A change of pace this week and next. I’m on the water 8 days out of 15, racing around Vancouver Island. Our boat is Surfrider, a Santa Cruz 50 out of the Royal Vancouver Yacht Club, owned and helmed by my long-time favourite skipper Greg Johnson. We have a base crew of 9 who are…
Month: May 2019
Social Commentary
Whose Housing Disaster?
by renaissanceadmin • • 0 Comments
Front page headline in the Vancouver Sun last Tuesday: Billions in home equity lost! According to a recent report, housing prices actually fell by about $90 billion in the past year. Panic, Panic, the Sky is Falling Think of all the other businesses that will be affected! The cause? “Demand-side taxes.” Whatever those are. But they’re…
Social Commentary
The Last Gasp…for Which Side?
by renaissanceadmin • • 0 Comments
The recent spate of anti-abortion legislation in the United States, along with a surge in similar outbreaks of conservatism in Canadian provincial elections, is a predictable and unfortunate manifestation of the usual swing of politics. The bad news is the damage these movements do to social progress in the long term and to the people…
Social Commentary
Civility in Political Discussion
by renaissanceadmin • • 0 Comments
In honour of our mothers, who seem to spend a lot of their time trying to teach us to be polite to each other, today’s post is a call for more civil discourse on the Internet. It used to be a rule that politics and religion were not de rigueur topics for polite dinner table discussion. This…
Social Commentary
Gas Consumption…Then and Now
by renaissanceadmin • • 0 Comments
My first car was a ’55 Ford Fairlane with a V8. Because of the importance of fuel cost to a teenager, I remember the amount: $0.49 a gallon in my home town. I also remember my car’s fuel consumption: for the time, a reasonable 24 mpg. That’s 12 litres/100 km for you metric sorts. In…