randomosity

Ok. The con­stant CBC warn­ings that this pro­gramme con­tains coarse lan­guage is cer­tainly the hint that the CBC has yet to warm to Brian Mul­roney. A rather tepid present­a­tion. The chal­lenge to the film maker was to take the taped con­ver­sa­tions and find a way to make them visu­ally com­pel­ling. Although a good col­lec­tion of doc­u­ment­ary foot­age and occa­sional switched between soundtrack and voice overs, Peter Newman’s self-described role as ‘pet news­man’ causes a real lack of counter voice or even nar­ra­tion that does come across in the book. All in all des­pite the good foot­age, the book is a far more com­pel­ling product. Nonetheless,listening to a man seek­ing to con­stantly jus­tify his actions, remind of his hard knocks, our former prime min­is­ter comes across as a sniv­el­ing twit, para­noid, and con­vinced that he was a bet­ter man than the coun­try deserved…always con­vinced that he was doing the right thing…his remark refer­ring to the ‘genu­ine mediocrity’ of the Cana­dian media seems to really cap­ture his feel­ings towards the cit­izens of Canada in general.

So…why would any­one vol­un­tar­ily attend a sem­inar on Admin­is­tra­tion and Book-keeping in Renais­sance and Early Mod­ern Italy? Even the lec­turer was sur­prised by the turnout. Stand­ing room only at Vic­toria Uni­ver­sity. The work­shop was very fas­cin­at­ing and a use­ful look at the ori­gins of the double entry sys­tem of book-keeping. Dr. Mauro Car­boni gave an enthu­si­astic and extremely step-by-step and logical look at the fin­an­cial records of the Monte di Peita of Bologna. As it turns out when you say busi­ness terms in Italian they sound much more exotic. Partitorum (Minute Book), Vade­mecum (Admin­is­trator), Pri­ore (Chair­man), Eco­nomo (Chief Admin­is­trator), Com­pi­on­eri (Chief Book­keeper), Quaderni di cassa (Day­book). Aren’t these great? Ser­i­ously, the rationale for devel­op­ment of the ela­bour­ate sys­tem of fin­an­cial records that we are so famil­iar with today wasn’t always so com­mon. This short work­shop provided some remark­able insight on the need to stem rampant embez­zle­ment and provide busi­ness­men with the abil­ity to imme­di­ately be able to determ­ine the fin­an­cial health of their enterprises.

Just back from a great week­end away at my first fen­cing tour­na­ment. The Mac bus headed off on Fri­day and we were in King­ston just before midenight. Short nights sleep and we were on the bus at 6 the next morn­ing. I got to fence Epee after all and we had a great time. Didn’t move past the first round, but got some good exper­i­ence. Sunday I warmed up with foil­ists and then was altern­ate for the Sabre C team. The team did great against three A teams and came close to win­ning the last match. All in all a great weekend.