Polite Company

Flashback!

2010-12-25T12:46:00.001-08:00

To an old, and quite popular, post I did a few years back:

The Holiest Day of the Year.

Because, let's face it, for guys the big deal is getting some. Merry Christmas!

Pascal's Three Card Monte

2010-12-22T14:45:00.002-08:00

For those who don't know, Pascal's Wager runs something like this:

A) If you believe in God, and are right, you achieve paradise when you die;
B) If you believe in God but are wrong, there is no afterlife, so when you die nothing happens;
C) If you don't believe in God and are right, there is no afterlife, so when you die, nothing happens;
D) If you don't believe in God and are wrong, you burn in Hell forever;
E) It is only reward and no risk to believe in God, so why not?

The problem is that this is binary thinking in what is pretty much guaranteed a non-binary system, at least for these choices to be available. Pascal is only concerned with the Christian God in his reasoning, and fair enough given his time and place: he was a Catholic in France in the 17th century, specifically a Jansenist, a group who focused on the "fall" part of mankind. Amusingly, it's stil occasionally used today in misguided efforts to "convert atheists through reason" by people who probably don't actually know who Blaise Pascal was...

I'm going to use the same counter described by Euripides when he thought of this same argument centuries before, and for much the same reason. But first things first: Pascal's assessment of risk.

The assumption he makes is that there are two potions, believing on God or not. To which the proper response is "Which God do you mean?" There is all of one mention of atheists in the Bible, in Psalm 14:

The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.

...Which certainly puts them in their place, but that's just being scorned rather than punished. No, punishment is saved for those who worship the wrong Gods, or worship God in the wrong way. Boy HOWDY do those guys get it! There are regular wholesale slaughters of people who decide to worship different Gods or in a different way that Yahweh commands.

So given how those who believe in the God of Pascal's faith treats people who believe in him, but do so in the incorrect way (both in the multiple variants of Christianity and in the multiple variants of Islam and Judaism), what chance do the followers of other divine images have? Pascal himself said that the understanding of God is infinitely remote, so no one actually knows what it is God wants. Any one of the hundreds of images of God could be the "right" one!

So let's say Pascal and I both die - bound to happen, really, what with us being the same age and all - and go off to our reward. Then what?

Me, I die and whatever happens I can say honestly and with a clear conscience that I didn't think there was enough proof to support the existence of any God, so I didn't worship at all, sorry about that. Poor old Pascal, on the other hand, clearly believed that God existed and was happy to worship Him... right up until he was face-to-face with Horus. He's going to have a fun time explaining his way out of that one!

Seriously, what if the ancient Eqyptians were right? Or some version of Shinto where the afterlife is nothing but hanging out with your parents for eternity? Or that Mohammed was the last prophet of God, but only the Sufis got it right?

The long and short of it is that the followers of false gods are treated worse than the followers of no God at all. Which means for Pascal, there's a one in ten thousand chance he guessed right; for me, it's straight up 50-50. That, and the very real, very practical benefit of not following any scripture is that I can decide how to live for myself, and can choose to change or adapt my life as I see fit or as I'm convinced otherwise.

I'll take that bet.

Why WikiLeaks Helps Diplomacy

2010-12-14T16:03:00.003-08:00

"Tyrants tremble when they see their people with their tongues wagging."

-Italian satirist Gregorio Leti

It becomes increasingly difficult to take any of the talking heads seriously when they openly call for the assassination of a private citizen for the high crime of... embarrassment. Because, frankly, that's all the latest document dump on Wikileaks has done: embarrassed the U.S. State Department and some of the ambassadors involved.

Thus far, that's the sum total of the "damage" caused. So Canada "discovers" that we are regarded as touchy, insecure, passive-aggressive and with a tendency to knee-jerk anti-Americanism? Is there anyone out there who cares to dispute that? Heck, anyone with 20 minutes and access to the internet could discover that; and anyone with a sense of history and basic knowledge of humanity could figure it out just looking at a map! These are all tendencies we share with the other "small neighbours" of the world: New Zealand, Portugal, Ireland... Small economies beside much larger ones can be a little twitchy. Sorry about that.*

(Not to make light of hurting American diplomat's feelings, but it ends up that 20 hours with a television is actually how this conclusion was reached by the State Department. No, really.)

The cables from Mexico revealed a deep concern with the drug war going on there, especially in the border states, and whether the army can succeed in those ongoing battles.

Where things get interesting is seeing what the reaction will be in nations that lack a free press: the knowledge that other Middle Eastern nations don't support Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmahinejad has him scrambling to paint the entire thing as a set-up by the American government in an effort to discredit his leadership. Why would he do that? Because he knows that there's no way to stop the information from getting to the self-same population that he's been telling the exact opposite to.

I don't see any harm in revealing to the world that China is getting sick of the antics of North Korea, and that the younger members of the Party see little return from supporting North Korea, as their economic interests are minimal there when compared to Central America, the United States, and Africa. Bringing this out into the open does nothing but strengthen negotiations with North Korea, highlighting the madness and isolation that is Kim Jong-il. If this report makes it to the North Korean people, his position is weakened even more.

In those nations that do have a free press, what is being talked about? Mostly gossip: the worst that could be said about the relationship between most European countries and the Unites States has already been said by some newspaper or other. Describing German Chancellor Merkel as "risk averse" or French President Sarkozy as an "Emperor without clothes" is hardly shocking news.

Likewise, few surprises are coming from diplomatic cables in Central America: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is "crazy"; the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan have made association with the U.S. a political hot potato in Brazil; and the State Department wants to know how Argentina's new President Christina Fernandez relaxes after a long day.

The worst nation to get "hit" was likely Turkey, who's Prime Minister Recip Tayyip Erdogan is mentioned as being in an isolated bubble, an "iron ring of sycophantic (but contemptuous) advisers"; and who's foreign minister is called "exceptionally dangerous".

In all of this, what is actually known is out and in the open. Diplomacy that relies on playing into a leader's delusions is only effective until either the leader or his delusions change, and frankly that is going to happen sooner or later. The only thing that can have any lasting power is negotiation based on reality: anything else is doomed to failure.

*Did I mention passive-aggressive?

You Won't Understand

2010-12-12T21:32:00.003-08:00

...But thats okay. We just wrapped up production of a Mother Goose pantomime, so I haven't been here terribly often. It's been a long few months, as ever with any production, and playing the villain has left my voicebox in shreds. Today was a day of rest (and rehearsing another play - bit part with no singing, thankfully!), so I spent it writing up tomorrow morning's radio show and throwing a parody of the panto together in an exercise to make an ouroboros proud...

If you don't get it, that's okay: it's not for you to get.

Mother's Goosed - A Parody

(Whoops! Looks like there is some concern about mistaking actors for characters, so down it comes. Sorry!)

I Said QUIET!

2010-12-03T14:05:00.002-08:00

Admit it:

When you heard that a man was shot and killed with a crossbow in a public library, you were thinking the same thing I was, weren't you?

He would have used a gun, but didn't have a silencer. Hey, it was in a library!

Fight the Real Enemy

2010-11-22T17:02:00.003-08:00

This day in Whoops!

A New Jersey pastor who banned church staff from using Facebook, claiming it leads to infideity, admitted to having group sex with his wife and another couple.

Seriously, Facebook to hook up with 'old flames'? Why would you bother with that when there are so many other sites that have people on them without whatever baggage you've left behind?

I know the idea of finding lovers from the past, but I do believe in letting the past remain its own country, too. Whoever is back there has changed from when you knew them last: you know, the whole "a man cannot cross the same river twice" thing.

That being said, if you're trying to get out of a relationship, it's certainly one way to find a convenient excuse. The problem is that it's just an excuse, not a cure. The change has to come from you, for your reasons, or it just ain't gonna work.

On Impoliteness

2010-11-17T21:32:00.003-08:00

There are many ways to kill yourself. I'm given to understand that most are horribly painful/nauseating (for reference, see Dorothy Parker's Resume), but at least they're private. Really, if you're going to put yourself out of whatever misery you think you're in, have the decency to wander off into the woods well away from anyone else, would you?

Oh, and could you be good enough to call the police and tell them what you're going to do immediately before you do it? I take my dog walking in the woods around here a lot, and frankly my day would be pretty much shot if I found a human body while exploring. That's how most "dumped" bodies are found, so why not be a good sort and get the professionals to find your miserable corpse first, hey?

I bring this up because there have been two incidents this week of people running at cars on the highway in apparent efforts to kill themselves, and this latest one had a small child watch as he tried killing himself. Sorry, but that's a NO! Bad drunk/drugged/depressed inconsiderate dickweed! There is no reason to put someone through watching someone die violently on the grill of their car.

If you want to kill yourself, fine: that's your choice, and it's a shame you feel that way because it's a long-term solution to what's usually a short-term problem as well as being astoundingly selfish and greedy, but it's ultimately up to you. But for crying out loud, try not to have seven year old girls involved, okay?

Ban 55-Year Old Americans!

2010-11-05T10:47:00.003-07:00

Does the man on the right look 55 years old to you?

Because that's what the man on the left claimed he was when boarding an Air Canada flight out of Hong Kong last week. The Asian man wore a latex mask after passing through customs with his own name and passport and just before boarding the flight. Current speculation is that the older man was an accomplice, and that the two simply switched boarding passes while waiting; but he also could have targeted an older gentleman and stolen the pass at a moment of opportunity. It's not as likely because of the Aeroplan card, but still possible.

This con doesn't concern me much for a few reasons:

1) As good as the mask was, there is no way he could have avoided detection for the entire 14 hour flight. A mask like that is not only hot and stinky, the skin under it will itch like hell very quickly and simply drive whoever's under it insane. Add to that the spirit gum peeling off, the long time it takes to apply these masks on your own, and the familiarity that the cabin staff has with their passengers (far more than the gate staff who will see a person once) and they will get busted before getting to their destination. His hands, for instance, had already been noticed by flight staff.

2) Coming from Hong Kong and applying for refugee protection? Frankly, I can't say I blame him: I can't think of a totalitarian dictatorship that I wouldn't have been killed by or jailed in before I was twenty. I think I'd want to leave by any means, too!

3) The guy's got moxie. This isn't something most people would be able to pull off, and frankly I'm impressed. He wants to make a refugee claim? Go for it: if he qualifies, let him in. I like people who have this kind of drive!

It will be interesting to see what the reaction to this will be Down South (CNN broke the story first): I fully expect hyperbolic panic about terrorism and how weak Canada is on threats coming from outside their borders and a resurgence of that old canard about the 9/11 terrorists coming from Canada etc etc etc. How much attention do you think will be paid to the possible accomplice, an American citizen who gave him the boarding pass and Aeroplan card.

Clearly, we're going to have to subject people who claim to be American citizens to greater security measures. For their own protection, you understand.

Just Sayin'

2010-11-02T12:01:00.002-07:00

With the November Elections up and underway down South, it's odd to know who to blame for the lack of results coming out of the Obama administration this year:

Is it:

A) Not doing anything;
B) Not telling people what was done;
or C) People ignoring accomplishments in favour of sound bites?

I'm going with C.

This was the busiest first two years of any President in decades; yet no one seems to know it. Truly bizarre especially when compared with the utterly inert G.W. Bush who needed planes to hit buildings before he got off his ass and did something: he spent a total of three months at his ranch in Texas "on vacation" in 2001 alone, though not a whole lot was done when he was "on the job" for that first year, either.

Good luck, and stay sane.

Playing Catch-Up

2010-10-26T10:55:00.003-07:00

Religion

With an election coming up in the US, it looks like people are back to ignoring the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque". Must be a relief to know that any major protest can simply be ignored and/or ridden out until attention goes elsewhere! But even as the Muslims are breathing a sigh of relief, another group gets pushed ahead.

Witches.

Well, I suppose Wiccans generally rather than witches in particular. Bad enough trying to overcome the image of sexually gratifying yourself with a broom handle or being hideously ugly or being in league with the devil; now they have to get past being phenomenally stupid as well.

Politics

...Which brings us to the Tea Party nominees. A boon for anyone who is even marginally progressive in the US, there are over a dozen seats or Republican nominations that went to TP nominated or backed candidates, and not many in the Republican Party are happy about it. Many are making sure to add a huge "fiscal responsibility" angle to their campaigns, despite ample proof over the past twenty years that Republicans are utterly inept at managing national finances.

Even so, Republican nominees that are clearly supported by fervent, single-issue fanatics are more likely to keep the more moderate conservatives at home or even voting in favour of their rival Democrats. Which is, again, a boon for any progressives in that nation.

Sex

So long as the Democrats actually behave like progressives.

President Obama benched a federal court decision on the rather idiotic "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy brought in by former President Clinton because having gays serve openly in the military is apparently still an issue that frightens Americans. The federal court judge ruled that DADT is unconstitutional in a court case brought up by the Log Cabin Republicans (irony alert going off every time those guys are mentioned), but an injunction was granted to the Department of Justice by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals staying the ruling, at least until after the national elections. This comes after a previous effort to have DADT removed passed the House of Representatives but was filibustered by that "Maverick" John McCain.

To clarify: The Democrats got an injunction to keep a law in place that has stopped soldiers from serving in a time of war and cost over $350 million to enforce despite the removal of that policy being a large and very visible promise last Federal election; a group of Republicans (though not the party itself) fought and beat that law, which led other Republicans to decry "activist judges" and defend the Democratic policy.

The rather silly idea that serving beside gays would lead to a dissolution of the military is rather ludicrous, as the US Army has already served alongside gays in the armed forces. As of this date, only two European countries do not allow gays to serve openly in their militaries: Serbia and Greece, who have apparently decided to completely ignore their own military history.

Science

I am not a scientist. There is no possible way I could be confused for one, what with being a high school dropout and essentially unemployable for any white-collar position. So why is it I understand what this story in the Atlantic means better than the person who wrote it? It is long, and it is well written, but the deliberately antagonistic headline that writer David H. Freedman uses as a lead - implying not only that science is unreliable, but also deceitful - does nothing to help Dr. John Ioannidis' major work.

What Dr. Ioannidis did is report on the difficulty in getting accurate results in scientific studies, specifically medical ones. His own headline is also grating, and one that is used by people who don't understand what scientific method is as a catch-all for "proving" that their crackpot beliefs are better than science. Again, the entire point of Dr. Ioannidis' work is that tests have to be more rigorous before they are published, with clear methodology that is open to criticism - in short, more scientific. For a more complete response, check out Dr. David H. Gorski's (who is quoted in the Atlantic article) reply here.

Motorcycles

Missed the entire riding season because I like interesting bikes: my Goose is still out of commission because of the difficulty in getting engine parts for it. Next time, something new, perhaps... Still, looking to sell off my rebuilt RD350 to help pay for it, so I must be dedicated to the Italian.

Since I have a bike already, the next one we bring in is going to the Significant Other. We were looking at the Honda 125, which is a brilliant price and good engineering: under $4500 for a new Honda is tough to turn away from. Alas, it just didn't have the juice we need to travel highway speeds while sharing the road with logging trucks. Kawasaki's 250 Ninja is the next option, with a bit more power and a touch more heft, but after trying it on the road, I still couldn't picture the little thing hauling my fat (210 lbs) corpse around with much alacrity, never mind introducing a passenger to the already taxed shocks.

But this year, Team Green introduced a 400cc size to the stable. It's very much a middle-of-the-road bike, having only 45 horsepower and weighing in at nearly 500 pounds; but as you could probably guess by my ride, I don't mind the extra weight, and the size slips right in to the 201cc-400cc category as far as insurance is concerned. It is also apparently moving into the 650 Ninja chassis, meaning it's going to have more room to move than the 250. The down side is having a price tag that's only $1200 less than the 650, and at $7500 there's going to be a lot of competition at the price, if not at the size. No one else makes the 400cc motorcycles any more, which I admit is my second favourite size (right after 750), so it'll be interesting to see how it sells.

Hockey

Memo to Rick Rypien: if you want to reach out to fans, try Twitter.

An Unexpected Relief

2010-10-12T22:47:00.005-07:00

Funny story.

I've been working with a new show: a musical, of all things. Not really my thing, but it'll be fun, and I've never been in a pantomime before, so why not? I believe I've mentioned that I'm musically declined before? Looks like I'm "singing" ABBA in this one.

In any case, I found myself working with a slew of new people of pretty much every age and shape, two of which are quite attractive. So naturally I've been chatting regularly with one or the other when time has allowed. Over the days, I noticed they arrived in different vehicles, but the kids they brought with them seemed interchangeable. Then I caught that they lived in the same house, and was brought up cold.

Were they mother and daughter? Was the eldest girl still (or back to) living at home, and driving her own car so they can pick up other kids on the way to rehearsals?

Oops!

Granted, I'm lousy at judging ages, but looking again, I supposed it was possible for one to be in her mid-thirties and the other to be... No, no no no no no! Nooooooo... There was no way I was attracted to a 17- or 18- year old! That's literally less than half my age! I've got a certain self-image, as we all do, and mine doesn't include the Dirty Old Man:

This isn't what I am turning into, is it? The caricature can stay just that, thanks: a nicely self-contained joke; a piece of cultural shorthand for sad old perverts forever chasing brainless young hotties around a desk or using their canes to lift up the skirts of girls in the park.

Sure, I'm a sad old pervert: that I can accept. Hell, I accepted that when I hit 30. But why on Earth would I suddenly be macking on kids decades younger than me? Was I hoping to recapture my youth by fucking some? AAAHHH!!!

Luckily, my concern only lasted for a day when I read their bios: they were married, and to each other, at that. So, sure, my chances with either are pretty much shot, but my self-image has been restored. I am not suddenly having my head turned by a wildly inappropriate teenager after all! And as an added bonus, I got to say a line I never thought I would:

"Oh, thank God you're married!"

A Reminder

2010-10-07T15:20:00.003-07:00

The lovely folks at World-O-Crap do terrible things: they read horrible, horrible writing and gleefully tear it to shreds so you and I and other more delicate folk don't have to. Their latest piece is all about spit-roasting staggeringly idiotic "Dr." Mike Adams, who tried this tired chestnut of and inequality argument:

My speech will highlight several pending cases, which show that homosexuals are not the principal victims of civil rights violations in this country. Instead, they are the principal perpetrators of civil rights violations in this country – especially on our college campuses.

And don't that just warm the cockles of your heart? But don't be afraid - go look at the things they (and their commenters) can do to the stupid: they takes a load of hot air and turns it into a cool breeze!

There are reasons why gay boys and girls are far more likely to commit suicide that straight ones are: they feel alone. That there is no one else like them around, and certainly no one they can trust to talk to. Teenagers can be isolated and lonely without having the added pressure of being the target of the weak and small minded.

But now they don't have to.

One of the unpredicted effects of the internet is this: community. The exact opposite of the closeted stereotype, kids (and adults) on-line can find friends, share ideas, see that the world is not only bigger than they imagined, but that they can also touch any part of it! And one of those parts is the It Gets Better Project.

At the It Gets Better Project, gay people are encouraged to show gay kids that not only is what they are going through survivable, but they can thrive after it. Survive school, and school becomes a smaller and smaller part of your live until it is just a tiny, miserable little speck that can be blown away with the smallest breath from your future self.

So if you're gay - or heck, even if you're not - go ahead and submit a video. Give them a chance to see who is out there, hear how they got there, and just how much better life is now!

It serves as a reminder that whenever you hear someone say that high school was the "best years of their lives", they either have really bad memories or really pathetic lives now. Just ask Stephen Fry.

And Back!

2010-10-07T07:58:00.003-07:00

Boston was a great trip. It's a fantastic city, especially if you're one of two things: a history nerd or a sports nerd. Seriously, it's a four sport city: I don't think I went more than two blocks without seeing a banner or sign for the Red Sox, Bruins, Patriots, or Celtics. And I mean in stores and on official public buildings, not just flapping from cars and draped over people.

As for history, it's one of the oldest towns in the Americas - which isn't saying much compared to the rest of the world, but credit where it's due. The American Revolution did start there, giving the place a 200+ year old Paul Revere fetish.

And its a college town, giving the living people a young fearlessness for new experiences: there's a huge variety of cultures, restaurants, and a lively arts community in Boston. Which is funny coming from the same town that was a living punchline for how delicate their sensibilities were. Seriously, this is the town that banned Christmas for twenty years.

Even so, there were down sides to the trip which were a bit disappointing. A little synopsis:

Nice: The Freedom Trail. Lots of stories in a bunch of the original buildings with graveyards, churches, and pubs all the way along it.
Bummer: Infrapatellar bursitis. That trail is about five kilometers long, and there weren't a lot of elevators in the seventeenth century.

Nice: Attending an NHL game in an NHL arena in the lower bowl. Probably the only time I'll be able to afford that is the pre-season. It was worth it.
Bummer: The home team lost, and they deserved to. Would have been funner to be in a happy crowd.

Nice: A Sam Adams Brewery tour that got us free beer and free glasses. Oh, and some information about how they make beer.
Bummer: They still spread the myth of different places on your tongue responding to different flavours. It's wrong! Stop it!

Nice: Lots of bars and restaurants with a huge variety of styles represented - we started with Italian and finished with Senegalese!
Bummer: The two bars we entered both carded us, and one refused to serve us because we weren't carrying passports. We're thirty-eight. Whats the point of this law again?

Nice: Museums. We hit the Fine Arts, the MIT, the Natural History, and the Isabella Stewart Gardner in the week. Some great collections in all three, my personal favourite being the geology exhibit in the Natural History Museum - I now want a table made of polished Kyanite.
Bummer: The Museum of Fine Arts had some great stuff (especially from Egypt), but three exhibitions were closed, a connecting hallway was shut adding some randomness to our day, and the people in blazers were pretty useless for help getting around.

Nice: The Iggies! We learned that fruit bats perform fellatio; remote controlled helicopters are the best way to collect whale snot; and there is mathematic proof businesses have a better chance of success if they promote people at random rather than by merit.
Bummer: You kidding? There are no down sides to the First Annual IgNobel Awards! This year, previous Iggy Award winner Andre Geim became the first double winner, adding a Nobel Award in physics to his bookshelf to go with his 2000 IgNobel win for levitating frogs with magnets. Decide for yourself which is more impressive.

Check the highlights from past years (including the best of Miss Sweetie Poo) here.

Glad to be back, but wouldn't have minded another week. On the other hand, we're already thinking about where to go next... Chicago? San Francisco? Montreal? The years (and finances) will tell!

What Colour is Hockey?

2010-09-28T19:07:00.002-07:00

Harrison Mooney over at hockey blog Nucks Misconduct pointed out that recently the Atlanta Thrashers have gone out of their way to acquire black players, and found it curious enough to comment on. I have thought about the subject before (specifically when most of the few black players were in Alberta - but that's not saying much, as there were only seven at the time!), so I wrote a response. Here it is:

Canada has one sport – hockey. In Sweden and Russia, soccer is huge and right alongside or even ahead of hockey for popular sport. The best athletes here are encouraged to get into hockey, period. In the US, the best generally went into other sports (unless they were from Minnesota, but who counts them? I kid! I kid!), and had plenty to choose from that had a high level of competition immediately: regional and national competitions and a high population base combined with huge visibility makes for an obvious target!

As for natives being in the sport, it’s not like they have been excluded: but few bothered talking about their race. Strangely enough, Johnny Bucyk’s nickname was “Chief”, to which he usually responded “Uh, thanks, but I’m Ukrainian”. For a while there was an unwritten rule about natives not fighting each other (both Gino Odjick and Chris Simon mentioned this); I don’t know whether that’s still in place or not… Guess a quick trip to HockeyFights is in order!

A part of the low numbers for any specific group (hello, Prab Rai!) could simply be, well, numbers. Getting to the NHL is damn hard!

Consider the numbers of kids in competitive hockey just in Canada (“junior A” leagues like the VIHL): to get past even that is hard enough, and by the time the CHL level is reached when US and International players get added it becomes harder still. Of those sixty teams, just 100 players were drafted in 2009 (about 5%), and of them only about half will ever see the ice, never mind play long-term. They are also seeing competition from other hockey nations, American colleges and high schools, and a vastly improved US developmental league.

Bear in mind there is a cumulative effect, as previously drafted players don’t simply vanish, but even so, to further specify a single ethnicity is going to start pushing the numbers into the vanishing point. Add to that the comfort level of the parents getting their kids to play hockey – it’s not a game many visible minority immigrants know when they first arrive! And many immigrants put a huge amount of pressure on their children to succeed financially, and playing games isn’t often a part of that! So it often takes a couple generations before that level of security (financial and social) is achieved.

I did mention earlier when this subject came up a time when Alberta had five of the seven black players in the NHL about ten years ago, but I don’t imagine they were “actively recruiting” them! They were just good players. I do think that Atlanta is actively acquiring blacks, and believe that their market is a very specific reason for it. However, I also hope they refuse to draft players because they are black, or they could end up with the misguided Ice Dogs experiment.

(Quick run down for those who don’t remember it: Don Cherry was the owner of the Mississauga Ice Dogs [before they went to Niagara], and decided the team should only have Canadian players. Frankly, the team sucked until he sold the team in 2003 and that policy changed. End of story.)

I do think this is one aspect of expansion that doesn’t get mentioned much: as the profile of hockey increased in non-traditional markets (there are around twenty professional and semi-professional hockey teams in Texas now as compared to “sometimes two” before the Stars moved in), there will be people from other regions trying to make the big leagues. The first round of this year’s draft had a couple of Californians get picked up, which I don’t think has happened before. (Really hoping Etem would have fallen to us, but hey – that’s the risk you run trading away draft picks.)

With the invention of roller blades, some skills can be picked up without ice, but more importantly kids can play it year-round all over the place, not just where there’s a rink. And far before anyone will play any sport professionally, they have to play for love. The kid you can’t get off the ice, the one who sleeps with his stick – that kid has the best chance of making it.

As for colour? Heck, Iginla looks green by the end of the season! Seriously, look at that guy after eight months of winter sun and rink lights.

Stephen Colbert Steals $342.45 from America!

2010-09-24T12:08:00.004-07:00

In case you haven't heard, Stephen Colbert appeared to the immigration subcommittee today and testified, in character, that farm work is

"[...]really, really hard."

Which I have to agree with. As far as I'm concerned, farms have animals: everything else is a glorified garden, and I'm not fond of gardening. But I also understand that it is a necessary job, and boy am I glad that someone else is doing it! Much like, I imagine, the vast majority of other people who have actually thought about where their food came from.

Colbert's appearance raised some hackles, with some members of the committee complaining that his appearance was a stunt, and did nothing but waste time. In fact, Senator Jason Chaffetz from Utah said

"What's sad about it is in the 21 months I've been on the immigration subcommittee, we have only met ten times. We have never, never looked at a substantive bill to deal with the immigration issue."

What Senator Chaffetz neglected to mention is that without Colbert's appearance at the meeting, no one would have known how many times the subcommittee had met. It's unlikely that Senator Chaffetz's appearance on "Washington Unplugged" would have even happened, or that it would have gotten nationwide advertising. His own profile would be that much smaller, and when you're a senator from Utah, let's face it, you need all the help you can get. The two things Utah is known for are Mormons and the highest on-line porn consumption in America: where can you go from there but up?

The advertising that the subject of immigration has gotten from the stunt appearance of Stephen Colbert's television pundit character did cost the American people, though. There is a cost for everything, even if the committee was already meeting and Colbert paid his own travel costs. But even so, the senators had to wait as he entered the room, listen to him talk, and then wait some more as he left the room.

Now then, given that a senator earns approximately $175,000 per year and there are 16 members of the committee (minus Sen. Chaffetz, who decided to miss the entire meeting because of the ten minutes given to Colbert's testimony, and consequently taking the day off). US senators "work" (it's a bit tough to define working days, and there is frequent communication between members outside official working days) anywhere from 130 to 190 days a year - let's call it 160 - and laughingly consider those days to be 8 hours each.

So, 160 x 8 = 1280 hours of work per year, giving an hourly rate of around $137/hour per senator, or $22.83 for ten minutes. Multiply that by the fifteen senators in attendance, and the American People were charged $342.45 for Stephen Colbert's appearance before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law Membership.

I suggest sending a bill and seeing if that will do it. If he doesn't pay, threaten him with small claims court. Just be sure to reduce it by the free advertising Sen. Chaffetz received first.

Girls Without Skin

2010-09-16T22:17:00.004-07:00

There's a theatre right up Western, with seven X's. I mean, double-X, okay. Triple-X, eh... but seven X's. "GIRLS WITHOUT SKIN". That's all I could think... that I wanna see.

-Tom Waits, Big Time

Somehow, you know when something is just wrong. But that's an unscientific, and occasionally cruel, view; so let's say it differently.

There are warning signs that one can take advantage of, if you know how to look for them. In the forests of the West Coast, for instance, any berries that are blue or black are safe to eat; red ones have a chance of being toxic; green have a greater chance of making you sick instead of refreshed; and white ones are never good food.

Things are different with authors, especially ones writing on science. When they describe themselves as, for instance, being "like Abraham Lincoln, self-educated, and might be viewed as a polymath, left school young and commenced my real education", that's never a good sign. Or when the book they are writing, purporting to deconstruct the "myth" of evolution, has something that looks remarkably like one of the oldest (more than 200 years at this point) and most easily refuted arguments on its cover, that's not a good sign, either.

(It's actually cells in division, but it certainly reminded me of a pocket watch. And reading the text did nothing to dissuade me from the impression.)

And when any author uses seven - SEVEN - exclamation points on a single page when it is written in large, easy-to-read print? It doesn't matter what the subject is, does it? The writer is probably better suited in temperament for street corner chanting than access to a word processor. Yes, he provides 25 free sample pages from his book, and frankly, they don't impress. The chapter he donates to the public is all about the growth of a single cell into a human, and he doesn't understand how it happens.

That's not a criticism of the author: that's actually his argument.

He openly proclaims that he doesn't understand how it happens. It's too complicated, to intricate, and too involved for the creation of humans not to have been created. Hence the watch on the heath, AKA "Godiddit". (Oh, and atheists and agnostics are dead inside, but that doesn't come up until the last page, so no matter.) It's an old, old argument that has been occasionally prettied up, but never seriously changed and never much improved. Mutation, redundancy, and imperfection are all blithely ignored throughout the chapter, favouring instead the joys of a perfectly functioning, awesomely intricate (and delicate!) machine.

Any engineers out there want to talk beta testing? Or the horrors of "ship first, patch later" products? Well, no errors are mentioned in this book!

What John J. May, the creator of "The Origin of Specious Nonsense" (again, not an insult but the actual title of his work) and people like him all too often ignore is that by attacking Darwin - and Mr. Jay is very specific in his attack - they bypass the evidence of the everyday. Simply put, nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. True in 1973, and even more so 37 years later.

But the evidence doesn't just come from biology.

Even in the seventeenth century when devout egomaniac Carl Linnaeus was inventing modern taxonomy, he realized that there was simply no way the Earth could be as young as current thought held (about 5600 years) when he discovered fossils. (Nothing in paleontology, geology, astrophysics, or any branch of biology has shown evidence for anything other than a very, very old Earth - somewhat closer to 13.65 billion years.) Plus this interesting little quote from the man who thought he was revealing God's Truth to the world (I mentioned he had a rather high view of himself, right?):

I ask you and the whole world for a generic differentia between man and ape which conforms to the principles of natural history. I certainly know of none [...] If I were to call man ape or vice versa, I should bring down all the theologians on my head. But perhaps I should still do it according to the rules of science.

The only reason humans are all alone in the homo genus, unlike every other animal on Earth, is that Linnaeus didn't need the headache of arguing with clergy. Starting from scratch, with the evidence we currently have, humans would be shuttled in with the chimps, but otherwise Linnaeus' system has stood up pretty well as the most useful means of classification available.

And here's the funny bit: you'll be hard pressed to find anyone who proclaims humans to be "more evolved" than other animals - or plants for that matter - who aren't also religious.

For all the complaining that people are "too complex" to have come about by chance, the fact that everything else is equally complicated is ignored. The "Seven Questions" Mr. May asks (then repeats, and repeats, and repeats...) in his sample chapter apply equally well to a human, a goose, or a cedar. The example he gives is human because that's what he so desperately wants: to be special. And he knows that the people who buy his book will want that, too. But by his own questions, he reinforces the idea that people aren't special, that we really are no different from a bird or a tree.

Which is what atheists have been saying all along. And I don't think that's the show that Mr. May expected to see.

Humans, A Working Guide

2010-09-12T16:49:00.002-07:00

Killing a bit of time while waiting for the Canucks vs. Edmonton Young Stars game to begin streaming, and an article by dating site OK Cupid caught my eye:

The REAL ‘Stuff White People Like’

What drew my attention was the sample size (526,000 people) and the fact that they're self-selecting. The words used in people's profiles were written because that is what they want others to see. If you're embarrassed about being the 2004 University Chess champion, you're not likely to mention it; or if you don't think other people like Creed, you're more likely to hide the fact that you do. On the other hand, if you think reading '100 Years of Solitude' is going to get you some action, it's in the profile whether you've read the thing or not!

The lists were divided by sex and by race (again, both self-selected), and there were some startling revelations in the choices made:

The top word/phrase for White people:

Men: Tom Clancy
Women: Red Sox

Revelation: Really? So the guys are 40+ with aviator's glasses and golden lab retrievers and the women are from Boston. And I've never heard of Jodi Picoult.

Top word/phrase for Black people:

Men: Soul Food
Women: SOUL FOOD!

Revelation: While black men may like soul food, with black women it is possibly more important than their own blood. Both are also scared of God.

Top word/phrase for Latinos:

Men: Merengue
Women: Merengue

Revelation: Hispanics and dancing. Lots of it. The men mention three different dances in the first ten words; the women do the same, but also mention music, a musician, and 'I love dancing' made it to 11th place.

Top word/phrase for Asians:

Men: Taiwan
Women: Coz

Revelation: The men mention where they are from quite often, and emphasize that they are 'simple' guys. The women talk food far more, and emphasize that they are 'simple' girls. So, Asians like simplicity, and I have no clue what 'Coz' is.

Top word/phrase for East Indians:

Men: CRICKET!
Women: Bhangra

Revelation: Indian guys like their sport almost as much as black women like their soul food. Oh, and third for guys? 'A software engineer'. Indian Women go for the dancing first, but authour Jhumpa Lahiri second. Also high in their list? 'Interpreter' and 'my passport'. I'm guessing work's important to East Indians.

Top word/phrase for Middle Easterners:

Men: Arabic
Women: Different Cultures

Revelation: Huge difference here, as guys have 'Arab' or some variant listed four times in the top ten words, where women don't at all in the top 50.

Top word/phrase for Pacific Islanders:

Men: Hawaii
Women: Alicia Keys

Revelation: The guys are quick to mention 'ukulele' and 'Swingers', while the woman have 'kick boxing' and 'my girlfriends' in their top five. This tells me that the guys know to get their seduction game on, because Pacific Island women don't mess around!

How To Be In Favour of Book Burning

2010-09-10T18:58:00.003-07:00

So the ageing Yosemite Sam (of COURSE he's in Florida!) has decided to call off burning however many Korans his 15-person ministry could afford - call it a dozen or so. If it weren't for the fact that clearly insane people in the Middle East would flip out even more than they normally do if he had gone through with it, the story would be a two-inch segment on "News of the Weird" and that would be that.

If we lived in a sane world, that is.

Unfortunately, we live in a place where symbols take precedence over the actual; where the Platonic means more than the real. In the same way that the cartoons of Mohammed changed Islam not a whit, the burning of a few Korans in Florida would have affected the faith in absolutely no way. None. Zip. Zero.

The American flag has been burned - repeatedly - in countries around the world. Sure, usually it's in the Middle East, but why limit your view? It's caught fire in every nation in existence. Hell, one's probably been burned for fuel by clumsy expeditionists in Antarctica for all I know. And the grand total of foreign policy affected by these burnings has been... (drum roll please)...

Bupkus.

There was quite the little streak of puritanism in the United States (really? How shocking!) that led to an awful lot of book burning, album crushing, and drug banning, but somehow they didn't manage to crush out the ideas. Frankly, if you bought the book, why shouldn't you be allowed to do whatever the heck you want with it? It's YOUR book! If you're too stupid to read it, that's not my problem.

There's a reason why book burning simply isn't done any more - it's not effective. (For future reference: Though Kindles are appropriately named for burning, I really suggest you stick to the traditional paper format...) Trying to pressure schools and libraries from buying the book, now THAT'S more effective!

As for people getting their knickers in a twist about the "desecration" of a holy book, I'm afrraid I have some bad news for you: it's already happened. That's right!

There are Bibles that have been reduced to ash.
There are Korans that have been run through shredders.
There are Torahs that are rotting in compost heaps.

And all of it is happening RIGHT NOW! Millions of these things have been printed over the course of history, and that means millions have been destroyed in various and sundry ways. And if anyone, anywhere, can tell me how this has destroyed their faith, then maybe it was a good thing.

Because if that was all it took, you probably never had much faith to begin with.

Truth in Advertising

2010-09-09T12:14:00.002-07:00

So, the commercial for the Video Music Awards features the talentless Ke$ha not being smart enough to avoid falling out a window?

That sounds about right!

Whew

2010-09-07T01:15:00.002-07:00

Well, that's another one written, proofread, and sealed off. Better this year than most: 15,700 words, and no really, really glaring errors despite having to move the closing scene to three different countries when I realized that the first, then second, wouldn't work.

But that's it! Another 3-Day Novel done! Whoo!

I get to sleep now, right? And can ignore the computer for a couple of days?

N -15 Minutes

2010-09-03T23:40:00.003-07:00

Come midnight, a new 3-Day Novel will be begun by yours truly.

I've got the characters (though who knows if they'll stay, or go, or someone else won't show up) and I've got the beginning of the story. As for plot...? Last year I had the plot well devised before hand, and my damn characters kept wandering out of it; this time, I'm following them. See how they like it!

Whee!

WWACJD?*

2010-09-03T18:12:00.004-07:00

*What Would an Associate Chief Justice Do?

Well, in this case, she'd get chained up and on her hands and knees blowing her husband while a black guy plows her from behind.

Allow me to put a reminder out there for all those folks who are cool with a bit of photographic exhibitionism: once and internet porn star, always an internet porn star.

Personally, of course, I couldn't give a rip what she and her husband (and whatever other consenting adults who happen to be around) do sexually, other than to wish them good luck and hope they have fun. Let's face it, I'd rather the judge deciding my case be someone who is getting laid often and well than one who is frustrated and bitter. Wouldn't you?

The more interesting aspect of this situation is the apparent justification for doubts about Justice Lori Douglas' credibility, according to the University of Ottawa's dean of civil law Sebastian Grammond:

Grammond doubts that Douglas would have been appointed a judge if she had disclosed the fact that there were nude photographs of her on the internet in her application.
There is a question in the application that asks, "Is there anything in your past or present which could reflect negatively on yourself or the judiciary and which should be disclosed?"

"I think the facts are sufficiently suspect to warrant disclosure and to raise very important questions as to whether such a person should have been appointed a judge," Grammond said.

It's not that she is apparently into kink - specifically playing the submissive to a black man/men - but that people might know about it. Welcome to the brilliance that is Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

It's a double standard at the most basic point: if you're okay with someone playing Cops and Robbers in the bedroom, then why is it a bad thing when people find out about it?

What her husband did, pressing unwanted advances on someone who was also a client of his law firm, was certainly wrong. I've been hit on by women, men, and couples, and fortunately whenever I've said "no, thanks" they listened. They were polite and left the offer where it was and that was that. I've never had someone who was in a position of power over me make an advance, and I hope never to. Of course, it's not something I'm likely to have to worry about now that I'm hitting 40, but still!

So Justice Douglas' husband (lawyer Jack King) should be reprimanded, investigated, and, if deemed suitable, charges against him should be laid.

But it's interesting to see who the story leads off with, isn't it?

Why Ken Mehman Deserves Nothing

2010-08-31T15:31:00.004-07:00

In case you hadn't heard, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee decided to come out last week. Not in any interesting way, alas: just that he's what most folks either suspected or knew.

In his interview with the Atlantic Monthly, Mehlman tried to gain sympathy by talking about how long it took him to "get comfortable" with being gay - 43 years, apparently. For those of you keeping track, that's his entire life. So I guess he wasn't one of those "converted" types we so often hear about from the more paranoid branches of the conservative tree...

So why is he coming out now? Because in September he's going to be a speaker at a fund raiser for the American Foundation for Equal Rights. That would be the folks who worked against California's infamous Proposition 8, banning gay marriage.

Funny story: while Mehlman was the chairman of the RNC, Republican strategist Karl Rove made sure that anti-gay referenda and initiatives were on the ballots in 2004 and 2006 as a scare tactic to get conservative voters to the polls.

"I can't change the fact that I wasn't in this place personally when I was in politics, and I genuinely regret that[...]If they can't offer support, at least offer understanding."

Gosh, and who can argue with that? Let's see...

Well, how about everyone who's not gay and has argued in favour of gay rights? In fact, how about everyone who has ever worked for the rights of any minority that they weren't a part of? Think they might have something to say, Ken?

You didn't have to be black to abolish slavery.

You didn't have to be native to demand action of residential schools.

You didn't have to be a woman to support the Equal Rights Amendment (in fact, it failed because a woman worked hard against it).

And you don't have to be homosexual to support gay rights.

You didn't even have to come out when you were "in politics", Ken: you could simply have opposed the decision to use gay people as bugbears to panic social conservatives and herd them to the polls. You could have objected to the hysteria that was actively encouraged by your party.

But then, you were also confused why so few gay people supported Republicans against "Islamic jihad", so maybe it is that you're simply not that bright. (Here's a hint: Democrats don't support "Islamic jihad" either. And of the two political parties in the United States, only one of them has openly compared homosexuality to atheism or acceptance of gays to encouraging bestiality, paedophilia, and incest.)

If you're going to ask people to forgive your past transgressions when you were in a position of power to do so, it's going to take some time. Opposing Prop 8 is a good start - but now you've got another 22 states in which specifically anti-gay initiatives were put onto the ballot at the insistence of the RNC while you were in power.

Good luck with that!

Stupid Is As Stupid Does Is

2010-08-25T22:25:00.003-07:00

You remember that movie?

You know - hugely popular, all about how, just by being nice and honest and not thinking too hard, you could be a massive financial and social success (even if you were as dumb as using two bricks to make a house)? Yeah, that one.

I was reminded of it while in a conversation lasting several days with an opponent of the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque" (a term, that consists of three words: two of which are wrong and one other being misleading). It was both surprising and not for me - I have encountered stupidity before, and I've certainly met people who don't actually seem to be aware of what they are saying before. But what was surprising was the complete lack of self-awareness, even when they have their own written words that they can reference not half a page away on the same screen, but don't bother to.

I did finally get tired of ending my days smacking my head into the desk, so called it quits. Here, of course, was his final post:

Once again, an untenable position descends to name calling.

Now, can you guess what his second to last post was? Go on, guess! Oh, all right:

Oh I get it now Erin. People with lesser minds than yourself have a tendency to be swayed by simplification.

What is most telling, is that you do recognize a Mosque inside of Ground Zero would be offensive. Not offensive enough to penetrate... through your cool rational mind of course, but offensive enough to legitimize the protests. So from now on, let's just refer to it as: "The Mosque and More, Adjacent to Ground Zero," so there will be no more outrage from the simpletons.

Did it ever occur to you that people who paint the placards just prefer the shorthand, because it uses less paint?

There are few mock-arguments that annoy me more than the idea that being smart is a bad thing. He was insulted because I pointed out that the term "Ground Zero Mosque" is a horrible description, but great if you want to inflame emotions while misinforming the public.

Yes, he really meant that last sentence to be a cogent point in his favour!

Look, when people are being stupid, they're being stupid. And you know what? I'm not going to patronize them by pretending that their point of view "could be correct" when it patently isn't. The moon is not made of cheese, no matter how people you get to agree with you.

When you're stupid, you're stupid; and someone really should tell you when you are before you do something stupid, permanent, and public.

You can go look if you want, though it is on Facebook, so fair warning there.

Love and Romance

2010-08-23T19:15:00.004-07:00

Romance is... Romeo & Juliet
Love is... Paul Newman & Joanne Woodward

Romance is... "My Heart Will Go On"
Love is... "I Got a Crazy Wife"

Romance is... "I Can't Live Without You!"
Love is... "Yeah, I could live with ya."

Romance is... Happily Ever After
Love is... See you tomorrow!

Romance is... I'm the only one for you, and you're the only one for me.
Love is... If live is ever better without you than with you, I'm outta here.

...And 13 years later, life is better with you than without.

Happy Anniversary, Love! And, as you know, if I didn't have you...

Area 51, Manhattan Branch

2010-08-12T11:26:00.003-07:00

Anyone who has watched television, read a newspaper, or been on line any time in the past two weeks knows that there is a plan for a mosque to be built "somewhere near Ground Zero" - the site of the former Twin Towers.

The reactions to this have been very diverse, and generally along the expected intelligence curve from "AAAAGGGHH! AAAGGHHH! AAAGGGHHH!" through "Not there! Anywhere but there!" to "How about a few more blocks away?" to *shrug* "Okay."

It's perfectly understandable for people to have an emotional response: for many, it was as if aliens had come to Earth, and they were the ones from Independence Day instead of E.T. These strange creatures that no one knew about had done terrible things for no known reason, and now they want to make a holy shrine right where they did those terrible things!

This, as it ends up, is not exactly true. Pointing out that it's not true doesn't often help, but maybe -just maybe - it could be possible to show where some of the worst arguments are a touch inaccurate:

"It's on Ground Zero!" Well, no it's not. It is fairly close - two blocks away at 45 Park Place - but there are no plans for building on the Twin Tower site other than those already in place. As it is, the planned site is as close to City Hall as it is to Ground Zero: lower Manhattan isn't a big place.

"It's a MOSQUE! A big, onion-domed MOSQUE!" Not really; or at least not just a mosque. One of those wouldn't fit very well for starters, what with requiring a lot of space to get a dome built and space being at such a premium on the island. The primary reason for the facility is the mosque, certainly: but there are also plans for a community centre involving a fair amount of rental space (available to any group), a permanent 9/11 memorial, auditorium and classroom spaces... Currently, the largest community centre in lower Manhattan is in a basement.

"There shouldn't be any more mosques in New York!" There are more than 100 in New York right now, and of the two mosques in Manhattan one holds about 450 people, and another about 60. This isn't anywhere near enough for the number of Muslims that are in the area. The community board in charge of the area already approved of the plans well before it became the national and international spectacle it is now. Now, if you want the federal government to step in and tell local communities how to plan out their towns, shouldn't you just say so? Plus, the building is currently being used as a mosque right now: Muslims gather there to pray. It is, in every sense, a mosque.

"It's an insult to America!" Americans want to build the site. There are approximately a million Muslims in New York City right now: they are Americans.

"Okay, it's an insult to the Americans who died in the 9/11 attacks!" Presumably that includes the 300 or so Americans who were Muslims who died directly in the attacks and the others who have suffered along with all the other rescue workers who were at the scene trying to save lives and care for the survivors, yes? Unless you are saying that those people killed themselves by having other people fly into building they worked in, then you're dividing people into "Good Americans" and "Bad Americans" based on their religion.

"But Islam is so violent!" The Koran often makes references to violence and war, it's true. As does the Bible. You do remember your Bible, don't you? Comparing the two is a bit unfair, as Christianity has 600 more years of historical violence behind it. Islam has a ways to go if they want to catch up!

"Christians only follow the New Testament!" Sure they do! Right up until it's convenient for them to bring out the Old Testament to prove their moral superiority. Or have you forgotten the fights over race relations and women's rights in North America? Heck, look at any group that is protesting gay marriage and count the signs with Leviticus quotes on them. But this does bring up the good point that treating any group with more than a billion members as a single, homogeneous blob is ludicrous. Pretending to believe that the Muslims in America all get marching orders from Saudi Arabia is just as insane as pretending all Christians get marching orders from the Vatican. Know who turned in those idiots in Toronto? Other Muslims.

"It (is/going to be) funded by extremists in the Middle East!" First off, the funding isn't in place yet because they want to apply for tax-exempt status. If that succeeds, then the funding is going to have to be transparent. Second, the funding is likely to come from Muslims themselves; meaning yes, some is probably going to come from the Middle East. You know what else? A huge amount of funding for the terrorist group the Irish Republican Army came from the United States, specifically from Boston and New York. And yet Americans are allowed into England - why do you think that is?

"Look at the terminology: Muslim World Visionaries aren't even called 'extremists': they're called 'Islamists'! That proves their vision of a world dominated by Islam is accepted as normal!" Why, yes: and those who see the world being overcome by Christianity are called 'Christians'! The very reason behind the largest groups of Christians is to 'spread the word' as commanded by God. I like to think of this point as just being spectacularly non-self aware rather than deliberately misleading. See also: missionaries.

"They put up mosques whenever they conquered new lands, and now they're doing it here! It's historical fact!" *Le sigh* That is a tiny little bit of an historical fact. Here's the rest of it (and this holds true for every single religion in existence): when members of a faith go to a new land, there isn't going to be a place of worship already there. Really. It's not like a native tribe in Ecuador suddenly thought to themselves, "Hmm, we had better build a church for when Christians arrive!" No, the church gets built after the missionaries get there and bring the faith with them.

It's unlikely any of these arguments will sway anyone's mind, of course: folks have to overcome their prejudice on their own. But maybe seeing that there is an answer to their "unbeatable" arguments could get the opponents of the New York mosque proposal thinking about why they feel the way they do and asking themselves whether their opposition as logical as they believe.

Oh, and welcome to the second day of Ramadan!

Hard Concepts, Hard Time

2010-08-05T14:48:00.003-07:00

Neil Gaiman is a writer who is perhaps most famous for his anthropomorphic personifications: dreams, death, despair and many other concepts humans have formed take bodies in his tales. They can be touched if they wish (though you might want to watch it with the second one, there); they talk, and travel, and fight.

Terry Pratchett is another author whose Discworld series has showed us the Tooth Fairy (actually a conglomerate), the Hogfather (a Santa Claus stand-in), and a Death who loves cats.

And now, the Canadian government is bringing that idea to life!

Here's the plan: Team Blue is planning to build new prisons and (improve current ones) because the rate of unreported crime went up from 1999 to 2004.

Let me repeat that.

Stockwell Day wants to build prisons because of the unreported crime rate. Now unless I'm thinking wrong, you can't actually catch, try, and jail someone who commits an unreported crime because the crime is unreported. So there's no one to put in these new jails. Which means he must be planning to imprison the concept of crime itself!

This is a startling development, to say the least.

Sure, you could "titch" away about the Conservatives' inability to come up with any reason for claiming their plans are going to cost $2 billion, or you could complain about the survey they quoted being from six years back and why are they talking about this now when a new one is coming out this fall. You could even point out that Team Blue is eliminating the long-form census because they don't think any census is valid after five years.

But you'd be missing the point.

The point is, if they can do this, if the Conservatives have somehow come up with a way to imprison the very idea of crime, then...

Hunger? You're next.

NOM NOM NOM!

2010-08-04T18:30:00.004-07:00

So it looks like the rather silly Proposition 8 (the vote to ban gay marriage) got struck down by a federal judge in San Francisco today as being flatly unconstitutional. Which can't be that much of a surprise to those folks who thought about having a majority voting on minority rights.

While that could probably be filed under the category "No Shit", you do have to be a little concerned for the opposition. After all, what started as certainty that "God would make things right" in their battle against people getting hitched by (for instance) shooting a meteor at Orlando has devolved into complaining that they can't get anyone to appear in court for fear of "retaliation".

That they had no evidence and incompetent witnesses had NOTHING to do with it, I'm sure. Just ask Peter Barber Gallagher-Sprigg!

No it's all about fear of "retaliation", despite the people who have appeared as witness for them not being retaliated against. These are well known people, directly opposing rights for millions of Americans - and the retaliation is... where?

The reaction from the National Organization for Marriage (NOM NOM NOM!) president Brian Brown managed to spit this out:

"Never in the history of America has a federal judge ruled that there is a federal constitutional right to same sex marriage. The reason for this is simple – there isn’t!"

...without bothering to mention that the reason why no federal judge has said such a thing is because the only federal legislation is the Defence of Marriage Act, brought in in 1996. Federal governments have been terrified of touching marriage before or since, and have been leaving it up to the the states to decide for themselves. Hence gay marriage in Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Iowa (!) without the feds saying boo about it. Varied rights have been given in a slew of other states, too: Colorado, Hawaii, Washington, Rhode Island, Maryland, Nevada, Oregon (!), New Jersey, and Wisconsin.

California and Maine both have given some rights to gay unions, but both states have also had popular referendums overturning a previous legislative decision to grant full marriage.

Which is why the feds aren't going to get involved this time, either. And left in the hands of the courts, the decision is startlingly obvious: it's going to become legal. I'm sorry, but when the best witnesses in your favour $35 million can buy cites "preventing states from falling into Satan's hands", you're going to lose the argument.

It really couldn't come as a surprise, though: the lack of self-awareness comes right from the top. Maggie Gallagher, the chairman for the National Organization for Marriage:

"Gay activists treat Americans who disagree with them about same-sex marriage like bigots. They want to use the law to suppress and marginalize and stigmatize."

(Bigot: a person who holds blindly and intolerantly to a particular creed, opinion, etc. Webster's New World Dictionary)

NOM is using their influence to ensure a large portion of society is suppressed, marginalized, and stigmatized in a very specific way; we can clearly see what they are trying to do.

But Maggie and her ilk never do quite get around to what those in favour of gay marriage are going to do to those who are opposed to it. How exactly are the members of NOM going to suffer if gay marriage is legalized?

Other than eventually have to look for real jobs, that is.

Incoming Nerdgasm!

2010-08-04T14:30:00.000-07:00

An up-and-down weekend, but a lovely finish:

It started off with a class reunion needing to get into a hall they rented from the Lions on Saturday night. Their key didn't work after trying it for an hour, so out I went. Simple picking open a cheap deadbolt... except whoever had installed the thing put it in upside down, and the reason they couldn't get it open was that one of the springs inside had given out. I had to wait to get permission to drill the lock out, which the president of the club was reluctant to give for the first hour, even as the reunionists were getting drunker and surlier. This stuff always goes better with an audience, you know?

I finally got permission, popped out the lock (and replaced it) and got people inside before getting home two hours later from a 15 minute job. And now their treasurer is telling me they don't want to pay because I "never got authorization" to drill out the lock, and there seems to be some kind of power struggle going on in the club and I may have to take these idiots to small claims court over a $70 bill.

Gah.

But then on Sunday, we had a lovely little gathering in our back yard with pakoras and beer and some fantastic weather, and all was right in the world. I've never had a mojito before; that is a very nice drink. Doesn't look like much more than ditchwater and grass clippings, but boy it does its job!

And then... (drum roll please!)... I got tickets to the twentieth "First Annual IgNobel Awards" in Boston! W00T! It goes on in Harvard, and features Nobel Prize winners handing out prizes to researchers for studies and discoveries and inventions that "cannot, or should not, be repeated". Last year, for instance, on of the winners (for "Public Health") designed a bra that could, in the event of emergency, be converted into a pair of protective face masks. In 2001, the IgNobel Peace Prize winner was the designer of the Soviet playground "Stalin World".

Boredom is not an option, as there is a very strict time limit on winners' speeches, enforced by Miss Sweetie Poo since 1999. This year also has the world premiere of The Bacteria Opera, with arias interspersed throughout the ceremony.

Being in Boston itself is just an added bonus, really. Packed with history, universities, and bookstores, I'm only disappointed that our stay will only be for a week!

Stop Looking At Me!

2010-07-31T14:16:00.004-07:00

I just spent an hour or so making dog food for my beast - not because I like handling raw meat so much as I like knowing what my dog is eating. If I don't know what's in there, then there's not much I can do to prevent his getting sick. I can't control what he finds on the trails around our house (he's a dog, after all), but I can see to it that he gets a proper diet to maintain his health.

This is why I find it so strange that the Conservatives decided it was vitally important to do away with the long form census this year. Population information is vital to governing... well, anything, really. I cannot imagine someone trying to run a business without having as much information on their own operations as possible.

Well, I can imagine it, just not for long.

Basic asset management 101. It's not even a case of a business getting information on customers. Everyone in this country is part of the country - we're not apart form it, we are it.

The only defence I've heard on removing the long form from the census was a rather feeble libertarian effort claiming it would reduce the number of government employees because the short form is easier to check. In between claims that the government was going to use their ill-gotten knowledge of how many bathrooms are in my house for their own nefarious (and mysterious) ends, of course. Alas, Industry Minister Clement himself mentioned that the federal government was going to spend $30 million in advertising to encourage people to fill to fill out the new forms.

A slightly more reasonable claim could be that by placing the long form under a different title (the National Household Survey), it no longer becomes mandatory to fill out, letting people relax about the theoretical invasion of privacy the survey involves.

First, about that "invasion of privacy" thing that some folks rail against: Statistics Canada has an excellent reputation around the world for maintaining that privacy. No information is ever rendered down to an individual basis, not for anyone. Even other branches of government can't see individual responses; neither can CSIS, the RCMP, or Revenue Canada. You even have to check a box to say you agree to release your information 92 years from the census date.

Frankly, if you're still around in 92 years (I know I will be), why not brag a little? More seriously, I'm a trivia nerd, so I think it would be interesting to see how people in Canada actually lived during World War I instead of relying just on popular images.

Second, making not filling out the survey punishable by law really does get more people to fill them out - even when breaking that law only involves a minor fine and a reprimand. That "Oh yeah, right!" moment when a reminder is delivered weeks later brings a second wave of responses as folks are goaded into opening the envelopes for the first time.

Third, the whole purpose of gathering information is to make governance possible. For those who say "Why would I want to help them?" ask yourself if you want to live with an educated populace, with well maintained roads, a sufficiently manned police force, and hospitals that can care for the people living there.

It becomes a far more serious issue when not filling out the census is viewed as a political stance: if Canada, many in First Nations communities consider it an act of rebellion, feeling the information gathered is somehow used against them. This led to the very strange situation where the 2008 census numbers were different from the Indian registry, leading to complaints that the information was skewed to show fewer natives were living on reserves. This was after the Akwesasne and Kahnawake tribes refused to participate.

So yes, the numbers were different: tens of thousands of natives refused to take part. So you can see how those two things might be linked.

Still, Tony Clement is standing by his decision to change how the long form census is delivered, and he's been

"[...]actually pleasantly surprised at the support I am getting given the one-sidedness of the mainstream media[...]"

No, really. He's had a few people Twitter him with their support, so all that negativity out there must be the "main stream media". And where have we heard that excuse for failure before...? It looks like the "main stream media" in this case includes the chief economist at the Toronto Dominion Bank, a former clerk of the Privy Council, the CEO of the United Way, the CEO of the Toronto Board of Trade, the president of Environics Analytics, and a dozen and a half other folks who either rely on accurate information or know something about getting it.

I swear the phrase "main stream media" is turning into a dog whistle for people trying to claim popular support for stupid actions. Maybe not always, but it certainly is now.

Adding Gold

2010-07-31T13:48:00.003-07:00

One more blog is going on the list at the lower right: Hyperbole and a Half has wonderful writing and disarmingly good illustrations. Allie Brosh is well worth the time, even if you have to wait a few days for a new post.

Put the time to good use by going through her backlog. It'll do you good.

When is Racism Not Racism?

2010-07-30T12:49:00.002-07:00

When it's not only taken out of context, but the message is actually turned into the exact opposite of what was said. The entire point of Shirley Sherrod's story was that she was able to forgive the very people who had killed, beaten, deprived of rights and freedoms, forced into slums and ignorance, and persecuted in every way members of her own family.

Her father was shot to death by a white man when she was 17, but never served time despite eyewitnesses at the scene. The 6,000 acre communal farm she started in Georgia was opposed by the surrounding farmers, who thought it was a communist camp, but also by the segregationist Governor Lexter Maddox, who ensured not funds were brought into the state for the project. She and her husband lost their farm when they were unable to get Department of Agriculture loans, while white farmers around them had little problem getting the same. Eventually a lawsuit had to be brought against the USDA, and the USDA not only admitted they were in the wrong, but that they were wrong to the tune of nearly $1 billion.

Now, can you think of any reason why she shouldn't harbour a life-long grudge, or distrust, or even an open hatred of white people?

What was used as "evidence" of Ms. Sherrod's inherent racism was a three minute piece of a 50-minute speech where she was describing the fact that she didn't give all the help she should have to a white farmer when he was trying to keep his land. Even then, she took him to a "white lawyer" who only had "a little training" regarding the new chapter 12 bankruptcy laws as they applied to farms.

And that was it. That was the total sum of her supposed racism. Even in this little segment of tape, she alludes to her realizing that what she did was wrong, and later in her speech she discusses how her faith had brought her from a place of hating white people to one of trying to help all the poor. You know, someone who actually thought about "what would Jesus do".

So it has been pointed out, rather forcibly in some quarters, that the person who had put the edited tape on the air was a scumbag who went out of his way to present her as the exact opposite of who she was.

Jeffrey Lord of the American Spectator called Sherrod a liar for describing her relative as "getting lynched" when he was in fact only "beaten to death", and that perhaps she was trying to "add glamour to a family story". No, I'm not kidding.

A bit of social context here: we're not talking about something that happened 100 years ago. All this is within living memory: it took until 1965 before the Jim Crow laws were finally taken off the books in the United States, and Ms. Sherrod was born in 1948.

Think of that. When were you born, or your parents, or your grandparents? Imagine that being not only in your family's history, but having happened to your living relatives. How long would it take you to get over it?

My own grandfather shocked me when he told the man working on his roof to "get rid of that raghead or don't come back" some years ago. He had never used anything like a racist term anywhere near me before, and I had no idea that attitude was sitting under the surface. I live in a logging town, and it's easy to hear derogatory terms in the bars and from school kids, but it never occurred to me that my family would have taken part.

If even my own gentle grandfather had a hatred for other races, I can't imagine what someone trying to live in a place filed with him (and worse) would have been like.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: given the option of living anywhere in time and space, I'll take right here, right now every time.

Playing Catch-Up

2010-07-20T16:40:00.002-07:00

Oh, damn.

Still waiting for the broken kneecap to heal, and for a very, very good reason: I'm now on the last hole in my belt. This is NOT a good thing.

All my exercise was walking the dog, but my walking has been limited to about 20 minutes at a time at most, and more frequently 10 or 15 minutes. Though a friend of mine advised me not to worry too much about it, as the legendary line goes: "The bigger the cushion, the better the pushin'!"

Unfortunately, the bigger the waist line, the longer the down time, too. The very best reason to lose weight and stay in shape is so you don't end up being winded after foreplay. Why would you want to limit not only what you can do, but how long you can do it for?

In the mean time, I've been spending way too long on the internet, and ended up in an argument about gay rights and whether and why they should be granted. After a few days of little back and forth messaged on a YouTube video (500 characters is really tough to get your point through in), it seems to have boiled down to this (after it was pointed out that there is nothing, and I mean nothing that homosexuals can do that hetros aren't happily doing right this minute):

"Society will never accept gays having full rights because of Gay Pride parades!"

That's paraphrased a little, of course, but that was the message in essence. Which I've certainly heard before, and know it to be a fairly common excuse for withholding rights to minorities. The self-same people will protest that they don't have any problem with gay people, but "why do they have to flaunt their 'otherness' out in the open like that?" The other variant of this excuse is "Why do they bother with that stupid lisp, and that prissy, faggy behaviour? It's all such a stupid act and I hate it! If they didn't behave that way, I'd be fine with them!"

Well, there are reasons.

First off, about the stereotypical "fag" behaviour: why shouldn't some people act like that? Is it seriously any worse than, say, the idiots on Jersey Shore? Or goofy little wiggers? Not really, no. Sorry, but if I had to choose someone to be sterile, it wouldn't be the folks for whom not having kids comes naturally.

It'd be this guy.

But that "fag" behaviour is what those who behave that way are comfortable with. Call it an act if you want to, but it is no more an act than anyone else's behaviour in public. Saying you have nothing against someone, then demanding that they change because you don't want to see them is, well, a bit stupid. Don't you think?

But why the parades? More to the point, why are Gay Pride parades so frequently overtly sexual? Simply put, sexuality is what is used to separate and ostracize a minority, so that is exactly what is being put forward in these parades. That's what the Black Cat Tavern riot was about, and why raids on clubs happen (even in 2010, if you can believe it). Hell, Gay Pride parades came directly from the Stonewall riots (Christopher Street Liberation Day ended up catching on), so it would be simply amazing if there wasn't a sexual element to an event that celebrates a liberation of sexuality.

Still, tell you what: I'll accept that you hate Gay Pride Parades for their displays only if you agree to protest against Hallowe'en and the Folsom Street Fair.

Deal?

P.S. Oh, yeah... Don't open either of those last two links if you're at A) work or B) your mom's house. Unless she attends the Folsom Street Fair, then I leave it up to you.

To the East, to the West...

2010-07-14T12:01:00.001-07:00

Just got a note reminding me that the tickets for the 20th "First Annual Ig Nobel Awards" are going on sale August 1st. The Significant Other and I are going to get tickets ASAP, then off we go to New England for the end of September.

Apparently, there's a lot more to do in Boston - in a major university-laden city? Really? - so we're going for a week or so. Maybe as much as 10 days, but we'll have to see what we can afford. The S.O., bring a Boston Bruins fan, is pitching for a pre-season game against Washington before they bugger off to Europe to open the NHL season. Twist my rubber arm!

Alas, after seeing the doctor, it appears my knee is healing right on schedule, which means I won't be able to get my stride back up for a couple more weeks. And I was so hoping for superhuman healing abilities! Ah, well. I'll just have to train up my endurance in way other than walking until then.

I'd love to have a tour guide or two for one/some of those days. Who knows someone in Boston with a handy day off or two?

Regulations Galore!

2010-07-10T11:13:00.002-07:00

Been talking about a post I wrote from a couple of years back, and the conversation went from quack medical practices to regulation of medicines; it went on long enough that I figure we should bring it to the front page. Here's my reply to a published report by the Fraser Institute that was sent for my edification:

Took a look at the book whose link you sent (thanks for that!), and there are the problems in it that are unfortunately typical of the Fraser Institute:

1) The assumption that market forces are always right, like when on page 11 where the fact that Canadians pay for alternative therapies "proves" that they provide a benefit;

2) That the placebo effect is enough to warrant continued use without government oversight - without considering that proof that the treatment does no harm is something that such oversight necessitates;

3) Reaching a conclusion that brand names would increase and maintain standards to a greater degree because of "competition between certifying organizations" is one hell of a leap of faith: if there are conflicting reports, people tend to choose one and disregard others. This choice is also affected by the advertising done by the competing bodies, meaning whoever spends more wins.

This holds true with the proposed "certifying agencies" replacing licences as well. It would be very easy for such agencies to abuse their powers, as alternative practitioners are VERY reluctant to call out a method that doesn't work, for fear of closer investigation into their own practices.

The Fraser Institute also often (as in this report) makes the assumption that government regulation eliminates competition and societal pressure, which is simply not true. Both of those things are still in place, as can be witnessed by (for instance) the Maple Leaf listeria disaster.

The British Petroleum nightmare going on in the gulf is a clear example of the difference between government and corporate standards: the regulators that were supposed to safeguard not only the environment but also the worker's safety failed miserably because they were influenced by the company (coke and hooker party, anyone?) into relaxing the government regulations until they were at a level the corporation wanted. There is no reason to believe that corporations, without oversight, would do any better, and plenty of reasons to believe they would do worse.

The banking system in the U.S. failed horribly, and are still fighting any kind of oversight, whereas the one in Canada - with some of the strictest regulations in the world - had not a single failure.

The Walkerton tragedy was a direct result of failure by the government to regulate water consumption - the province had slashed more than a third of those people hired to do so from its payroll. Their Drinking Water Surveillance Program was shut down, along with provincial water testing labs, leaving municipalities to use their own budgets or sell off the responsibility. (The UK had privatized water supplies in 1989, and not only did profits increase, but hepatitis A did too by 200% and dysentery by 600%. This is considered a success by unregulated free market supporters.)

So no, I'm not a fan of letting businesses or corporations regulate their own industries without any government oversight, and this Fraser Institute report hasn't convinced me otherwise. Thanks for the link, though!

Why I Love Theatre...

2010-05-28T19:45:00.001-07:00

...And live radio: you don't know what's going to happen or how you'll get through it, but there you are!

Show three had some kind of electronic insurrection going on, and I lost my playlist about an hour in. We switched over to the "Emergency Back Up" playlist while I tried reloading, and that playlist is what was on the air on Mondays before I started: the blandest country and "smooth tune" crap you've ever heard. Considering that I opened with Alice Cooper's "Hello! Hooray!", it was a little jarring.

As soon as we were back online, I covered with Tom Petty's "Breakdown" while frantically rebuilding the set - only to have it go down again two minutes later. Well, let's see where the complaints come from this time! 8)

The play is finished now, and went about as well as I could have hoped. I was fun watching the other three guys go through the experience for the first time, but so much work went into making sure they didn't fall (or trying to - I made plenty mistakes of my own!) that I couldn't actually get around to acting. Mostly it was "remember your lines and don't run into the furniture" (h/t Cary Grant). Maybe next time!

No, Honest!

2010-05-28T15:56:00.003-07:00

Picture this:

A husband and wife are wheeled into the emergency entrance of the local hospital late one night; she on the gurney, he in a wheelchair. His knuckles are bruised and cut, and she's got two lack eyes and facial lacerations.

Wait! It's not like that, and I've got the destroyed truck to prove it!

Missed the deer standing in the fast lane on the highway (so we were moving between 90 and 100 km/h) but somehow couldn't avoid the sapling-covered embankment. Spent the last 16 hours or so picking "popcorned" glass out of my hair and limping while getting the truck towed where I want it, picking the dog up, and fielding questions from various and sundry family members. Joy!

But now we are home, the Significant Other has been asleep since 11:00, and I'm about to join her. After a couple painkillers and a touch of food/drink to avoid waking up ravenous and screaming whenever I lift my leg (cracked patella).

Well, at least I'll have something to talk about on the radio Monday!

Just to Clarify...

2010-05-25T11:27:00.002-07:00

...So I know what the Sam Hill the Idiot Imams* are thinking about: when you get the stupider of your followers all riled up about what goes on in other countries, what purpose does it serve?

I'm having flashbacks to the 80's and 90's, when women in Afghanistan and Pakistan and elsewhere in more conservative parts of the Middle East would speak out in town meetings about human rights, some jackasses seeded into the audience would jump up and start chanting "Death to America" over and over until the meeting ended. In this way, anyone who wanted to change or even to question women's rights would be effectively silenced with a distracting blast of otherwise purposeless anger.

So if you could answer a few simple questions for me about the whole "Draw Mohammed" thing, that'd be great:

1) Would Mohammed appear in a photograph? Not "would he willingly appear in one", but would his image physically be transferable to either physical or digital media?
2) What does he look like? If I painted a scene of an Arabic man in the 7th century leading soldiers into battle or preaching from his tent, would you assume it was the prophet? What if I called the painting "Bob on a Horse" or "Bob in a tent"?
3) Is there any way to tell if someone walking around right now looks exactly like the prophet did? Could there be a living twin of Mohammed in the world today who is being inadvertently captured on film, and if so is this against the will of God?

This isn't even getting into why your God can tell me what to do. I eat pork products (and lots of them!), happily drink alcohol, and own a dog I love very much. All of these things are haram - expressly forbidden. Lots of other folks around the world do that, too. What are you planning to do about them?

*These are a specific few who rile up ignorant mobs more frequently than the most devoted Tea Party Performers, much like the Westboro Church mob are not so much Christians as they are Conservative Christian Fuckos.

Into the Deep End...

2010-05-10T13:48:00.001-07:00

Just finished my first radio show. The power was out in town this morning for just a second, but that was enough to knock it off the air, and the manager didn't know how to get it back. So we sat and babbled for twenty minutes or so until a tech came in and fixed it for us.

Didn't have a play list of my own yet, so I relied on theirs. Not great, and ended up accidentally playing some religious stuff (not exactly my thing...) but got the hang of what was going on. More my kind of stuff next week.

Got to talk about a bit about Matt Ellison, who's a local boy (from Duncan) playing in the KHL right now; and a bit about Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (yeah, I actually tried that name live on the radio) and when and why he decided on the work he did. I excerpted it straight from "Curious Minds: How a Child Becomes a Scientist" by John Brockman. Fun book, and great for parents who fear their children might be "a little odd". Hey, you could be witness to the next great bio-chemist!

Station's here: http://www.cicv.ca/
Streaming's here: http://cicv.streamon.fm/

To Air is Human...

2010-05-08T16:43:00.003-07:00

...That's gotta be taken already, right?

So a strange side effect of doing a bit of publicity for the amateur play I'm in: being a radio host. Apparently the local station has a dearth of volunteers, so when I went in to talk about the play I was asked if I wanted to come back on Monday "for a couple of hours" every week.

Well, why not? My brother was a DJ at a private (and, as it ends up, illegal) radio station on Salt Spring Island called TNFM a couple decades ago, and that sounded like fun! Of course, far more beer was involved at the time; I believe their slogan was "Beer Powered Radio!"

Where I'm going is CICV, which is either a radio station or the number or a savage misuse of Roman Numerals.

If you're bored or miss those Lake Woebegone days, the station can be streamed right over here. It's a wildly eclectic bunch of programming, just like you'd expect from a small town volunteer radio station, ranging from conspiracy theorists talking chemtrails and global warming being a hoax to suggestions on which wine with what meals to late night psychedelica. Jazz, country, big band, classical, rock, pop, classic radio plays... Whatever people bring with them, really.

Not sure what I'm going to do with it, but the space is there: I'm thinking just music and bits of science trivia from around the world and whatever's happening in town. We'll just have to see what comes out - should be interesting. For me, at least. You? You're on your own.

I'm on Monday mornings, either at eight or nine o'clock. Not sure about that yet, either!

Ministerial Awareness 101

2010-05-04T14:35:00.003-07:00

Women are complaining about cuts to eleven support groups over the last two weeks. The timing of the leak is such that it happened the day after Conservative Senator Nancy Ruth told told a gathering of women's groups to "Shut the fuck up" about abortion, or else.

"If you push it, there will be more backlash," Ruth said. "This is now a political football. This is not about women's health in this country."

Ruth's statement was apparently to try to stop women from talking about the Conservative policy of not supporting any health organizations internationally if they include abortion in the services thy provide. Giving her the benefit of the doubt, it could be that Senator Ruth fears too much trouble over the policy could have repercussions in domestic policy.

Or it could simply be the senator telling the truth about women's roles in the Conservative Party: Sit down and shut up; or else we WILL pay attention to you, and then you'll be sorry!

Or it could be that the Conservatives have no clue about what abortion means to the actual health of women, in this country or any others.

Just ask Transport Minister John Baird:

But Baird replied that the Liberals were trying to start a "culture war" by opening the divisive abortion issue. "Canadians don't want to drag the abortion debate in the maternal health discussion," he said. "This government is focused on how to make a positive difference in the lives of mothers and newborn children in the developing world."

Um. Tell you what, John: next time a question about transportation comes up, you can speak. But when it comes to women's health...?

Have a seat.

All Right, Who Said "MacBeth"?

2010-04-13T11:22:00.003-07:00

So I've gotten back into theatre for the first time in a few years. Took a while because I had to find the time and a troupe that wasn't doing a frikkin' musical - I'm confident enough in my acting, but I have a singing voice that frightens crows. DEAD crows.

It's a fluffy little puff piece by Norm Foster called "The Foursome", and makes for a gentle reintroduction to the stage. Except:

Our group shot, taken right after casting, was the last picture ever taken by our photographer;

One of our actors had a teen aged girl run in front of his car after she had an argument at a party - he then watched her get run over by a car coming the other way;

Our director's husband died one day after going to the hospital.

"Do you know what the most important element of comedy is?"
"No, what is th-"
"Timing."

(Rowan Atkinson)

Super Duper Natural!

2010-03-28T15:12:00.003-07:00

For those of you not from my beloved home province of British Columbia, we had an advertising slogan for many years:

"Super, Natural British Columbia"

Those folks who believed in mysticism and the occult (yeah, there may be one or two out on the coast here) could pretend there was no comma; hikers and outdoorsy types could leave it in; and photographers could have a magazine to keep their pictures in.

(It wasn't our official slogan, which was "Beautiful British Columbia"; a perfectly nice thing to say about one's home, and one that's tough to argue with. Frankly, this place is gorgeous! But I live here, was born here, and choose to remain here. But if rain isn't your thing, you might think otherwise...)

But the Local Liberals (that would be the Conservatives in any other province) decided that the slogan just wasn't obnoxious enough, opting instead for "The Best Place on Earth!"

No, seriously.

There's a petition to stop the province from using the arrogant (and, for a region that relies heavily on tourist income, stupid) phrase going around; but I always prefer to use reasoned and logical argument to back up my points. The shouting and hissy fits come later.

The best reason to return to our old slogan is tag line is simple: it's accurate, and becoming more so every day. What could possibly be less "natural" than someone acting as a caretaker in our provincial parks? Clearing hiking trails of deadfalls; making sure toilets are available to tourists; having firewood available so fewer drunk campers wander into the woods wielding hatchets... You know, the guys who do this sort of thing:

"Park Rangers are responsible for delivering park's programs, protecting park's visitors and resources, and compliance based enforcement, as well as maintenance of parks facilities and equipment."

(Taken from Ministry web site)

All horribly, horribly unnatural I think you'll agree. So they were done away with.

Not all of them, of course! No no, that would be crazy! There are 970 parks and 13.5 million hectares of total protected area to watch, after all: surely there will have to be, say, 50 or so rangers? Yeah, that should do it. After all, if you let all of them go, there could be vandalism, poaching, litter strewn about, crap piling up... And what kind of signal would that send?

Well, never mind! This year, after two years of cuts to staff and services, the province is taking the bold step of increasing park fees for the third time since 2001. Oh, and cutting the budget by another 10%.

But that's okay! As Environment Minister Barry Penner says,

"B.C still has a "fantastic" parks system and attendance was up last year. "We do a visitor satisfaction survey each year and our approval rating is more than 80 per cent," he said."

Which means that they can go to hell for a few years, and who's going to notice, right? Why, 80% is almost an A in school, and who wouldn't be happy with that?

I suggest Minister Penner's not taking all the credit he could be: if cutting the number of Park Rangers in half results in an 80% satisfaction rating, then surely eliminating them completely would produce a rating of 160%! Math doesn't lie!

And then, when all of the protected areas are finally free of any management at all, we can finally call them truly Natural.

Tyger, Tyger, Burning Bright

2010-03-24T18:53:00.002-07:00

So now that Tiger Woods is back to playing golf, I'm just going to skim down the pertinent facts of his time off:

A staggeringly successful, athletic, globe-trotting young man (who happens to be one of the richest in the world) is revealed to have had several affairs. This is revealed to the world when his wife hits him with a golf club and smashes the window of his car as he tries to escape. He, concussed and unable to steer, crashed said car.

Then his sponsors decide to either drop him or pressure him into getting back together with his wife after counselling to cure his problem.

To clarify:

His problem is that he has sex with women.

Her problem is that when she gets angry, she physically attacks him with a club.

Can anyone please tell me why the Sam Hill he'd want to stay in the marriage?

If you had heard this story being told about Serena Williams (she had affairs and was beaten for it by her husband), would any sane person have encouraged her to stay hitched to the guy?

A Day of Announcements

2010-03-22T10:51:00.003-07:00

Yesterday, the President of the United States finally managed to drag his country kicking and screaming (and howling and moaning and wailing) into the modern era.

Mostly.

While the bill that passed is a mediocre amalgam of government and business that makes ManBearPig a thing of beauty, it's a step in the right direction, even if it's on the wrong path. A single-payer option really is the best (and cheapest) way to go for national health care, but that would have left insurance companies out of the loop for their biggest profit-producing teats. Still, some of the worst excesses of those same companies has been curtailed, which makes for an easy rebuttal against Republican attacks, if the Dems care to use them.

"I'm destroying the country, am I? Well how could you be in favour of pre-existing exclusions on children? Huh? Huh?"

The Republicans have sworn vengeance against those Democrats who are in supposed "risky ridings", but so what? What would they have done if the Democrats didn't pass the bill, donate money to them? Let them run unopposed? Didn't think so. The Republicans did everything they could to avoid any form of compromise, any appearance of there being a discussion, or contributing in any way to any kind of health care bill at all, so now they're pissed about not having a say? Too bad!

Of course, you could always ask the people what they think...

***

Also yesterday, an announcement was made of lesser importance nationally, but great importance socially - at least for one person. James Randi (he's The Magic Man in the links on the right, there) decided to come out as gay. While it's not a big surprise to me, the reasons he had for keeping that part of his identity a secret are finally not enough to outweigh his desire to live beyond his self imposed secret.

A long time magician and front line battler against fuzzy thinking and "woo-woo" beliefs, Randi has decided that he had enough of keeping such a huge part of himself hidden in a secret compartment out of sight of the public. While originally the 81-year old had been silent due to social pressure (as many other celebrities did), even as being gay became more acceptable to the public at large, he had built a career out of alienating mystics, mediums, "zero-point energy" con artists and other charlatans as well as established religions and decided that those people would use his sexuality to discredit his work.

Most famous for his appearances with Johnny Carson (himself an amateur magician) on The Tonight Show debunking the abilities of Uri Geller and exposing the supposed healing abilities of Peter Popoff as utter fraud, he has drawn the ire of many people who make a lot of money off "true believers" over the years. Now, he feels that announcing he is gay is not going to be giving those people any more weapons than they've already tried using against him.

Who knows? Perhaps the idea of someone being a "former gay" can now apply for the $1,000,000 Paranormal Challenge!

Out and In

2010-03-21T11:15:00.000-07:00

Evidently, employers don't care for it much when you point out they're being bone-headed. Who knew?

So I've been fired from my latest job (again) for the usual reason: insubordination (again). I seem to have made a habit of behaving "inappropriately" (ie. showing an apparent lack of respect) to my superiors, looking over my employment record. Funny how I never get fired by my co-workers or through customer complaint, but so it goes.

I guess I should be more afraid of being poor, but I'm just not. Unfortunate personality trait, or just finding the wrong employers? Tough for me to tell, really. I've quit as many jobs as I've been fired from at this point, so I'm thinking self employment may be my only option. We don't quite have the money to open a locksmithing shop, so let's see what's up next. I'm looking to get on with the library here as a casual, so there's hope for me yet.

Sometimes, It's Hard to Argue

2010-03-19T17:00:00.004-07:00

Talking to a co-actor on the weekend, and he was bemoaning the "fact" that Canada wasn't a capitalist society.

"Um, actually we are," I said, thinking about working for money, owning a small business, families inheriting from one generation to the next.

"Not even CLOSE!" came the reply, muttering something about high taxes.

**Here's your "End of Capitalism"! You know you want this to happen!**

Now, there's a lot of things to think about before responding:

1) I'm going to be on stage with this guy, and he's never acted before, so he's already nervous enough without going on tilt;
2) he's been on Unemployment for several months;
3) he's in a government program teaching him how to start his own business;
4) did I mention he's starting his own business?
5) he's got kids, meaning he gets free schooling and medical care for them from my taxes, plus he's getting a tax rebate and child credit for them.

So, how to respond? Alas, in person the first point takes precedent over whatever argument I might have in rebuttal. I like the internet that way: here, you can be who you actually are.

If I Were in Movies...

2010-03-15T12:04:00.000-07:00

...I'd be so dead by now.

Things I've found following strange noises in the woods:

1) A tiny waterfall I didn't know was there;

2) an otter;

3) a bee's nest in a fallen log;

4) a beaver;

5) a bear;

6) a branch that fell seconds ago, with the bushes it hit still moving;

7) a bwoodpecker;

8) an owl getting harassed by dozens of crows (twice);

9) a young couple smoking dope and making out (smile, wave, move on);

10) spiders engaged in a mating ritual. No, they weren't making noise, but I'm easily distracted when I'm outdoors.

When I say there's nothing in life that isn't interesting, I mean it. I absolutely love living in a temperate rainforest in a small town. There's stuff I don't have the opportunity for that I would in a city, but so be it: the Significant Other would hate city life, so here we are. And a darned fine here it is.

Canada's Hosting the Olympics? Really?

2009-10-14T21:00:00.003-07:00

Much was made of China winning their Summer Olympic bid due to their numerous human rights violations and lack of personal freedoms.

A short while back, it was mentioned that out of the kindness of our hearts, we'd be giving the homeless somewhere to sleep for the three weeks that the Olympics are in town. And if there aren't any rooms available, there are always jail cells either in town or at some friendly nearby community. That the folks in question are homeless at least partially due to a lack of funding for specific shelters and recovery clinics as an added burden to insane housing costs doesn't seem to have crossed anyone's minds just yet, but I'm sure we'll get back to concern for them after the streets are cleaned for the guests.

More recently, the City of Vancouver is putting through a bylaw allowing police to enter homes and seize any visible signage that is deemed "inappropriate" on 24 hours notice. The fun part is determining what exactly makes a sign "inappropriate". According to the Minister of Community and Rural Development (that would be Bill Bennett, his contact information is right here) it's all about the money:

"You've got the potential for some businesses to try and exploit the games logo without having paid for the rights to do that. I think its a reasonable thing for communities to want to remove those kinds of signs, and to remove them before the end of the Olympic Games."

So businesses that didn't pay for Olympic ad space can't display signs with any Olympic symbols on them? Well, that doesn't seem too unreasonable, even if the law was already in effect...

The Vancouver bylaw prevents anyone who isn't licensed to do so from carrying any signs or handing out any materials on or near Olympic venues or other designated city property.

Wait - any signs or materials? On all designated city property? Any exceptions?

In a news release sent out this morning, BCCLA Executive Director David Eby said the association is concerned about restricting signage that is deemed not "celebratory" in public facilities and even a city park.

What about for charity? Like for, say, Right to Play, a favourite charity of many NHL players?

For the last three Games, Right to Play has set up an unadorned information booth in the village to educate the curious about its programs and to recruit athletes for its projects. No sponsor logos, no offending literature, no misuse of the iconic Olympic rings, no clash of corporate colors. Just selfless human decency.

That wasn't good enough for VANOC and its sponsors. At one point in negotiations, Vancouver organizers insisted Right to Play dissolve its agreement with Mitsubishi. So, Right to Play tore up its agreement with the Japanese car giant, which was was creative enough to delay its sponsorship of Right to Play until after the 2010 Games.

Seizing the moment, VANOC then took dead aim at the the other corporations in partnership with Right to Play. At which point Right to Play balked. Understandably, they could not permit VANOC to axe its funding lifeline.

In other news, the Olympic Torch Relay is coming through my town on October 31st.

Anyone have a Right to Play shirt, umbrella, jacket, or any thing else they want on display for Hallowe'en? I want to see just how "inappropriate" I can get.

Well, That Didn't Work

2009-10-14T20:56:00.002-07:00

Back to text. Beautiful as I am, I just don't have the time to do video version of a blog. Maybe some shorties will make an appearance here, or I'll pop another one up now and again; but for now, I'm going back to what I do best.

No, not "nothing at all", wiseacres: I mean write.

Now For Something Completely Different

2009-03-02T21:50:00.003-08:00

It's been over a month now, and it just doesn't seem like I'm coming back, does it? Still, the links here are a fine collection, and I'd hate to see them go to waste. Maybe I'll do a "most popular/weirdest" list of my posts at some point, but that will come around later.

For now, I'm changing mediums. (Media? Feh.) Bottom line: I'm going to try this "video" thing I keep hearing about. I'm not too worried about sticking my ugly mug and reedy voice out there, free to be openly mocked by the world at large, because I've already exposed my brain. Can't get much more personal than that, eh?

Anyhow, I'm packing up my stuff from here and moving Just Along The Corridor, to Room 12A.

See you there!

Uh, Really?

2009-01-26T21:26:00.002-08:00

So.

Been working with one woman for almost a year now, and it came up that I used to iron shirts for a living. And she was fascinated by this. No, really: her reaction was:

"I didn't know you were such an interesting guy."

She wasn't being facetious, either. This after (in the course of idle chatter) I had mentioned breaking a rib going down rapids without a boat; converting a trailer into a motorcycle workshop and rebuilding a couple of bikes; entering the Three Day Novel Contest; working in theatre (on and off stage) and as an extra in a couple commercials; starting my own locksmithing business; and a couple of other bits and pieces I'm not going to mention in a public forum.

She's fascinated... by a guy ironing shirts.

This can't be normal.

Swing and Miss

2009-01-21T17:19:00.001-08:00

(From a comedy website pitch. It failed, but that's too much writing to toss aside, so here ya go.)

If you asked people who the biggest names in science are, you'll get the usual lot: Newton; Curie; Asimov. Francis Bacon only comes up because it's so much fun to say.

Go ahead, try it. Bacon. Bacon Bacon Bacon. Mmmm, Bacon. Francis Bacon. Could you imagine calling a child that today? "Hey, Bacon! Eat me!" "Are you Franks or Bacon?" "Is your dick kosher?" "Bite my Novum Organum!" Children are so, so cruel.

Sorry. Where was I? Right!

One name you'll hear over and over again (especially this year) is Charles Darwin. Who doesn't know his brilliant work on the formation of coral atolls, or the definitive The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms? Oh, and that other thing he did, popularizing and explaining the theory of evolution by publishing On the Origin of Species one hundred and fifty years ago this November and it's been in print ever since.

Despite his other work, that one small portion of it seems to drive a certain element of the population to their wit's end. No, really: they seem to have left all semblance of intelligence behind in protest of evolution's popularity. These are a few of the most egregious.

5) People make watches, so Darwin = wrong.

The Argument: If you were walking in the middle of a field, and you saw a watch, you'd know it was a complicated instrument, so you would assume that it was manufactured and that someone had dropped it, not that it "evolved" from nature. Anything that has a complex structure has to be created.

The Problem: Would you change your mind if you then found a watch tree? Say there was a small shrub with watches just like the one you found growing from it at the edge of the field. And say you took a cutting from that shrub home, planted it, and watched it grow, producing many watches. Then went and found more Time Shrubs (you found 'em, you get to name 'em!) of differing varieties and produced a variety of watches in different materials, colours, and qualities. Well, that's pretty much what we've done with every living thing on earth in the past 200 years. And guess what? It all has complex structures, and none of it looks like clockwork.

This argument, by the way, has been around longer than Darwin. Not Darwin's book: longer than Darwin. Time to move on, wouldn't you say?

4) If people came from monkeys, why do monkeys still exist?

The Argument: Okay, fine: apes, then. Jeeze, you evolutionists are a touchy lot! Anyhow, if everything evolves, and everything is still evolving, then everything like us should be us, right? If dogs came from wolves, then the wolves should be gone (they all became dogs). So if we're apes, and all the apes came from a similar ancestor, then they should all be evolved the same amount: us!

The Problem: Everything of the same age is evolved the same amount, just in different directions. There has to be a reason for a new mutation (or even a new means) to be advantageous, or it simply won't stay around. Why learn how to run when you can swing through the trees? You'd learn how to run if the trees started to vanish, for instance... Do it well enough, bringing home enough food, and those strange-looking feet the other chimps laughed at you for suddenly become the hot ticket to successful mating, boyo!

You can see exactly that happening right now in the Chambura Gorge in Uganda, if you'd like. Or we can go on to the next argument...

3) Hold it! No one has ever seen a new species evolve, so it's not science! (AKA "It's just a theory")

The Argument: Science has to be testable, and evolution is not testable in any controlled way, so it's not science.

The Problem: Do you have any idea what sort of time frame we're talking about here? No? Somewhat more than 6,000 years, anyways. Still, if you insist on claiming fruit flies don't count (inability to breed is considered a change of species: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-06/uor-nsf061203.php) then perhaps Escherichia coli will. A research project at the University of Michigan that's been running for 20 years now has been studying 44,000 generations of E. coli, all started from the same strain, and separated them. Doing nothing else but watching, one of those populations (and only one of them) developed the ability to eat the medium of the petri dishes they were living in.

Boom! One clearly different strain, including a beneficial mutation, that was unique to it despite sharing the same genetic starting point as all the other strains. Bear in mind that was a single study on frikkin' bacteria, and it still took twenty years. If you want to see a dog give birth to a cat by next week, you're SOL. Ain't gonna happen.

2) If I don't understand it, no one else does either.

The Argument: Look at the astronomically small odds of a single chain of RNA forming. For the universe to be accidentally created, it would be like winning the lottery every day for the rest of your life! And for a series of accidental mutations to "just happen" to become us, well, the odds of that are so small as to be considered zero!

The Problem: Two different complaints, one end result. First, it's pointless arguing that the universe shouldn't be here when it so obviously is. We don't know the time frame, or how many iterations it's gone through, or even what exactly the universe is, so that's simply going to have to stay in the realm of the philosophers for now. But let me put it to you this way: if you went with an infinite amount of time, you wouldn't even need a million monkeys at typewriters to reproduce the complete works of Shakespeare. One would do fine, if you could keep it alive. Unfortunately, you'd also get everything else: every piss-poor emo high school poet; all the lyrics from WHAM!'s Make It Big album (in order); the instruction manual for your Toshiba AM/FM compact disc player. Everything. That's what infinity means, bub: don't mess with it.

The other argument is that the mutations should accidentally be to our benefit. Actually, no, they rarely are to our benefit: for the most part, we don't even know they exist until circumstances create evidence of them. Resistance to the last bout of Black Death, for instance, is still carried around by a bunch of us Europeans thanks to the lucky few who had the mutations that made them survivors. Malaria still plays hell with us, though - unless we've also got Duffy negative blood from West Africa in us, too. But then there's the sickle-cell anemia to deal with... And so on.

The point being that these inherited traits aren't "accidental" - they are selected, much like that lucky monkey (okay, ape) back in argument 4 is going to have a slew of descendants because his mutation is suddenly very sexy. That's selection.

Put it another way: to recreate all of Shakespeare's Hamlet, generating random phrases while keeping those letters that were accurately placed (selecting for them, you could say) took a computer program written by Richard Hardison of Glendale College less than a week. Nature does not choose randomly - nature chooses what works.

And the stupidest argument against evolution is...

1) Evolution is evil!

The Argument: No one was ever picked on before evolution came around, and ever since him millions of people have died. So it's all his fault. So nyah!.

The Problem: Oh, for... Are you really going to make me go there? *sigh* Fine.
Welcome to the world of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, which took 90 minutes to explain that Darwin caused the Holocaust. Yes, they went there: the entire movie is , so any reference to Nazis in the comments is allowed. In an interview (http://boingboing.net/2008/05/01/ben-stein-science-le.html) on the Trinity Network, the presenter (Ben Stein) came up with this gem:

"Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people."

Yup, science leads you to killing people. I suppose this is true in that discovering force = mass x velocity can bring you to the conclusion that a club is better for hitting people with than your hand, so who am I to argue?

Still, the idea that somehow Darwin's work led to racism and genocide is more than a little ridiculous, even if it is an old meme: Social Darwinism, which was a combination of eugenics and classism. Problem for those who say this was what Darwin thought is that it's not what Darwin thought. Eugenics came from Francis Gaulton, who thought of breeding programs for animals being applied to humans, and Thomas Malthus brought up social pressures being applied to have people restrain themselves when they outstrip their resources. (Malthus thought, interestingly enough, that God made us breed beyond our means to teach us a lesson.) Others took that to mean poor kids should be shuffled off to workhouses. Herbert Spencer coined "survival of the fittest" to economics, and Ernst Haeckel decided it should apply to races, too.

Darwin himself was frankly horrified by a theory in biology being applied to social welfare, but much like a maker of cream pies, once you put the product in the hands of the public, what they do with it is out of your control.

The Inevitable Inauguration Post

2009-01-20T22:11:00.005-08:00

It's official: history in made in the United States. As a coincidence, the Celebrity Death Clock for Obama is now spinning fast enough to start fires.

But I don't want to be too pessimistic - there are a lot of other people doing that already. I will, instead, look at one person who has decided that Barack Obama isn't (yet) an angel:

Obama 'is no Martin Luther King'

There's a lot written here, but it boils down to this: Obama is a politician, and Martin Luther King wasn't. That's pretty much it.

"Obama is Lyndon Johnson."

This is because Johnson was also a president neck-deep in a war. As such, Johnson couldn't speak out about human rights... or something.

"Dr King would find creative ways to confront Obama's militarism, and to actively resist further diversion of public wealth to the bankers."

Hope you don't think that "bankers" means "Jews". Because, gosh, that would be wrong. Just because author Glen Ford talks pretty much exclusively about the war in the Middle East. Oh, and Israel/Palestine.

Plus more than a little "how dare blacks celebrate Obama's presidency!"

"Tens of millions of African-Americans - who did not choose the little-known Obama to be their champion, but supported him near-universally at the polls once his candidacy had been made "viable" - will celebrate a vicarious attainment of power when Obama is sworn in."

It's not that I actually mind Ford reminding people that Obama is actually pretty dang moderate in his views and his votes for a Democrat. But I do have to add that the people who claim leftists view Obama as some kind of saviour are... conservatives. The people on the left, at least the ones I read (look over to the right, there), are perfectly aware that he's a fantastic orator (which won him the election) and is otherwise a thoughtful, coherent politician. This doesn't stop The Daily Show and The Colbert Report from mocking both the President-Elect (now President, of course) and the fanboy culture that's sprung up around him.

Meaning he looks pretty damn good by comparison, but is otherwise just a good choice for leader right now. After all, a single candle seems as bright as the sun when you've been living in a hole for eight years.

Even so, it is interesting to see Ford complain that a president doesn't go ramming Israeli warships like Cynthia McKinney did (kinda). He's complaining that the man who wanted to be president of the United States (anyone know why yet?) doesn't have a two-dimensional sensibility to the world; he doesn't make hard and clear (and public) decisions on what is morally right and morally wrong in every circumstance. Why can't Obama just stand up and tell the world how to behave? How could that possibly be wrong?

After all, only one decision is important: choose wrong, and terrible things could happen...

"[...]not all African-Americans have morphed into warmongering clones of Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice."

Because we all know how identical they are. So long as President Obama can avoid becoming Secretary of State, he should be just fine.

The World Turns

2009-01-15T18:57:00.002-08:00

Enough about my pathetic whining - the world continues on, and brings with it the first Skeptics' Circle of the New Year!

Enjoy, and mind where you put your feet - she gets really annoyed if you squish anything over there...

The Pause That Refreshes

2009-01-14T17:29:00.003-08:00

So in addition to having our truck broken into, it seems our washing machine died while we were gone. Well, we were planning on getting a stacking set whenever we got around to rebuilding the house anyway, so...

Spent a couple hours today installing said set, only to find the dryer cord not long enough to reach the outlet, and having to replace the vent pipe, and needing some more plumbing for the new washer, and and and.

On the plus side, I did get a comment left at a long-ago post about Kirk Cameron's "banana" incident that starts thusly:

"Great to see! A bunch of evolutionist sheep."

Some days, I get sweetly rewarded.

Criminals Are Idiots, Proof #1,253,465

2009-01-10T18:03:00.002-08:00

Home after 28 hours of travel, to find the window of our truck smashed in. Total of what was stolen:

Home made CDs. Resale value: $0
Ferry pass to smaller islands. Resale value: $0, unless you live on said islands, and don't mind getting busted for using stolen merchandise.
Face plate to stereo, but not the stereo itself. Resale value: $0
Two pens. Resale value: not sure. A dime each, maybe?

And that's about it. Awfully pathetic, really. The snow chains got left behind; as were the jumper cables, my rubber boots and some Canadian Tire money in the ashtray. Hell, even the registration was still there, so the big time potential for identity theft was completely ignored! Who the heck is training these amateurs?

Look, free advice: if people have left their vehicles in the Long Term Parking lot, it means they expect to be gone a Long Time. See how that works? This means there isn't going to be anything of value left behind: those people are probably planning on using their cash, cards and cheques while they're on vacation, yes?

No, don't bother trying to think about it: the answer's "yes".

Idiot.

Origins and Exodus

2008-12-28T12:17:00.002-08:00

In England now, tucked into the South-west corner. Had a perfectly delightful time with a perfectly delightful and enthusiastic lady the evening before we left, and will jot down impressions of here when I've got a bit more time. Perhaps in London.

For some reason, I've really been hit with jet lag, even though I didn't even notice the difference last time over... Of course, I didn't write for the first week, either, so that could be the difference there.

I have been shamed into FINALLY reading Darwin's Origin of the Species - one of my favorite features of this nation is how many people are educated, in school or otherwise. There is none of that idiot anti-intellectualism that's infecting North America: people here are unashamed to have books on their shelves, despite George Orwell's protests of years ago.

One of those books happened to be the sixth (and final) edition of Darwin's, and it's one I haven't yet managed to read. It's astoundingly accessible (allowing for the usual purple prose of Victorian times), and there is no reason not to have read it by now - the only excuse I can manage is that it is such an integral part of our lives that there is no need to read Darwin in the same way there's no need to read Pythagoras (if anything was left) in order to understand geometry.

But there's a better excuse to read Darwin's masterwork than guilt: in February, it will be that great man's 200th birthday, and come November, Origin will have been continuously published for 150 years. (By sheer coincidence, I got a comment at this post today, which I consider an entirely appropriate mention.) Tragically, that last major mention of Darwin's world changing theory was the execrable eXpelled: No Intelligence Allowed (which certainly lived up to its name), so it's time to make up for that.

This year, we can push his name into public consciousness as something more than a muttered grey man in Grade 8 Biology. That you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who has done more for our understanding of the universe since Newton is rarely mentioned: this really is someone who deserves to be enshrined for elucidating something so basic that modern science would be literally impossible without it.

He will be mentioned again, of course: what's important is where. His writing was for reasonably educated people who would not have known too many specialist terms one hundred and fifty years ago, so there is little excuse not to expose him to the same sort of people today.

Time to spread the word!

***

The Significant Other, reading over my shoulder as I write this, would like me to amend the "200th birthday" remark, as Darwin stopped having birthdays some time ago.

Rewarding Year in Review

2008-12-22T11:38:00.003-08:00

Need a reminder why veering left in your politics is evidence of intelligence? Check the Year in Review (and award nominees!) over at the Poor Man's Institute.

Vote early, vote often!

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

2008-12-21T23:26:00.002-08:00

Going to Vancouver in three days, London in four. Re-scheduled ferry reservation; got an hotel room; made arrangements for someone to harass our cats one day sooner.

Horrid weather has forced our hand with all of these changes, but all told it's something we were considering any way. No hardship there.

Meaning: it's time for the truck to die.

Fortunately, it's just the belt tensioner. We've got a dead-common truck, and it's not a rare part. It is, however, a few days before Christmas. If there isn't one on in town, we may be in trouble.

Drum roll, please...

Happy Birthday to Me!

2008-12-20T16:44:00.003-08:00

This year, and at my location, Global Orgasm Day is happening on December 21st at 4:00 AM. Okay, so it's actually the day before my birthday, but when I was born the solstice fell on the 22nd, so I consider the solstice to be my birthday, whichever day it happens to actually fall on.

Frankly, I don't give a rip about feel-good movements: the people who tend to participate in them are already a pretty peaceful bunch. But this one just makes sense, dammit! Hence I encourage everyone to participate. And don't let the time frame limit you: the orgasms are effective throughout the entire day. Promise.

Focus, Lads! Focus!

2008-12-18T22:36:00.001-08:00

Speaking of sex selling...

Perhaps not safe for work...

Sex Sells; Fear of Sex Sells More

2008-12-18T20:06:00.002-08:00

So I'm catching up on Blue Gal's blog, and find a link to a bit of advertising hysteria that got posted at Huffington Post:

Yet the advertising world has not caught up to the advances of half our population and continues to use stereotypes and violence to prey on our most vile desires. Here are the worst of them--the trends that won't die despite our cultural outrage, and personal boredom.

Well, first off: "outrage" and "boredom" are pretty much antonyms. You really can't have both at once. It does serve as a nice warning for what is to follow, however.

You may think, "hey this one shows two women, there aren't even men involved, how can it be sexist?" [...] these women are obviously putting on a show for an outsider, not having a passionate lesbian love affair for themselves.

Note that this is about a series of ads for Remy Martin. You know, booze. And the two women in the ad pictured? Are two women in a heavy flirtation with a bondage subtext. Women who engage in bondage are apparently bad, though I personally remain unconvinced.
Next up is rape:

The world of high fashion has been the worst offender in the violence-as-art game. Cavalli had pirates, Chanel had a wife beater, and now Dolce and Gabbana has this.

Yup, Dolce & Gabbana. Lots and lots of guys buy Dolce & Gabbana. That's why that fashion company is so successful - they know their market. Oh, and any guy who doesn't think a rape is going on right there on the set is a fag.

They are offering you a virgin in looks and expression, and a slut in the tagline: "You know you're not the first." [...] She's the ultimate fantasy: a virgin who won't say no to anything.

Other than contradicting yourself, you could simply say that kids in advertising are creepy - which is absolutely true. But the writer shoots herself in the foot by bringing up that Calvin Klien campaign featuring young people in sexual circumstances; apparently she missed the part where the models were both male and female...

There are many meanings to the term corporate responsibility and one of them is not to fetishize female sexuality.

That when she's talking about a Nikon ad featuring two women on a bed, posing for the camera.

Sigh.

Okay, I'll type slowly so you can follow along: the term "fetish", when used in a discussion of sexuality, means something that the victim of the fetish cannot achieve sexual wholeness without. To enjoy sex, they must have their fetish indulged. The term "sexuality" is misused here as well, unless you are talking about the sexuality of the two women in the picture. Meaning: unless you intended to state that Nikon is taking advantage of the poor lesbians in the crowd, I think you've missed your mark.

However, in case you meant that companies shouldn't advertise using men's fantasies, boy are you going to be disappointed for the next, oh... 1,035,626 years or so. Fantasies are exactly what advertising is, whether sex is involved or not.

The images and tag lines reinforce the idea of women sex receptacle, and therefore simply a receiver of sex, not one engaging in an equal process. This ad reads "I Want You All Over Me," which is as subtle as it is sexy.

It's also for a perfume. Called "Lamb", of all things. No comment on women being "led to the slaughter"? I'm shocked! Shocked, I tell you!

The ending paragraph is probably one the writer wants to have back, too:

The fact that these trends are so widespread is not the fault of the advertising world--these people are paid to appeal to our ids, they are often self-aware in their tendency to make the world harder for women, that's the life they've chosen.

So, they are deliberately making the world harder for women, but it's not their fault? Huh. And it's true, you know: life has been getting harder and harder for women ever since advertising came out this year.

I'm still bemused that of the five advertisements the writer complains about, all are for luxury items - unless stupidly expensive shoes have become somehow essential - and two are targeted specifically at women. Add that to her astounding ability to chase her own tail (logically speaking) and you end up with a post filled with despair and anger and not a small amount of cluelessness.

Makes you wonder what complaints she'd file about this jeans ad.

Given time, these things will balance themselves out. Maybe we'll be hearing Dan Savage complaining bitterly about the wall-to-wall gay porn being used to sell lipstick in his podcasts by 2010.

We can only hope.

The Politics of Blogging

2008-12-17T19:56:00.003-08:00

Looks like the secret tapes are out, and boy, it doesn't look good for Rod Blagojevich. We knew he was bad, but NOW we know he's eeeeevil, too!

All the proof is at this week's Skeptics' Circle, served up at Happy Jihad's House of Pancakes.

Ancient History and New Victims

2008-12-16T22:25:00.003-08:00

Story Time!

A long time ago, there was a young man who was a new immigrant to America. He had been told, and he believed, that America was the land of opportunity for anyone willing to work hard and learn a trade. He tried various approaches to earning money, including work as a dishwasher (and eventual waiter) of the restaurant on whose floor he slept and a bank teller.

His fortune was finally made when, while selling advertising to businesses, he hit upon the idea of arbitrage - buying goods from one market where it is cheap and selling it in another where it is more valuable. The distances are irrelevant: so long as there is a seller and purchaser who have different ideas of the value for an item, money can be made between them.

Within days, he was making thousands of dollars. He showed potential investors the money he had made, and offered to let them in on what was a stunning return (fifty percent!) for what was an easily explained - and clearly demonstrated - idea.

They invested, he produced; within weeks word was getting around about the immigrant with a golden touch. New investment started flowing in from more and more people getting the astounding return exactly as promised. People saw cash in their hands and promptly threw it back into the new company that was making them rich.

Soon enough, investment capital had gone from a few thousand to millions. As there always is when millions of dollars is involved, a lawsuit raised questions; and as often happens when millions is involves, the Financial Wizard paid everyone who asked questions, and the questions stopped.

But questions soon followed from people he couldn't simply hand money to go away. He was exposed as a fraud, arrested, and eventually deported. Investigators couldn't find where the investor's money went, and finally concluded he had simply spent millions of dollars of other people's money. Some went to his exuberant living expenses (He's rich, and thus good with money! Invest with him!) and more went to the investors themselves. Well, some of it did, any way.

Later investors provided the cash for him to pay older investors when their dividends came due. The older investors saw their cash, plus a generous profit, and handed it back (plus more, having gotten a mortgage for this fantastic deal). That money was later returned, plus yet another huge bonus, with the sure knowledge that they would reinvest. Who needed to make money when people would simply hand it to you?

The man's name was Carlo ("Charles") Ponzi, and he has a financial scam variant named after him. He had, and pissed away, millions of dollars in a matter of months, scamming some 17,000 hopeful victims. In 1920 dollars, that would be the equivalent of $10,000,000 using the Consumer Price Index.

Not bad for four months, eh? If he had been set loose for 40 years, perhaps he'd have been close to Bernard L. Madoff's $50 billion of ghost money.

The scam has been around for decades, and it's always the same bait and the same hook.

The Bait

Cash. It's that simple. Ponzi offered a staggering 50% return on investment: that's more than enough to make any reasonably intelligent person highly suspicious. (Note: having money does not make one intelligent; not even reasonably so.) Madoff handed out 11% or better on investor's returns for fifteen straight years - including through two market crashes.

The Hook

When questions arise, there's an extra layer of protection scam runners have: trust. Ponzi had the newly arrived Italians; Madoff had the members of his country club. Both of them started out talking to people they knew, people like them. Those first victims would be talking to someone who they knew they could trust. He's our people, and he wouldn't betray our people, would he?

And then those folks, getting huge returns on their investment, would tell others they knew: you know, people like them. Hey, there's this great kid made good, he's looking for investors, and you could do worse, yes? Look what he did for me! And my gosh, have you seen his house?

Madoff, unlike Ponzi, likely had no intention of stealing money from his investors. Most likely he got caught in one of the many pitfalls of the markets he played in, and simply couldn't stand to tell the people who trusted him, many of whom were philanthropic institutions, that they wouldn't be meeting projected marks. It was just a little cover-up: they would make up for it next year...

Sound familiar?

You want to trust people, especially ones who remind you of yourself. It's difficult to question someone who you already believe knows more than you do; but to doubt one that has brought you a reward for trusting him is nearly impossible for many.

Many investment scams still rely on exactly this tribalism to find new victims: Hispanics in the southern United States have seen Spanish-only banks appear, last for a year or two, then vanish. How can that happen? The people investing are strangers in a strange land, exactly as the first of Ponzi's victims were - they need someone they can trust, who also knows the world they are trying to exist in. Who better than someone who speaks their language? There are even smaller groups catered to, sometimes opening in rented mall space.

There are other variants circulating about that use the Us-verses-Them mindset to ensure trust, and to encourage the idea that to question is to betray that trust. "Women's Investment Circles" are a classic example, meeting at each other's homes (with help from a facilitator), getting women to recruit their friends and expand the Circle - whose members then go looking for others to recruit... There are people who prey on religious congregations; who pose as new-age gurus starting "healing colonies"; who have free-energy machines that "they" don't want you to know about.

Every group has been ripped off at one point or another: religious congregations, political activists, home makers, sports fans. I'm sure if I lived in Italy, I'd be writing about how the Moroccans coming to the country are too naive; or about the Koreans if I lived in Japan.

When Ponzi was arrested, people were furious... with the officers. Even in prison, he was getting inquiries from potential and past investors who simply didn't believe he was misleading them, combined with the fervent hope that the magic ride wasn't over... plus one other thing.

A funny thing about poker hands: many people find it harder to fold a hand they've put $500 into than one they've only invested $5 into. There comes a tipping point, different for everyone, where the gambler decides they "can't afford to walk away" from their investment. So they pay more, dream bigger, and ignore any signs that they're headed for disaster. Even more interesting is that people who are bluffing, who know their hand is worthless, are more likely to fold their hand, cut their losses and look for the next opportunity. But people who have bad hands, ones that they are playing despite fifty-to-one odds against, they're the ones who stick around. They pray, deeply and devoutly, that a miracle happens to pull them back to their original level of savings. The hope is what keeps them, misplaced though it may be.

This simile falls apart when you realize while there are few miracles in poker, there are none in the financial world.

The big question is this: how can you trust any of your investing when some of the wealthiest people in the world fall victim to a well known scheme more than seventy-five years old?

All that can help is the same thing that help in every other circumstance where people are looking to take advantage of you:

1) Multiple sources of information;
2) Increase your personal knowledge of what's claimed;
3) Keep your emotions in check, especially if you hear an Us-verses-Them message.

Money: yet another reason why keeping skeptical is a healthy idea, physically and financially.

***

Since I have the chance, I'm going to point you to a certain Mr. Madoff pontificating on the economy (hat tip to Crawl Across the Ocean, or CAtO, over on the right, there). As he puts it:

Red Tory links to an old video of Madoff pontificating on life on Wall Street, and how he goes down to the SEC and complains that Wall Street is over-regulated, and how now that they can't make money from commissions any more, the big money is made by taking risks, and how the public doesn't understand that "in today's regulatory environment is is impossible for a violation of the rules to go undetected, particularly over a long period of time". Great stuff!

Go, look, and laugh.

Time and Communication

2008-12-15T18:58:00.004-08:00

Trevor Greene hasn't learned how to walk yet. But the 41 year-old Canadian soldier is working on it.

He was attending a shura in the village of Shinkay in March of 2006, talking with elders there about what they would need for reconstruction. Shinkay is in the Kandahar region of Afghanistan, where the mountains have provided shelter for Taliban fighters conducting hit-and-run attacks, and where Canada's military actions are focused. Greene had previously written books on missing women from Vancouver's East Side and the homeless in Japan, and was most interested in bringing education opportunities to girls and women in Afghanistan. He was a member of a provincial reconstruction team, focusing mainly on providing wells for villages.

While seated the the shura, he was attacked by a 16 year-old boy wielding an axe. Greene had his helmet off and rifle on the ground, as a sign of respect for the shura, so there was nothing to prevent the axe from essentially splitting his brain in half. Fortunately, a medic had decided to accompany him despite Greene's insistence that one wouldn't be needed. It was, after all, a simple meeting with an organizational committee to discuss what the town needed.

In the past two and a half years of rehabilitation, Greene has nearly died three times. He's managed to speak above a whisper. He has some control over a motorized wheelchair. And he now lives at home, and has pretend tea with his daughter. As far as a list of accomplishments goes, it's short - but surprising none the less.

If anyone had reason for despair, resentment, or hatred, it would be him. When asked what he would say to his assailant if he met the boy now, he said this:

I'm sorry. Because he's dead now. I know my comrades killed him. I was there in a uniform with a weapon. He had reason to attack me.

The Canadian government has said that it fully intends to pull out of Afghanistan on schedule in 2011, probably with some developmental assistance and technical support deployment - troops numbering in the dozens rather than thousands. I can only hope that there is enough stability left behind so that the people there will have the luxury of choice; that desperation or fear or hunger won't be the overriding factor in their lives.

If we can keep employing people like Trevor Greene to represent us around the world, I do believe that the hope I have has reason as well.

There Are Times...

2008-12-15T18:26:00.001-08:00

I wish I didn't read Orcinus. Often, it's those same times I wish he wasn't right.

It's Official: I'm Legal

2008-12-12T20:15:00.003-08:00

And no, this has nothing to do with age.

I just got my Security Industry Licence: Worker and Security Industry Licence: Business Owner cards.

So now when I enter a home/car/what have you, it will be because I have permission!

"Daddy, What's a Pusher?"

2008-12-07T20:24:00.006-08:00

"It's a kind of pollster, son..."

What do you get when you have a reckless warrior,

a three-headed monster,

and a member of the arts?

Brave Sir Robin, of course!

But the same day Plastic Man did run away, a poll was released that showed we shared the overwhelming terror he felt:

What Canadians are witnessing has shaken them pretty much to the core: almost three quarters (72%) of Canadians indicate that they are truly scared for the future of the country with what is going on in Ottawa[...]

What didn't get mentioned in the story is exactly what question was asked:

The findings were in response to a question about whether Harper should remain in government "because of the severe economic situation the country faces and the fact the Liberals and NDP have entered into an 'unholy' deal with the Bloc separatists."

You know, you can really tell the quality of a poll question by the number of times 'unholy' appears in it. This poll was about as honest as Daddy's answer.

That's What She Said!

2008-12-05T11:49:00.002-08:00

And so, friends, we come to a break in the proceedings. This dramatic tale of politics, power, betrayal, and, apparently, pants-wetting terror come to a close until January 26th (or so).

For now, let us hear the joyous sounds of Talking Points and Counter Points ring through the land this holiday season:

We're not even two months removed from the last election, and a group of backroom politicians are going to pick who the Prime Minister is. Canadians didn't vote for this person. We don't even know who this person will be.

Actually, we do. He just won't be there longer than a few months when he'll get replaced with someone else. That's who we don't know.

Not a single voter voted for a Liberal-NDP coalition. Certainly not a single voter voted for the Liberals to form a coalition with the separatists in the Bloc.

And yet 62% of the voters did vote against Stephen Harper, including those Canadians who voted for the Bloc. Though you do raise a good point: from now on, we should be allowed to choose coalitions on our ballots! Otherwise, how will they ever know to cooperate with each other and actually get things done when they're in Ottawa?

This is what bothers me the most. The Conservatives won the election. The Opposition keeps saying that the Conservatives have to respect the will of the voters that this is a minority and so on.

Isn't stepping on their throats respect enough?

…how about Liberals, NDP and Bloc respecting the will of the voters when they said "YOU LOSE".

How dare the opposition oppose the current government! How dare they?!

And what's this going to do to the economy. I'm sorry, I don't care how desperate the Liberals are — giving socialists (Jack Layton) and separatists (Gilles Duceppe) a veto over every decision in government — that is a recipe for total economic disaster.

First, thanks for letting us know who you meant. I thought Elizabeth May was the separatist, and Ron Gray was the socialist. (Can you really blame me for the last one, though? Look what that other evangelical fanatic did to our nation.) Still, is 'socialist' still your big, scary boogieman? Really? Despite the financial record of left-wing leaderships compared to right-wing ones? Well, if you insist...

But how more phony could these guys be?

Call me when you've got a leader who has a memory longer than four years old. And doesn't repeatedly proclaim that 'the people of Canada demand immediate action on the the economy' and then promptly run away for seven weeks to let ad men do his job for him.

I mean, I follow the news, virtually every single day you have Harper or Flaherty out there telegraphing exactly what they plan to do with the economy. And not once did you hear the Liberals, NDP or separatists talking about toppling the government in response.

No, "you" don't - you're a list of talking points. Otherwise you may have noticed that talking about buying your son a car so he'll love you is not the same as actually buying him a car so he'll love you. Plus, when it was made clear that Haprer and Flaherty wanted to cripple their political opponents, attack unions, and stop women fro using the Human Rights Commission, then boy howdy! did you ever hear the Liberals, NDP, and Bloc talk about toppling the government! In fact, that's what this whole embroglio is about, remember?

No — do you know what set this off. When Flaherty said he was going to take taxpayer-funded subsidies away from the opposition. Now there is a reason to try and overturn an election— because the Conservatives the audacity to say "Hey, it's a recession, maybe you should take your nose out of the trough."

Which explains taking away the right to strike and stopping women from using the Human Rights Commission to address workplace pay inequities. That'll save this nation some cash!

And I wish the media would be more clear on this point — the opposition aren't being singled out by this fact the Conservatives stand to lose the most money of all. The only difference is that Canadians are voluntarily giving money the Conservatives, so they don't need taxpayer handouts. The only reason the opposition would be hurt more is because nobody wants to donate to them. They should be putting their efforts towards fixing that problem.

It is, of course, the media's fault. Just ask John Ziegler.

I don't want another election. But what I want even less is a surprise backroom Prime Minister whom I never even had the opportunity to vote for or against. What an insult to democracy.

And no one wanted to piss away $300 million on the last election, either: still happened, though. Strange how Harper insisted on having one even when he knew ahead of time what the results would be. I suppose he knows something about sound fiscal management that we leftie types don't. Of course, acting like he had a majority when he didn't wasn't exaclty respectful of democracy, either.

Well, that's enough for now. If you'll excuse me, I now have a second reason to turn off the radio for the next several weeks...

Ye Gods

2008-12-04T17:29:00.004-08:00

Okay, three hours writing a post about the silliness we got out of Ottawa this week, and somehow it got eaten.

I feel certain this creature was somehow involved:

I feel so very, very sad. Like my time was completely wasted. Like a Prime Minister gone prorogue.

Perhaps a redo tomorrow. Perhaps.

Speaking of Autocratic Dictatorships...

2008-12-04T13:00:00.003-08:00

A ray of light from the so-called "Dark Continent", this edition of the Skeptics' Circle comes to us from Africa by way of Michael Meadon at Ionian Enchantment.

The post title is in reference to some of the criticisms levelled at... well, pretty much everyone in Canadian politics right now. (More on that next post - check out these folks first!)

...And Here My Troubles Began

2008-12-02T19:48:00.004-08:00

(Apologies to Art Spiegelman's brilliant work)

Well, this does look interesting...

After a year and a half of governing as a minority, and a year of that campaigning for an unnecessary and ultimately useless $300 million election, the first act of the newly minted Team Blue minority government was to try screwing the other parties by reversing something put in place as a means for smaller parties to have financial support (yes, kiddies: your votes do count). The excuse was to 'save' Canadians $28 million - but the reason was to quickly kneecap the other parties when their political war chests were at their lowest.

Surprisingly, this backfired. I say surprisingly because for the first year of the last run, the Perpetual Party had done nothing but whine about how "Canadians don't want an election". That ended up being true, of course, but it's a bad excuse for not doing your job, and the electorate responded accordingly.

There were rumours of an overthrow, so Plastic Man's chief of staff Guy Giorno promptly sent out a Talking Points Memo of their very own, including magic phrases for folks to use on television, radio, and the immortal 'Letters to the Editor'. How many have you heard? Don't worry, you'll hear them a whole lot more in the coming months...

In any case, Plastic Man quickly melted (one day has got to be a record) and backtracked on that 'promise', as he did his insistence that federal employees be forbidden to strike for three years. Or did you miss that? Yeah, somehow that was going to save us millions, too. No details, but trust them, it woulda fer shuuuure.

Weirdly, when Harper was in opposition, his strength was supposed to be finances, and his reputation was as an in-the-trenches political fighter. On the other hand, the latest incarnation of what it means to be a Conservative seems to include an astounding amount of pollyannaish thinking about, well, everything: nothing will ever, ever go wrong, so we don't need to plan for the future. These are people who still think the Laffer Curve exists.

The two percent reduction in the sales tax has been kind of like trading off your raincoat for a cold beer in August. It feels good, but wasn't exactly a long-term consideration. Frankly, I bought a truck after taxes were reduced, and it saved me $80. Can't say that the reduction has even been noticeable for any other purchase I've made since.

In exchange for that, I'll take eleven consecutive years of budget balancing, and nine of surplus. If the option is a federal party that pulls a Plaxico Burress, it will be the best $80 I've ever spent.

We'll take a look the strangely hysterical criticism tomorrow.

When Religions Collide!

2008-11-28T20:04:00.004-08:00

There is a scheduled counter-protest of the Westboro Baptist Church in Vancouver today by local Pastafarians.

That would be these folks:

Protesting these folks:

Who want to protest these folks:

But usually fail instead.

From Douchebag to Loser in One Easy Step

2008-11-27T20:40:00.002-08:00

So, how can you tell when you're a douchebag? The secret lies here:

Claiming that he has been unfairly branded a "douchebag" in the book "Hot Chicks with Douchebags," a Las Vegas man has filed a libel lawsuit against the volume's author and publisher.

You may notice the link to said website off to the right there, down at the bottom. The host, Douchebag1, has a fine compilation of the greasy, the scungy, and the repulsive. Or you could just ask Elizabeth Banks.

The amusing thing is that he's not the first to launch a lawsuit against the publication:

According to a New Jersey Superior Court lawsuit, the women--Yvette Gorzelany, 22; Joanna Obiedzinski, 21; and Paulina Pakos, 24--have been forced to undergo medical treatment and psychological therapy [because of the book].

Because after all, what's a douchebag without hot chicks? Nothing, that's what. Though I do have one word of advice for the theoretical "hotts" who were complaining:

Angered that their photos appear in "Hot Chicks with Douchebags," three New Jersey women have sued the book's author and publisher, claiming that the "vulgar" title has unfairly tarred them as "females who date dubious men."

Don't date dubious men. Problem solved!

'Science' in the House

2008-11-22T11:30:00.003-08:00

Joy.

You may or may not recall one of Plastic Man's first acts as Prime Minister was to demote the position of National Science Adviser from the Privy Council, where he reported directly to the PM, to Industry Canada; which I think tells you all you need to say about the Conservatives' attitude to science.

Or I thought it did.

There's a new man appointed to Minister of Science and Technology. Unlike the demoted 'science adviser', (who had over 300 publications in peer reviewed journals, was president of the National Research Council for 10 years, was a former president of the Canadian Society for Chemistry, is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, is an Officer of the Order of Merit in France, had served on many, many boards of science and industry councils, has honorary degrees from thirteen universities and honorary professorships from two more, has worked on advisory boards in several countries, and has five patents among other notable accomplishments and awards), this new guy graduated cum laude from the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College. School motto: "Do you have great people skills and the drive it takes be an entrepreneur? If so, becoming a Doctor of Chiropractic may be in your future!"

Now, I know what you're thinking: why didn't they just nominate a chiropractor in the first place? After all, they link to a study that concludes:

Providers, policy makers and insurers need to move toward universal, validated, evidence-based treatment guidelines.

And if that's not support for chiropractors, I don't know what is!

Even if this government appointment thing doesn't work out for him, Minister Goodyear can always fall back on his fellowship in clinical acupuncture. Plus, he's apparently worked as an 'adviser to investment firms in the biomedical industry'.

So really, as far as our government understanding complex scientific questions, we're in good hands.

Holy Crap

2008-11-20T16:25:00.004-08:00

Every now and then I pick up Maclean's to see just how far it's fallen (this week: a panic piece about how kids ain't as smrt as thy wuz befer all them 'puters an' junk!) and give a small sad sigh.

Then I glance through the Wall Street Journal and find things like this:

One man's theory: A nation whose people can't say "Merry Christmas" is a nation capable of ruining its own economy.

No, really.

Okay, Maclean's has taken on the personality of a coot in his wifebeater demanding punks stay off his lawn, sure; but at least they're not following you down the street whispering madness sotto voce.

It's tough to expect much from a paper who knowingly publishes Peggy Noonan, but it would be nice if they occasionally thought about what might work in financial markets instead of preaching the repeated idiocy of that financial wizard Saint Ronnie. But it has it's echo in the current *ahem* leadership of George W(ho?) Bush who said this at the Manhattan Institute last week:

History has shown that the greater threat to economic prosperity is not too little government involvement in the market, it is too much government involvement in the market. (Applause)

Somehow I can't shake the feeling that simplistic, ritualized chanting just might have something to do with being incapable to anticipate future complexities. For instance, how many people in that room remembered the words Bush spoke less than two minutes before:

One vital principle of reform is that our nations must make our financial markets more transparent.

Secondly, we must ensure that markets, firms, and financial products are properly regulated.

Third, we must enhance the integrity of our financial markets. For example, authorities in every nation should take a fresh look at the rules governing market manipulation and fraud -- and ensure that investors are properly protected.

Fourth, we must strengthen cooperation among the world's financial authorities. For example, leading nations should better coordinate national laws and regulations.

There wasn't any applause for those lines, so maybe the folks in attendance just missed them. But back to the importance of Jesus to banking futures. In the writer's own words:

One had better explain that.

You think?

The path to 50% wealth reductions and the death of Wall Street was paved with good intentions, notably the notion that all should own a house, even if that required giving away the house to untutored borrowers with low-to-no-interest loans. This good intention set off history's largest chain of moral hazard.

Moral hazard? Moral hazard? How about using hyperbole to throw blame on whoever's poorest, instead of noting a complete lack of safeguards and greed and a system that rewards signatures on paper instead of the appropriateness of the mortgage granted? That morally hazardous enough for you?

Little or nothing that has occurred through this crisis discredits the system of free-market capitalism. Across several centuries of rising world incomes and social gains, the system has proved its worth. In this instance, the system has been badly used -- by mere people.

And for the writer, nothing ever, ever will. One gets the impression Mr. Henninger would be all for selling children, so long as it happened on the free market. Hey, at least the hands that molested them would be invisible.

When the Social Security and Medicare meltdowns arrive, as precisely foretold by their trustees, will we ask again: What were they thinking?

"...So long as we don't have to ask it now about this collapse, okay? Because that would be wrong. But the fact that hard-line free market fanatics have been hobbling these programs for the past thrity years must never be discussed; likewise that other nations can somehow manage both of these better than America can manage either one. Damn commies."

What really went missing through the subprime mortgage years were the three Rs: responsibility, restraint and remorse.

Amazing how these things also rather famously "went missing" in the 1980s (say hello to Mike Milken for me, would you?) isn't it? Despite the nation being led by another great moral leader...

Anyhow, three quick questions:
1) Responsibility to whom;
2) Restraint to what level; and
3) Remorse about what, exactly? By its very nature, you cannot feel remorse except in retrospect; this means you've already acted badly, so remorse isn't doing much good there, is it?

Responsibility and restraint are moral sentiments. Remorse is a product of conscience. None of these grow on trees.

So we're only getting semi-metaphysical here, or was noticing that "restraint" wasn't a vegetable an accident?

It has been my view that the steady secularizing and insistent effort at dereligioning America has been dangerous.

DANGEROUS!

That danger flashed red in the fall into subprime personal behavior by borrowers and bankers, who after all are just people.

And no one else. Ever. Do not look behind the curtian. This had nothing to do with insurance investors purchasing and repackaging mortgages a number of times.

Northerners and atheists who vilify Southern evangelicals are throwing out nurturers of useful virtue with the bathwater of obnoxious political opinions.

This one's fun to parse.

In one sentence, Henninger says: atheists are neither Northerners nor Southerners; no Southerners vilify Southern evangelicals; Southern evangelicals are the only sources of 'useful virtue'; these self-same nurturers are also holders of 'obnoxious political opinions'.

So virtue and reasonable political views are mutually incompatible? Interesting that he's found the courage to say so in print, but you have to wonder who he's expecting to nod in agreement here.

My favorite pearl of sad wisdom is this:

In this instance, the system has been badly used -- by mere people.

Not sure who Mr. Henninger's banker is, but one hopes it's a human. Of course, that could explain his anger when the fish flakes market bottomed out in '03.

Big Round Number!

2008-11-20T15:34:00.003-08:00

"A statement of fact cannot be insolent."

Tough to argue with. As tough, in fact, as arguing with a faceless computer. Now try doing that 100 times...

Or you could see the 100th(!) edition of the Skeptics' Circle, which by sheer coincidence is a nice little primer to what Orac is, all packaged in an easy-to-read prediction of doom.

Enjoy!

Oh, No! Teh SEX!

2008-11-18T22:41:00.003-08:00

There is a lovely little place in Seattle which is sex-friendly and also a private club.

And it's Sweeps Week for the local television stations.

See where this is going?

Mistress Matisse noticed, and she's not happy. And when the Mistress ain't happy, ain't no one within reach happy...

On Acronyms and Being Helpful

2008-11-14T18:59:00.002-08:00

Been looking around Kiva again and noticed a certain something: in theory, conservatives are the folks who believe the strongest that hand outs to poor people are a horrible idea, right? And that businesses are the foundation of a strong national economy, right? And that liberals are the ones who insist on government funding everything, right? And that President-Elect Obama is the most extreme leftist ever to exist in America, right?

So why is it that the top donor group to an organization that finances microloans to poor entrepreneurs is *gasp* Team Obama? They have loaned nearly $110,000 to people around the world as of today. They are followed closely by the Kiva Christians* group at $107,000; then a pack of atheists, agnostics and freethinkers at $103,000. The Conservatives for 2012 (hmm) are at $11,000 (not bad for a new group), more tha $3,000 ahead of the Beer Goggles Never lie...much group and $5,000 ahead of Goons Without Borders. They do drag behind the Flying Spaghetti Monster Religious Congregation by a couple of grand, though...

The individuals seem to be bringing game, even if their parties lag behind: Team Democrat has financed only $3,150 in loans, while the only Republican group I could find was Republicans help (sic), who have six members, and made two loans. Given minimum loans are a mere $25, it would be nice if... ah, never mind. Loan what you can, folks! The return rate is phenominal!

*Non-denominational. Not to be confused with RRCFs, or Religious Right Christian Fuckos. Those are the "people" who hate in the name of Jesus. see also: Propsition 8; Fred Phelps

But, From Here... Where?

2008-11-14T16:40:00.005-08:00

So.

Obama isn't going to be president for another two months, and already the panic has set in:

In a column posted on the Christian Worldview Network Web site, Dunbar wrote that a terrorist attack on America during the first six months of an Obama administration “will be a planned effort by those with whom Obama truly sympathizes to take down the America that is threat to tyranny.”

Bear in mind, this is coming from a woman who is on the Texas State Board of Education. No, really. Any surprise she's from the Regent University School of Law?

Funny thing is, her writing (which she believes to be totally accurate and not libellous at all):

“I don’t have anything in there that would be retractable,” said Dunbar, R-Richmond. “Those are my personal opinions and I don’t think the language is questionable.”

seems to have disappeared from the website it was originally published on. Funny, that.

Still, it's not like she's the only official afflicted with a ringing case of Stupid:

Broun cited a July speech by Obama that has circulated on the Internet in which the then-Democratic presidential candidate called for a civilian force to take some of the national security burden off the military. "That's exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it's exactly what the Soviet Union did," Broun said. "When he's proposing to have a national security force that's answering to him, that is as strong as the U.S. military, he's showing me signs of being Marxist."

"Broun" in this case would be Congressman Paul Broun, who's website includes his "Four-Way Test" to see if he'll support any legislation he sees. First comes "Is it moral?", then "Is it Constitutional?" Which pretty much tells you where his heart lies in the religion/state debate. Yep, he's a university graduate who thinks the National Guard answers to an individual (Barack Obama, in this case) instead of the office (president), never mind conflating Nazis with Marxism.

Well, the degree was is chemistry rather than political science of history, so maybe we should cut him a little slack.

"We can't be lulled into complacency," Broun said. "You have to remember that Adolf Hitler was elected in a democratic Germany. I'm not comparing him to Adolf Hitler. What I'm saying is there is the potential."

Or not.

But then, Broun isn't without his defenders:

Hitler's group was called Gestapo — Hitler's Secret Police or "brownshirts." So, because he told the truth about Obama, Broun was 'forced' to 'take it back.' Question: Can anything be said about Mr. Obama that isn't an indictment?[...] [I]t's an icy chill running up the spines of even the bravest of us.

That they're ignorant and easily terrified means nothing: they're still supporters, right?

Here, by the way, is the AARP's take on the speech:

From Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy to Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, presidents and those who aspire to be president have long put forth calls for greater public service. Some found success, while others fell short of their lofty rhetoric.
Roosevelt formed the Civilian Conservation Corps and Kennedy created the Peace Corps with strong support and participation, while Clinton's AmeriCorps has never fully realized its full potential, hampered by ongoing funding struggles since its 1994 inception.
Still, as Sen. Barack Obama called for greater public service Wednesday, some experts predict the potential now exists for programs seeking an expansion of volunteerism to succeed, despite a slumping economy and the nation being at war.

But then, we know how that turned out, with the Clinton Youth marching in the streets, driving their foes before them with violence and hatred...

Funding for AmeriCorps has been a constant strain amid agency mismanagement and disdain for the program among some Republicans.
Still, it recorded its 500,000th participant last year. Volunteers nationwide have provided service to needy communities by tutoring children, feeding the homeless, caring for the elderly and rebuilding areas struck by disaster.

Oh. Still, all this is awfully familliar stuff to anyone who was around for the 1992 and 1994 elections.

Any how, here's the YouTube video so you can join the panic yourself (with histrionic personality disorder commentary included at no extra charge).

Of course, it's not all about the Dreaded Muslim o' Terror that has conservatives wetting themselves. There's also a strong (yellow) streak of Fear of Actual Cooperation with Other Nations, as evidenced by Ron Paul guesting with the hilarious Alex Jones' Prison Planet:

Commenting on the much touted “International crisis” that luminaries such as Colin Powell, Joe Biden and Zbigniew Brzezinski have all guaranteed will occur within weeks of Obama entering the White House, the Congressman stated that he believes it may be a catalyst for a shift toward world government: “I think it’s going to be an announcement of a new monetary order, and they’ll probably make it sound very limited, they’re not going to say this is world government, even though it is if you control the world’s money and you control the military, which they do indirectly.”

Because as we all know, international cooperation and regulations are bad things. Who knows what sort of chaos might happen financial institutions are forced to behave less like eight year olds with Red Rider BB guns and more like adults? It would be MADNESS, I tell you!

And, of course, there's the usual panic about guns:

The fears aren’t unfounded. Clinton’s gun ban crippled many gun stores and increased the prices of assault weapons already in circulation to such a degree that the average Joe couldn’t afford them anymore.

That the average Joe is packing around assault weapons doesn't seem to worry this guy, because he's ready for he self-described (and eagerly anticipated) End Of The World As We Know It.

The next four (eight?) years are going to be fun, fun, FUN! Can't wait until the next Timothy McVeigh to show up, and for the clueless panic-mongers to wonder whatever could have driven him to do it!?!

You know it's going to happen, right?

More Interesting Than I Thought I Was

2008-11-08T18:50:00.003-08:00

Hm.

So I'm flicking around teh intatron, when I spot a poster for a fetish night in Vancouver:

Check out what's required to get past the front door:

Not permitted: plain jeans, cargo pants, briefs or boxers, t-shirts, suits and work clothes. Absolutely no street or casual wear! Lower genital nudity not permitted. Highly encouraged: suggested attire includes but is certainly not limited to - vinyl, leather, PVC, leather, bondage, straps, chaps, full-on goth, punk, cyber, tuxedo, tailcoats/fancy dress, military/full uniform, fantasy or period costume, armour, drag/cross-dress, body paint, fancy lingere, kilt or any other risque costume your perverted little mind can dream up...

Besides wondering what the heck "upper genitals" are supposed to be, I have to ask: tuxedo? Since when have I been dressing up in fetish gear while bartending the more expensive catering jobs? Not that I mind so much, but it would have been nice to know: I could have charged more.

Love is Less Important Than Sex!

2008-11-08T10:54:00.002-08:00

Or so say the supporters of the banning of gay marriage.

Don't believe me? Then explain to me why people who love each other are forbidden from forming a life-long bond in the eyes of government, whereas two drunken idiots with a couple hundred bucks and fifteen minutes can get hitched without a blink?

Or are you one of those "progressive" types who doesn't care what people do with their genitals, but also think that marriage is a sacred rite and must remain the same no matter how society evolves (BAD WORD! BAD WORD!)?

May I suggest talking to Jake over at NoFo? He has a story you may appreciate.

Short-Term Memory Loss Victim #3,468

2008-11-06T15:09:00.003-08:00

So apparently there have been voices inside the McCain camp that are anonymously talking smack about the other Great Not Quite Leader:

If the anonymous McCain insiders are to be believed, Palin, a 44-year-old mother of five, was unaware that Africa was a continent, arguing that South Africa was simply a region of the larger country of Africa.

My first question is: where the hell were these folks when the election was going on, and knowing this could have made a difference?

My second? What about those wingnuts that became so insanely obsessed with Palin's very existence that they were pitching her for a 2012 run? (Yes, they're out there.) What ever will they do?

Well, obviously they'll have to do what they always do: DESTROY!!!

RedState is pleased to announce it is engaging in a special project: Operation Leper.

We’re tracking down all the people from the McCain campaign now whispering smears against Governor Palin to Carl Cameron and others. Michelle Malkin has the details.

One problem: that would mean them fighting against Republican nominees, and half of these jokers vowed they would never vote for John McCain, yet within one month were convinced he would lead them to the Golden Throne that is the White House. Do they really expect to remember who their enemies are four years from now? Or even two years, in case of senate elections?

Apparently so:

We intend to constantly remind the base about these people, monitor who they are working for, and, when 2012 rolls around, see which candidates hire them. Naturally then, you’ll see us go to war against those candidates.

I fully expect this dedication to last about as long as it takes for them to be distracted by a shiny belt buckle. Or pair of glasses.

On Time This Time

2008-11-06T14:49:00.001-08:00

Right! None of this lazing around for two weeks before mentioning the Skeptics' Circle this time!

Circle #99 is up and running, even as we speak.

Sacrameto, We Have a Problem

2008-11-05T16:54:00.003-08:00

So for the good news, there's going to be a whole new president of the United States in a few months, much to most of the world's relief. And that's "new" in a lot of ways: I expected the first non-white/non-male president would be Republican, and a conservative one to boot.

Anyhow.

On the down side, California seems to have allowed this goofy-ass Proposition 8 to pass, effectively banning gay marriage in that state.

One problem: the State Attorney General says that those folks who already got married will be allowed to remain so.

Now, either:

A) Jerry Brown doesn't realize the sheer volume of lawsuits that allowing some exceptions to the law is going to create, in which case he's not qualified for the post; or
B) he knows perfectly well, and also knows that the courts are not going to allow that state of affairs to continue, using the upcoming decision as a leverage point for allowing gay marriage to be officially enshrined in California, possibly as a Governator going-away present.

I fear it's the former, but trust it's the latter. In the mean time, I'm not moving there any time soon, so my concern is more for the well being of others than it is for those I know and love.

***

Update: Ah, lovely! If you remember the hyperventilating that Obama is a "closet Muslim", and if he were ever elected sharia law would be declared and women would have to wear chadors and etc etc etc?

Think naming the son of a zionist militant as his chief-of-staff will curb that angle of attack at all? Or more is it more likely that Rahm Emanuel will be declared a "traitor to his blood" or some other idiotic thing? Because you know it's just a matter of time...

Some Call It Trivia...

2008-11-03T23:51:00.002-08:00

The Washington Redskins lost 23-6 in Monday Night's game.

Just thought Obama fans would want to know.

Bad Me

2008-10-31T11:24:00.002-07:00

I have been a horrible person: I've missed TWO Skeptics' Circles in a row!

Here is the one from early in the month:

http://www.evolvedrational.com/2008/10/skeptics-circle-97-wild-mudkip-appears.html

And the latest:

http://uncrediblehallq.net/blog/?p=180

Both with sincere apologies, both to the folks who wrote for them and to myself for missing out on some fun and fascinating stuff!

Enjoy!

And Now, the Good News

2008-10-29T22:17:00.005-07:00

I would like to direct your attention to Kiva, and the concept of microloans. In short, they are loans to people in poor nations that help them start businesses so they can support themselves.

The loans are made with no lawyers, no paperwork (often the recipient can't read), and no guarantee of repayment.

Kiva is an international group that acts as go-between for the lenders and the entrepreneurs. Individuals can loan any amount they like out to any of the people starting (or improving) their business. Individuals can also join groups (like the Crazy Canucks, or the Praise Black Jesus donor groups) to make it a community effort.

So far, Kiva arranged for well over $47,000,000; the default rate is below 1%.

And they recently achieved the amazing goal of funding every person who successfully applied for a loan.

We are with the Flying Spaghetti Monster Religious Congregation, and I suggest you find a mob you like and dive in: it's solid proof that altruism works, mate.

This is what the World Bank was supposed to be doing, and was doing, right up until the 80's when the ideologues of the Thatcher/Reagan era took over. What say we show them how to really change the world?

***

Note: Kiva started as a peer-to-peer lending institution in March, 2005. Three and a half years, and nearly $48,000,000 loaned out, often five or ten dollars at a time.

And from the observant:

2008-10-29T21:47:00.002-07:00

Back in June, I made fun of those folks who insist in every word of the Bible being the infallible Word O' God (tm) by mentioning the lovely episode in Numbers where a couple are killed because they are of differing races. But then, even the more strident Thumpers shy away from some of the stranger or more psychotic of God's episodes, so I didn't think anyone would really be offended.

That is, I didn't think I would be able to offend anybody. Goes to show what I know about Alabama:

“He’s neither-nor,” said Ricky Thompson, a pipe fitter who works at a factory north of Mobile, while standing in the parking lot of a Wal-Mart store just north of here. “He’s other. It’s in the Bible. Come as one. Don’t create other breeds.”

Really? No, really?

Any way we can have more gun shows in that state? Bring your kids.

Maybe I'm in a Bad Mood...

2008-10-28T22:18:00.002-07:00

...But can anyone tell me why a school shooting in Arkansas never quite made it to the front page nation wide? Let's see:

Columbine;

Montreal;

Finland;

Aaaaand Arkansas.

If you look closely, you just might see a difference that could explain the relative lack of interest.

United States of WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?!?

2008-10-28T21:56:00.003-07:00

*pant*
*pant*
*pant*

Excuse me for a minute. I've just been in the back yard screaming of idiots, wilful stupidity, and really, really bad parenting.

To wit:

An eight-year-old boy has died after accidentally shooting himself in the head while firing an Uzi submachine-gun at a gun fair in Massachusetts.

...

The club said on its website that the event was "all legal and fun" and would allow people to fire weapons at vehicles, pumpkins and other targets.

In case you hadn't heard: guns are a right in America. Not just guns, of course: we've got plenty of those in Canada. What's important is that any guns are a right in America.

"This is a horrible event, a horrible travesty, and I really don't know why it happened," said Mr Bizilj, a hospital director from Ashford, Connecticut.

I have some idea: you had an eight-year old boy shooting a fully automatic weapon. Somehow, it doesn't make me feel any better that it was with parental consent.

How about you?

Latte Liberals and Cruller Conservatives

2008-10-23T21:03:00.003-07:00

The classic accusations go: The Political Left are all a bunch of latte-drinking, metrosexual, anti-establishment hippies; while the Political Right are are a pack of double-double swilling heartless billionaires living in trailer parks festooned with velvet Jesii and twelve kids.

In at least one aspect, these images are untrue: the ridings with more of the elitist Starbucks coffee shops tended to vote Conservative, where the Tim Horton's-dominant regions went to the Liberals.

So says CanWest, and I'm sticking to it.

Caribou Barbie Goes Shopping

2008-10-23T01:40:00.002-07:00

Bearing in mind that the entire image of Sarah Palin has been one of, essentially, a Hick from the Sticks - you know, one of the Regular People the Republicans are so happy to avoid helping - you'd have to wonder what she would spend $150,000 on in two months?

By happy coincidence, it's not the season tickets to the Alaska Aces for 300 of her closest friends that you expected, but instead it was all spent on clothing and accessories at Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue.

Yes, $150,000.

And yes, two months.

I guess Manolo Blahnik makes hiking boots now!

How Was Your Weekend?

2008-10-21T21:49:00.002-07:00

I spent mine getting (among other things) fingerprinted at the local constabulary. Alas, not for any particularly interesting reason - I'm applying for a locksmithing licence from the province tomorrow. Just need to finish up by drooling, getting drunk, not going to bed until 4 AM, then sleeping on my hair.

Or I could just get another passport photo. Same result.

50-50 Odds in Las Vegas

2008-10-19T23:26:00.002-07:00

New Mexico, that is.

There's a reason why a whole lot of Democratic observers are only giving Obama a fifty percent chance of being named the next president, and it has less to do with this:

"When you got a Negra running for president, you need a first stringer. He’s definitely a second stringer."

and more to do with this:

"On February 5th, the day of the Super Tuesday caucus, a school-bus driver named Paul Maez arrived at his local polling station to cast his ballot. To his surprise, Maez found that his name had vanished from the list of registered voters, thanks to a statewide effort to deter fraudulent voting. For Maez, the shock was especially acute: He is the supervisor of elections in Las Vegas.

Maez was not alone in being denied his right to vote. On Super Tuesday, one in nine Democrats who tried to cast ballots in New Mexico found their names missing from the registration lists. The numbers were even higher in precincts like Las Vegas, where nearly 20 percent of the county's voters were absent from the rolls."

For those pissing and moaning about ACORN, which is an attempt by communities to register the poor and homeless to vote, try this on for size.

Which is worse: stopping people, specifically the poor, from voting; or an unemployed registrar going to a graveyard and writing names of dead people as voters? Here's a hint: in one case, dead and imaginary people are signed to the rolls who don't vote; in the other, living people who are on the rolls can't vote.

If you still can't tell, I can guess which party you belong to.

Evil + Stupid = ?

2008-10-19T16:21:00.004-07:00

The brilliant Billmon on the recapturing of history that the McCain/Palin campaign is attempting:

"With the prospect of a bone-crushing election defeat staring them full in the face, the diehard rump of the conservative movement is already busy fashioning a narrative to explain the dissolution of its world -- the one that Ronald Reagan built and that George W. Bush (with an assist from Wall Street) has thoroughly trashed.

And the emerging story line appears to be, roughly, that ACORN did it.

[...]

You have to admit: That's a damned impressive revolutionary track record for an obscure group of community organizers operating on a shoestring budget. I mean, who needs the Red Army when you've got ACORN and the Community Reinvestment Act?"

The tragedy is that McCain is aware of what's happening in his country, and his own contribution to it: "his" followers are blindly terrified of even the thought of anyone who is different t them being in the same country as they are. Anger comes from fear, and violence isn't far from that. There is a reason why the Oklahoma bombings happened during Clinton's campaign: certain people were told, deliberately and repeatedly, that the Clintons were EEEEVIL and destroying America. If you limited yourself to a single information source, you are vulnerable to what that source tells you. For instance, dd you know McCain won the last presidential debate?

Think I'm making this up? Exagerating the fear and disinformation sown into the so-called "Heartland"?

Ask David Neiwert (get your headphones on for this one).

Why Respect Must Be Earned

2008-10-15T23:07:00.002-07:00

There are a whole lot of people out there who don't agree with me on everything - I'm averaging somewhere around 100% of them so far, wife included - but many of those I can at least understand why they have the views they do.

But the new breed of "conservatives" in the United States is utterly bewildering. Trying to argue with them is like... like... trying to tell Matthew McConaughey he sucks. Really, the only people that are left are the ones who will proudly tell you they're voting for Sarah Palin, ignoring the old guy who's actually running for office.

***Side note: Why do I hate Palin? For hearing the cascade of fear and vitriol that gets unleashed by her fans whenever she mentions the astoundingly idiotic "Obama pals around with terrorists" meme, then watching her smile...***

Here's the "expert" from the National Review debating economics:

"The economy is all the blacks' fault. Answer what? Uh... Oh, shit! This is live? Google save me!"

Okay, maybe that's not a direct quote, but it is representative of what happened. Check out the whole "debate" here if you want, but there's not much more to it.

It's All Over

2008-10-14T22:09:00.003-07:00

Just to rub it in a little for the Americans - from declaration to finish, our election took less than sixty days.

Okay, so nothing actually happened as a result, outside of what everyone already knew:

1) Dion is not a leader that moves people;
2) Harper blew it in Quebec with his arts cuts;
3) Cities don't trust the Conservatives;
4) One more minority government;
5)Donna Cadman is showing herself to be an utterly vacant shell who got elected by avoiding exposure and letting her late husband do the work for her;
6) The lowest voter turnout ever (well below 60%) showing a tired/bored group, despite the quite interesting economic turmoil going on just now.

So what's next? A few things:

The Liberals are going to go into yet another leadership campaign, giving the Conservatives yet another weak opposition and de facto majority, at least for their first year.

Harper lost his best chance at a majority - he even held off the election as long as he could to see if the Republicans would be rising in the polls at all down South, hoping to catch a bump from their ads and spin. It didn't work, but you can understand the motivation.

The Conservatives will declare victory - after all, they gained seats - and permission to do whatever they want, because somehow a Minority + Minority = Strong Mandate.

The Liberals will reluctantly agree, because "The people aren't ready for another election" (not until they get their pants on, anyway) and will declare victory because Dion avoided spontaneous combustion.

The Bloc will declare victory because Duceppe set the bar low enough to crawl over: seriously, "a majority of seats in Quebec" going to the Bloc could have been won by a dyspeptic goat.

The NDP will declare victory despite getting less than 20% of the popular vote because they got one seat in Quebec and one, astoundingly, in Alberta.

The Greens are going to declare victory because they could have won a seat somewhere in the country.

And we the electorate are going to wait for these idiots go get back to work.

School District 10, Now With Enhanced Irony!

2008-10-11T20:08:00.002-07:00

Stop me when you've figured out why this is eye-blinkingly stupid:

"Alex Sanchez writes books about gay youth and their struggle to find acceptance, but local school principals were not comfortable allowing him to address their students."

Stop now? Well, that took you less time than superintendent Keith Pierce:

"Some principals felt their schools were just “not ready” for the kind of presentation that Sanchez will give, he said."

Not ready, indeed.