Scripturient

It’s Official: Homeopathy is Bunk

“Homeopathy not effective for treating any condition, Australian report finds,” reads a headline in The Guardian this week. Well, that’s hardly news. But it repeats saying anyway. It’s a story about the latest in a series of studies that again and again debunk homeopathy as a treatment and conclude it is useless. Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) “…thoroughly reviewed 225 research papers on homeopathy to come up with its position statement,” the paper reported. And on Gizmodo they said: An analysis of over 225 medical studies and 1,800 scientific papers has found that homeopathy is ineffective as a ……… click below for more ↓

Ukulele Festival Coming in May!

2015-03-11 2021-05-15 Culture / Ukulele: instruments & musicLeave a comment

It’s official: the Canada Ukes ukulele festival will be held right around the corner from Collingwood: in Midland at the Midland Cultural Centre, May 22-24. Three days of ukuleleness, featuring Ralph Shaw, Stevie McNie (leader of Toronto’s Corktown Ukulele), The Skinnydippers and others. Performances, jams and workshops galore! Vendors, too. Early bird tickets for the entire weekend of activities are $148 adults and $128 student under 21; after March 31 they go up to $188 adults and $148 student. Check the official website for more and the full schedule of events. Most of the events have limits for participation, so be sure to pick ……… click below for more ↓

Why Elvis Matters to Collingwood

2015-03-08 2015-03-09 Collingwood / Council / Development & Growth / Planning & Policies / Social Order & DisorderLeave a comment

There are some things that are pointless to argue, it seems. Creationism with a fundamentalist. Anti-vaccination with a New Age wingnut. Reason and logic with local bloggers. The value of the Elvis Festival to Collingwood with a closed-minded resident. I recently heard complaints about the cost of the 2014 festival: $74,000. More than double what the Integrity Commissioner cost taxpayers to investigate bogus, politically-motivated claims last year. And what did we get for that $74,000? International recognition and widespread media coverage, more than 30,000 visitors, increased revenue for our hospitality sector, a full downtown, busy restaurants and hotels, people shopping ……… click below for more ↓

Ukulele Workshop Today

2015-03-07 2015-03-08 Culture / Learning & Education / Music & Reviews / Musical Instruments / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

I just returned from Orangeville where Broadway Music hosted a two-and-a-half hour musical workshop this Saturday by Manitoba Hal today (which will be followed by his concert tonight from 8-11 p.m. – try to attend, if you can: he’s very talented). Very informative and well worth attending. Interestingly, at least half the participants were my age, and I didn’t see anyone in the classroom under 40. Perhaps you have to be mature in order to really appreciate music this way, not simply as the soundtrack in the background. Hal spoke to the group about a basic approach to understanding music ……… click below for more ↓

Councils and Their CAO

2015-03-06 2015-03-06 Collingwood / Council / Municipal PoliticsLeave a comment

A good relationship between a municipal council and their town’s CAO is crucial to smooth, effective and efficient governance. The CAO is the liaison between council and staff, responsible for directing staff to implement council’s direction and overseeing internal personnel issues. If the relationship is rocky, then governance and Council’s interactions with staff – and therefore the entire public’s interests – all suffer. To fill this role well, a CAO has to be scrupulously objective and neutral, calm and wise – not push any one person’s or side’s agenda, and certainly not promote his or her own, act Solomon-like with both council ……… click below for more ↓

Bad News For Balderdash

2015-03-04 2015-03-04 Balderdash & Hoaxes / Conspiracy Theories / Creationism / Critical Thinking / Memes; Internet & Social / New Age Codswallop / Pseudoscience & Quackery / Social media & cyberbullying / Social Order & DisorderOne Comment

A recent story on New Scientist gives a glimmer of hope for those of us who bemoan the swelling tsunami of claptrap and codswallop that fills the internet: THE internet is stuffed with garbage. Anti-vaccination websites make the front page of Google, and fact-free “news” stories spread like wildfire. Google has devised a fix – rank websites according to their truthfulness. What a relief that will be. Of course it may spell doom for the popularity of pseudoscience, conspiracy theories, fad diets, racist, anti-vaccination fearmongers, yellow journalism, Fox News, celebrity wingnuts, psychics and some local bloggers – all of whose ……… click below for more ↓

How Marx Presaged Today’s Canada

2015-03-01 2015-03-01 Canadian Politics / Critical Thinking / International politics / Philosophy / Politics / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

“The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country,” wrote Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels, in 1848, in the Communist Manifesto. I came across this paragraph in Prof. David Harvey‘s book, A Companion to Marx’s Capital, recently and the quote from the Communist Manifesto struck me as very modern; one that presaged our current internationalism and the changes affecting Canada today. No one on this continent has been unaffected by the rampant, unchecked, corporate globalism that has seen thousands of North American factories closed, jobs discarded, and production ……… click below for more ↓

Collingwood council’s committee system is broken

2015-02-27 2015-02-27 Uncategorized3 Comments

Last term, council approved a recommendation from the CAO to dump its traditional structure of council and public committees, to an internal system of standing committees filled only with politicians. The structure is used in several other – mostly larger – communities. It sounded intriguing, bold and exciting, so council said yes, let’s try it. Let’s be innovative. But, despite recommendations to the contrary, it wasn’t implemented until this new council took office. And that implementation isn’t working. In fact, it’s created a worse-than-ever disconnect between politicians the the public. Instead of engaging the public more, instead of creating more openness ……… click below for more ↓

The tail wags the dog again

2015-02-27 2015-02-28 Collingwood / Council / Municipal PoliticsOne Comment

In January, the CAO coupled a ‘sky-is-falling’ presentation about the town’s debt with a proposed 5.11 percent tax increase. * Councillor Kevin Lloyd made a motion to have staff bring back two options for council to consider: a one and two percent increase to the general tax levy, with comments on how these would affect services. Council approved the motion and directed staff to prepare them. Instead, what council got at its Feb. 24 budget meeting was a wish list from staff for additional spending. The direction from council for a report on 1% and 2% increases was totally ignored ……… click below for more ↓

What’s Wrong with Municipal Bonusing?

2015-02-26 2015-02-26 Collingwood / Development & Growth / Municipal Politics / Politics / Provincial PoliticsLeave a comment

Until the early 1970s, municipalities in Ontario were involved in a free-for-all competition to attract business and industry. They offered tax breaks, free land, free infrastructure, utilities or services, housing — whatever it took to get a plant or office to open within their boundaries. A lot of small Ontario communities were able to attract businesses that way, and many got major industries. Of course, the local taxpayers paid for these benefits, but the towns subscribed to the theory that eventually the extra jobs and tax revenues coming into the municipality would pay for the up-front largesse through increased revenue ……… click below for more ↓

Smoking = Stupidity

2015-02-21 2015-02-21 Critical Thinking / Health & Medicine / Science & Technology2 Comments

I don’t know how to sugar coat this in some politically-correct, sensitive, caring way that doesn’t overtly offend anyone, but if you haven’t already figured this out by now, here it is: smoking is stupid. Really stupid. Even worse, smoking makes you even more stupid while you do it: Researchers tested the IQs of more than 20,000 healthy men between the ages of 18 and 21 who were either serving in the Israeli military or who had recently completed their service. Twenty-eight percent of the men in the sample smoked, while 3 percent were former smokers and 68 percent had ……… click below for more ↓

Whitewash

2015-02-20 2015-02-20 Collingwood / Council / Municipal Politics / Planning & Policies5 Comments

In early January, Council was presented with a report by outside consultants on the state of the shared service agreement between Collus/Powerstream and the town. The report, however, was rejected by council as flawed – wisely, it turns out – and the following motion was made (emphasis added) that night: THAT the motion be deferred for one month to allow the president and CEO of Collus/Powerstream to review and comment on the report, and that the report be further circulated to the interview participants and CPUSB to provide any corrections/clarifications that may be reflected in an updated report. This report, however, ……… click below for more ↓

Open for Business, But Not For Your Input

2015-02-11 2015-02-13 Collingwood / Council / Municipal Politics / Planning & Policies / Politics4 Comments

Did you happen to read the town ad on the inside page in the Enterprise Bulletin this weekend? February 6, top of page D7? I’m betting you didn’t because no one I’ve spoken to seems to have read it. And since you can’t find the ad on the EB’s website, you won’t have read it online, either. But you should because it likely affects you and possibly in a big way. It may change your life and not in a positive manner. It’s on the town’s website, buried under a user-unfriendly URL here: www.collingwood.ca/node/11875. It looks innocuous enough at the start: ……… click below for more ↓

Happy Talk

2015-02-10 2015-02-10 Culture / Language & Grammar / MediaOne Comment

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBWjNlBko70] A recent study proved an old notion – the Pollyanna Hypothesis – that there is a “universal human tendency to ‘look on and talk about the bright side of life’” according to a team of scientists at the University of Vermont. The story was reported on Science Daily recently. Reading through newspapers, magazines, websites, music lyrics and movie titles in ten languages, the researchers concluded that “probably all human language skews toward the use of happy words.” That struck me as counter-intuitive. Maybe it’s just my own experience with local media and bloggers, but I would have thought they’d find more negativity, especially ……… click below for more ↓