years slip by without a sequel to a successful Godzilla film, but what to do now? The last two films had all featured Godzilla battling another monster (kaiju), and since that worked for audience approval, why not do it again? But this time there would be several differences. And those differences not only resulted in another popular film, but one that is considered by aficionados as perhaps the best in the Showa series productions: Mothra vs. Godzilla. Not to be confused with 1992’s Godzilla vs. Mothra. Yes, it is a bit confusing. ……… click below for more ↓

Review 4: King Kong vs Godzilla – 1962

Culture / Film & Reviews / Godzilla / MusingsOne Comment

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What was to prove the most successful of Toho’s Godzilla films is, to me, at times one of the hardest to watch in the edited, Americanized edition, even though it included two of my favourite movie monsters. But even in the Toho version, King Kong is not the Kong of the beloved 1933 film. That Kong had majesty and flair. This one, well… read on. The film was released for Toho’s 30th anniversary, in 1962. Toho paid a huge royalty to RKO to use the King Kong name in a kaiju film, and then made it grow bigger in order ……… click below for more ↓

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