February 2012
36 posts
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Porsche 911 (991) Carrera S w/ 3.8 litre flat-six.
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Trouble in Toryland →
A catalogue of the vile behaviour of Canada’s current governing party.
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“Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood...”
– Will Durant
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In Service to the Public Good →
Yesterday, Frank Di Giorgio told the Globe: “If I’m a top member of the bureaucracy and I can’t support a new mayor’s mandate, I should either resign or find a new position or approach.” This is a mirrored fun house version of government, everything all swollen or shrunk out of its rightful proportion. If you’re a bureaucrat your job and obligation is to investigate the ramifications of any new...
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TTC Chair to Councillors: What's Next? →
On Monday, Ms. Stintz said she will press the commissioners who are eager to shake up leadership at the transit system to answer a crucial question: What’s next?
“At the end of the day it is the riders who will pay the price if we can’t bring some order to this chaos,” she said. “The TTC is supposed to be a professional organization, not a political organization. We need to bring stability to...
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“Many persons have believed that this book’s miraculous stupidities were...”
– Mark Twain on English As She Is Spoke
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Margaret Wente on internet privacy →
I am scarcely the first person to point out that Stephen Harper’s government likes to demonize its opponents, or that it has a nasty authoritarian streak. But in this case, the dissent is unusually widespread. Those with doubts about the bill include opposition politicians, civil libertarians, privacy commissioners and Internet experts – plus more than a few small-c conservatives who wonder why...
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“He can either stand with us or with the child pornographers.”
– Vic Toews, Minister of Public Safety, to critics of online surveillance bill.
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“Gréber rightly emphasized that the desire for beauty is not the preserve of...”
– Hans Blumenfeld on Ottawa’s Gréber Plan
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Rob Ford pays the price of obstinacy →
He ignored the host of transit experts who called his vision nonsense. He refused to take his plans to city council, bypassing the city’s supreme democratic body. He spurned the TTC manager and TTC chair who dared to question him. But on Wednesday, council struck back, handing the mayor his worst defeat and rubbishing his transit blueprint.
[…]
More than $8-billion in funding was at...
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Boyle Heights and Gentrification →
nickoftimelosangelesblog:
For those of you that live in LA or are familiar with it, I’ve been thinking about what area is next for ‘gentrification’. 5-10 years ago, it was Silver Lake and then Echo Park. Now Highland Park is going through the same thing and I am betting that Boyle Heights will be after that. What do you…
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“If our best and our brightest recent graduates applied themselves to the project...”
– Danielle Etzler, Harvard GSD
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“All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the...”
– J.K. Galbraith
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“High sentiments always win in the end, The leaders who offer blood, toil, tears...”
– George Orwell
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January 2012
32 posts
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Elmore Leonard's Ten Rules
These are rules I’ve picked up along the way to help me remain invisible when I’m writing a book, to help me show rather than tell what’s taking place in the story. If you have a facility for language and imagery and the sound of your voice pleases you, invisibility is not what you are after, and you can skip the rules. Still, you might look them over.
1. Never open a book...
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Vonnegut's Eight Rules
Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.
Start as close to the end as possible.
Be a sadist. Now matter how sweet...
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Hemingway's Six Rules
Use short sentences. Use short first paragraphs. Use vigorous English. Be positive, not negative.
Eliminate every superfluous word, as “Funeral services will be at 2 o’clock Tuesday,” not “The funeral services will be held at the hour of 2 o’clock on Tuesday.” “He said” is better than “He said in the course of conversation.”
Avoid the use of adjectives, especially such extravagant...
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“I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of shit. I try to put the...”
– Ernest Hemingway to F. Scott Fitzgerald
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A man said to the universe: “Sir, I exist!” “However,” replied the universe, “The fact has not created in me “A sense of obligation.”
Stephen Crane
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While editing The Sun Also Rises, Maxwell Perkins had to decide how to handle the many obscenities in Hemingway’s text. He planned a lunch with the author and kept a list of words to discuss with him.
While Perkins was at lunch, Charles Scribner came looking for him and, finding his office empty, consulted his calendar. It read “shit piss fuck bitch.”
When Perkins returned, Scribner said, “You...
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Wikipedia's articles are neutral; its existence...
We depend on a legal infrastructure that makes it possible for us to operate. And we depend on a legal infrastructure that also allows other sites to host user-contributed material, both information and expression. For the most part, Wikimedia projects are organizing and summarizing and collecting the world’s knowledge. We’re putting it in context, and showing people how to make sense of it.
But...
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Be good, be good, be always good, And now & then be clever, But don’t you ever be too good, Nor ever be too clever; For such as be too awful good They awful lonely are, And such as often clever be Get cut & stung & trodden on by persons of lesser mental capacity, for this kind do by a law of their construction regard exhibitions of superior intellectuality as an offensive...