Scripturient

2014 predictions always good for a giggle

2014-01-10 2014-01-10 Atheism & Spirituality / Balderdash & Hoaxes / Critical ThinkingLeave a comment

I had barely finished writing my post on the failed 2013 predictions of the self-described “psychics” and “clairvoyants” who are the media darlings du jour, when the sorry lot of charlatans published their latest lot of flim-flammery and codswallop: predictions for 2014. These will, of course, prove as wrong as the predictions for 2013. And 2012. And 2011, And 2010, And 2009. And on and on and on. As usual, the list of “predictions” contains a lot of vague or general statements in which an unidentified “someone” is involved – you’d think that a real clairvoyant would be able to ……… click below for more ↓

To err is human. And bureaucratic.

2014-01-09 2014-01-09 Arts / Books & Reviews / Municipal Politics / Politics / Social Order & Disorder / US PoliticsLeave a comment

Errare humanum est, perseverare diabolicum, et tertium non datur. To err is human; to persevere in error is diabolical; there is no third option. Bit of a tough love phrase, that one. Most of us know this as the later paraphrase of Alexander Pope: to err is humane, to forgive divine. Yes, he wrote “humane” because that’s how they wrote “human” in the early 18th century. And he was making a statement about critics, not about religion. But you get the drift.* Pope’s phrase is a staple in politics. To err is human, and governments are composed of people. In ……… click below for more ↓

Looking back on three years

2014-01-07 2014-01-07 Collingwood / Municipal Politics / Urban Design & GrowthLeave a comment

If you attended the Mayor’s Levee, Jan. 5, you received a small brochure that listed some of this council’s accomplishments to date, as well as our collective plans and priorities for the remaining year of our term. It’s worth reiterating some of those notes. Keeping the public informed was identified by this council as a strategic priority in our first strategic planning session at the beginning of our term. This flyer was produced by our new Communications Officer as part of that ongoing transparency and accountability. We want to let you know what we’re doing on your behalf. Many of ……… click below for more ↓

Archiving past posts

2014-01-05 2014-01-09 Blog & Blogging / Books & Reviews / My Writing / Personal Reminiscences / Theme & CodingLeave a comment

I spent a busy weekend copying posts from my previous blog (hundreds of posts, currently archived on another server awaiting my resolution) onto my hard drive. I plan to resurrect some of these posts – maybe with a bit of updating or editing – in a WordPress archive site here so I can keep them alive in that digital manner the Net provides. But first I have to sort through a lot of old material. A lot. And the corruption of the old database in the move to that server has created some technical issues I need to resolve, too. ……… click below for more ↓

What, no raisin bread?

2014-01-05 2014-01-05 Books & Reviews / Bread & Baking / Food & DrinkLeave a comment

I have a large – and growing – stack of books about bread. So many that I’m running out of shelf space for them all. Some are for artisan bread, some for regular homemade bread (traditional recipes, usually with lots of kneading), others are for bread machines. A couple are generic “all-about-breads-of-the-world” books with recipes. Yet only one of 15 has a recipe for making the basic raisin-cinnamon bread. This is a loaf I want to make in the bread machine on the timer, so next weekend we’d awake to fresh raisin bread, ready to toast. There are all sorts of ……… click below for more ↓

A Tale of Two Loaves

2014-01-04 2014-01-04 Books & Reviews / Bread & Baking / Food & Drink / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

An interesting experiment this week: using the same basic set of ingredients to make bread, but one made by hand, the other in the bread machine, both made the same day. I’ve been curious about this ever since I got the machine. Would the two methods create similar breads if I used roughly the same ingredients? I say roughly because I used a bread machine recipe found in a book, including all of the ingredients listed (substituting a small amount of honey for the sugar listed, and avocado oil for generic vegetable oil.) In the handmade loaf, however, I included ……… click below for more ↓

Collingwood: 2114

2014-01-01 2014-01-01 Collingwood / Humour & Satire / Municipal PoliticsOne Comment

I had one of those odd dreams recently; a crazy mix of future and past, where rotary dial phones and smart phones co-existed, where past and future intersected. A retro-future dream. I was in Collingwood, an odd Collingwood, but it was still my home town: recognizable,familiar, but also changed. Modernized in striking ways, old-fashioned in others. A calendar told me it was 2114. It looked a bit like 1964, too. Odd how dreams do that. I thought I’d share some images of that dream, of what Collingwood might be like in a century. Using a combination of arcane and highly ……… click below for more ↓

Looking back on 2013

2013-12-31 2014-01-02 Blog & Blogging / Bread & Baking / Games & Gaming / Municipal Politics / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

It’s been quite a year, both personally and politically. The best of times, the worst of times, to paraphrase Dickens. Looking back on 2103, it was a busy, eventful, successful, and yet often challenging year. I accomplished many things on different levels – personal and professional – and, I believe, overcame some of the challenges I faced. A lot happened locally, too, much of which development I take pride in having been a party to. Collingwood Council has been very productive, pro-active and progressive this term; more so than any council I’ve ever participated in or reported on when in the ……… click below for more ↓

Psychics 2013: the silly, the scams, the failed predictions

2013-12-28 2013-12-28 Atheism & Spirituality / Balderdash & Hoaxes / Media Issues / Pets & Animal Behaviour / Pseudoscience & Quackery / Social Order & DisorderOne Comment

Action News, an ABC affiliate, ran a late-year story with the headline “Psychics interpret pets’ thoughts.” No, it’s not April Fools’ Day: this was December 26. Yet the reporter treated it seriously; just like it was a real story; actual news, rather than a steaming heap of superstitious dung. That reporters for any media outlet treat would such codswallop as “news” calls into question their ability, their competence and their education. Lorrie The Pet Psychic has been tuning into the thoughts of animals for 18 years, appearing on Oprah after she helped locate a local dog who was blown away ……… click below for more ↓

The last loaves of 2013

2013-12-26 2013-12-26 Books & Reviews / Bread & Baking / Food & Drink / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

As my stock of bread dwindles, I’m contemplating what breads to bake this weekend, as well as what I may want to try before the New Year. I’m also pondering my baking successes and failures these past few months. Mostly successes, although a few have been “qualified” successes – edible but not optimal. First my levain – sourdough – mix got dumped last week. It went off and really stank. Unpleasant. I suspected it was struggling for a couple of weeks, ever since I tried – and failed – to make a decent sourdough bread with it as a starter. ……… click below for more ↓

Makes you feel happy, like an old time movie

2013-12-25 2013-12-25 Arts / Culture / Music & ReviewsLeave a comment

There’s something touching about a classic film, something magical about a B&W movie, about a film shot between the wars in that period of recovery and optimism; a film that was new when my parents were young, full of life and hope. A movie from the days before CGI, before green screens and 3D. Before slasher films, before graphic sex and graphic violence. It’s a combination of art and innocence, of technology just starting to blossom, of storytelling finding new avenues for expression and sometimes not quite sure about it. Others are bold statements about style and expression; avant-garde art.* There ……… click below for more ↓

Dictionaries: Concise, Compact, and dacoit

2013-12-23 2022-05-21 Books & Reviews / Language & Grammar / My Writing / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

Dacoit: noun; one of a class of criminals in India and Burma who rob and murder in roving gangs. A member of a band of armed robbers in India or Burma. A bandit. Origin: Hindi and Urdu. I love dictionaries. I like opening them up to a random page and just reading, discovering words and uses that I didn’t know. I love finding origins of words and phrases; linguistic connections between past and present. I will happily spend hours reading through Samuel Johnson’s dictionary, or a glossary of Shakespeare’s or Chaucer’s words. I’ll open any dictionary at random and read ……… click below for more ↓

Salt and bread making

2013-12-22 2013-12-22 Books & Reviews / Bread & Baking / Food & Drink / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

Salt is one of the four essential ingredients in making bread, along with flour, yeast and water. Nothing more is needed, although often a lot more is added. Salt is listed in all the recipes. Only one bread I’ve ever read about is salt-free (a Tuscan specialty mentioned in William Alexander’s book, 52 Loaves). We tend to assume salt is simply for flavour, but it is also part of our basic biology: I find it easiest to think of salt as one half of the body’s water-regulation system, the other half being potassium. The membranes of every cell in the body ……… click below for more ↓

How hot is your oven?

2013-12-22 2013-12-22 Bread & Baking / Food & Drink / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

Seems like a silly question: the answer would be it’s as hot as I set it to be. Isn’t it? Well, no, it may actually be rather different from what you expect, based on my recent tests. I was reading on several bread-baking forums about oven temperatures and the effects on baking. Specifically on the crust: higher temperatures (450F and up) lead to crunchy crusts as the sugars caramelize rapidly. Then there’s “non-enzymatic browning:” the Maillard reaction that happens at a range of temperatures: The reactive carbonyl group of the sugar reacts with the nucleophilic amino group of the amino acid, ……… click below for more ↓

American belief in evolution is growing: poll

2013-12-19 2024-07-12 Atheism & Spirituality / Balderdash & Hoaxes / Evolution & Paleontology / Faith / Pseudoscience & Quackery / Religion / Science & Technology / Social Order & DisorderLeave a comment

A new Harris poll released this month shows that Americans apparently are losing their belief in miracles and gaining it in science. The recent poll showed that American belief in evolution had risen to 47% from its previous poll level of 42%, in 2005. True, it’s not an overwhelming increase, and it’s still less than half the population, but it is an improvement. Belief in creationism dropped 3% during that time, to 36%. Good news, of course, but don’t break out the champagne yet. There’s other data and it’s not all so good. At the same time more Americans are believing ……… click below for more ↓