Bob Ramsay

Fast-Checking. Fact-Checking.

Leave a Comment / Featured, Omnium-Gatherum / By Bob Ramsay

All of us need to open a new folder on our desktops called “AI”.

Or “Eh-eye?” if we’re still not sure that artificial intelligence will overwhelm our 2,500-year-old ideas of reading and writing and creativity.

Into this folder, we should drop any article or video that catches our interest about the future of AI. We should fill it up once a week at least, no matter how despairing the prediction about AI is. Ever since ChatGTP made us aware that climate change is not our only existential crisis, I’ve been avoiding those who say we will soon be enslaved by our technology, and avidly reading those who say AI will be our salvation.

But at what other time in history have humans (at least those of us who can read and write) been able to not only be bystanders at the revolution, but players in it. Indeed, our participation is compulsory. We’ve all been drafted. So best that we at least learn what the rules will be, and how they’ll change because they’ll change faster than any other revolution in history. And for those of us who crave a ring-side seat to history, here’s your chance.

Meanwhile…

Whither the weather?

Leave a Comment / Omnium-Gatherum / By Bob Ramsay

A friend of mine who spent a year in Leavenworth said: “You can get used to anything.” But getting used to summer sunshine in March one day, followed by a brutal snowstorm the next, will take some getting used to. I get that our punishment for overwarming the earth is extreme weather. But I can see a huge uptick in the sale of suitcases, for example, so that we can put our summer duds in one and our winter ones in another when we go to Montreal for the weekend. Or when we pack our bathing suit in the trunk, to think: “Where’s my toque?” No wonder North Americans consume well over two-thirds of the world’s production of antidepressant drugs. It’s the weather.

Meanwhile…

A place to stand? Or a place we can’t stand?

Leave a Comment / Ramsay Writes / By Bob Ramsay

My brother Jim built Ontario Place, so I have a familial interest in the fate of the theme park on Toronto’s shore whose future is being loudly fought over. I also have friends on both sides of that debate.

What’s incontestable is that you should take an active interest in its future – not just because Ontario Place will likely be part of your leisure life, but because it will signal so much of what kind of city Toronto is and can be.

While Ontario Place is owned by the province, which is pushing forward on its plans for a new theme park to open as early as 2027 and serve up to five million people a year, last week Toronto’s planning department issued a critical report on the facility’s new spa in particular.

In 2019 a citizen’s group, Ontario Place for All, was formed, and Alex Bozikovic, The Globe and Mail’s architecture critic, has written a number of gloves-off reviews of the park’s design and funding. Meanwhile, Therme Group, the Austrian-based spa designers, have already made alterations to their original design.

One big question is whether Toronto’s next Mayor will support the new Ontario Place the way our last one did.

There’s a lot at stake here. Well worth some time to study up on the issues and the facts.

Meanwhile…

Wade Davis

Leave a Comment / RamsayTalks / By Bob Ramsay

If anyone knows about the promise and perils of psychedelics, it’s the renowned author and anthropologist Wade Davis.

In 1996, he wrote One River, the story of the riches of the Amazon rainforest and the extraordinary plants whose effects range from medicinal, to magical, to marginal.

Since then, he has gone on to become one of the world’s authorities on the deep connection between people and plants; and how psychedelics are enjoying a resurgence as a treatment for many mental maladies.

So what better time than now to have this daring and original thinker talk about the psychedelic journey, past, present and future?

Please join us to hear Wade Davis.

To say the world is his stage downplays his effect on Covent Garden, the Met, Stratford, the National Arts Centre, Quebec City, the West End, Cirque du Soleil, the Canadian Opera Company, and of course many moving pictures on screens large and small.

And now, Robert Lepage will reveal where he’s headed next.

The Mounties and the English language.

Leave a Comment / Omnium-Gatherum / By Bob Ramsay

I’ve never been a fan of Brenda Lucki, the Commissioner of the RCMP who decided to retire next month. Far from being an empathic female leader, she struck me as more of an old-fashioned, command-and-control leader who had a great deafness to politics and people.

But maybe the Mounties’ current state of disrepair is not just about leadership, but language. George Orwell’s famous essay, Politics and the English Language comes to mind when I read that, instead of abandoning a controversial neck restraint, the Mounties issued new guidance in November that “strengthens and clarifies definitions, oversight and accountability measures, the risks of applying the technique on medically high-risk groups, requirements for medical attention, the threshold for use and requirement to recertify annually on the policy regarding application.”

Meanwhile…

Turn every page.

Leave a Comment / Omnium-Gatherum / By Bob Ramsay

You’ll get much more from the original sources of a story than even the deepest in-depth article. From this month…

A landmark privacy ruling: The Supreme Court of Great Britain ruled that a group of luxury condo owners in London could close the Tate Modern’s viewing platform that’s let “hundreds of thousands” of people gaze into their homes and lives.

Billionaire blow-up. Gautam Adani used to be worth $120 billion. Today, he’s worth $61 billion. The difference is from a scathing report by Wall Street’s Hindenburg Research whose title says it all: “Adani Group: How the world’s 3rd richest man is pulling the largest con in corporate history.”

Meanwhile…

I have seen the enemy and it is…

Leave a Comment / Omnium-Gatherum / By Bob Ramsay

Words. An odd thought from someone who lives for them and earns a livelihood from them.

But while we’re all still fighting over fake news and free speech and truth and consequences, less than two months ago on November 22nd the San Francisco company Open AI released its latest generation writing bot called Chat GPT. It is to the revolution of thought what wheels were to roads.

Given the initial media response, ChatGPT will either shutter universities, vaporize teachers and homework, and eliminate rational debate, or usher in a new age of enlightenment. But as with many new technologies and bad drugs, the early days ChatGPT is fun and often magic. You ask it a question; it gives you a lengthy, thoughtful, nuanced, and often chummy reply. From 50 words to 5,000. Kul!

Meanwhile…

I’m not wild about Harry.

Leave a Comment / Omnium-Gatherum / By Bob Ramsay

Like most people who come from a family, I cringe for the Windsors whose prodigal son gives fresh new meaning to the idea of zealous indiscretion. And we haven’t even heard yet from the really offended party, Harry’s wife, who lived for some years in Toronto at 10 Yarmouth Road.

Perhaps we can turn our heads, then, to the matter of Royal Warrants. These are granted to companies that provide goods or services to the Royal Household. Everyone is waiting for Charles to be crowned so that an entire new generation of companies can put on their jam jars: “Supplier of jam to King Charles III.” You, too, can apply!

Meanwhile…

“Come see us before we come see you.”

2 Comments / Omnium-Gatherum / By Bob Ramsay

I remember growing up in Edmonton, Christmas was the busiest time of year. My father was a florist and my mom and I picked him up at 6 p.m. on Christmas Eve and brought him home, exhausted, to sleep – just as soon as he dealt with the complaints from customers who hadn’t got their flowers yet. He’d be in bed by 10 and slept for 12 hours straight, which let Santa deliver gifts late the next morning. But no matter how tired he was, we never forgot to put out milk and cookies for Santa on Christmas Eve, a tradition that still has me headed to the fridge tonight.

Meanwhile…

Happy birthday, Jesus

Leave a Comment / Omnium-Gatherum / By Bob Ramsay

Meanwhile…

Jack Diamond, Architect, 1932-2022

Leave a Comment / Omnium-Gatherum / By Bob Ramsay

Jack Diamond died last Sunday, one week short of his 90th birthday, and proof that living an engaged life often means a long one. He hated the word “starchitect”, but he was one because he had the will and the vision and the ego to create some of the great concert halls and opera houses in the world today. These are not run by people who lack willpower themselves, as this documentary (Password: Master) on his creation of the Mariinsky II Theatre in St. Petersburg, Russia, reveals.

Dear Mr. Putin: “People are not beans.”

Leave a Comment / Omnium-Gatherum / By Bob Ramsay

“Units are not units, except on a map,” said Frederick Kagan, a senior fellow and director of the critical-threats project at the American Enterprise Institute. “If you take a bunch of pissed-off, demoralized, scared, untrained humans, give them weapons and throw them into a fighting force, you don’t have soldiers.”

This is just one problem Russia’s president faces: a Potemkin Village of an army. The other threat comes from the 300 million other Europeans who will pay a fortune to stay warm this winter and never forget the man and the nation that did this to them.

Meanwhile…

Fast-Checking. Fact-Checking.

A place to stand? Or a place we can’t stand?

Wade Davis

The Mounties and the English language.

Turn every page.

I have seen the enemy and it is…

I’m not wild about Harry.

“Come see us before we come see you.”

Happy birthday, Jesus

Jack Diamond, Architect, 1932-2022

Dear Mr. Putin: “People are not beans.”

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