Openness and Transparency?
Legitimacy is earned through accountability. Accountability is produced through transparency. Those words are from an opinion piece by Ian Lee, published in the Ottawa Citizen, back in 2008. Important words;…
Ian Chadwick
Two New Posts on the Municipal Machiavelli
I added two posts today to my blog about Niccolo Machiavelli, the 16th century political philosopher. These are: Machiavelli: The Graphic Novel – a short piece about the recent publication…
Books versus E-readers
Back in February, Naomi Baron wrote a piece called “Reading on-screen versus on paper,” in which she compared the two reading experiences: printed books and e-readers in five areas: Cost…
Conrad Black: Wrong on Religion, Again
Atheists renounce and abstain from religions; they don’t reform them. So said Conrad Black in a recent National Post column. Black seems to be increasingly theological in his writing; perhaps…
Propaganda?
Last term, when council sent out community newsletters to keep residents informed, the illiterati screamed these were ‘propaganda’ and a waste of tax dollars.* Now this council has done the…
Illegal or Just Inappropriate Meetings?
Collingwood’s three standing committees consist solely of three members of council, each.* These committees of three each hold regular, published monthly meetings, hear public delegations, address public issues, post an…
Jade Helm 15 and the Madness of America
For a guy who gets great entertainment from reading the wild and wacky conspiracy theories that sprout like mushrooms online, I was surprised that I missed the rapid growth of…
Chinese Wisdom
As I promised in an earlier post, here are some of the epithets and sayings found in some of the Four Books of the Chinese canon. I think these are…
Signs – of the Apocalypse?
Councillor Cam Ecclestone made a comment at council earlier this month that he had been contacted by several residents concerned about the new sign on the Rexall Drug store on…
The Not-My-Fault Dance
There’s a story in this weekend’s Collingwood Connection about the PUC board meeting this week. The board confirmed that council’s dumping unexpected costs on the utility will mean an unplanned…
Fishy Thoughts
Canadians, the headline reads, now have shorter attention span than goldfish thanks to portable devices. The story in today’s National Post underscores a growing problem that is fuelled by technology:…
Rethinking Parking
Parking in Collingwood – especially downtown – has been a contentious issue since at least the mid-1980s. Numerous studies have been done advocating a variety of answers, none of them…
May’s Breads and Pasta: 1
So far this month, I’ve made two loaves and one batch of pasta. But the month is barely started, so I have lots of time to make more. The breads…
The Four Books
For many centuries, the core of Chinese education was focused on four classical works from the Confucian school: The Analects, The Great Learning, The Mencius, and Maintaining Perfect Balance. This…
Reward or Punishment?
Which works best in compelling behaviour of your subordinates: the carrot or the stick? Science has come up with the answer in a new study about how to get results…
The Worm Turns
This morning when I was doing my regular news search online, I came across two stories that stopped me cold: we’re being invaded. By worms. Yep. Worms. Not the slimy…
Ontario’s Sex Education
As Frank Zappa sang in his 1968 song, What’s The Ugliest Part Of Your Body?: What’s the ugliest Part of your body? What’s the ugliest Part of your body? Some…
The Count of Monte Cristo
Many of us grew up on the stories of Alexandre Dumas; from cartoons to comic books, TV series and movies. And, yes, books, albeit often abridged for the young market,…
Someone’s Paying Attention
I was glad to see the Connection is attending and reporting on some of the council standing committee meetings. The media need to be there to shine a light on…
Turning Positives into Negatives
Once upon a time, when George Cerny was the publisher, the Enterprise-Bulletin newspaper was an avid and active local promoter: the indefatigable cheerleader for the town; for its events, activities,…