John Brown’s letter got the attention it deserved

Collingwood / Council / Deceit / deception & secrecy / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Ethics and behaviourLeave a comment

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It went almost unnoticed, but on the agenda for the April 30 Collingwood Council agenda was a letter from the former interim CAO, John Brown, with eight questions (and some comments) about the CAO’s report on the costs of the upcoming judicial inquiry (item eight in the Consent Agenda portion). The letter itself is unsigned (see it here) but the agenda notes the author’s name. Not even the local media picked up on it. It’s curious that not one of The Block bothered to have it pulled for discussion or request that staff answer the questions from their former mentor and ……… click below for more ↓

Pollan’s Food fallacies

Books & Reviews / Cooking / Culture / Eating / Food & Drink / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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“Don’t overlook the oily little fishes,” is rule 32 in Michael Pollan’s small book, “Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual” (Penguin Books, 2009). I recently acquired a copy. I’ve read Pollan’s book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and have his In Defence of Food on my shelves for summer reading and have two other titles by him on my wish list. I’ve enjoyed his work so far. Maybe not so much this time around. I am skeptical about any attempt to reduce any subject to a set of basic rules because life is way too complicated for that sort of ideology. I have ……… click below for more ↓

Doherty’s Magic Money Fairy

Collingwood / deception & secrecy / Ethics and behaviour / Planning & Policies / Taxes / User fees and costs3 Comments

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At 3:55:20 in the video of Monday’s Collingwood Council meeting, Councillor Deb Doherty utters the self-congratulatory claim that she is “glad” the costs of the upcoming judicial inquiry to pursue the Block’s maniacal conspiracy theories are not coming out of “taxpayer funds on an annual basis.” I can hear your head shaking. Where does she think money comes from? And since taxes are calculated yearly, is there any other sort of taxation aside from an “annual basis”? Well, read on… This bit of financial wisdom comes from the same councillor who last year expressed bafflement over what dividends are and ……… click below for more ↓

The hypocrisy, it burns, it burns…

Collingwood / Council / deception & secrecy / Development & Growth / Planning & Policies / Publicity & Communications / Utilities: electricity and waterLeave a comment

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The Block on Collingwood Council can’t seem to go a week without diving into their deep, private lake of hypocrisy. Remember how they whined and snarled about the partnership last council formed with PowerStream to own and operate our electrical utility? How the Jeremiahs at the table lamented that a partnership deal was bad for the town. Now they want one for our airport. Ah, the hypocrisy. Yep. A story in the Connection last week noted, “…the two best options for the municipality would be a full sale of the property or a sale that includes a private and public ……… click below for more ↓

Council kills Collingwood construction

Collingwood / Council / deception & secrecy / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Ethics and behaviour / Planning & Policies / Publicity & CommunicationsLeave a comment

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Collingwood council – dominated by The Block – has voted to cripple the booming construction industry in town. A bylaw passed this week prohibits, “…operation of construction equipment to Monday to Friday from 7 a.m., to 7 p.m.” according to a story in the Connection.* This means The Block have really put a damper on construction, making it even more difficult for developers to get homes finished on time, hurting the workers who depend on those jobs, delaying new home buyers from moving in and creating yet another liability situation for the town. The article notes: This deals with major ……… click below for more ↓

The costs of the Block’s conspiracy theory

Collingwood / Council / deception & secrecy / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Ethics and behaviour / Utilities: electricity and water2 Comments

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$6.2 million. That’s how much it cost Mississauga to have a judicial inquiry into its utility Enersource, back in 2011. That inquiry was initially estimated to cost $2 million but the costs more than tripled, according to a story in The Connection. Imagine what The Block’s judicial inquiry is going to cost us in Collingwood. Millions and millions more. They’ve already admitted it will cost taxpayers around $2 million. But none of them have even the slightest idea of what’s involved, who has to be called, who pays what, or what the process is. They just swallowed the bait on ……… click below for more ↓

More rapture, less reality

Balderdash & Hoaxes / Conspiracy Theories / Critical Thinking / New Age Codswallop / Pseudoscience & QuackeryLeave a comment

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According to some, the rapture is coming again, April 23. I’m so tired of this event. I’m still cleaning up after the last rapture. And the one before that. And the one before that, and before that, and before that… it’s even more frequent than an annual event. But next week it’ll come again. the whole shebang: Christians rising from the dead, the messiah prancing about, angels flitting about like birds, the confetti, the glitter, champagne corks and party balloons all over the place. Raptures are always such a mess. Seriously. April 23, according to a report on Faux News. ……… click below for more ↓

Of mice and men, and trackballs, too

Computers & Programming / E-books & E-readers / Games & Gaming / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

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Late last year, I purchased another laptop to separate my work and recreational uses. After a long search in stores, and a lot of online reading and comparing models, I decided to get an MSI gaming rig (an entry level in their pantheon, admittedly). That process got me thinking again about how we buy and sell computers.* Computers are, for the most part, sold like muscle cars: what’s under the hood gets the attention. The processor, ram, speed, drive capacity all get writ large in ads and promoted in stores. But it’s all a bit misleading. For most uses – ……… click below for more ↓

The Block Bullies

Collingwood / Council / Deceit / deception & secrecy / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Ethics and behaviourLeave a comment

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Like all schoolyard bullies, The Block use aggressive tactics intended to intimidate and cow anyone who stands up to or disagrees with them. From their phony, trumped-up OPP investigation – which after five years hasn’t produce a single charge, nor have any of the alleged miscreants even been interviewed by police – through the debacle of how they handled the sale of Collus, to bullying the hospital, to their puerile judicial inquiry, The Block are hellbent on their vendettas. This is a group that continues to set the bar lower at every turn. This latest bit of dirty politics shows ……… click below for more ↓

Found in translation

Books & Reviews / Literature / Poetry & Lyrics / What I'm Reading Now3 Comments

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Language translation fascinates me. It’s a mix of language skill, art, interpretation, science and, apparently, divination. Maybe even magic. Going from one language into another is far from a simple step of swapping words in dictionary manner – Flaubert’s le mot juste. Any fool can do that. Hell, even Google can. A single word can be a fulcrum, and the decision to use one word instead of another can utterly change the meaning. I wrote about this in The Municipal Machiavelli. The translator’s choice of even a single word – in that case the choice between the English words ruin ……… click below for more ↓

Why are American evangelical Christians so cruel?

Christianity / Evangelicals / Faith / Religious intolerance / Theocracy / US Politics4 Comments

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The article in Forbes’ Magazine, March 11, didn’t ask that question I used in my headline. Instead, the headline simply stated the piece would explain, “Why White Evangelicalism Is So Cruel.” (The author later republished this on his own site under the less pointed title, “Why the Religious Right is so cruel.”) In America, where theocracy is a more powerful political force than free speech and where its president has publicly threatened to muzzle journalists and uncomplimentary media like other tinpot dictators do, such a piece was apparently unwelcome. Forbes removed it – but not in time to prevent it ……… click below for more ↓

The magic of reading

Critical Thinking / Fonts & Layout / Language & Grammar / Typography / Words & etymology / Writing & cursiveOne Comment

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Can you make sense of those lines in the image to the right? Of course not. They’re deconstructed from the letters of a simple, one-syllable word and randomly re-arranged. It’s just four letters, but their component parts are not arranged in the proper order, so they seem like meaningless lines and squiggles. We’ve not been taught to assemble them into a structure that makes sense to our brains. Yet we’re quite capable of assigning meaning and context to abstract forms, if they’re assembled properly. The order that we prefer those lines and curves to be in is arbitrary – the ……… click below for more ↓

Those we lost in 2017

Culture / Musings / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

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It’s not just because I’m older that I am reading more of the obituaries than ever in my past. At least, I don’t think so. I seldom read local newspaper obituaries (in part because the delivery here is too sporadic to make it a habit), and I don’t regularly share death notices on social media unless they are of very well known figures. But I do admit I think seem to notice these reports more these days than in years past. It’s not a fear of death, either, just an awareness that it’s closer than it was and that it ……… click below for more ↓

Malory then and now

Books & Reviews / Language & Grammar / Literature / Translations & translating / Typography / What I'm Reading Now / Words & etymologyLeave a comment

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I recently started reading Malory in the original – that is, the language that Caxton printed in. Not the typeface Caxton used, since that would be harder to read, but rendered in a modern serif face. Caxton initially used black letter type (aka gothic) – pretty much all the early printers used it, although each printer had his own dies and styles. However, he did move to a more easily-read, more-rounded typeface by around 1490, a few years after he printed Malory’s book. Still, the early typefaces used in all incunabula take a bit more mental effort to decipher because ……… click below for more ↓

Our treasonous council

Collingwood / Council / Deceit / deception & secrecy / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Ethics and behaviour / Utilities: electricity and water3 Comments

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If Collingwood Council operated at a higher tier or government – say the federal level – they would be called treasonous and taken to court for their culture of deception, their attacks on our democratic and civic institutions, and for their ongoing betrayal of the public trust. But because they are only a municipal government, they can merely be called despicable while we await the next election. The latest act of desperation in the dungheap of this term is the recent motion to demand a judicial inquiry into the sale of 50% of our electrical utility to PowerStream last term. ……… click below for more ↓

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