Scripturient

The Flat Earthers Respawn

While flat-earther might be a metaphor for a certain kid of myopic, political stupidity (think of your local council…), I learned this week that it’s also a thriving online subculture of rabidly pseudo-science wingnuts. A couple of entertaining articles about the flat-earthers appeared on the UK’s Guardian paper site (here and here) this week (and in the HuffPost, too). They surprised, but also disturbed me. I hadn’t actually believed in flat-earthers as a modern reality: while I knew of their former existence, I thought the concept was simply a trolling mechanism to expose the silliness of other pseudo-science like creationism or anti-vaccination ……… click below for more ↓

The Rational Gods of Iceland

2016-01-21 2016-06-06 Christianity / Creationism / Critical Thinking / FaithOne Comment

While 61% of Icelanders say they believe in God, according to a recent poll, absolutely none under the age of 25 believe that their personal hairy thunderer created the world: Less than half of Icelanders claim they are religious and more than 40% of young Icelanders identify as atheist. Remarkably the poll failed to find young Icelanders who accept the creation story of the Bible. 93.9% of Icelanders younger than 25 believed the world was created in the big bang, 6.1% either had no opinion or thought it had come into existence through some other means and 0.0% believed it ……… click below for more ↓

What Would $101 Million Buy?

2016-01-18 2016-01-18 Balderdash & Hoaxes / Christianity / Creationism / Critical Thinking3 Comments

The answer to that question could be very long. I’ll bet among all the things you thought of buying with that much, you weren’t even once thinking it could buy a 510-foot replica of the mythological Noah’s ark. But that’s what it is buying the folks who run the Ark Encounter theme park in Williamstown, Kentucky. You can see video “encounters” of it being built. Sort of (they wouldn’t work for me, but I’m an evolutionist, so their god probably stopped me from seeing them…) The park will open in July and, its creators promise, it will attract 1.4 million people annually. ……… click below for more ↓

Decoding Alice in Wonderland

2016-01-18 2016-01-18 Books & Reviews / Literature / Scifi and fantasy / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

It is tempting to suggest author David Day’s lush new book, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Decoded is the final word on the mysteries and secrets behind Lewis Carroll’s iconic children’s fantasy, but alas, it would be an over-reach. Surely others will follow, perhaps even Day himself will extend his research to a sequel. Aside from the difficulties of probing the motives of a man dead more than 125 years, there comes the question of interpretation, which is more like opinion than it is fact. Looking back 150 years at possible explanations for a reference or a character sometimes involves guesswork. But even from its original publication, ……… click below for more ↓

Monday’s Limited Choices

2016-01-17 2016-01-17 Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour2 Comments

Here are the choices Collingwood Council faces, Monday night, when dealing with the unethical, immoral and probably illegal actions of the two renegade members of council. You’ll recall that these two sent out an unauthorized, and what I and others believe was a highly inappropriate media release late in December, without showing them to council first, bypassing the mayor, and pimping their own personal political agendas, while disingenuously presenting them as town positions. This also implicated staff in what looks like inappropriate, partisan actions on behalf of the two council members. This violated the town’s code of conduct, council’s oath of office, ……… click below for more ↓

Kanile’a Islander GL6

2016-01-17 2021-05-15 Culture / Music & Reviews / Personal Reminiscences / Ukulele: instruments & music2 Comments

What a difference two strings make. Late last week, I traded my Jupiter Creek steel-stringed baritone, solid-body uke for one of these Kanile’a nylon-stringed GL6 “guitar-leles” which the company calls a “guilele.” It’s really a short-scale guitar tuned like a ukulele: a fourth higher. More like a requinto than a uke. Kanile’a says of the GL6 line: Our GL6 is a hybrid instrument that we developed bringing the convenience of the ‘ukuleles’ size with the playability that guitar players love. This instrument has our unique Super Tenor body in combination with our 20 inch scale, joined at the body on the ……… click below for more ↓

The Political Agnostic

2016-01-16 2016-01-16 Canadian Politics / Critical Thinking / Politics / Provincial Politics / US PoliticsLeave a comment

Watching the American political debates, especially the increasingly vituperative and acerbic Republican debates, reminds me again why I am a political agnostic when it comes to party politics. I simply cannot believe that any single political entity, any party or person, has all the answers or can dig us out of whatever hole we’re currently in. And America, with its rigid, two-party system, has seen its electoral options, choices and opportunities reduced to caricature status. On one side, a group of frighteningly racist, homophobic, xenophobic, gun-fanatic Christianists. On the other, a woman with no clear policies but a sense of entitlement. And ……… click below for more ↓

Where Have all the Readers Gone?

2016-01-16 2016-01-16 Books & Reviews / Culture / E-books & E-readers / Literature / Media / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

No, it’s not a remake of Pete Seeger’s famous 1955 anti-war song. That’s the title of an article that appeared in the Globe and Mail this week, by Peter Denton, lamenting our overall slide into image-based information with the “…intellectual attention span of squirrels…” * It grabbed my attention from the headline, but I stand at odds over his conclusions and his figures. Denton worries that people are reading less and sliding towards “personal illiteracy”: It’s not that e-books are taking over, either. People hardly buy books any more. Even fewer read them. My e-book sales are almost non-existent and ……… click below for more ↓

Oh, Ann, You Do Make Me Laugh

2016-01-15 2016-01-15 Critical Thinking / US PoliticsLeave a comment

Ann Coulter, that spewing harridan of hatred, bigotry, malevolence and xenophobia makes most thoughtful people cringe. Hell, she makes even rabid, right-wing frothers cringe. She makes the Westboro Baptist morons cringe. She makes the Duck Dynasty wingnuts cringe. She out-froths them all. Coulter represents the worst of human behaviour and thought in so many areas, blackening the eyes of even the most fervent right wing, which she alleges to defend. But you have to admit this thick-as-a-brick viper is sometimes good for a laugh. Coulter recently endorsed Donald Trump as the Republican presidential candidate. Which isn’t surprising: they are siblings in vehement hate speech. But I ……… click below for more ↓

More Bad Ideas

2016-01-13 2016-01-13 Collingwood / Critical Thinking / Development & Growth / Planning & PoliciesLeave a comment

Arguably the worst decision ever made by a Collingwood Council in my memory was to rescind the heritage permits from the Admiral Collingwood development, back in 2007. The results of that motion – moved by former Mayor Carrier and seconded by Councillor Jeffrey (the same one who sits at the table today) – can still be seen in the empty lot at the corner of Hume and Hurontario Streets. Locals called it Carrier’s Pond for years, before it was filled in. Had that council not put personal ideologies over the public good, the site would today be a thriving downtown development with residences, ……… click below for more ↓

The “Secret” Space Program Hoax

2016-01-10 2016-01-10 Balderdash & Hoaxes / Conspiracy Theories / Critical Thinking / Pseudoscience & Quackery2 Comments

It’s just one more of those wingnut fantasy conspiracies that popped up on my Facebook feed recently. It’s not a new one: the old aliens-among-us nonsense just gets recycled and re-spewed by a whole new group of ignorati who follow the scam artists, hoaxers and charlatans who in turn make their living off this stuff. This latest group is, apparently, led by two top wingnuts. If there was an army for wingnuts, they’d be five-star generals. One is Corey Goode, described as having… …an extensive knowledge of the Off World Colony & Exchange Program, Secret Earth Governments, MILAB & Black Ops ……… click below for more ↓

Who By Fire

2016-01-08 2016-01-08 Books & Reviews / Culture / Literature / Poetry & Lyrics / Pop Culture / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQTRX23EMNk I’ve been reading a biography of Leonard Cohen, recently: the 2012 I’m Your Man, by Sylvie Simmons. It’s an interesting journey through the life and thoughts of an exquisite artist who is, by nature, somewhat reclusive and stays out of the spotlight, but is deeply dedicated to his art. I don’t normally read “star” bios or autobiographies – frankly they often seem contrived and the lives portrayed, no matter how gussied up in prose, merely shallow. Most of them I categorize as “who cares?” books. Even those musicians I respect and admire have little to keep me turning pages. I struggled with ……… click below for more ↓

The Litmus Test

2016-01-07 2021-05-15 Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviourLeave a comment

Two renegade members of council broke the town’s Code of Conduct by sending out an unauthorized media release to defend their own, personal positions – but presented them as “town” positions. You already know that reprehensible story. Clearly this is unacceptable behaviour by any elected officials in any community. But where are the angry protesters marching with signs demanding officials “inpeach” council, screaming “corruption” and demanding councillors resign? Oh wait, they got themselves elected to council this term… They promised us openness, accountability and transparency… and this is what we got instead.

Updated Ukulele Songbook

2016-01-07 2016-01-07 Culture / Music & Reviews / Poetry & Lyrics / Ukulele: instruments & musicLeave a comment

Even though our local uke group, CPLUG, is not currently meeting, the songbook has not died. I have updated it with new arrangements and made a few editorial changes to the older content this past fall and winter. I, of course, continue to play the ukulele every day. If you don’t know this songbook, it’s a mix of more than 100 tunes ranging from traditional folk music to the 1980s, most of them arranged by me, with some that include my modifications of other people’s arrangements. There are some songs with more than one version – either the song in ……… click below for more ↓