Ten years ago today I published my first post on this site. I wasn’t sure if this blogging thing was going to last but since then I have posted more then 11,000 times to the site and the traffic has grown quite a bit. There hasn’t been many changes to the site. It was first [...]
June, 2011:
Column: Handling debt poses challenge
Today’s column in The StarPhoenix. Former mayor Henry Dayday wrote to council in May questioning how much debt the city was taking on and how Saskatoon residents were going to pay for it. He pointed out that the city has $175 million in debt on its books and potentially another $225 million related to new [...]
How $200 million changed poetry
From the Chicago Tribune Poetry magazine started in Chicago in 1912, and during the ensuing century, the magazine’s history and the history of American poetry often were joined at the hip. It published an unknown T.S. Eliot, gave early support to Langston Hughes, discovered Wallace Stevens, James Merrill, Gwendolyn Brooks. What Poetry rarely had was [...]
The deficit we imagine vs. the deficit we have
The New York Times is reporting on the deficit and debt ceiling fight that is happening right now. Eventually, the country will have to confront the deficit we have, rather than the deficit we imagine. The one we imagine is a deficit caused by waste, fraud, abuse, foreign aid, oil industry subsidies and vague out-of-control [...]
30 of the harshest things one author has said to another
Of course the harshest remarks are probably left anonymously on Amazon.com Ernest Hemingway on William Faulkner: “Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?” Mark Twain on Jane Austen: “I haven’t any right to criticize books, and I don’t do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize [...]
What makes Helsinki the best city in the world?
Check out this video that asks the question, “What makes Helsinki the city with the highest quality of life in the world?” As Monocle says, Rising from fifth position in 2010, Helsinki outperformed Zürich at number 2 and Copenhagen at number 3 to claim the mantle as the world’s most liveable city. An unorthodox but [...]
Column: Looking at some bigger issues
Tomorrow I woke up to a steady stream of email and tweets coming into my Blackberry about my first column appearing today in The StarPhoenix. It’s an introductory column so there wasn’t a lot of original research put into it (I knew the topic pretty well). While today the column appeared on A3, it is [...]
Titanic II
On Netflix the other night, Mark and I watched Titanic II which is probably the worst movie we have ever seen. The story wasn`t horrible but the acting, CGI, cheap sets, cliched casting, and even the lighting was. Yeah, you heard me, even the lighting was bad. It was so bad, Mark was upset that [...]
When social housing was paradise
An interesting look at the Chicago housing projects during the 1950-70s by Joy Connelly The communities created by the Chicago Housing Authority were all, by current wisdom, destined to fail. The new-built estates were large and isolated – Regent Park-style low-rises punctuated with high-rise towers. They were overwhelmingly black communities, drawn from the tenements on [...]
I’m angry at the government as well
Cosmo Industries is upset with the City of Saskatoon City Council. I am to but for totally different reasons. Saskatoon doesn’t have a minor league ball team, the Riders don’t hold their training camp in Saskatoon anymore, there is a massive pothole on a street I drive to work on. The list goes on. Cosmo’s [...]
Dirk Nowitski’s “Decision”
Bill Simmons has a great article on Grantland about Dirk Nowitski. Along the way he gives a theory about what happened to LeBron James Remember when Wade tore into LeBron with three-plus minutes remaining in Game 3? When he yelled at him for eight solid seconds? When there was genuine anger in his eyes? When [...]
