Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Representing 16 Million Amerikans
Yes, three states are now moving toward requesting the impeachment of George W. You can read about it here.
Monday, April 17, 2006
The Good News
Our contract was settled -- I'm satisfied with the outcome. We did get a signing bonus. We did get $500 every 2 years towards eye vision including the eye exam. We did get improvements in our benefits; not all of them but most of the important ones. There was a standing ovation at our General Meeting announcing what we'd been given. Its not easy being in Vankookoo for 25 days and not giving in or giving up and trying to bang out not a good deal but a great deal. We even get a pretty good pay increase that will bring us up to the cost of living. However, considering a house is on the market in Victoria for a price that is considered by myself grossly out of the ballpark I just know there isn't much hope of owning something at this time.
And that's my good news.....
And that's my good news.....
Monday, April 10, 2006
The Long Emergency
The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century
James Howard Kunstler
Atlantic Monthly Press
New York, ©2005
The Long Emergency is James Kunstler's hard-eyed view of the advent of the post-oil world—the world whose resource wars have finally come out in the open with the invasion of Iraq. Kunstler spends a lot of time on the history of oil in Amerika, and particularly the calculations of the Hubbard Peak. M. King Hubbert was the Amerikan geologist who devised the math used to calculate the life of oil fields. He later extended this to calculate the points of peak discovery and peak production in the US and later, the world. And, in case you hadn't guessed, global oil production is due to peak right about...now. Actually, the best guess is between 2000 and 2008, so we're likely past peak right now.
Kunstler then goes on to consider how much of modern global industrial society is fossil fuel based—and the answer,of course, is all of it. As peak production occurs quite late in the life of an oil field (followed by a precipitous decline in recovery), his thesis is that this is it, this is the nuclear weapon at the heart of the modern world that's going to blow it all apart—and probably before the end of the century. Likely before the halfway point, in fact.
Even without factoring in global warming and emergent diseases, Kunstler figures we're done. Once you add those two in to the mix, well, let's just say that a massive die-back seems to be in the cards. And that 90 to 95 percent mortality rate may not be out of line.
The biggest problem is that all our possible replacements for oil are ultimately fossil fuel based; the alloys needed to build decent wind generators, for example, need a fossil fuel based economy to create them. And needs one to place the generators and use them. Ditto for solar cells, and pretty much everything else.
Kunstler sees the demise of the cities as being already underway—except in Europe, which has been unable to pursue suburbanization the way Amerika has. And Kunstler hates suburbia—having written two books already about it: The Geography of Nowhere and Home from Nowhere—he sees it as the worst idea to have ever come out of Amerika. And without cheap gas, suburbia is untenable.
Kunstler, being Amerikan, does occasionally collapse in to an unconscious Amerikan-centric and jingoistic world view. Understandable, but frustrating nonetheless. He wants to keep Amerika and Amerikans alive as much as possible—even though he doesn't see just how that can possibly happen—and so he shies away from stating the clear conclusion of his book; that (as in Brunner's The Sheep Look Up) the destruction of Amerika may not be the worst thing for the planet. The hellish thing is that so much of the rest of the planet is going to go with it.
Thursday, March 23, 2006
Female Chauvinist Pigs
Ariel Levy, in her book Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture (Free Press, New York, 2005), looks at the gains of the women's movement from the sixties to the current day with particular attention to the way in which women have become complicit in the (culturally stereotypical) male approach to sexual matters.
When Levy says “The proposition that having the most simplistic, plastic stereotypes of female sexuality constantly reiterated throughout our culture somehow proves that we are sexually liberated and personally empowered has been offered to us, and we have accepted it,” she is not denying the transformative or revolutionary power of sex. Rather, she is arguing that we have settled, that the revolution has been co-opted by Hooters and Playboy and by accepting only one definition of sexual power women—and men—have accepted the easy way out. We have, as a culture, accepted the commodification of sexuality, allowed the most powerful evolutionary force to be drained of life, reduced to a package, and then sold to us in its least interesting form.
This is, of course, the most powerful tool that the power structure has for thwarting the reformist or revolutionary impulse; commodification. The women's movement of the sixties had a truly revolutionary agenda—from Gloria Steinem and Susan Brownmiller pointing out the (fatal?) contradictions of patriarchal society, to Susan Stern and her sisters pointing out that the revolution was not going to be male-dominated (Stern and her fellow Weatherwomen formed an assault unit during the Days of Rage. See her book With the Weathermen). The high water mark for the Women's movement crested and broke years ago, and the few hard-won victories of those years have been under attack since. One need only look at the statistics of women holding real power positions in any industry; the numbers have been stagnant for a decade, and have actually fallen in many areas. Even Roe vs. Wade has faced thirty years of challenges (If not for the underlying strength of the democratic ideal—that every person has rights, that laws support these rights, and that the legal system has primacy over political and cultural systems, Roe vs. Wade would have fallen years ago. Which is why the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is so important—and why the Fascist Right in this country hates it so. Because it means that Parliament is constrained in what laws it may pass, and that the laws it does pass are subject to judicial review. Sure, toss out gay marriage—the Supreme Court will force it back in. Just fucking get used to it assholes...).
How deeply this commodification of sex has penetrated the culture is laid bare in Levy's analysis of Girls Gone Wild and Sex and the City. In GGW, the reducio ad absurdum of existence is to show your tits—to act out, in other words, the most adolescent of concepts of sexual desirability; perpetual availability. But the stereotypes remain: men are perpetually ready/horny, and all that stands between us and paradise is having to convince a woman (any woman) to say yes. After which the woman can disappear until the next time one feels the need for (as Jack Douglas phrased it) “a convenient penis holster.”
Levy interviews women who have internalized this attitude towards sex—becoming, as it were, one of the boys (albeit penis-free). These are women who have bought into raunch culture seemingly whole-heartedly; attending strip clubs or adopting a “fuck 'em and forget 'em” attitude towards sexual encounters. But in discussion with one such woman, Levy finds herself hearing that this woman is not attracted to the men she meets, and doesn't really want to have sex with them. Levy continues; “Think about the underlying logic of that statement: She doesn't know why she doesn't want to have sex with someone she's not really attracted to. To her, this is a puzzle rather than a question answered. What Frailey [the interview subject] is articulating is our baseline assumption that sex is something you should automatically take when you can get it, something akin to, say, money. The more money, the more sex, the better, because these are things you accumulate to increase your status, your wealth of experience. “I want to get more notches on my belt,” as Annie [another interview subject] put it; “I want to get to a hundred.””
Which leads in nicely to Levy's deconstruction—however brief-- of Sex and the City, a show I confess I got hooked on over the last couple of years. Levy says that “little by little, the show became less about women having “sex like men” and more about the characters trying to negotiate their independence as they pursued intimacy with lovers, husbands, children, and each other. That's how the show grew and became so good.” Which would seem axiomatic; a good show is about compelling characters in a narrative arc, but somehow that still seems to be a revelation in entertainment circles....
But Sex and the City also reflected the zeitgeist in other ways, by what did—or, more importantly, by what did not—intrude or impinge on the lives of the characters. The world of Sex and the City is a very insular one; the real world seldom intrudes on it. As Levy puts it: “The ethos of the show was all about women getting themselves the best and the most, sexually and materially. They were unapologetically selfish, and civic-mindedness was scoffed at....The only time in the series Carrie was confronted with the prospect of doing something for charity, she dismissed the idea as ludicrous.”
In the world of Sex and the City, there is no poverty, no war, nothing but the occasional bother from other residents of the city. When Kim Catrall's character Samantha (the one who has most internalized the “male” approach to sex) runs into conflict with a group of trans hookers, it is not their lives that she is affected by, but the noise they make while conducting their business. The pressures that drive the sex workers, their lives, their needs, even the threat to them that Catrall's character presents (the gentrification of the neighbourhood and destruction of the local community), are ignored, and it is only that Samantha sleeps at night while the sex workers are at work outside her window that provides conflict. The politics of the situation are ignored, not dismissed, but don't even make it on to the agenda. And it is this the Amerikan zeitgeist—politics is a sideshow that can be safely ignored, as it doesn't actually impinge on the real world of consumption. Or, as Levy puts it: “In that episode,...as in many others, acquisition was the ultimate act of independence. One of the reasons the series was such a big hit was that it accurately reflected the vertiginous gobbling—of cocktails, of clothing, of sex—that was the status quo for American women of means by the turn of the millennium.”
But Levy interviews Erica Jong, and Jong says “...I would be happier if my daughter and her friends were crashing through the glass ceiling instead of the sexual ceiling...Being able to have an orgasm with a man you don't love of having Sex and the City on television, that is not liberation. If you start to think about women as if we're all Carrie on Sex and the City, well, the problem is: You're not going to elect Carrie to the Senate or to run your company. Let's see the Senate fifty percent female; let's see women in decision-making positions—that's power. Sexual freedom can be a smokescreen for how far we haven't come.”
The fear, when starting to read Female Chauvinist Pigs, is that this is another book about how porn is bad, sex is bad, fun is bad. It's not. What it is, is a book about how revolutions are co-opted. As Levy herself says; “this is not a book about the sex industry; it is a book about what we have decided the sex industry means...how we have held it up, cleaned it off, and distorted it. How we depend on it to mark us as an erotic and uninhibited culture at a moment when fear and repression are rampant.”
But the final quote should be by Candida Royalle; “We've become a heavily sexualized culture, but it's consumerism and sex rolled into one. Revolutionary movements tend to be co-opted—swallowed up by the mainstream and turned into pop culture. It's a way of neutralizing it, when you think about it...it makes it all safe and palatable, it shuts up the radicals. Once that happens, the real power is pretty much dissipated.”
When Levy says “The proposition that having the most simplistic, plastic stereotypes of female sexuality constantly reiterated throughout our culture somehow proves that we are sexually liberated and personally empowered has been offered to us, and we have accepted it,” she is not denying the transformative or revolutionary power of sex. Rather, she is arguing that we have settled, that the revolution has been co-opted by Hooters and Playboy and by accepting only one definition of sexual power women—and men—have accepted the easy way out. We have, as a culture, accepted the commodification of sexuality, allowed the most powerful evolutionary force to be drained of life, reduced to a package, and then sold to us in its least interesting form.
This is, of course, the most powerful tool that the power structure has for thwarting the reformist or revolutionary impulse; commodification. The women's movement of the sixties had a truly revolutionary agenda—from Gloria Steinem and Susan Brownmiller pointing out the (fatal?) contradictions of patriarchal society, to Susan Stern and her sisters pointing out that the revolution was not going to be male-dominated (Stern and her fellow Weatherwomen formed an assault unit during the Days of Rage. See her book With the Weathermen). The high water mark for the Women's movement crested and broke years ago, and the few hard-won victories of those years have been under attack since. One need only look at the statistics of women holding real power positions in any industry; the numbers have been stagnant for a decade, and have actually fallen in many areas. Even Roe vs. Wade has faced thirty years of challenges (If not for the underlying strength of the democratic ideal—that every person has rights, that laws support these rights, and that the legal system has primacy over political and cultural systems, Roe vs. Wade would have fallen years ago. Which is why the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is so important—and why the Fascist Right in this country hates it so. Because it means that Parliament is constrained in what laws it may pass, and that the laws it does pass are subject to judicial review. Sure, toss out gay marriage—the Supreme Court will force it back in. Just fucking get used to it assholes...).
How deeply this commodification of sex has penetrated the culture is laid bare in Levy's analysis of Girls Gone Wild and Sex and the City. In GGW, the reducio ad absurdum of existence is to show your tits—to act out, in other words, the most adolescent of concepts of sexual desirability; perpetual availability. But the stereotypes remain: men are perpetually ready/horny, and all that stands between us and paradise is having to convince a woman (any woman) to say yes. After which the woman can disappear until the next time one feels the need for (as Jack Douglas phrased it) “a convenient penis holster.”
Levy interviews women who have internalized this attitude towards sex—becoming, as it were, one of the boys (albeit penis-free). These are women who have bought into raunch culture seemingly whole-heartedly; attending strip clubs or adopting a “fuck 'em and forget 'em” attitude towards sexual encounters. But in discussion with one such woman, Levy finds herself hearing that this woman is not attracted to the men she meets, and doesn't really want to have sex with them. Levy continues; “Think about the underlying logic of that statement: She doesn't know why she doesn't want to have sex with someone she's not really attracted to. To her, this is a puzzle rather than a question answered. What Frailey [the interview subject] is articulating is our baseline assumption that sex is something you should automatically take when you can get it, something akin to, say, money. The more money, the more sex, the better, because these are things you accumulate to increase your status, your wealth of experience. “I want to get more notches on my belt,” as Annie [another interview subject] put it; “I want to get to a hundred.””
Which leads in nicely to Levy's deconstruction—however brief-- of Sex and the City, a show I confess I got hooked on over the last couple of years. Levy says that “little by little, the show became less about women having “sex like men” and more about the characters trying to negotiate their independence as they pursued intimacy with lovers, husbands, children, and each other. That's how the show grew and became so good.” Which would seem axiomatic; a good show is about compelling characters in a narrative arc, but somehow that still seems to be a revelation in entertainment circles....
But Sex and the City also reflected the zeitgeist in other ways, by what did—or, more importantly, by what did not—intrude or impinge on the lives of the characters. The world of Sex and the City is a very insular one; the real world seldom intrudes on it. As Levy puts it: “The ethos of the show was all about women getting themselves the best and the most, sexually and materially. They were unapologetically selfish, and civic-mindedness was scoffed at....The only time in the series Carrie was confronted with the prospect of doing something for charity, she dismissed the idea as ludicrous.”
In the world of Sex and the City, there is no poverty, no war, nothing but the occasional bother from other residents of the city. When Kim Catrall's character Samantha (the one who has most internalized the “male” approach to sex) runs into conflict with a group of trans hookers, it is not their lives that she is affected by, but the noise they make while conducting their business. The pressures that drive the sex workers, their lives, their needs, even the threat to them that Catrall's character presents (the gentrification of the neighbourhood and destruction of the local community), are ignored, and it is only that Samantha sleeps at night while the sex workers are at work outside her window that provides conflict. The politics of the situation are ignored, not dismissed, but don't even make it on to the agenda. And it is this the Amerikan zeitgeist—politics is a sideshow that can be safely ignored, as it doesn't actually impinge on the real world of consumption. Or, as Levy puts it: “In that episode,...as in many others, acquisition was the ultimate act of independence. One of the reasons the series was such a big hit was that it accurately reflected the vertiginous gobbling—of cocktails, of clothing, of sex—that was the status quo for American women of means by the turn of the millennium.”
But Levy interviews Erica Jong, and Jong says “...I would be happier if my daughter and her friends were crashing through the glass ceiling instead of the sexual ceiling...Being able to have an orgasm with a man you don't love of having Sex and the City on television, that is not liberation. If you start to think about women as if we're all Carrie on Sex and the City, well, the problem is: You're not going to elect Carrie to the Senate or to run your company. Let's see the Senate fifty percent female; let's see women in decision-making positions—that's power. Sexual freedom can be a smokescreen for how far we haven't come.”
The fear, when starting to read Female Chauvinist Pigs, is that this is another book about how porn is bad, sex is bad, fun is bad. It's not. What it is, is a book about how revolutions are co-opted. As Levy herself says; “this is not a book about the sex industry; it is a book about what we have decided the sex industry means...how we have held it up, cleaned it off, and distorted it. How we depend on it to mark us as an erotic and uninhibited culture at a moment when fear and repression are rampant.”
But the final quote should be by Candida Royalle; “We've become a heavily sexualized culture, but it's consumerism and sex rolled into one. Revolutionary movements tend to be co-opted—swallowed up by the mainstream and turned into pop culture. It's a way of neutralizing it, when you think about it...it makes it all safe and palatable, it shuts up the radicals. Once that happens, the real power is pretty much dissipated.”
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
BushWatch: The Saga Continues
Bush gall soared to new heights of impertinence and spelunked new caverns of What-the-Fuckism as Bush held a rare press conference today to announce that there was no civil war in Iraq.
He referred to eventual American troop withdrawl from Iraq as "an" objective. (Presumably there could be other objectives that require American troops to stay. Not that permanent American bases are being built or anything.)
Further, he stated that that decision "...will be decided by future presidents and future governments of Iraq."
In other words, American troops will be in Iraq at least until 2009, and other people will have to clean up his mess.
Petrodollar Warfare: Oil, Iraq, and the future of the Dollar
What drove Amerika into Iraq? William R. Clark, in his book Petrodollar Warfare: Oil, Iraq, and the future of the Dollar (2005, New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island (www.newsociety.com)), suggests (and makes a pretty solid case, too) that Amerikan criminality is based on the fear of losing its pre-eminent status as the world's last remaining superpower. The problem is that the foundation of Amerika's status is merely some awfully thin ice—ice made thinner by the fascists currently in office.
This is about more than oil—although oil is essential to Amerikan hegemony. Oil is bought and paid for in Amerikan dollars, and those Amerikan dollars are the world's currency of last resort. If everything falls apart, the $US is supposed to remain standing, and the Federal Reserve said back in the early eighties that if all else fails, they will just keep printing dollars until everything is paid off—all Amerikan international debt, all debt denominated in Amerikan dollars.
Because right now Amerika is living in a massive debt bubble—China alone holds over $1.7 trillion in Federal debt instruments and could crash the whole system simply by converting the lot over to euros. The dollar has declined over the last four years—seen here in Canada as the rise in the Canadian dollar against the Amerikan, and the euro has strengthened. But worldwide we have far too much productive capability, and not enough ability to consume, and this overhang is starting to scare the crap out of the holders of real money.
The current system is (almost) holding together. Oil sales denominated in Amerikan dollars and held by Amerikan financial institutions have managed to support Amerikan consumption. But then Saddam Hussein gets snarly; under the oil for food program, he requests that payment no longer be made in the dollar of the Great Satan, but be denominated in euros. Turns out to be a great financial idea made for political reasons. By denominating in the euro, Iraq sees a couple of hundred million dollars extra—free money just for using the euro. And don't think this isn't noticed by the rest of the region; the Saudi's know all about this, but have made their own separate peace with the Great Satan, and are funnelling their excess dollars back into the Amerikan economy (70% of Saudi Arabia's petrodollar wealth is invested in the US). But for this and other crimes (like having Amerikan oil inconveniently under their country and making deals to sell it to Russia and European countries rather than the Amerikan ones), the Iranians pay a heavy price; they suffer the extension of Amerikan hegemony.
But Iran notices; they announce a new oil bourse (a stock exchange for securities trading) in 2002 to be up and running by 2005 that will offer an oil marker denominated in euros—just like the $US-denominated marker of West Texas crude. Funny how they are now in the crosshairs, isn't it?
William Clark doesn't claim that what currency petrodollars are denominated in is the sole reason behind the illegal invasion of Iraq; but he does make a strong case that this was a significant reason behind it. Some writers, most recently Gwynne Dyer, don't buy it. A recent Dyer article basically says that this Amerikan administration is simply too stupid to pay attention to esoteric financial concerns, and makes a strong case for this view. But this administration's partners, this cabal of the super-rich, this loose affiliation of millionaires and billionaires that rely on the dominance of the Amerikan dollar, they notice. And they have both a confluence of desire and the world's largest and best equipped mercenary force at their disposal. And what the hell, they've been using it for just this kind of bullshit since forever, so what's one more country destroyed to serve their interests? The rest, we say, is history.
This is about more than oil—although oil is essential to Amerikan hegemony. Oil is bought and paid for in Amerikan dollars, and those Amerikan dollars are the world's currency of last resort. If everything falls apart, the $US is supposed to remain standing, and the Federal Reserve said back in the early eighties that if all else fails, they will just keep printing dollars until everything is paid off—all Amerikan international debt, all debt denominated in Amerikan dollars.
Because right now Amerika is living in a massive debt bubble—China alone holds over $1.7 trillion in Federal debt instruments and could crash the whole system simply by converting the lot over to euros. The dollar has declined over the last four years—seen here in Canada as the rise in the Canadian dollar against the Amerikan, and the euro has strengthened. But worldwide we have far too much productive capability, and not enough ability to consume, and this overhang is starting to scare the crap out of the holders of real money.
The current system is (almost) holding together. Oil sales denominated in Amerikan dollars and held by Amerikan financial institutions have managed to support Amerikan consumption. But then Saddam Hussein gets snarly; under the oil for food program, he requests that payment no longer be made in the dollar of the Great Satan, but be denominated in euros. Turns out to be a great financial idea made for political reasons. By denominating in the euro, Iraq sees a couple of hundred million dollars extra—free money just for using the euro. And don't think this isn't noticed by the rest of the region; the Saudi's know all about this, but have made their own separate peace with the Great Satan, and are funnelling their excess dollars back into the Amerikan economy (70% of Saudi Arabia's petrodollar wealth is invested in the US). But for this and other crimes (like having Amerikan oil inconveniently under their country and making deals to sell it to Russia and European countries rather than the Amerikan ones), the Iranians pay a heavy price; they suffer the extension of Amerikan hegemony.
But Iran notices; they announce a new oil bourse (a stock exchange for securities trading) in 2002 to be up and running by 2005 that will offer an oil marker denominated in euros—just like the $US-denominated marker of West Texas crude. Funny how they are now in the crosshairs, isn't it?
William Clark doesn't claim that what currency petrodollars are denominated in is the sole reason behind the illegal invasion of Iraq; but he does make a strong case that this was a significant reason behind it. Some writers, most recently Gwynne Dyer, don't buy it. A recent Dyer article basically says that this Amerikan administration is simply too stupid to pay attention to esoteric financial concerns, and makes a strong case for this view. But this administration's partners, this cabal of the super-rich, this loose affiliation of millionaires and billionaires that rely on the dominance of the Amerikan dollar, they notice. And they have both a confluence of desire and the world's largest and best equipped mercenary force at their disposal. And what the hell, they've been using it for just this kind of bullshit since forever, so what's one more country destroyed to serve their interests? The rest, we say, is history.
Friday, March 10, 2006
Luna, c.1999 - March 10, 2006
Luna the Killer whale has died.
Luna was just a whale being a whale. We were trespassing on its turf. But again nature has encountered man, nature has lost, and we are all the worse off for it.
Reunite Luna website
American Cetacean Society Luna Page
Fisheries and Oceans Backgrounder
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
Want to play?
As part of a class experiment, I have posted a hoax web page (meaningless nondata) at
http://people.uleth.ca/~runte/research/surveyresults.htm
Using various 'black hat' tricks, my class and I have managed to move it up to #5 out of 9300 Canadian web pages in response to the Google search on "Grammar Checker" (quotes included); and to about #160 spot out of 313,000 on the whole Google WWW. If anyone is included to play, linking to it in your blog (as I have just done here! :-) or webpage will increase Google's ranking of the site. I'm curious to see if I can push it any higher, and how long it will take to sink as the links date....
http://people.uleth.ca/~runte/research/surveyresults.htm
Using various 'black hat' tricks, my class and I have managed to move it up to #5 out of 9300 Canadian web pages in response to the Google search on "Grammar Checker" (quotes included); and to about #160 spot out of 313,000 on the whole Google WWW. If anyone is included to play, linking to it in your blog (as I have just done here! :-) or webpage will increase Google's ranking of the site. I'm curious to see if I can push it any higher, and how long it will take to sink as the links date....
Is It Too Late Already...?
This BBC story reports that The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will report that only greenhouse gas emissions can explain the worldwide freak weather patterns we are experiencing. Further, the report goes on to state that CO2 emissions will have doubled by the mid part of the century, resulting in a temperature increase of perhaps 4.5c or even higher.
We're fucked, kids. We need rapid change in our industrial habits and our personal lives right now. This, of course, would require leadership and backbone from our leaders like Bush, Blair and Harper.
Ha. Fat chance. They are too busy playing their little war games to notice that the real battle has already passed them by.
We're fucked, kids. We need rapid change in our industrial habits and our personal lives right now. This, of course, would require leadership and backbone from our leaders like Bush, Blair and Harper.
Ha. Fat chance. They are too busy playing their little war games to notice that the real battle has already passed them by.
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
The 18% Veep Factor
According to this Washington Post story, Dick Cheney's 18% approval rating makes him less popular than:
- Michael Jackson during his child molestation trial (25% approval);
- O.J. Simpson after his trial for murdering his wife (29%);
- Josef Stalin in a 2003 poll in Russia (20%);
- Spiro Agnew a month before he resigned as Nixon's Vice President and pleaded "no contest" to criminal tax evasion (44%).
Mind you, Cheney is still more popular than Paris Hilton (15%).
- Michael Jackson during his child molestation trial (25% approval);
- O.J. Simpson after his trial for murdering his wife (29%);
- Josef Stalin in a 2003 poll in Russia (20%);
- Spiro Agnew a month before he resigned as Nixon's Vice President and pleaded "no contest" to criminal tax evasion (44%).
Mind you, Cheney is still more popular than Paris Hilton (15%).
Wednesday, March 01, 2006
In Praise of Slow
Just finished Carl Honoré's In Praise of Slow: How a Worldwide Movement is Challenging the Cult of Speed.
I read it in three hours.
I read it in three hours.
Thursday, February 16, 2006
Quote of the Day
From a skit on The Daily Show:
"The vice president is standing by his decision to shoot Harry Whittington. According to the best intelligence available, there were quail hidden in the bush."
"The vice president is standing by his decision to shoot Harry Whittington. According to the best intelligence available, there were quail hidden in the bush."
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
How To Tell The Difference Between a Millionaire and a Quail
(from michaelmoore.com)PS. Dick Cheney was hunting illegally when he shot his millionaire friend. Was he drunk, too?
Saturday, February 11, 2006
State of the Groundhog Union
From long-time reader Elizabeth....
This year both Groundhog Day & the State of the Union Address fell within 32 hours of each other. It was an ironic juxtaposition: One involved a meaningless ritual in which we looked to a creature of little intelligence for prognostication, and the other involved a groundhog.
This year both Groundhog Day & the State of the Union Address fell within 32 hours of each other. It was an ironic juxtaposition: One involved a meaningless ritual in which we looked to a creature of little intelligence for prognostication, and the other involved a groundhog.
Conversation Cafe
I work at UVic--in Undergraduate Admissions & Records which recently hired a new Administrative Registrar and a woman to boot. Our new "leader" is trying to be innovative with allowing staff to contribute to the overall running of what we call the OAR (Office of the Administrative Registrar). We talk in code at UVic alot. Anyway the first Conversation Cafe is about being a great boss and what makes a great boss. There are two sessions -- Feb 7 and Feb 16; I'm scheduled for the Feb 16 one and since I don't like going in cold I've been doing a bit of research. And then it occurred to me with the Harper latest fiasco and being off to a bad start that what I'm reading applies to him as well. Here is how to be a great boss (the following doesn't not include all great boss points):
Definitely Define -- know where you are going, you team also needs to know where they are and where they are going. Your mission and goals should always be clear to all your team members. If you team doesn't know where they are or where they are going how can they get anywhere?
Be a True Leader -- leading people does not mean telling them what to do. Guiding them, helping them and teaching your team and setting an example to follow are part of being a leader. You must be a positive role model and practice what you preach, otherwise the quality of your team's work as individuals and consequently that of the team will suffer not to mention your credibility.
Motivation -- this is one of the hardest tasks but one of the most important. Motivation is key when it comes to the quality of work and dedication. Pay attention to what uniquely motivates different people. Recognition, praise on a job well done, promotions, increase in responsibilities and financial incentives are also very important.
Hmmm....well Mr. Harper you've obviously been brushing up on the motivation side of being a leader. Credibility is starting to suffer though.
I'm getting ready to vote again.....
Definitely Define -- know where you are going, you team also needs to know where they are and where they are going. Your mission and goals should always be clear to all your team members. If you team doesn't know where they are or where they are going how can they get anywhere?
Be a True Leader -- leading people does not mean telling them what to do. Guiding them, helping them and teaching your team and setting an example to follow are part of being a leader. You must be a positive role model and practice what you preach, otherwise the quality of your team's work as individuals and consequently that of the team will suffer not to mention your credibility.
Motivation -- this is one of the hardest tasks but one of the most important. Motivation is key when it comes to the quality of work and dedication. Pay attention to what uniquely motivates different people. Recognition, praise on a job well done, promotions, increase in responsibilities and financial incentives are also very important.
Hmmm....well Mr. Harper you've obviously been brushing up on the motivation side of being a leader. Credibility is starting to suffer though.
I'm getting ready to vote again.....
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
Dry Run
My daughter Lila's cat, Shadow is dying. You might think that this shouldn't have that great an impact on me, but for the last five years Paula and I have been the primary caregivers for this animal. We kind of knew this would happen when Lila got the cat some fourteen years ago, so it hasn't been a surprise, but nonetheless, now that the cat is dying the primary responsibility for decisions about its care has fallen on us.
Shadow was born in Victoria, but truly only came into her own with the move to the farm over a decade ago. Paula very quickly gave her the sobriquet “Danger Cat,” which seemed quite suitable if you watched her prowl the acreage giving full rein to her desire to hunt. She chased down gophers (Richardson's Ground Squirrels), hunted birds both on the ground and in the Manitoba maple trees and poplars that ring our farm. She slaughtered untold numbers of mice (the past few years leaving nothing but noses behind to mark their passing) and on at least two occasions took on full-grown weasels. She survived coyotes—mostly by learning to climb metal siding with nothing but claws and fear—and quite sensibly left the badger,deer and moose alone. Though to look at her, you know she thought about what it would be like to bring a large ungulate down....
When Lila moved out, quite naturally she moved into an apartment complex that didn't allow pets. We didn't mind too much. Shadow was far too effective at rodent control to really have been happy living inside a bachelor suite 24/7.
When she and I left the farm last winter, she was very upset with me. The weather turned awful as we drove into a blizzard with wind chill of -40°C (or F, for that matter), and when we washed up for a couple of weeks in Nelson, Monica's house not only had another cat, but also a dog that lived indoors. Shadow thought that I was doing all this to torment her. But when she finally could go outside and explore the barn, even though there was snow everywhere, she was emotionally ready to forgive me for the trip. Particularly since it was beginning to look like she was going to be able to co-exist with Monica's dog.
So when I uprooted her again and we drove out to the coast, she was seriously pissed. She'd lived in one place for over a decade, and here I'd moved her twice in less than a month. When we got out of the car and she found not only that I'd brought her to Paula (good, she at least is familiar), but also seemed to somehow have discovered the doorway into spring (Victoria in February is most certainly not -40°C...or even the -10°C of Nelson), she was much quicker to forgive me for uprooting her.
She mellowed into a Victoria lifestyle quite quickly. When she discovered the cat door, she knew she could live here. Her home territory had shrunk—the yard isn't anywhere near as big as the farm, but then raccoons aren't quite as big a problem as coyotes either. And there were two other adults who really didn't mind being cat toys either, so that was good. So Shadow seemed to slip into retirement with grace and an attitude that involved sleeping 22 hours a day—much like the rest of the retirement community in Victoria.
But two weeks ago we noticed that she was drooling a little bit and that the shape of her face had changed slightly. When we finally convinced her to open her mouth, we discovered that she was in fact missing one of her big teeth. Paula took her to the vet a couple of days later to ensure that there was no problem with infection, and the vet told her that Shadow had a very fast-growing cancer in her jawbone. The only question was whether the cancer was the fast-growing one or the really fast-growing one. It was not really a question that needed answering—either way it was going to kill her—so it wasn't answered. And a couple of days back, she lost another tooth, so even if it's not the really fast-growing one, it's growing plenty fast for her.
A couple of months ago when John told me his cat was ill, I mentioned that on the farm we had a very inexpensive .22 calibre solution for sick animals. He—quite rightly—suggested that I'd been on the farm too long.
But our family knew right from the beginning that vet bills were something we weren't going to be saddled with; there was an upper limit and it was very low. Thankfully my sister-in-law being a small-animal vet helped keep visits to a minimum. She would answer questions and do quick exams to let us know if there was anything to be worried about. And there never was. Shadow has been a most healthy cat, with the occasional incident of mouse-bait-eating excepted.
The vet question is still moot—Shadow has just now exceeded what we had set as her upper level of health care benefits, and we know that the cancer is 100% guaranteed fatal, so there is no point in medical intervention.
The question now is only when does she die. Euthanasia is not an option in this case, but a necessity. Shadow has difficulty eating and is losing both fur and weight. And better a day early than a day late.
But we don't want to impose the final solution too early. Lila is planing to come out mid-month—not just to visit the cat, but relatives and parents and such as well. Will Shadow be in reasonable shape in ten days? Are we pushing to extend her life for our emotional ends? Shadow doesn't appear to either us or the vet to be in any great pain, except perhaps immediately after eating. But she's been shifted from her normal hard, crunchy cat food over to meat paté (which she doesn't seem to like as much as the old crappy food. Or maybe it's just that the new food hurts to eat also). You can stroke her neck and chin, including the tumour, without causing her any distress. All she wants is to curl up someplace warm and sleep—and if that warm place is on or next to you, so much the better. And so far her breathing doesn't seem to be affected, so we let her carry on. But she isn't consuming enough calories, so she gets thinner and weaker every day, and we go through the dry run of decision-making for when our parents, children, or friends will rely on us to make the same decision for them: when is enough actually enough?
With people it can be easier; my mother remained lucid up to the end, and so could decide for herself when enough was enough. But Shadow can't talk, so the ethics of it, the hard decision of it rests completely with us. Hit by a car? Easy. Get a chunk of firewood and the cat is out of its misery. But this uncertainty, the indefiniteness of it is what is hard. Lila is happy to leave the problem in our laps (often quite literally). So I throw her questions like “what do we do with her body?” Mass cremation/disposal? Individual cremation? Or do we just freeze her and send her out to Lila's freezer to wait for the ground on the farm to thaw enough to bury her there? (Yeah, that one didn't go over too well. “I don't think that's the way I want to do it” was the polite answer). Bury her in Victoria? It was where she was born, but, like people, is it where her roots are? Where do we want to think of the cat being? Because, after all, most of this is about the survivors. So I get my daughter thinking about the questions that one day will have to be answered about me, that I have to answer about my parents, and I look at a cat we've loved slowly decline, preparing to go off and hunt the Great Perhaps.
Shadow was born in Victoria, but truly only came into her own with the move to the farm over a decade ago. Paula very quickly gave her the sobriquet “Danger Cat,” which seemed quite suitable if you watched her prowl the acreage giving full rein to her desire to hunt. She chased down gophers (Richardson's Ground Squirrels), hunted birds both on the ground and in the Manitoba maple trees and poplars that ring our farm. She slaughtered untold numbers of mice (the past few years leaving nothing but noses behind to mark their passing) and on at least two occasions took on full-grown weasels. She survived coyotes—mostly by learning to climb metal siding with nothing but claws and fear—and quite sensibly left the badger,deer and moose alone. Though to look at her, you know she thought about what it would be like to bring a large ungulate down....
When Lila moved out, quite naturally she moved into an apartment complex that didn't allow pets. We didn't mind too much. Shadow was far too effective at rodent control to really have been happy living inside a bachelor suite 24/7.
When she and I left the farm last winter, she was very upset with me. The weather turned awful as we drove into a blizzard with wind chill of -40°C (or F, for that matter), and when we washed up for a couple of weeks in Nelson, Monica's house not only had another cat, but also a dog that lived indoors. Shadow thought that I was doing all this to torment her. But when she finally could go outside and explore the barn, even though there was snow everywhere, she was emotionally ready to forgive me for the trip. Particularly since it was beginning to look like she was going to be able to co-exist with Monica's dog.
So when I uprooted her again and we drove out to the coast, she was seriously pissed. She'd lived in one place for over a decade, and here I'd moved her twice in less than a month. When we got out of the car and she found not only that I'd brought her to Paula (good, she at least is familiar), but also seemed to somehow have discovered the doorway into spring (Victoria in February is most certainly not -40°C...or even the -10°C of Nelson), she was much quicker to forgive me for uprooting her.
She mellowed into a Victoria lifestyle quite quickly. When she discovered the cat door, she knew she could live here. Her home territory had shrunk—the yard isn't anywhere near as big as the farm, but then raccoons aren't quite as big a problem as coyotes either. And there were two other adults who really didn't mind being cat toys either, so that was good. So Shadow seemed to slip into retirement with grace and an attitude that involved sleeping 22 hours a day—much like the rest of the retirement community in Victoria.
But two weeks ago we noticed that she was drooling a little bit and that the shape of her face had changed slightly. When we finally convinced her to open her mouth, we discovered that she was in fact missing one of her big teeth. Paula took her to the vet a couple of days later to ensure that there was no problem with infection, and the vet told her that Shadow had a very fast-growing cancer in her jawbone. The only question was whether the cancer was the fast-growing one or the really fast-growing one. It was not really a question that needed answering—either way it was going to kill her—so it wasn't answered. And a couple of days back, she lost another tooth, so even if it's not the really fast-growing one, it's growing plenty fast for her.
A couple of months ago when John told me his cat was ill, I mentioned that on the farm we had a very inexpensive .22 calibre solution for sick animals. He—quite rightly—suggested that I'd been on the farm too long.
But our family knew right from the beginning that vet bills were something we weren't going to be saddled with; there was an upper limit and it was very low. Thankfully my sister-in-law being a small-animal vet helped keep visits to a minimum. She would answer questions and do quick exams to let us know if there was anything to be worried about. And there never was. Shadow has been a most healthy cat, with the occasional incident of mouse-bait-eating excepted.
The vet question is still moot—Shadow has just now exceeded what we had set as her upper level of health care benefits, and we know that the cancer is 100% guaranteed fatal, so there is no point in medical intervention.
The question now is only when does she die. Euthanasia is not an option in this case, but a necessity. Shadow has difficulty eating and is losing both fur and weight. And better a day early than a day late.
But we don't want to impose the final solution too early. Lila is planing to come out mid-month—not just to visit the cat, but relatives and parents and such as well. Will Shadow be in reasonable shape in ten days? Are we pushing to extend her life for our emotional ends? Shadow doesn't appear to either us or the vet to be in any great pain, except perhaps immediately after eating. But she's been shifted from her normal hard, crunchy cat food over to meat paté (which she doesn't seem to like as much as the old crappy food. Or maybe it's just that the new food hurts to eat also). You can stroke her neck and chin, including the tumour, without causing her any distress. All she wants is to curl up someplace warm and sleep—and if that warm place is on or next to you, so much the better. And so far her breathing doesn't seem to be affected, so we let her carry on. But she isn't consuming enough calories, so she gets thinner and weaker every day, and we go through the dry run of decision-making for when our parents, children, or friends will rely on us to make the same decision for them: when is enough actually enough?
With people it can be easier; my mother remained lucid up to the end, and so could decide for herself when enough was enough. But Shadow can't talk, so the ethics of it, the hard decision of it rests completely with us. Hit by a car? Easy. Get a chunk of firewood and the cat is out of its misery. But this uncertainty, the indefiniteness of it is what is hard. Lila is happy to leave the problem in our laps (often quite literally). So I throw her questions like “what do we do with her body?” Mass cremation/disposal? Individual cremation? Or do we just freeze her and send her out to Lila's freezer to wait for the ground on the farm to thaw enough to bury her there? (Yeah, that one didn't go over too well. “I don't think that's the way I want to do it” was the polite answer). Bury her in Victoria? It was where she was born, but, like people, is it where her roots are? Where do we want to think of the cat being? Because, after all, most of this is about the survivors. So I get my daughter thinking about the questions that one day will have to be answered about me, that I have to answer about my parents, and I look at a cat we've loved slowly decline, preparing to go off and hunt the Great Perhaps.
Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss
With his first act as Prime Minister, Stephen Harper demonstrated that he can play the political game as well as anyone, and his high-minded campaign of integrity, honest government and accountably were as worthless as Chretien's promise to remove the GST.
In other words, he said anything to be elected, and now that's he won, the real Harper agenda will now be revealed.
First, MP David Emerson, re-elected a scant two weeks ago as a Liberal, crossed the floor to join the Conservative cabinet as the Minister of International Trade, with responsibilities for the Vancouver Olympics. Emerson, who had vowed on election night to become the new prime minister's "worst nightmare", does not understand what the fuss is about. His Conservative opponent finished a distant third in his riding; clearly his constituents what wanted a Liberal representing them.
And after all the Tory's boo-hooing when Belinda Stronach crossed the floor, and the cries of anger and outrage when the Liberals were apparently caught trolling for other Tory MPs in the last house, one would have thought Harper would heeded the calls from his party and enacted legislation requiring members that cross the floor to win their seats back in a by-election, rather than trolling for Liberals who value bigger pay cheques over serving their constituents. And he want after a Liberal! You remember them, those corrupt and decadent crooks that Harper just spent the last eight weeks telling us we couldn't trust.
Harper also appointed Michael Fortier to the position of Minister of Public Works and government Services. Fortier was the Conservative campaign co-chair in 2004 and 2006, and co-chair of Harper's leadership campaign in 2006. He lost a bid for the Conservative leadership in the 1990s, and lost a bid to win a seat in the 2000 federal election. While the PM has the right to name anyone he wants to cabinet, traditionally it has been a sitting MP, and if the person chosen is not an MP (as in Fortier's case), the new cabinet member usually runs in a by-election at the earliest opportunity. This will not happen this time; Fortier is being appointed to the Senate, where he will sit until the next election, when he will run.
In other words, Harper's first political appointee is a Conservative party hack who will sit in the Senate and Cabinet. Patronage lives! Worse, Fortier won't have to take questions in The House because he's not a member -- so much for accountability!
And finally, Stockwell Day was given the Public Safety portfolio. While giving Day any form of responsibility is a disaster waiting to happen, surely Day would have preferred some sort of Recreation portfolio. He's clearly a man who loves water sports.
In other words, he said anything to be elected, and now that's he won, the real Harper agenda will now be revealed.
First, MP David Emerson, re-elected a scant two weeks ago as a Liberal, crossed the floor to join the Conservative cabinet as the Minister of International Trade, with responsibilities for the Vancouver Olympics. Emerson, who had vowed on election night to become the new prime minister's "worst nightmare", does not understand what the fuss is about. His Conservative opponent finished a distant third in his riding; clearly his constituents what wanted a Liberal representing them.
And after all the Tory's boo-hooing when Belinda Stronach crossed the floor, and the cries of anger and outrage when the Liberals were apparently caught trolling for other Tory MPs in the last house, one would have thought Harper would heeded the calls from his party and enacted legislation requiring members that cross the floor to win their seats back in a by-election, rather than trolling for Liberals who value bigger pay cheques over serving their constituents. And he want after a Liberal! You remember them, those corrupt and decadent crooks that Harper just spent the last eight weeks telling us we couldn't trust.
Harper also appointed Michael Fortier to the position of Minister of Public Works and government Services. Fortier was the Conservative campaign co-chair in 2004 and 2006, and co-chair of Harper's leadership campaign in 2006. He lost a bid for the Conservative leadership in the 1990s, and lost a bid to win a seat in the 2000 federal election. While the PM has the right to name anyone he wants to cabinet, traditionally it has been a sitting MP, and if the person chosen is not an MP (as in Fortier's case), the new cabinet member usually runs in a by-election at the earliest opportunity. This will not happen this time; Fortier is being appointed to the Senate, where he will sit until the next election, when he will run.
In other words, Harper's first political appointee is a Conservative party hack who will sit in the Senate and Cabinet. Patronage lives! Worse, Fortier won't have to take questions in The House because he's not a member -- so much for accountability!
And finally, Stockwell Day was given the Public Safety portfolio. While giving Day any form of responsibility is a disaster waiting to happen, surely Day would have preferred some sort of Recreation portfolio. He's clearly a man who loves water sports.
Monday, February 06, 2006
Saturday, February 04, 2006
The Face of Fear
This week one of the young ladies, hired to be as assistant to my Admissions area at UVic, drew the alien face--the one we all know--the one with blue eyes that light up that I gave to Karl Johanson as a gift--and promplty told me this scares her alot. My reply was "That's the face of terrorism from space." Now its something both of us had never considered....but its true! And thus a conversation on the face of terrorism was launched. Only I noted that all of it was based on the face of terrorism Americans view....
For example we figured that most young people growing up in America today will consider the face of terrorism to be Arabic. How will this effect these young people as they grow into adults? Will immigration be restricted? Will there always be a feeling of not being safe around Arabics?
During the 1950s it was communists and Russians. Americans built bomb shelters and kids in school were made to practice over and over again what to do in the event of an attack. I've met Americans who now live in Canada who had fathers who went to Vietnam and were in the military. These men are afraid of Asians, one even sent me a site to purchase medication to protect me from fallout from THE bomb something he lives in fear of seeing in his lifetime. In the end I had to stop receiving his emails and going for coffee with him because his panic was starting to scare me. I hope he got some very needed help.
And on it goes....there seems to have always been some terror threating American in one form or another. Here is a nation that keeps its population in constant fear. Which then leads to my observation that Americans suffer from this fear--ever notice all the ads for antacid, headahces, stomach aches, sleepnessless and weight problems on American TV? These are all cases of stress! And the way I see it Americans are one stressed out society.
Did I make my coworker feel better -- it helped to talk. I think she realized that she doesn't have to be afraid of an invasion from space, she has to be more concerned that our neighbours to the south might buy us up more and more; that we could become more American.....now that scares me almost as much as Harper and Day.
For example we figured that most young people growing up in America today will consider the face of terrorism to be Arabic. How will this effect these young people as they grow into adults? Will immigration be restricted? Will there always be a feeling of not being safe around Arabics?
During the 1950s it was communists and Russians. Americans built bomb shelters and kids in school were made to practice over and over again what to do in the event of an attack. I've met Americans who now live in Canada who had fathers who went to Vietnam and were in the military. These men are afraid of Asians, one even sent me a site to purchase medication to protect me from fallout from THE bomb something he lives in fear of seeing in his lifetime. In the end I had to stop receiving his emails and going for coffee with him because his panic was starting to scare me. I hope he got some very needed help.
And on it goes....there seems to have always been some terror threating American in one form or another. Here is a nation that keeps its population in constant fear. Which then leads to my observation that Americans suffer from this fear--ever notice all the ads for antacid, headahces, stomach aches, sleepnessless and weight problems on American TV? These are all cases of stress! And the way I see it Americans are one stressed out society.
Did I make my coworker feel better -- it helped to talk. I think she realized that she doesn't have to be afraid of an invasion from space, she has to be more concerned that our neighbours to the south might buy us up more and more; that we could become more American.....now that scares me almost as much as Harper and Day.
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