February 2012
36 posts
1 tag
ListenPorsche 911 (991) Carrera S w/ 3.8 litre flat-six.
Feb 29th
1 note
1 tag
Trouble in Toryland →
A catalogue of the vile behaviour of Canada’s current governing party.
Feb 28th
1 tag
Feb 27th
1 tag
Feb 27th
2 tags
“Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood...”
– Will Durant
Feb 26th
1 tag
Feb 25th
14,532 notes
1 tag
Feb 24th
324 notes
4 tags
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...
Feb 23rd
1 tag
Feb 23rd
2 notes
1 tag
Feb 22nd
49 notes
5 tags
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...
Feb 21st
1 note
4 tags
Feb 21st
2 tags
Feb 20th
1 note
1 tag
Feb 20th
22 notes
2 tags
Feb 19th
273 notes
1 tag
Feb 19th
48 notes
2 tags
“Many persons have believed that this book’s miraculous stupidities were...”
– Mark Twain on English As She Is Spoke
Feb 18th
1 note
2 tags
Feb 18th
5 notes
1 tag
Feb 17th
3 tags
Feb 17th
15 notes
Feb 17th
2,963 notes
3 tags
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...
Feb 17th
3 tags
“He can either stand with us or with the child pornographers.”
– Vic Toews, Minister of Public Safety, to critics of online surveillance bill.
Feb 14th
5 notes
3 tags
“Gréber rightly emphasized that the desire for beauty is not the preserve of...”
– Hans Blumenfeld on Ottawa’s Gréber Plan
Feb 13th
1 note
2 tags
Feb 12th
53 notes
3 tags
Feb 11th
5 tags
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...
Feb 10th
2 tags
Feb 10th
3 notes
2 tags
Feb 9th
2 tags
Feb 8th
51 notes
3 tags
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…
Feb 7th
7 notes
3 tags
Feb 6th
300 notes
1 tag
Feb 6th
19 notes
2 tags
“If our best and our brightest recent graduates applied themselves to the project...”
– Danielle Etzler, Harvard GSD
Feb 4th
1 note
1 tag
“All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the...”
– J.K. Galbraith
Feb 3rd
1 tag
“High sentiments always win in the end, The leaders who offer blood, toil, tears...”
– George Orwell
Feb 2nd
1 tag
Feb 1st
90 notes
January 2012
32 posts
Jan 31st
289 notes
Jan 30th
197 notes
2 tags
Jan 29th
245 notes
2 tags
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...
Jan 28th
2 tags
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...
Jan 27th
2 tags
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...
Jan 26th
4 notes
2 tags
“I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of shit. I try to put the...”
– Ernest Hemingway to F. Scott Fitzgerald
Jan 25th
26 notes
1 tag
Jan 23rd
65 notes
2 tags
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
Jan 22nd
1 tag
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...
Jan 21st
3 tags
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...
Jan 18th
1 tag
Jan 18th
46 notes
2 tags
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...
Jan 15th