Scripturient

Tudor politics: Elizabeth’s struggle

David Starkey’s book, Elizabeth: the Struggle for the Throne, is the best book I’ve read on the period of Elizabeth’s life between the death of Henry VIII and her own coronation. It gives a clear, richly detailled picture of the machinations, the politics and the society that she lived in during the 25 years before she became monarch – 1533 to 1558. And what a life it was. In and out of favour, imprisoned, in fear of her life, threatened, cajoled, living on her wits, political puppet and Machiavellian instigator… Elizabeth emerges as a canny, quick and lively actor in ……… click below for more ↓

What do we know about Bell’s Palsy?

2014-04-17 2014-04-17 Health & Medicine / Personal Reminiscences / Science & TechnologyLeave a comment

Bell’s Palsy is one of those rare ailments, and one that annoys more than threatens, but can be difficult and socially awkward for sufferers. It’s also one that still baffles researchers as to its cause. And also for an effective treatment. According to facialpalsy.org, The name ‘Bell’s palsy’ comes from 19th-century Scottish anatomist and surgeon Sir Charles Bell, who discovered that severing the seventh cranial (or facial) nerve causes facial paralysis. It has no vaccine, no known method for prevention, and the treatment is still uncertain. [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxVHFJs1uJ4] Wikipedia tells us: Bell’s palsy is a form of facial paralysis resulting from ……… click below for more ↓

Oooh, shiny….

2014-04-09 2014-04-09 Culture / Musical Instruments / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

Religious texts are full of admonitions about avoiding temptation. The Lord’s Prayer tells God to “lead us not into temptation.” Fat lot of good that does. We can find the way ourselves, thank you. Not only do we lead ourselves there, we go willingly and eagerly. Pushing and shoving aside those who stand in our way to reach temptation. Ever see the crowds in the mall on Boxing Day? Psychological texts, magazines and sites are full of secular advice on resisting temptation, too. It’s our brain’s “executive control” functions that fail use when we succumb to our impulses. And fail ……… click below for more ↓

The dangerous idiocy of the anti-vax movement

2014-04-08 2014-04-08 Conspiracy Theories / Critical Thinking / Pseudoscience & Quackery / Science & Technology2 Comments

Measles is on the rise in Canada. There have already been many cases in 2014: in PEI, London, Ottawa, southern Alberta, Regina, Qu’Apelle, Calgary, Fraser Valley (320 cases), Hamilton, Halton, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Waterloo, Nanaimo and other locations. Eleven cases in Ontario this year alone. Nine in Alberta. That ancient, deadly foe we recently believed we had conquered, is coming back. And it’s going to kill children again, this time with the complicity of their parents. Fifty years ago, science found the cure and made a vaccine for it. In 2000, the United States optimistically declared ongoing measles transmission had been ……… click below for more ↓

April’s early breads

2014-04-07 2014-04-07 Bread & Baking / Food & Drink / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

April has begun with three loaves of bread; generally successful efforts, although there’s still some tweaking to do with the recipes. As always. But I’m encouraged to try more – and of course experiment more with recipes and ingredients. The first loaf of the latest batch was an artisan loaf made at the tail end of March. Started with an overnight poolish and the standard artisan recipe I’ve been using for a while now (derived from one found online). All unbleached white flour in the mix. A little less salt than was called for, but otherwise pretty basic bread. The ……… click below for more ↓

Is this the end of the gluten-free fad?

2014-04-01 2014-04-01 Bread & Baking / Critical Thinking / Food & Drink / Pseudoscience & Quackery4 Comments

Last November, when I first wrote about the gluten-free diet fad, I bemoaned how an everyday protein, a staple in human diets for many millennia, had become demonized by the diet fad crowd. In fact, the gluten-free fad rapidly grew into a multi-million-dollar industry in Canada to accommodate that vulnerable intersection of consumer fears and gullibility.* Back when I was writing my piece, the National Post had a piece that indicated while nine million Canadians were allegedly on a gluten-free diet or avoided gluten for non-medical reasons, only 1% of us – about 330,000 people – actually have Celiac disease ……… click below for more ↓

Feetish or Fettish?

2014-03-30 2014-03-30 Language & Grammar / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

I was surprised to recently read in David Crystal’s book, The Story of English in 100 Words, that fetish – which I pronounce “feh-tesh” – was once pronounced “feetish.” In fact, in the 1920s, Crystal writes, the BBC had that pronunciation in its guide for radio broadcasters.* It makes sense, of course, when you think about it. Usually when there is a single consonant before a vowel, that vowel is pronounced long. It usually takes two consonants to shorten it. For example: Holy and holly; Mater and matter; Scared and scarred; Hater and hatter; Pater and patter; Diner and dinner; ……… click below for more ↓

The ethics of politics via Aristotle

2014-03-26 2014-03-28 Books & Reviews / Philosophy / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

Politics, Aristotle wrote in the Nicomachean Ethics, is the “master science of the good.” The good of which he wrote is the greater good, the “highest good” that benefits the state, not the personal. For even if the good is the same for the individual and the state, the good of the state clearly is the greater and more perfect thing to attain and safeguard. the attainment of the good for one man alone is, to be sure, a source of satisfaction; yet to secure it for a nation and for states is nobler and more divine. But good is ……… click below for more ↓

The late March breads

2014-03-26 2014-03-26 Bread & Baking / Food & Drink / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

A couple more loaves were made this month and a third will be started later this week. Both were made in the oven, not the machine, at 425F for roughly 35 minutes. Neither rose very high, but both were edible and tasty. Only about a third of the second loaf remains, so I will start a poolish today for baking a new loaf tomorrow. First up: a sourdough, made from the levain I keep in the fridge. All-sourdough: this time I didn’t use any commercial yeast as a helper. It seemed to be rising well in the bowl, so I put ……… click below for more ↓

Getting solid numbers makes sense

2014-03-24 2014-03-24 Collingwood / Municipal PoliticsLeave a comment

I recently was directed to read a statement that I had “…put forward a notice of motion calling on the municipality to spend the money to put a concrete floor in the building, without any kind of business case …” That is incorrect. The notice simply asked the town to put out a ‘request for proposal” (RFP). If the writer had asked me about my notice of motion (or asked any of the other councillors or senior staff with whom I discussed it), I would have been able to explain that I was simply asking for the town to get ……… click below for more ↓

Thinking about a new ukulele

2014-03-23 2014-03-23 Musical Instruments / Personal Reminiscences / Science & TechnologyOne Comment

I’ve been thinking seriously of adding another ukulele to the herd. A tenor resonator, or resophonic, like the Kala shown above. That’s the re-designed 2014 model. I’ve played earlier models, including the 2013 version with the strings attached to a tailpiece (see photo below, left). The 2014 design (shown above) anchors the strings back into the cover plate, which I expect will be a better design; it looks cleaner, too. But I believe the biggest change is that the through-the-plate model has more tension on the biscuit (see below). And I like Kala products, too. I really like resonator instruments ……… click below for more ↓

Marcus Aurelius

2014-03-21 2014-03-21 Arts / Books & Reviews / Education & Learning / Philosophy / What I'm Reading Now3 Comments

I continue to be profoundly moved by the wisdom of the classical authors. It’s often hard to accept that some of them were writing two or more millennia ago: many seem so contemporary they could have been written this century. Of late – within the past year or so – I’ve been reading Lucretius, Aristotle, Horace, Cicero, Seneca, Pliny the Elder*… and more recently Marcus Aurelius. I’ve had a couple of versions of his Meditations (written ca. 167 CE) kicking around on my bookshelf for decades. I’ve dipped into it many times before today, but never really read it for more ……… click below for more ↓

CPLUG songs and more

2014-03-18 2014-03-20 Collingwood / Culture / Musical InstrumentsLeave a comment

CPLUG – the Collingwood Public Library Ukulele Group – has so far proven a very popular group. We started with 17 people at our first monthly meeting and more have attended each time: 34 people came out last month! I’m hoping to continue this trend and see as many this week at our next meeting (March 19). You can read about our group in this newspaper story, here. We are dedicated to enjoying making and learning music in a friendly, supportive community group setting. We need help! We need songs, song leaders, helpers, tuners and ukuleles. And of course ukulele ……… click below for more ↓

Machiavelli and the Elizabethans

2014-03-16 2014-03-16 Books & Reviews / History & Biography / My Writing / PoliticsLeave a comment

In 1555, Bishop Stephen Gardiner wrote a treatise to King Phillip II of Spain, in which he borrowed (aka plagiarized) extensively from Machiavelli’s The Prince and The Discourses. Gardiner did not credit Machiavelli or attribute any of his quotes, but rather copied some of Machiavelli’s content verbatim or very closely. This was less than two decades after Machiavelli’s works had been first printed, and before Pope Paul placed it on the Index librorum prohibitorum, effectively banning it in Catholic countries (but also making it more interesting, as any banned book inevitably becomes, thus guaranteeing its publication and translation). Some two ……… click below for more ↓