The Maxims of La Rochefoucauld

Books & Reviews / PhilosophyLeave a comment

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Certain good qualities are like senses: people entirely lacking in them can neither perceive nor comprehend them. You might think that was written about local politics, or a comment on the local blogosphere. But no, it was written in the mid 17th century by Francois, du de La Rochefoucauld. It is number 337 in his famous book of Maxims, a work that stands beside other timeless classics of advice, reflection and epithets; like Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, and Balthasar Gracian’s The Art of Worldly Wisdom. I found a copy in a local used book store recently and have been digesting his words of wisdom. ……… click below for more ↓

The Hypocrisy Starts

Collingwood / Council / Municipal Politics / PoliticsOne Comment

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It didn’t long for the hypocrisy to start at council. Monday night, council approved a five-year contract for an unsolicited proposal from the town’s only (monopoly) taxi service without going to an open bid process. Yes that’s right: this council approved a sole-source contract in its first two months of this term. No tender. No RFP. No public input. It wasn’t advertised. It just came in, unsolicited.* And the contract lasts five years – beyond the term of this council. Yes: the same people who loudly lambasted the previous council for sole-sourcing a contract for Sprung (although staff recommended it because ……… click below for more ↓

Professional Politicians? Not Here…

Collingwood / Municipal Politics / PoliticsLeave a comment

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There’s an editorial in the January 29 edition of the Collingwood Connection that underscores how little the local media really understand local politics, and how biased it remains. Which is unfortunate, because buried within this vitriolic screed was a nugget of wisdom; a salient point about local politics.* First, it begins with an essential error by criticizing councillors for not showing “…they’re willing to work as a team -as they’ve been elected to do.” In non-partisan municipal politics, only individuals are elected. Not teams. Yes, there was a slate of candidates with similar ideologies who ran and many of whom were ……… click below for more ↓

Weaponized Aryan Jesus?

Culture / Faith / Film & Reviews / History & Biography2 Comments

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The term “weaponized Jesus” comes from an article I read on politicsusa.com, from November 2013, titled “The Religious Right With Their Weaponized Jesus Are Not Christians.”  It’s worth a read, if you enjoy the political-religious debate. I eventually traced the phrase back to a 2010 story in Mother Jones. It’s a good description of the way some fundamentalist Americans are taking their religion. But that’s not at issue right now. It’s the guy on the left of the movie still that I want to write about. Someone on my Facebook stream recently posted the picture above and talked about how she ……… click below for more ↓

Internet TV and Roku

Culture / Personal Reminiscences / TVLeave a comment

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I picked up a ROKU streaming stick this weekend at the local Staples store to get access to some internet TV. The box advertises 500+ channels, while the boxes for the upscale models 2 and 3 offer 450+ and 1,000+, respectively. However, the official webpage for Roku says you can get more than 1,800 channels in the US on these devices. The Canadian site suggests it’s closer to 1,000 – Canadians get shortchanged by this and similar services, it seems. But by my count on the screen, the actual number of possible “channels” tops 1,300. Before you shout “woo hoo” and rush out ……… click below for more ↓

The Ampersand, Etc.

Personal Reminiscences / TypographyLeave a comment

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Among my many iPad apps is a simple one called ‘Ampersands.’ All it does is display, in large format, numerous ampersands from different typefaces. A brief introduction tells the viewer it was the designer’s intent to show how the character had become art in it its own right. It accomplished that to some degree, but it is also limited; showcasing only a very small handful of ampersands out of tens of thousands, all simply shown alone on the screen. And it does it without explanation why that particular character was chosen. Beautiful, but the limitation in numbers makes it somewhat frustrating. ……… click below for more ↓

Revised CPLUG Ukulele Song Book

Collingwood / Culture / Library / Music & Reviews / My Writing / Personal Reminiscences / Ukulele: instruments & musicLeave a comment

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I spent the past couple of weeks diligently working on updating and expanding our Collingwood Public Library Ukulele Group (CPLUG) songbook. I’m happy to announce it is completed – and that I can get back to my regular blogging. Update, June 2020: The link to download was broken and is fixed. AND there are more songs in the songbook than listed below. I had put together two smaller songbooks previously for group use, as well as sent along several individual song sheets over the past year. Over the time since the group began, I’ve been updating my own style and ……… click below for more ↓

The Book List Game

Books & Reviews / Culture / Film & Reviews / Music & Reviews / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

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In a recent story titled “Neil deGrasse Tyson Selects the Eight Books Every Intelligent Person on the Planet Should Read,” the eminent astrophysicist listed his top eight book titles – from a Reddit conversation that was going on back in December, 2011. Here are the books he chose back then (check the linked story above for his comments on why he picked these titles): The Bible; The System of the World, by Isaac Newton; On the Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin; Gulliver’s Travels, by Jonathan Swift; The Age of Reason, by Thomas Paine; The Wealth of Nations, by Adam ……… click below for more ↓

The WOW Factor

Games & Gaming / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

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After two years away from the game, I was recently convinced by a friend to return to World of Warcraft again and play in the fantasy universe of WOW. At 10 years old, WOW remains the biggest, most-subscribed, most popular MMORPG, with around 10 million subscribers. By technology’s rapid-aging standards, WOW is a grandfather game; maybe even a great-grandfather. It has certainly spawned a lot of offspring, although not all are legitimate. I started playing WOW back in 2005. although I didn’t play it seriously and attentively until a little later, after the first expansion. Then I got heavily into the ……… click below for more ↓

47 Ronin Reviewed

Film & Reviews / Pop CultureLeave a comment

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[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8cKdDkkIYY] This week, after watching the 2013 film, 47 Ronin, starring Keanu Reeves, I had to wonder why Hollywood felt it necessary to take a powerful story, a great historical drama, and mess with it. And, of course, why they would put Keanu Reeves into a film about 18th century Japanese samurai. Or, for that matter, into any film. I’m not an actor, so my appreciation of their talents is only as an outsider. But Reeves seems to be pretty much a one-dimensional character. It worked in the Matrix, albeit less so in the sequels, but in films like the ……… click below for more ↓

Facebook, Likes and Big Data

Computers & Programming / Critical Thinking / Internet & Social Media / Social Order & DisorderLeave a comment

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I suppose you could call it ironic. There was a story from a ‘friend’ on my Facebook news feed today called “Quitting the Like” all about escaping Facebook’s data collection processes by simply not “liking” items or comments you see. Right below this ostensibly anti-Facebook story were three related links produced by one of the Facebook data-collection bots all about the same thing: breaking free from Facebook’s data mining. I suspect the FB programmers hadn’t planned it that way. But aside from the irony, it caused me to read them all. The first story, fully titled “I Quit Liking Things ……… click below for more ↓

Heart of Darkness

Books & Reviews / Culture / Social Order & DisorderLeave a comment

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Heart of Darkness can be a difficult read. Not just for its brooding setting and the sense of morbid inevitability. Conrad’s semi-autobiographical 1899 novel is replete with racism and breezy colonialism: the insufferable superiority of white, Western culture. The casual ability of so-called civilized men to commit savagery in the name of some higher cause is clearly expressed; a forerunner to the brutality of two world wars. Listening to it as an audiobook, yesterday, as I drove again to Toronto, I almost flinched every time the reader pronounced the “N” word. No amount of rationalization about the times and the era made ……… click below for more ↓

200,000 Thank Yous

Blog & Blogging / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

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It seems that only yesterday I was saying thank you to my  first 100,000 unique visitors at this blog after just over two years of writing. That was at the start of March. Now, 10 months later, I want to say thank you to more than 208,000 visitors for coming here and reading my humble efforts at writing, at philosophy, politics, history, science, reviews and – very important to me – music.* In 2014, I wrote 220 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 527 posts. I’ve written almost 840,000 words – more than 350,000 of them ……… click below for more ↓

Falling Skies: Aliens as Metaphor

Culture / Pop Culture / TVOne Comment

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We watched the last of Season Two of the Falling Skies series last night. After a bit of research this morning, I learned I have two more seasons to watch and a fifth season has been scheduled. Something to look forward to. I wasn’t sure about how it would turn out, but the series has matured nicely, although one can’t say that about its politics. If you’re not familiar with the series, it’s about American reaction to an alien invasion – one could say it is a drawn-out remake of War of the Worlds. The aliens, of course, have more ……… click below for more ↓

Jack Finney’s Time and Again

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

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Ever read Jack Finney? I knew the name, but I never read any of his books. I knew he was the author of the 1955 pulp novel, The Body Snatchers.  This became the basis for the 1956 movie, The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. That is one of my all-time favourite B-films, one I can watch almost endlessly. I like it even more than the 1978 re-make. I have both (of course), and even have have the subsequent – and less impressive – remakes: Body Snatchers (1993) and The Invasion (2007). Plus a few of the below-B spinoffs like Invasion of the ……… click below for more ↓

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