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Cultural Travel and Foodie Travel
First, an explanation for my silence for most of the month. One week I was in Cambridge, MA for the end of the week (when I normally post), and I have also been busy preparing and grading exams, doing my annual reports for the university, writing a grant application, and revising a paper for resubmission.…
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Standing Up to the Russians: Return of A Presidential Narrative
In my graduate narratives course, our narrative-of-the-week feature has frequently looked at how journalists incorporate narratives at the start of their articles to capture the reader’s attention. This is an alternative to the standard inverted pyramid model that involves summarizing the entire story in the first paragraph. My guess is that roughly 80 percent of…
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Presenting Complex Narratives on Film: Three Different Approaches
During the last three weeks, my graduate narratives course has looked at three films, each an adaptation of an historical book: North Country, based on the book Class Action about the Jensen versus Eveleth Taconite legal battle over sexual harassment; All the President’s Men, based on the book by that name; and Charlie Wilson’s War,…
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Chinese President Taken Hostage by Tibetans at G20 Summit: What If?
Last week’s public management class was about crisis management, and I always start with a simulation. The scenario I came up with this year involved a high-level hostage-taking at the upcoming G20 summit in Toronto. Somehow, a group called the Tibetan Liberation Organization takes President Hu of China hostage in his hotel suite. Students were…
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Simulating the Ontario Budget Process
Over the last three weeks, I had the students in my public management course simulate the Ontario budget process, and here’s what happened. I assigned them to two-person teams, including the premier and chief of staff, minister and deputy minister of finance and of the largest program departments (Health; Education; Training, Colleges, and Universities; Community…
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More on Nexus
Now that I’ve actually used the Nexus kiosks on a quick trip to Boston, I have three more things to say. First, one of my readers mentioned that he applied to the Canadian Government and received his card in 4 weeks, which was a week or two faster than my application to the US Government.…
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Joining Nexus
I travel to the US fairly frequently and, as a result of the lengthy delays after the foiled terrorist incident last December 25, I decided to join the Nexus program. Nexus is a voluntary program in which travelers who are qualified and willing to provide an iris scan can avoid lineups at both Canada and…
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Who is an Ideal Juror?
One of the questions we discussed in yesterday’s narratives and management class is what would constitute an ideal juror and whether the protagonists of A Trial by Jury (Graham Burnett) and Twelve Angry Men (juror number 8, portrayed by Henry Fonda) meet that definition. Burnett came off well in the discussion, with the conclusion that,…
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The Narratives Around Us
This week I was on the lookout for compelling narratives out there in the zeitgeist and found two worth discussing, both focusing on automobile safety (or the lack thereof). The anchor story on the front page of last Monday’s (Feb. 1, 2010) New York Times was headlined “Toyota’s Slow Awakening to a Deadly Problem.” The…
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The Canada Revenue Agency: A Hotbed of Innovation?
For the skeptics who claim that innovation in government is an oxymoron, the notion that a tax collection agency could be innovative seems even more oxymoronic. Yet my intuition tells me that the Canada Revenue Agency indeed has bragging rights to such a claim. Historically, it has been a rapid adopter of information technology, using…
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A Look Back at the Final Exam in Management and Narrative
I see a final exam as an opportunity to challenge students to demonstrate what they have learned by applying the course material to situations they have not encountered in the course. But because the examinations are never returned, the learning loop is not completed. To rectify this, today’s post will be about the final exam…
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Digital State 2.5
A little over a year ago, I wrote a paper entitled Digital State 2.0 reviewing the major developments in the use of IT in Canadian politics and government between 2006 and 2009. It is being published in a festschrift – due for release any day now – in honour of the retirement of the eminent…
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Don Valley Golf Course: A Run Back in Time
Back in high school, I played golf as often as I could. My family didn’t belong to a club, so I played the public courses and the one I liked best was the City’s Don Valley Golf Course. If I recall, the total fee for juniors under 18 starting before 11 am was $.95, of…
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Highway 407 Revisited
Just as Highway 61 (running from New Orleans to Duluth, Minnesota) kept reappearing in Bob Dylan’s life, Highway 407 ETR keeps reappearing in mine. I co-authored a book about it six years ago (If You Build it … at www.407etrbook.com), and I get asked to comment on its ongoing controversies. I was just on Goldhawk…
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In the Loop? Not Really
The movie In the Loop, released last summer in the cinemas and on DVD last week, is the successor to Armando Ianucci’s 2005 television series The Thick of It (the subject of my post last March 13). The series received considerable recognition when initially released, then was cancelled after its costar, Chris Langham, who played…
- I am Professor of Public Management Emeritus at the University of Toronto, having retired in July 2020 after a 45-year academic career.
- I continue to be engaged in research, writing, and giving professional presentations. With my co-author and spouse Beth Herst, I am completing a book on narrative and politics.
- On this website I post blogs about politics, narrative, and my life experiences.
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