Scripturient

Time for Closure

Thirty-six months ago a small group of disgruntled, angry residents, some with burning ambition to take a seat on council themselves, allegedly complained to the OPP about decisions made by some members of the previous council. Decisions they didn’t like. They chose to act in secret, through anonymity and stealth, rather than through open, democratic and public processes. Using biased media, gossipers with their own agendas, sycophant bloggers, protests, ambitious candidates mouthing righteous platitudes, and virulent social media campaigning, they alleged corruption by local public officials. The OPP must have been mortified at having to investigate a clearly politically-motivated, baseless complaint. But the law is ……… click below for more ↓

Type Crimes and Taxes

2016-03-03 2016-03-04 Canadian Politics / Critical Thinking / Fonts & Layout / Grammar / Language & Grammar / Politics / Style & usage / TypographyOne Comment

Type crime is the term author Ellen Lupton uses in her book, Thinking With Type, to describe egregiously bad typography. That description came to mind as I perused the latest fluff mailer from our MP; the so-called “Tax Guide.” So-called because it isn’t a guide: it’s the usual, dreary Conservative whack-a-mole propaganda about how great they were when in power and how evil the Liberals are now. In fact, if you want actual information, the publication has a final page where you have to send in to get it (or call the Canada Revenue Agency). And unless you’re an accountant, you’ll ……… click below for more ↓

The Wolf and the Dogs

2016-03-01 2016-03-01 Culture / Humour & Satire / Legends & Myths / Social Order & DisorderLeave a comment

Once upon a time, there was a pack of good-hearted dogs who were known for their good deeds, and indeed their good natures. They travelled around the town unmolested, loved by everyone they met, helping with the chores, keeping the town safe from wild animals and intruders. The humans fed and pampered them, the other animals in the town bowed to them. Their leader, a kindly, gentle dog, was loved by all. But there were animals in the forest who grew envious of the dogs. They hated their popularity, their good deeds, their companionship with people. They wanted what the dogs had. Most ……… click below for more ↓

The Crafty Crow and the Doves

2016-02-27 2016-02-27 Culture / Fables / Humour & Satire / Legends & Myths / Literature / What I'm Reading Now / Writing & FictionLeave a comment

Once upon a time, an old crow lived by the seaside. He had grown fat over the years because he was too lazy to work for his food. He preferred to sit than fly. He followed the other animals to get their leftovers, taking what wasn’t his, and annoying them by begging for some of their food. The other animals shunned him. They had chased him from many places, until he found himself on the coast. He was unwanted and unloved. One day, a flight of doves appeared. They were young, inexperienced doves fresh from the forest, who didn’t know their way ……… click below for more ↓

The Travelling Life

2016-02-24 2016-02-24 Culture / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

The thing I don’t like about travelling is, well, travelling. Being somewhere else is fine. A wonderful, expansive experience. I love waking up to the sounds of the ocean, wandering the streets of a foreign town, eating foods in their restaurants, shopping in their markets, listening to their music and moving to the rhythms of their city. Getting there is, however, overrated. More than that: it’s dreary. Stressful. Boring. The antithesis of the romantic. Most of the time travel isn’t anything of the sort. It’s waiting. Hurry up and wait. You rush from one location to another, one platform, one ……… click below for more ↓

432 vs 440Hz: Science or Codswallop?

2016-02-14 2020-10-04 Balderdash & Hoaxes / Critical Thinking / Culture / Music & Reviews / Musical Instruments / New Age CodswallopOne Comment

Canadian band Walk Off the Earth posted excitedly on Facebook that they had just recorded a new song. Great. I like WOTE and look forward to their new song. What was really different about that notice was that they also said they had changed their instruments from the standard A440 to A432 tuning, and it made a huge difference to them: For all the music nerds out there, you might want to look into this. This has not been 100% proven but the evidence is building. When we were in the studio recording our latest album “Sing It All Away”, ……… click below for more ↓

The ‘Sharing Economy’ is a Hoax

2016-02-12 2016-02-12 Critical Thinking / Marketing / New Age Codswallop / Politics / Social Order & DisorderOne Comment

Stop calling it the sharing economy. It’s an oxymoron, like ‘creation science’ or ‘sustainable capitalism.’ It’s not collaborative: it’s the new indentured servant economy. If you believe these corporations are all about sharing and collaboration, then you’re mightily gullible. You’ve been had. These are big, multi-billion dollar corporations whose executives are millionaires. They are more akin to drug cartels than to cooperative economics. The economic similarities are evident: both use others – the users or subscribers – to break the law for them, to generate their wealth for them, to do their dirty work, then leave those users to face legal, moral ……… click below for more ↓

Sloppy Reporting and Secret Agendas

2016-02-10 2016-02-10 Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / Media Issues / Planning & PoliciesOne Comment

One really doesn’t actually expect sterling journalism, good, investigative reporting or excellent editing from a community newspaper, but we do expect factual accuracy. And we expect reporters and editors to do at least the basics of their jobs. Some parallel stories in the local papers show just how inaccurate – and sloppy – local reporting and editing can be. And how this is letting council get away with its secret agendas unreported. The first story, in the Connection, is headlined, Collingwood calling on Collus Powerstream to divulge salaries of executives, employees. It opens: Salaries paid to executives and employees of ……… click below for more ↓

Aesop is Still Relevant

2016-02-06 2016-02-06 Books & Reviews / Collingwood / Council / Literature / What I'm Reading Now3 Comments

A MONKEY perched upon a lofty tree saw some Fishermen casting their nets into a river, and narrowly watched their proceedings. The Fishermen after a while gave up fishing, and on going home to dinner left their nets upon the bank. The Monkey, who is the most imitative of animals, descended from the treetop and endeavored to do as they had done. Having handled the net, he threw it into the river, but became tangled in the meshes and drowned. With his last breath he said to himself, “I am rightly served; for what business had I who had never handled ……… click below for more ↓

De Officiis: Cicero on Political Obligations

2016-02-04 2016-02-06 Books & Reviews / Collingwood / Council / Ethics & morality / Ethics and behaviour / Philosophy / What I'm Reading Now2 Comments

No phase of life, whether public or private, whether in business or in the home, whether one is working on what concerns oneself alone or dealing with another, can be without its moral duty; on the discharge of such duties depends all that is morally right, and on their neglect all that is morally wrong in life. Cicero wrote that in 44 BCE in his last work in his last year of life: De Officiis, or in English: On Obligations. The translation from Book 1.4 above comes from the Perseus Project (the 1913 Miller/Loeb translation). In the 2000 edition (Oxford University Press, reprinted ……… click below for more ↓

Reading Pablo Neruda

2016-02-03 2016-02-03 Books & Reviews / Literature / Poetry & Lyrics / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

One hardly expects poets to generate spirited debate in the media these days*, but they did, not that long ago, well within my own lifetime. Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) was one of those who sparked great, passionate emotions in people, for both his writing and his leftist politics. And in his own country, Chile, he was the equivalent of a rock star for many years. Even his 1971 Nobel Prize for Literature was controversial: the award noted Neruda was a “contentious author” about whom the debate still raged. His death, shortly after the coup by the right-wing general, Augusto Pinochet, was ……… click below for more ↓

More secrecy, more witch hunt, less accountability

2016-02-03 2016-02-03 Collingwood / Council / Development & Growth / Ethics and behaviour / Planning & PoliciesOne Comment

“Those who gain a good reputation should be commended.” So starts the Lay of Guigemar, by Marie de France. It seems like mere commonsense, doesn’t it? We should laud those who achieve good things, who accomplish feats and goals, recognize with thanks those who work for our greater good. But it ain’t necessarily so, Marie warns. The 12th century French poet and fabulist known only as Marie de France wrote fables and poems with stories and morals – the earliest woman in France to do so. And what she wrote still has resonance in today’s world. She continued: “But when ……… click below for more ↓

Collingwood’s Finances: Great Shape!

2016-01-29 2016-01-29 Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / Planning & Policies / TaxesLeave a comment

There’s been a lot of doom-and-gloom bandied about over Collingwood’s alleged dire financial picture this term. There have been the-sky-is-falling presentations and nightmare-inducing consultants’ reports that paint a bleak picture of the town’s debt and financial status. Hand-wringing and hair-pulling. These jeremiads are enough to make a taxpayer wake up in the middle of the night and weep. If it were true. Fortunately, it isn’t. I’d like to think that someone got his or her numbers wrong, read someone else’s information, added or subtracted when they should have been doing the opposite. Or maybe was just pulling our collective legs. A practical ……… click below for more ↓

The Swimmer

2016-01-25 2016-01-25 Humour & Satire / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

The swimmer stood on the dock, contemplating the lazy current in the river. The warm spring, followed by the sunny days of early summer, had warmed the water enough to make the crossing less a challenge than a few weeks back, when he had first done it. It was still early enough in the day that the boaters weren’t on the water yet. The morning was calm and quiet, the sky clear and bright. The perfect time for a swim. He dropped his robe on the dock beside his towel, and prepared to dive. “Just a moment!” a voice from the shore interrupted ……… click below for more ↓