Scripturient

Human Smoke

“The truth of history,” Napoleon wrote in his memoirs while exiled on St. Helena, “is a fable agreed upon.” Agreed upon mostly by the victors, one should add. The losers seldom agree with it. In 1865, Mark Twain added in his work, Following the Equator: “The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice.” Two centuries after Napoleon, Dana Arnold wrote in Reading Architectural History: Historical reality is then a ‘referential illusion’, in which we try to grasp the reality… In this way history becomes a Myth or an ideology as it purports to be reality. ……… click below for more ↓

A Few More Uke Arrangements

2014-12-17 2014-12-19 Culture / Musical Instruments / Personal Reminiscences / Ukulele: instruments & musicOne Comment

Lately, I’ve been redoing all the arrangements of songs I put together for the Collingwood Public Library Ukulele Group (CPLUG) this year, as well as arranging some new pieces for the group. I’m working on a new layout for the tunes that makes them easier for beginners to follow and makes the songbook somewhat easier to manage. I’ve zipped a few of the most recent tunes (in PDF) here: Dec 2014.zip. As I often do, I offer some of the songs in alternate keys. You can always transpose any song yourself, with the help of my free chord transposition wheel. ……… click below for more ↓

Hate Crimes Against Non-believers Growing

2014-12-12 2014-12-12 Atheism & Spirituality / Critical Thinking / Faith / History & BiographyLeave a comment

We all know about the hate crimes religious believers commit against one another, against people of a different faith. It’s headlines news, almost daily. Protestants against Catholics. Sunnis against Shiites. Muslims against Christians. Hindus against Muslims. Buddhists against Muslims. Christians against pagans. Christians against Jews. Muslims against Jews. Cults against anyone and everyone against cults. Pick a faith and it’s been involved in attacks, intolerance, intimidation, and killing sometime in its history. Even the normally pacifist Buddhists have been. Religions have been fighting with one another since prehistory: their believers have been killing, burning, rampaging and raping one another since ……… click below for more ↓

Evolutionary Dead-Ends

2014-12-08 2014-12-08 Creationism / Critical Thinking / Evolution & PaleontologyOne Comment

Some people seem genetically inclined – perhaps I should write doomed? – to believe in nonsense: believe in conspiracy theories, in myths, legends, superstitions and supernatural, in magic, in pseudoscience and pseudomedicine. Nothing – no amount of fact, truth, education, reason or contrary evidence will change their minds. The harder you try to correct them, the more firmly they believe. Watch, if you can, this painfully dim woman trying to dismiss paleontology and evolution as she blunders through Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History’s exhibit on the evolving Earth and comments on the displays. It’s a tough video to view for ……… click below for more ↓

Gravity: A Review

2014-12-02 2014-12-02 Culture / Film & Reviews2 Comments

While watching director Alfonso Cuarón’s film, Gravity, this weekend, I was struck by how powerful the mixed themes of isolation and survival can be. I was reminded not simply of films – Tom Hanks in Castaway came to mind immediately – but in literature, too; from Robinson Crusoe to Blindness. Stories of survival have captivated humankind since the Gilgamesh epic was scratched into clay tablets by an anonymous Sumerian scribe. I really enjoyed Gravity for several reasons and highly recommend it. First it’s a science fiction film and scifi is my favourite genre of movies. And it’s a good, well-done, high-quality production, ……… click below for more ↓

The Pinnacle of Homeopathic Stupidity

2014-11-27 2014-11-27 Critical Thinking / Health & Medicine / New Age Codswallop / Pseudoscience & Quackery2 Comments

“Have Homeopaths Reached Peak Stupid?” asks the headline on Quackometer.net. It’s hard to imagine anyone getting dumber than a belief in homeopathy (aka The One Quackery to Rule Them All), but apparently there are higher levels within their madness that homeopaths continue to scale. This, however, looks like their Everest of stupidity. The story in question is about the plan by homeopaths to “heal the oceans” last week. Admirable goal, but it’s the implementation that will make you laugh so hard you’ll snort your morning tea right out of your nose. You have been warned. I speak from experience. Here’s how they ……… click below for more ↓

My Goodbye to Local Politics (for now)

2014-11-25 2021-05-15 Collingwood / Municipal Politics / Personal Reminiscences / PoliticsLeave a comment

I had meant to read a statement at last night’s final meeting of Collingwood Council, but I misplaced my printout between the time I left home and the meeting’s start. I remembered most of it, but may have missed a few words. Here’s an edited version of what I said with some notes from what I had written for the occasion: First, I’d like to thank staff for all their help and support these many years. Staff have helped make council’s ideals, plans and goals into reality. Without them, we would have floundered and run aground on our unconsummated ideas. ……… click below for more ↓

Before You Become a Politician

2014-11-23 2014-11-23 Canadian Politics / Municipal Politics / PoliticsLeave a comment

No, this isn’t about me. This is about federal politics. I never had an inclination for higher levels of politics, those other arenas, other battles, nor the lofty separation of politician from the electorate such roles entail. But some of it is relevant to those who want to enter municipal politics; indeed to all levels of politics. It’s a letter from the former leader of the Liberal party, Michael Ignatieff. And a touching letter it is. After an glorious entrance into politics, hailed as the next Pierre Trudeau, a towering intellectual giant among the pygmies, Ignatieff was eventually elected leader, then battled ……… click below for more ↓

Julius Caesar: Best of the Bard?

2014-11-22 2016-04-20 Culture / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

For my money, Julius Caesar is simply Billy Shakespeare’s best ever play. I mean, what’s not to like in it? It has some stonking great speeches in it – including one of his top five ever (Marc Antony’s “Friends, Romans, countrymen….”) as well as a passel of memorable lines you can quote at parties (Who among my readers hasn’t passed off a quick “Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war…” just for effect?). Plus it has a conspiracy, a murder, a riot, a battle, and a couple of suicides to gussy up the action. Treachery, betrayal, loyalty, raw ambition, backstabbing, ……… click below for more ↓

Poor King Henry VII

2014-11-21 2014-11-21 Books & Reviews / England and Britain / History & Biography / Politics / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

As Rodney Dangerfield might have said had he been cast in a role as Henry VII, “I don’t get no respect.” Henry VII is one of those English kings who never seem to get any attention, outside the rarefied realms of academia. Only of late, it seems, have a few writers and TV producers turned their heads towards him – no doubt because a lot of the other, more exciting monarchs have been thoroughly covered on screen and in print. Although he was the first of the short Tudor dynasty, his reign is overshadowed by those of his son, Henry VIII, ……… click below for more ↓

The Canadian Way of Drinking

2014-11-18 2014-11-18 Alcohol / Food & Drink / Personal ReminiscencesOne Comment

Do you drink a glass of wine with dinner every night? That puts you in the top 30 percent of American adults in terms of per-capita alcohol consumption. If you drink two glasses, that would put you in the top 20 percent. When I read that in the Washington Post, I went, yikes! I have a glass of wine with dinner many nights – three to five times a week. The US figures show about 30% of Americans don’t drink at all, and another 30% have less than one glass per week. No wonder they’re so religious in the USA. Maybe ……… click below for more ↓

The Three Godzillas: Size Matters

2014-11-16 2023-04-20 Culture / Film & Reviews / Godzilla / Personal Reminiscences14 Comments

This year another remake of Godzilla was released, and of course I had to get a copy. I have many of the other Godzilla films made over the past 60 years, sadly not all of them. There were so many monster movies made in Japan through the 1950s and 60s that it’s hard to keep track of them all, let alone collect them. B-films, all of them, and still entertaining if you can find them. (If I recall it properly, I first watched the original Godzilla in the late 1950s at a drive-in theatre, sitting with my parents in the front ……… click below for more ↓