What’s in a missing word?

Books & Reviews / Education & Learning / Language & Grammar / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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There’s a line in one of Horace’s epistles that really caught my eye. In Latin it reads: Utque sacerdotis fugitiuus liba recuso, pane egeo iam mellitis potiore placentis Horace: Epistles, Book I, X No, I can’t translate it.* However, I was reading David Ferry’s 2001 translation and he renders it like this: I’m like that slave who ran away because They fed him honey cakes and he longed for bread. That appealled to me both for my recent passion for making bread, but also for its philosophic – almost Buddhist – intent. Ferry gives us both the Latin and English, ……… click below for more ↓

Loafing around again

Bread & Baking / Food & Drink / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

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Been at it again this month. Bread making, I mean. You knew that from the image, right? Several efforts so far this month and March isn’t even half-way through its course. Winter remains firmly entrenched here, and spring – or any time without a thick layer of snow – looks far away. So it’s a good time to be making bread. First up: banana bread. I haven’t made many fruit loaves – mostly raisin-cinnamon – but have always wanted to try this. And it’s not a yeast bread: rather a soda/quick bread. We had some over-ripe bananas on hand, and ……… click below for more ↓

Litter, litter, everywhere

Collingwood / Environment / Psychology & Sociology / Social Order & DisorderOne Comment

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Pop cans. Coffee cups. Candy bar wrappers. Fast food wrappers. Cigarette packages. Cigarette butts. Dog feces. Bags of dog feces. Flyers. Cellophane package wrap. Water bottles. Juice bottles. Chip bags. Beer cans and bottles. Disposable lighters and pens. Cardboard beer boxes. Discarded newspapers and junk mail. Plastic grocery bags. I just don’t get littering. I’ve never gotten littering. These are just some of the items I’ve seen stuck into snow banks and hedges in my neighbourhood, or dropped on the road the past few weeks. There’s always litter, it seems, always someone carelessly and thoughtlessly dropping garbage on the sidewalk, ……… click below for more ↓

Reading: A Canadian tragedy… or not?

Books & Reviews / Critical Thinking / Culture / Education & Learning / Politics / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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The map above might show the making of a serious tragedy for Western and especially Canadian culture. It indicates in colour which nations read the most. Yellow is the second lowest group. Canada is coloured yellow. In this survey, Canada ranks 10th – from the bottom! Twenty countries above us have populations which, on the average, read more per week than we do. That surprises and shocks me. And it disappoints me no end. I’m not only a voracious reader, I’m passionate about books, language, reading and writing, and have been on the library board for 20 years actively helping ……… click below for more ↓

100,000 thank yous

Blog & Blogging / My WritingOne Comment

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Last week (late Feb, 2014), I passed 100,000 unique views on this blog – in slightly over two years since it was started. Not large by any means, given that some sites easily get that in a month. But a personal milestone for me.* Thank you, gentle readers, for coming here, for spending time with my humble scribblings**, for taking time out of your busy day to read my words. I hope I have managed in some small way to entertain, amuse, delight and inform you. At the very least, I hope I have encouraged you to think about what ……… click below for more ↓

Conspiracy Theories: 2014 Update

Collingwood / Conspiracy Theories / Municipal Politics / Social Order & DisorderLeave a comment

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It’s time to update a piece I wrote in December, 2012, outlining the secret deals, backroom negotiations and “barbecue politics” that our council has been involved in since that date, more than a year ago. So here comes the update, the emperor without his clothes: Secret meetings: none Backroom negotiations: none Barbecue deals: none Sorry, I know this is a disappointment to local conspiracy theorists and bloggers, coming hard on the failure of the world to end as per the Mayan Calendar, or the failure of any number of predicted ends of the world, coupled with the lack of any ……… click below for more ↓

Time to get serious with distracted drivers

Critical Thinking / Municipal Politics / Provincial Politics / Social Order & DisorderOne Comment

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In March, the fine for being caught texting,  talking on your cell phone, or tinkering with your MP3 player while driving will jump from $155 to $280 in Ontario. That’s better, but not good enough. Distracted drivers are a growing threat to everyone sharing the road – other drivers, pedestrians, and cyclists. We are all at risk. As the CBC reported: The fine for distracted driving in Ontario will soon nearly double. As of March 18, driving with the display screen of a phone, computer, MP3 player or tablet computer visible to the driver will jump to $280 from $155. ……… click below for more ↓

Lucretius and the Renaissance

Arts / Books & Reviews / Critical Thinking / Education & Learning / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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It’s fairly clear, even after reading only a few verses, why Lucretius’s didactic poem, On the Nature of Things – De Rerum Natura –  made such an impact on thought, philosophy, religion and science in the Renaissance. It must have been like a lighthouse in the dark night; a “Eureka” moment for many of the age’s thinkers. For others, especially the church leaders, it must have arrived like a mortar shell among their intellectual certainties and complacencies; shattering walls and window. An act of war that threatened to tear down whole schools of thought and belief. While today his descriptions of atoms, ……… click below for more ↓

Collingwood’s municipal debt and 2014 budget

Collingwood / Municipal Politics6 Comments

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Tuesday, Council got a combined debt-and-budget presentation that set the stage for the upcoming, fuller 2014 budget deliberations starting next week. CAO John Brown gave us a recap of a report (produced by BMA Management Consulting) about the town’s debt situation and financial well-being. It was a mix of good news/bad news. The good is that it’s not as bad as it seems, certainly not as bad as some other municipalities, but mostly in the middle of the peer group selected for the report. The bad is that it’s not as good as we’d like it to be. But barring ……… click below for more ↓

Should councillors abstain from voting?

Collingwood / Municipal Politics / Provincial Politics2 Comments

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In an earlier post, I wrote that Collingwood’s Integrity Commissioner, Robert Swayze, proposed two changes to the town’s Procedural Bylaw: amending section 13.7 and deleting section 13.8. Last post I dealt with the former; here I will explain my concerns about the latter. Section 13.8 currently reads: 13.8 No vote – deemed negative – exception Notwithstanding the provisions of Section 13.7 of this By-law, every Member who is not disqualified from voting by reason of a declared pecuniary interest shall be deemed to be voting against the motion if he/she declines or abstains from voting. In other words, no member ……… click below for more ↓

Legal Versus “Personal” Conflicts of Interest

Collingwood / Municipal Politics / Provincial PoliticsOne Comment

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In May, 2013, I wrote my thoughts about Ontario’s Municipal Conflict of Interest Act and the effect it had on the governance and procedural behaviour of municipal councillors. Back then, I wrote, The Act allows no grey areas: there are no “perceived” conflicts in law, only clearly defined legal ones. This is obviously intended by the stringent wording that lays out what construes a conflict of interest. This clarity absolves everyone of trying to second guess the intention of the Act, or trying to interpret degrees of conflict. For the MCOI Act, only pecuniary – i.e. financial – conflicts matter: ……… click below for more ↓

BL2: Resistance is futile

Games & Gaming / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

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I tried to resist. I really did. I avoided it for more than a year, skillfully averting my eyes from the store shelves where it sat, ignoring the emails with invitations, sales offers that dangled newly-released DLC packages before me. I looked the other way when ads popped on on websites. I have more serious things to do, I’d tell myself. Getting too old for games, I’d mutter under my breath. I have better things to do with my time. Like reading. Studying. Developing website material. Learning music. Besides, I’m running out of hard disc space. But then I saw ……… click below for more ↓

Amo, Amas, Amat…. and what?

Books & Reviews / Education & Learning / Language & Grammar / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

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My well-thumbed copy of Eugene Ehrlich’s book, Amo, Amas, Amat and More, is dated 1985. It’s amusingly subtitled “How to Use Latin to Your Own Advantage and to the Astonishment of Others.” It’s still in print, it seems, or was as recently as 2006. I’ve read my copy on and off for the past 25-plus years, but have not been able to effectively astonish anyone with my grasp of Latin. Possibly the reason for this is that my grasp of Latin is small. Very small. I had a single year of Latin classes in high school; lessons mostly relegated to ……… click below for more ↓

Feb. 12: Happy Darwin Day

Atheism & Spirituality / Balderdash & Hoaxes / Critical Thinking / Education & Learning / Science & Technology2 Comments

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February 12 is international Darwin Day, the day when we collectively celebrate science and reason. And, of course, we recognize Charles Darwin’s birthday: February 12, 1809 (the same birthdate as Abraham Lincoln, by the way). If Collingwood made such declarations, I would propose we recognize the day in our municipality. Other Canadian municipalities have done so. Maybe we could raise a flag with Darwin’s face on it outside town hall. Darwin Day was first celebrated in 1995 and has been growing in recognition and popularity ever since. As Darwinday.org tells us the celebration was: …initiated by Dr. Robert (“Bob”) Stephens ……… click below for more ↓

Raisin and sourdough this week

Books & Reviews / Bread & Baking / Food & Drink / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

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While I haven’t tried to make a sourdough raisin bread yet, that idea occurred to me while I was making my latest breads, this week. I’m sure it would be a good mix, but I’ll have to build my levain up again, since I used all my countertop levain in yesterday’s bread (about 350g). I still have a culture in the fridge, however, and will take some out to get it going in the warmer kitchen, today. I made a medium-sized sourdough loaf, and two smaller raisin-cinnamon loaves, Friday. Somewhat ambitious of me, but with mixed results. Two? You ask. ……… click below for more ↓

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