The Breadbin

Last Thursday into Friday, the right-leaning Mayor of Toronto ran a marathon committee meeting: twenty one hours and ten minutes. The purpose of the meeting was to gather public opinion on what services should be cut to make up a $774-million hole in the city budget. (Municipalities in Ontario are required, by law, to table balanced budgets.)
Predictably, Ford and his committee were told, over and over again, not to cut anything at all. Also predictably, the mayor was and continues to be a target for a CN Tower full of hatred, much of it irrational and visceral. Yes, Rob Ford and his brother Doug are right-wingers with little patience for things they don't use themselves. (Doug, a city councillor himself, made waves last week telling Margaret Atwood, of all people, to get herself elected or shut up. Atwood had leapt to the defence of Toronto libraries, which are possibly on the Ford chopping block.)
It remains to be seen what Ford will actually cut. He was handily elected last year…

My heart grieves for the families affected by the atrocities in and around Oslo, Norway.
As with any terrible occurrence, be it a natural disaster or a cold-blooded murder spree, the meaning is up to those who survive and those who look on. In this case, I find it more than a little unsettling how quickly so many media sources assumed Islamic terrorists were behind what is turning out to be a politically motivated hate crime of the highest order.
We can deduce from social networking clues that Anders Behring Breivik, aka "Andrew Berwick", considered himself to be a force. Indeed, his one and only tweet, posted the day before the massacre, is a quote from John Stuart Mill: "One person with a belief is equal to the force of 100,000 who have only interests."
What were Breivik's beliefs? Do you want the long version, which runs over FIFTEEN HUNDRED PAGES, impeccably organized and endnoted, a compendium astounding in its seeming respectability through very long str…

I've been thinking about getting an e-reader.
Most of the people I know who own one are rabid converts...including people who swore up and down that they'd never buy one. Some of the things I've heard:
"The printed page is so yesterday. It even smells musty!" "I can carry an entire library around with me anywhere I go!" "I used to read a book a year, now I'm reading all the time!"
Retailers are hyping the things to the high heavens. "Our latest model provides you with extra-long battery life, the ability to read in direct sunlight...and it has a 700 book capacity!"
Humph. My inner curmudgeon has a response at the ready for each selling point.
What if I LIKE the smell of books? I typically read one book at a time. You know, since I only have the two eyes, and they work together. I read considerably more than one book a year, my wife outreads me by a wide margin, and everything we read is printed on dead tree. Battery life, eh? Well, my Eye…