The sum of all knowledge
In his 2004 book, The Know-It-All, A. J. Jacobs tells of his quest to become “the smartest person in the world” by reading the Encyclopedia Britannica from cover to cover.…
Ian Chadwick
Losing the world, and some sleep, but enjoying it
Brave New World – not the novel of a dystopian future by Aldous Huxley – is the name of the latest add-on for Civilization V, following after Gods &…
Small glitch, please stay tuned
Oops. Seems there’s a coding glitch in the latest WordPress update. Comments are getting attached to a header image rather than to the post they’re supposed to be associated with.…
Putdownable books?
A recent article in The Independent said that J.K. Rowling’s new book and the abysmally-written 50 Shades of Grey were among the books most put down by readers as unfinishable.…
Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde
After reading the play by Shakespeare last week, I decided to tackle Chaucer’s epic 8,000-line poem about the Trojan lovers, Troilus and Cressida (or Criseyde as Chaucer writes it). It’s…
Casinos redux
First let’s clarify the terms. A “casino” was never really in the discussion, although just about everyone used that term. What the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp. (OLG) offered was…
Believing is Seeing
“He who permits himself to tell a lie once,” wrote Thomas Jefferson (in a letter to his nephew, Peter Carr, from Paris, France, 1785), “finds it much easier to do…
A Sneak Peak Inside Our New Fire Hall
Councillor Lloyd and I took a tour through the new fire hall, at the corner of High and Third Streets, today. It’s still under construction, but the main components are…
Centennial Pool Gets Finishing Touches
A sneak peak into Centennial Pool a few weeks before it re-opens. Councillor Lloyd and I took a look around today (July 9) at how it’s progressing. We were very…
Troilus and Cressida
I’ve always found Troilus and Cressida a difficult play. The characters all seem jaded, cynical, opportunistic, stuffily sanctimonious, lecherous or simply underhanded. Some are merely unpleasant, others are despicable, reprehensible.…
Racism and the US Civil Rights movement retold
As I read through Rick Perlstein’s book, Nixonland, about American politics and life in the 1950s and 60s, the Civil Rights movement and the reaction to it by white Americans,…
Why are Pickup Trucks so Anti-Pedestrian?
Take a look at the back of any of today’s pickup trucks. Notice the exhaust pipe, under the vehicle? It points to the right. The same side of the road…
Reading, Writing and Memory
“Memory,” he read the headline as he settled into the armchair, resting his elbows on the wide arms to expand the National Post paper to its fullest, “declines much slower…
The CAO Conpsiracies
Collingwood has appointed an interim CAO, John Brown, former city manager of Brantford, St. John’s and Oshawa, to help the town’s administration and governance during the interim while we search…
The Decline in Media Credibility and Profitability
Last August the Pew research Center released the results of its latest study on how much the American public trusts the media. This has been part of an ongoing study…
Who Knows Where the Time Goes?
I was thinking of the lines from that Fairport Convention song this week as we walked through Toronto on our three-day mini-holiday. I can still hear Sandy Denny’s wonderful, haunting…
How should a municipality deal with cigarette litter?
I was sitting on a decorative rock on the landscaping west of Loblaws, this weekend, waiting while Susan was inside and amusing myself at the bad driving habits of our…
The Game of the Book of Thrones
No, it’s not about that heavyweight book series by George Martin, or the TV series based on it (or even about how you really need to read the books to…
A Little Uke on the Side
About 20 kilometres from home, while mentally playing the piece I had practiced all week, I asked myself if I had remembered to pack my tuner. I remembered taking it…
Review: The Life of Pi
We watched Life of Pi last night, a film that has garnered much critical acclaim and won four coveted Oscar awards (although it has not been without controversies). I had…