Ontario’s Sex Education

Critical Thinking / Politics / Provincial Politics / Social Order & Disorder5 Comments

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As Frank Zappa sang in his 1968 song, What’s The Ugliest Part Of Your Body?: What’s the ugliest Part of your body? What’s the ugliest Part of your body? Some say your nose Some say your toes I think it’s your mind, your mind, I think it’s YOUR MIND, woo woo I’m not a fan of the Wynne government, but I respect their current willingness to wade into the public muck that clings to any attempt to implement or even update a sex education curriculum in public schools. The old curriculum was last updated in 1998 – years before sexting became headlines, ……… click below for more ↓

The Count of Monte Cristo

Books & Reviews / Personal Reminiscences / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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Many of us grew up on the stories of Alexandre Dumas; from cartoons to comic books, TV series and movies. And, yes, books, albeit often abridged for the young market, with drawings of swordsmen, women in flowing dresses, and the court of kings. Swashbuckling adventures, romances with honour and swordfighting. We may not have always realized that it was Dumas who was the source, of course. Do you watch The Princess Bride and wonder who inspired it? His ideas and plots were mined by many who came after. We learned to behave, to be men and women, by reading such ……… click below for more ↓

Someone’s Paying Attention

Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / Planning & PoliciesLeave a comment

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I was glad to see the Connection is attending and reporting on some of the council standing committee meetings. The media need to be there to shine a light on what seems to the rest of the town as a secretive, unaccountable process. At least the Connection is paying attention. The story that came out of the meeting is titled, “Lobbyist registry could make things complicated: Collingwood town clerk.” Apparently the EB didn’t think it was worth writing about. The EB doesn’t get it. Clerk Sara Almas told the committee: “Not only does it capture developers and contractors, it could include ……… click below for more ↓

Turning Positives into Negatives

Collingwood / Council / Development & Growth / Planning & PoliciesLeave a comment

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Once upon a time, when George Czerny was the publisher, the Enterprise-Bulletin newspaper was an avid and active local promoter: the indefatigable cheerleader for the town; for its events, activities, clubs and organizations. It was the proud voice of Collingwood. Not so, today. The paper seems to have lost that community passion. Today it comes across as bitter, ideologically-driven, full of negativity and hidden agendas. Take a look at the EB’s story about the Curling Club renovations. Here should be a positive story about the collaboration between the town and the Curling Club to share costs, renovate and restore one of the town’s most ……… click below for more ↓

The Grey Wolf Escapes

Books & Reviews / Conspiracy Theories / History & Biography / War & Military / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XsuZUggi4I] Forget your chemtrails, your big pharma, your New World Order; forget UFO abductions, Bigfoot and GMOs. This is the granddaddy conspiracy theory of them all. This one makes all the rest look like grade school gossip. It makes the petty conspiracies of local bloggers look like the diaphanous piffle they really are.* What is it? That Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun escaped from Berlin in 1945 and survived until the 1960s in exile in South America. And his dog, Blondi, got out with them, too. And, in their marital bliss Adolf and Eva had two children after the war, living in their ……… click below for more ↓

Making Pasta

Cooking / Food & Drink / Personal Reminiscences2 Comments

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Last year I decided to start making my own pasta. Seems a natural extension of my bread making. But it took several months before I could get started, what with personal issues and, of course, the holiday season interfering. This week I finally took the step. As usual with me, I did a lot of online research and reading before I took the first step. I looked at many reviews of pasta makers, as well as read techniques and recipes from hundreds of sites and several of my cookbooks. I wanted a manual pasta maker, although I know that you can ……… click below for more ↓

Prenzie Scamels

Culture / Language & Grammar / Literature / What I'm Reading Now / Words & etymology2 Comments

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Four hundred years after he wrote them, we still use in everyday speech the many words and phrases Shakespeare coined. He gave us so many, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to list them all here. But two words he wrote have stopped us dead: prenzie and scamels. What do they mean? Were they more of his 1,700-plus famous neologisms like accommodation, castigate, frugal, inauspicious, premeditated and sanctimonious?* If so, no one today knows for sure what prenzie and scamels refer to. Or were they transcription errors? The typesetter or copyist reading from a crabbed, handwritten manuscript and spelling out for ……… click below for more ↓

Bad Designs

Collingwood / Council / Fonts & Layout / Language & Grammar / Taxes / User fees and costs4 Comments

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I’m not a graphic designer. I was not formally educated in that art. However, over the years, my jobs in editing and writing for books, newspapers, magazines and publishers have required me to learn the rudiments of layout, typography and design. I am the first to admit my design talent is merely adequate. Despite that, I did absorb enough to be able to recognize egregiously bad design. And this week, I found what may be the best example of the most egregiously bad design and layout I’ve ever encountered: the Town of Collingwood’s advertising section on pages D6-D8 of the ……… click below for more ↓

Not Getting It

Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / Writing & Fiction2 Comments

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In a recent opinion piece in the Enterprise Bulletin titled “Swayze overused by council?” EB reporter/editor Paul Brian comments, I think the overuse of Swayze is outlandish and it is not congruent with the tough financial situation of the town.* Like much of the EB’s increasingly vague reporting since former editor Ian Adams left, the paper’s current editorial staff doesn’t seem to understand municipal politics. The reporting on many local matters raised at the council table show a naïve ignorance of both the issues and the processes at stake. The EB’s budget reporting this year was so flawed it should have been posted as ……… click below for more ↓

Written by God?

Christianity / Critical Thinking / Faith / International politics / US PoliticsLeave a comment

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I don’t pay as much attention to American politics as I suppose I should, in part because despite the entertaining craziness of some of their politicians, the internal politics seldom affect Canadians, and also in part because the craziness not only baffles me – it scares me. But this week I paid attention when I read year-old statements made by former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who is quoted on Rawstory as saying, “I think we got off the track when we allowed our government to become a secular government. When we stopped realizing that God created this nation, that ……… click below for more ↓

Me, Myself and I Redux

Collingwood / Council / Grammar / Language & Grammar / Style & usageOne Comment

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At Collingwood Council meetings, you will always hear someone say “Moved by myself…” when presenting a motion at the table.* Argh! Where did these people go to school? Clearly our education system has failed us if people were raised to say that. And this is in the public record, too. To me it’s like nails on a blackboard. It’s like saying “I seen…” and “yous.” The grammatically correct way to present a motion is, of course, to say, “Moved by me…” So why the mistake we so frequently hear at the table – and in fact in many other councils across ……… click below for more ↓

Shakespeare Changed Everything

Arts / Books & Reviews / Culture / Pop Culture / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

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I have been reading an entertaining little book called How Shakespeare Changed Everything, which, as the title suggests, is about the pervasive influence the Bard has had on pretty much everything in our lives ever since he started putting quill to paper. Stephen Marche’s book was described in the NatPost as a, “sprightly, erudite sampling of Shakespeare’s influence on absolutely everything.” Reviewer Robert Cushman isn’t always that laudatory about all of Marche’s claims, however. He concludes the book is full of, …rash generalizations balanced by elegant insights. Rightly, he links Shakespeare’s frankness about sex to our own; wrongly, he asserts ……… click below for more ↓

Too Many Books?

Books & Reviews / Culture / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

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Tim Parks* wrote an intriguing essay in the New York Review of Books last week with that title. My first thought on seeing it was to wonder if one can ever have too many books. But of course, Parks – an author himself  – is looking at the bigger picture, not the ever-growing collection that clutters my bookshelves and litters my house. He asks: Is there a relationship between the quantity of books available to us, the ease with which they can be written and published, and our reading experience? I worked in book publishing as both an editor and ……… click below for more ↓

Rethinking John Carter

Film & Reviews / Pop Culture / Scifi and fantasyOne Comment

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After recently going through the first five of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ 11 Barsoom books, I decided to give the 2012 Disney film, John Carter, another viewing. This two-hour-eleven-minute film bombed at the box office, and when I first saw it, I was deeply disappointed. But on reflection after a second viewing, it isn’t all that bad. It’s not great, but it deserves a better rating than it received, and it wears well in a second viewing. It isn’t quite the Barsoom I grew up with, true, but it borrows heavily from Burroughs, enough to make it a close cousin in ……… click below for more ↓

We Need a Different Integrity Commissioner

Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviourOne Comment

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Monday night’s council meeting again underscored why the town needs someone new in the role of integrity commissioner. Lawyer Robert Swayze presented his report about a complaint filed against councillor Deb Doherty and it was accepted by council in a recorded 6-2 vote*. But his report shared the same flaws his previous report about former Deputy Mayor Lloyd had, and kudos to the two (mayor Cooper and Coun. Lloyd) for rejecting it. The IC’s report was presented to the public (and thus to the media) before it was presented to the council member (Doherty) about whom it had been made. The ……… click below for more ↓

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