The hit parade just never stops, does it?

http://www.ktla.com/news/landing/ktla-ashburn-arrest,0,4135863.story

An excerpt:

“Family Values” Senator Ashburn Gets DUI Leaving Gay Bar

SACRAMENTO — The county district attorney says Republican state Sen. Roy Ashburn’s blood-alcohol level was .14 percent when he was arrested on suspicion of drunken driving after leaving Faces, a gay bar and nightclub.

Ashburn has voted against every gay rights measure the senate has voted upon, according to Project Vote Smart.

The California Highway Patrol says the Bakersfield lawmaker was arrested early Wednesday after he was spotted driving erratically. Ashburn was taken to the Sacramento County Jail, booked and then released.

Ashburn, the married father of four, was reportedly driving with a male passenger who was not identified.

A spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office, Shelly Orio, said Thursday that a breath test showed Ashburn’s blood alcohol level was .06 percent above the legal limit.

He was released on $1,400 bond.

The lawmaker was a no-show on the Senate floor Thursday. The state-owned vehicle he was driving when he was arrested has been impounded at the Capitol, Senate sergeant-at-arms Tony Beard Jr. said.

Congratulations, Senator Ashburn. You get the Republican trifecta: DUI, improper personal use of a taxpayer-owned vehicle, and being caught picking up a guy at a gay bar!

So how many hypocritical “family values” conservatives do we have now? Let’s see, we have:

• Jim Bakker, televangelist. Caught embezzling money and having sex with his secretary.
• Jimmy Swaggart, televangelist. Charged with soliciting sex from prostitutes. Famously made a tearful apology on TV.
• Ken Calvert (R-CA), who blasted Bill Clinton for his affair with Monica Lewinski. Caught by police receiving oral sex from a prostitute. At least Bill didn’t have to pay for his blowjob.
• Jim Bunn (R-OR), elected with Christian Coalition support, whereupon he immediately divorced his wife to marry an employee (who also mysteriously received a huge pay raise).
• Newt Gingrich, Republican House Speaker, harsh critic of Bill Clinton’s sexual infidelity. Married 3 times, cheated on first wife with a campaign staffer, and was fined $300,000 by the House Ethics Committee for misuse of funds.
• Beverly Russell, executive member of SC Republican executive committee, sexually molested his step-daughter Susan Smith (yes, the same Susan Smith who went insane and drowned her own children).
• Helen Chenoweth (R-ID), blasted Bill Clinton for his adultery but later admitted a long adulterous affair herself.
• Daniel Crane (R-IL), another “family values” crusader, had sex with an underage congressional page.
• John Fund, Wall Street Journal columnist, GOP fundraiser, and anti-abortion crusader, impregnated the daughter of an old girlfriend and then encouraged her to have an abortion.
• Reverend Stephen White, “family values” preacher active at Yale, arrested for offering money to a 14 year old boy for oral sex.
• Brent Parker (R-UT), arrested for soliciting gay sex from an undercover officer.
• Robin Vanderwall, director of the Faith and Family alliance, arrested for criminal solicitation of a minor.
• Paul Crouch, director of the Christian Trinity Broadcasting Network, paid $425000 to silence an alleged gay lover.
• Jim West, Republican mayor of Spokane who crusaded against abortion, gays, and premarital sex. Had a gay affair with a male teenager.
• Dr. David Hager, Bush Administration appointee to the Advisory Committee for Reproductive Health Drugs in the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), wrote numerous books on sexual morality and tried to ban the “morning after” pill. Had an adulterous affair.
• Ted Haggard, hard-line right-wing “family values” preacher, seen in “Jesus Camp” lecturing people on sexual morality. Resigned after being caught with a male prostitute and crystal meth.
• Mark Foley (R-FL), famously caught soliciting underage congressional pages for gay sex.
• Lou Beres, former executive director of the Oregon Christian Coalition. Confessed to police that he fondled under-aged girls.
• Jon Matthews, Republican talk show host in Houston, indicted for exposing his genitals to a teenaged girl.
• Larry Craig (R-ID), yet another “family values” and anti-gay crusader. Famously caught soliciting sex in a men’s airport bathroom.
• Robert Allen (R-FL), arrested for soliciting sex from an undercover officer in a men’s bathroom.
• Daniel Dean Thompson, a Utah retailer of bowdlerized movies (with the dirty parts cut out), arrested for sexually molesting a 14 year old.
• Mark Sanford, Republican governor of SC. Family-values crusader, was being groomed by the GOP as a possible presidential candidate in 2012. Famously caught using taxpayer money to fly to Argentina and have sex with his Argentinian mistress, who he publicly called his “soul mate”. Refused to resign despite numerous calls to do so from both parties.
• And of course, as of today we have this douche-bag Ashburn.

Feel free to look up any or all of these incidents. It is by no means a complete list. For a much longer, fully referenced list, see:
http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Republican_Sex_Scandals

Also, for fun, see:
http://www.badmouth.net/top-five-republican-gay-sex-scandals/
http://www.salem-news.com/articles/october172007/repub_scandals_10_17_07.php

Moral of the story: if you see someone ranting about “family values”, you should keep a watchful eye on your kids.

On Valentine’s Day, I’m prompted to think about marriage. And after yet another run-in with somebody talking about “traditional marriage”, I got to wondering just how old “traditional marriage” is. After all, contrary to popular belief, church marriages were not always required. Well, as it turns out, we have an exact date for this thing: 1754. That’s the year when the British Marriage Act of 1753, also known as Lord Hardwicke’s Marriage Act, went into effect.

Interesting, isn’t it? Before that year, marriage in England had no religious requirement at all. People just lived together for a while, and were eventually considered to be married. Look it up. So the next time someone tells you about “traditional marriage”, you can just point out that common-law marriage has been around a lot longer than church marriage, so it is more traditional.

PS. It is common, particularly among really ignorant religious egocentrics (read: Christian fundamentalists), to claim that the connection between religion and marriage is a universal thing. In fact, many cultures such as China did not think to make this connection at all in their history, and did not make it until Christian missionaries brought the idea.

Seriously, it sounds like a joke, but it’s not. Some giant obese man literally sat in a chair and waited for God to heal him, until he finally died. Here’s some stuff from the news article:

Obese man dies after 8 months in recliner, believed God would heal him
Posted: Nov 19, 2009 2:56 PM
Updated: Nov 20, 2009 8:08 AM
Tillmon Webb

GREENWOOD, SC (WIS) – Believing his faith would heal him, a Greenwood County man sat down in his recliner after an injury in March and never got up.

On Thursday, his wife explained why he stayed in the recliner until shortly before he died.

“The man totally believed in God and his healing,” said Ada Webb.

In March, Webb’s 550-pound husband, Tillmon, sat down in a recliner inside their trailer in Greenwood. Wearing nothing but a blanket, the 33-year-old didn’t move from that recliner for the next eight months.

“He couldn’t do nothing for his self and I couldn’t do but so much,” Webb explained.

Webb says Tillmon tore his ACL in March and drove to a doctor’s office.

“They were gonna give him an appointment, but they wanted $300 up front, and we didn’t have the money,” said Webb.

Webb says he returned to the recliner, picked up his Bible and became determined that faith would heal his leg.

“He read his Bible daily, he spent his full focus on God,” said Webb. “And he was literally waiting and praying for a Job miracle. If anybody knows the Bible and knows Job, he really and fully believed that God was going to heal him just like he did Job, because he said he couldn’t think of a better testimony to go out and to tell people.”

For eight months they had no visitors. Webb rarely left his side, and she tried to keep him clean.

“I couldn’t get him rolled over to use a bedpan,” said Webb.

Other than eating and reading the Bible, she says Tillmon posted sermons online and texted messages of faith through his cell phone.

“He wanted so much to get up and you know, he wanted to tell everybody what Jesus done,” said Webb.

Webb says Tillmon consistently told her not to call for help. She says Wednesday morning he was in so much pain that she finally called an ambulance.

Greenwood County authorities say they found Tillmon covered with sores, and that he appeared to weigh about 800 pounds. They say he was stuck to his chair, and they had to saw the recliner apart. They cut a large hole around the front door to get him out.

He died at the hospital.

Webb says she has no regrets about leaving him in that recliner.

“If I feel anything right now, it’s envy for him because I wish he had taken me with him,” said Webb.

“He couldn’t do nothing for his self”? “he wanted to tell everybody what Jesus done”? You can actually hear the inbreeding.

With all of the talk of Wall Street bonuses in the news lately, there’s a pretty interesting article in today’s Globe and Mail. Here’s an excerpt:

In 2008, Dan Ariely, a professor of behavioural economics at Duke University and the author of Predictably Irrational, led a series of experiments to determine exactly how people respond to financial incentives. Participants in the study were asked to play memory games, put together puzzles and perform physical tasks, such as throwing a ball at a target. When they performed very well, they earned a payout. Some subjects were promised a small bonus, about the equivalent of a day’s pay, while others were shooting for a much bigger reward.

Here’s what happened: For tasks that required no cognitive skill, such as repeatedly pressing the same key on a keyboard, performance improved when researchers upped the bonuses. But for tasks that demanded any intelligence at all (some participants played an electronic game of Simon Says), the incentives didn’t work. In fact, the bigger the bonus, the worse the performance.

Oops. It turns out that these giant bonuses the corporate executives like to reward themselves with are almost certainly worthless in terms of improving performance, and in fact they probably make their performance worse. In short, not only are the bonuses of Wall Street bankers outrageously offensive in light of their contribution to present economic woes (not to mention the fact that the taxpayers had to bail out their industry to keep it from collapsing last year), but that bonus culture might have even contributed toward the reckless and incompetent conduct that led to these woes in the first place.

Of course, we should not expect this perverse status quo to ever change. From the article:

Of course, many in the C-Suite already know that bonuses are bunk. In 2003, Harvard professors Michael Beer and Nancy Katz anonymously surveyed over 200 senior executives in more than 30 countries about their bonus plans. The overwhelming consensus was that bonuses had little or no effect on how their companies or employees performed. Many execs even admitted to low-balling expectations, to ensure everyone was eligible for a bonus.

And there’s the rub: You don’t hope for a bonus; you expect one. The first company to voluntarily scrap its bonus pool will undoubtedly watch as talent flocks across the street (right into the arms of Goldman Sachs, whose current $12-billion U.S. compensation kitty is the biggest it’s ever had). One might have thought a long and painful recession would have compelled companies to reconsider their most basic practices, but, this year, many will carry on as usual.

Goddamned bankers. I may not be a Christian myself, but I can see why Jesus hated them.

EDIT: here’s an excerpt from another article on the subject (this one from the CBC on November 4):

Chief executives in 35 of the top Fortune 500 companies were overpaid by about 129 times their “ideal salaries” in 2008, according to an analysis by a Purdue University researcher.

Venkat Venkatasubramanian, a chemical engineer, said he’s devised a new way to calculate the true worth of top CEOs based on equations found in chemical engineering.

His paper — What is Fair Pay for Executives? An Information Theoretic Analysis of Wage Distributions — was published Tuesday in the online open-access journal Entropy.

Fair pay for an average S&P 500 CEO should ideally be in the range of 8 to 16 times the lowest employee salary, according to Venkatasubramanian’s calculations.

By contrast, average CEO pay ratios were about 11-to-1 in Japan, 15-to-1 in France, 20-to-1 in Canada and 22-to-1 in Britain in 2006.

Since the 1970s in the United States, the ratio of CEO pay to the lowest employee’s salary has gone up to as high as 344-to-1 from about 40-to-1

That’s amazing. American business leaders continue to insist that stratospheric US executive pay is necessary in order to attract “top talent”, but one would be hard-pressed to conclude that US corporate executives are ten times more competent than their counterparts in Japan, France, Canada, or Britain. Is GM’s CEO ten times better than Toyota’s CEO?

Today we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the most unusual method of mail delivery ever attempted: mail delivery via guided missile.

On June 8 1959, a missile was installed into the USS Barbero (which had been temporarily established to be a “postal branch”) and 3000 letters were stamped and inserted as the payload. The missile was fired from sea and flew to Mayport, Florida, where the payload was deployed via parachute and the letters were collected and taken to Jacksonville for processing.

Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield remarked: “This peacetime employment of a guided missile is the first known use of missiles by any post office.” He predicted “Before man reaches the Moon, mail will be delivered within hours from New York to California, to Britain, to India, or Australia by guided missiles. We stand on the threshold of rocket mail.”

Oh, those wacky 1950s people. But wouldn’t rocket mail be cool?

You can file in the “that’s obvious” folder if you want, but it’s interesting to see it confirmed through scientific study. It seems that the April issue of the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine published some studies on childhood obesity, including the following:

At age three, the children took part in a test of their self-control. They were left sitting alone in a room with several toys, one of which they were asked not to touch until an adult returned. Those who waited at least 75 seconds before playing with the toy were considered high in self-regulation.

Then at age five, the children participated in a similar exercise in delayed gratification that involved the choice between a smaller portion of a favourite food immediately or a larger amount after several minutes.

Compared with children who showed high self-control and were able to wait at least 210 seconds before diving in, children who were unable to wait at both ages had the highest body mass index scores for their age at 12 years, and the fastest increases in BMI over the nine-year followup, the researchers found.

“In essence, it appears that children with greater self-regulation tend to be leaner, smarter, and better able to get along with others,” Dr. Robert Whitaker and Rachel Gooze of Temple University in Philadelphia said in an editorial accompanying the research.

Ouch.

From the CBC.

Is it time to retire all of those old “a drink a day is good for you” studies yet? Especially since they were generally funded by associations of brewers and wineries?

According to this CBC article:

Downing as little as one alcoholic drink a day seems to increase a woman’s risk for developing cancer, according to a British study that looked at a million middle-aged women.

The study in Tuesday’s issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute suggested the cancer risks of alcohol may outweigh any potential benefits it has on the heart.

“These findings suggest that even low levels of drinking increase a woman’s risk of developing cancer of the breast, liver and rectum — and in smokers, cancers of the mouth and throat,” Naomi Allen of the University of Oxford, who led the study, said in a statement.

Low to moderate alcohol consumption may account for nearly 13 per cent of the cancers studied, the researchers said.

This dovetails with the EPIC (European Prospective Investigation of Cancer) study earlier, which came to similar conclusions. So stop telling people that a drink a day is good for them: it causes cancer, and let’s be honest here: there are far better ways to improve your heart health than to drink alcohol.

If heart health is your concern, here’s an idea: try a better diet and regular exercise. Regular alcoholic drinking is an absolutely ridiculous way of trying to improve your heart, especially since we have scientific confirmation of its considerable down side.

Today we celebrate the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln, both of whom struggled mightily against backward-thinking reactionaries in their respective spheres of influence.

We all know the political controversies surrounding Darwin’s evolution theory (note that there is no scientific controversy, only a political one), and it may come as no surprise that Pope Pius IX attacked it the moment it was published.

For his part, Darwin wrote: “For my own part I would as soon be descended from that heroic little monkey … as from a savage who delights to torture his enemies … treats his wives like slaves … and is haunted by the grossest superstitions.”

That’s a phrase which sadly rings as true today as they did in Darwin’s lifetime. In the last 8 years we have had the “privilege” of witnessing the rise of a socio-political movement in America which embraces the torture of its enemies, the clawback of women’s reproductive rights, and absurd religious teachings such as irrational fear of homosexuals, premarital sex, and any scientific teachings which threaten either religious doctrine or corporate profit.

Seriously, the more I look at Catholic feast days, the more perplexed I am. Did you know that they actually have an official patron saint of banking?

It may be amusing at this point in time, with all of the bad news about the US banking system, to recall what some of the early American presidents had to say about bankers.

Thomas Jefferson once wrote to John Taylor and declared: “I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies.”

In 1836, Andrew Jackson disbanded the second federal bank, declaring: “The bold effort the present bank made to control the government … [suggests] the fate which awaits the American people should they be deluded into a perpetuation of this institution.” Later, he said the following to the bankers themselves: “You are a den of vipers and thieves. I intend to rout you out, and by the eternal God, I will”, which he did.

Henry Ford once said: “It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”

Believe it or not, the Catholics actually have an official patroness saint of bell-ringers. Luckily, loud bell-ringing is not quite as prevalent today as it once was, but it’s still damned annoying.

From America Revisited (1883) by George Augustus Sala:

“The bell-ringing nuisance is nearly as offensive in England as it is in America, and in both countries the practice is equally needless and wantonly indifferent to the requirements of those who need rest and quiet. Surely a man knows to what religion he belongs, and at what hour the services in his particular place of worship begin. Yet the sexton goes on tugging at his bell as though Christians had altogether lost their memories, and as though there were no clocks and watches in the world. Moreover, how is the churchgoer to discriminate between the different bells when they are all brangling at the same time? Here in Baltimore, a city of 300,000 inhabitants, there are about 200 churches. With the exception of the Quakers meeting-houses, all these churches are provided with bells which boom and brawl from sunrise to sunset, as though they were so many hotel gongs calling guests to theological meals.”

From Josiah Quincy III (1772-1864), mayor of Boston:

“The journey to New York took up a week. The carriages were old and shackling, and much of the harness made of ropes. We generally reached our resting place for the night, if no accident intervened, at ten o’clock, and after a frugal supper went to bed with a notice that we should be called at three the next morning, which generally proved to be half-past two. Then, whether it snowed or rained, the traveller must rise and make ready by the help of a horn-lantern and a farthing candle, and proceed on his way over bad roads, sometimes with a driver showing no doubtful symptoms of drunkenness, which goodhearted passengers never fail to improve at every stopping place by urging upon him another glass of toddy.”

This is how people travelled when they were well-off, like the mayor of Boston. I always think of anecdotes like this whenever I run into one of those pinheads who thinks that the past was a better time than the present.

On this day in 1709, the Scotsman Alexander Selkirk was rescued after being stranded for 5 years on a deserted island. After returning to civilization, he became friends with Daniel Defoe, who would eventually write the novel The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe.

Apparently, the real inspiration for Robinson Crusoe went a little bit crazy after his long isolation, and would periodically leave his home in England to live in a nearby cave. I wonder if he got any kind of royalties for his friend’s novel.

From the British Museum’s Harleian Manuscript 247:

“In the night, 130 men were disguised and well-mounted on horseback to go mumming, riding from Newgate through Cheapside, where many people could see them, with great noise of minstrelsy, trumpets, cornets, and shawms, and a great many wax torches lighted. The first 48 rode like esquires, 2-and-2 together, in coats and cloaks of red. After these esquires came 48 like knights, well-arrayed in the same manner. After the knights came one excellently arrayed and well-mounted, as though he were an emperor; after him some 100 paces came one nobly arrayed as a pope; after him came 24 arrayed like cardinals … When they reached the manor, they alighted and entered the hall.”

Apparently, what followed was a lot of heavy drinking. Apparently, the Christmas revelry for the nobility lasted from the end of November to the beginning of February at this time. For the peasants, I suspect Christmas was considerably shorter.

Today is the Catholic feast day of Saint Paula the Bearded. According to legend, in the fourth century, the widow Paula was pursued into a church by a lustful young Roman man, where she prayed for a miracle to save her virtue. God supposedly responded so that “a beard and moustache quickly grew” on her face, thus driving away the man in disgust. She is considered the patroness saint of widows.

Seriously. I’m not making this up.

London’s official morgue death toll for a week of January 1665:

Abortive: 6
Aged: 52
Cancer: 2
Childbed: 40
Chrisomes (unbaptized): 19
Dropsie: 34
Flux: 1
Feaver: 383
Flox and Smallpox: 5
Gowt: 1
Griping in the Guts: 65
Jaundies: 4
Impostume (abscess): 13
Kingevil: 3
Meagrome (migraines): 1
Plannet: 3
Purples: 3
Quinsie: 2
Rising of the Lights: 18
Scowring: 3
Scurvy: 3
Stopping of the Stomach: 7
Suddenly: 2
Tissick (tickling faint cough): 3
Tympany (intestinal bloating): 1
Winde: 4
Wormes: 23

I don’t even know what half those things are. I’d be curious how (unbaptized) is a cause of death, though. Those zany 17th century Brits …

I hear on the news that a lot of parents are having difficulty with the concept of discussing homosexuality with their children. As Robb and Robin Wirthlin in California complained: “Our son came home and told us the school taught him that boys can marry other boys. He’s in second grade” and tried to sue her school district as a result (they have since begun campaigning for an anti-gay marriage constitutional amendment in that state).[1]

Their discomfort is most likely caused by the fact that they have never discussed this issue with their kids themselves, and they are terrified of doing so (in much the same vein that some people are terrified of discussing sex in general with their kids). However, they still feel they should be the first ones to talk to their kids about it, so they want the rest of the world to say nothing until they finally work up the courage to say something themselves (whenever that is; their kids will probably be in their 20s by then).

So here’s a bit of advice: it’s really not that difficult, as long as you just stick to the facts and try to remember that you are only giving information to your kids, not trying to use this discussion as a way of ensuring that they don’t turn gay. The fact is that you can’t ensure that they won’t turn gay; it’s simply not possible to do this with a discussion of any kind, so once you drop the silly conceit that your words will determine whether your child becomes gay, you will realize that this discussion is not fraught with dangers. It’s not the minefield you think it is.

With that in mind, my kids asked me a while ago what “homosexual” means. I didn’t record the conversation so this is not an exact transcript, but it’s as close as I can recall from memory. They brought up the subject while we were driving somewhere in the car.

THEM: “What are homosexuals?”

ME: “OK, you know how Mommy and I are a couple, and how most of your friends have a male parent and one female parent? Well, homosexuals are couples where both partners are males, or both partners are females.”

THEM: “Does that mean that they have sex?”

ME: “Yes. Homosexuals are men who have sex with other men, or women who have sex with other women.”

THEM: “Ewww.”

ME: “Is there anything else you need to know about homosexuals?”

THEM: “Why do they do that?”

ME: “Well, guys like me, actually most guys, are naturally attracted to women. For some reason, homosexual guys are naturally attracted to men.”

THEM: “Why?”

ME: “Well, nobody knows for sure. Most people believe it’s genetic. A lot of religious people think it’s some kind of evil influence from Satan.”

THEM: “In South Park, Satan is gay.”

ME: “Yes, he is. Is there anything else you need to know?”

THEM: “Not really. What are we having for supper?”

And there you have it. Does that sound like it was really so difficult? Now imagine how much more difficult that could have been if my head had been filled with the conceit that my words would determine my kids’ sexual orientation! Time to get that idea out of your heads, folks. You can’t give a speech which determines whether your kid will grow up straight or gay. Get over it. And don’t get that foolish idea into your head that a schoolteacher can do that too.

Footnote:
1: From the Orange County Register, reported on October 21, 2008.

I think I finally figured out what bugs me about people who talk about being proud of their countries. I feel like I can’t disagree with them because to do so means I’m ashamed of my country, and that’s not the way I feel. But pride is something that I associate with personal accomplishments, not the place where I happened to be born. Shouldn’t you only be able to take pride in something you’ve earned or accomplished by yourself? Or at least assisted in?

This is what bugs me about people who take pride in (for example) the D-Day landings. If you were there, then by all means, let your chest swell with pride. You deserve it. But if you’re like me and you only read about it in history books, then what business do you have being proud of it? The fact that you happened to be born in the same country as the guys who were there?

So what do I feel about these sources of what people call “national pride”? I think I figured out what I feel about things like this: I feel gratitude, not pride. I cannot honestly take pride in the accomplishments of others, but I can be grateful to them for what they did. And I can be grateful that I was born in a country where I have human rights and material prosperity.

“National pride” bugs me because I think it gets in the way of constructive change; one is not allowed to criticize one’s country because you’re supposed to be proud of it, and being proud of it means not admitting its faults. But if we can replace this idea with the idea of gratitude to one’s nation, I think it’s a bit easier to be grateful to someone or something while still acknowledging its faults.

Well, it’s been roughly 36 hours since my beloved dog Fuzzy died. He suffered a cardiac arrest yesterday around noon, after fighting both cancer and heart disease for the last six months. But he was surprisingly strong for most of it, didn’t suffer, and only experienced a serious decline in the last couple of weeks. He went without pain; the doctors tried to resuscitate him several times without success, but he was unconscious through the whole process.

It’s a strange emotional roller-coaster. When he first died, I felt like it was his time. I knew it had been coming, and I was glad that he didn’t suffer. But as time goes by, I notice his absence more and more. Just now, the fireplace clicked on, and I instinctively thought that the noise was Fuzzy moving around. I actually jumped out of my seat, but of course, he wasn’t there.

Last night, I carefully put his bed in its customary spot, next to mine. It somehow felt right to have it there, even if he wasn’t in it. But this morning, I took it to the animal hospital. We’re going to have him cremated, and I know he would want his bed, so I left it with them so they could cremate him in it.

It’s such a strange, hollow feeling. Every single time I get up and walk around, I expect to hear the jingling of his collar as he moves to follow me. Even as he weakened in the last few weeks, he would still raise his head to watch me, and wait for me to come over and pet him. But there is only silence. The house feels empty and dead without him here.

I can’t complain about the way things happened. I know nothing could have been done to prevent this, and it’s not as if he was going to live forever. But I still feel hollow inside.

I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that we all think we know what’s right and what’s wrong. Even people who claim to subscribe to some sort of cultural relativism tend to admit they have a few pretty rigid ideas of what’s right and wrong if you push them hard enough. And for most people, they don’t really need to study some complicated ethical philosophy or read books on ethics in order to know what’s right and wrong. They just “know” it. It comes from their intuition. That’s how we “know” that certain rights and principles are “self-evident”, and that’s how Christians “know” which parts of the Bible are important to follow and which parts aren’t. And once we “know” what’s right and wrong, we can judge other people on their actions.

But what if we’ve actually got it backwards? What if we don’t judge people by their actions? What if we do it backwards, and we actually tend to judge actions by the people who commit them? I know what you’re probably thinking: “this guy is on drugs”. But bear with me for a moment here: didn’t you ever wonder why an Arab would make excuses for the actions of Islamic terrorists, while vocally condemning American military actions on moral grounds? Or, to turn the tables, why an American would make excuses for the death toll caused by American military action, while vocally condemning Islamic terrorism on moral grounds? Why do middle-class people in first-world nations wax poetic about the materialistic excesses of wealthy people like Paris Hilton, but get defensive when someone points out how the first-world middle class is obscenely wealthy and materialistic compared to the third-world nations that we exploit for resources and cheap labour?

For all the high-minded moral rhetoric that people spout, there is one element which is common to all of these examples: we claim that we judge people by their actions, but in many cases we seem to make excuses for actions if they are committed by people we respect, while raining thunderous condemnation upon similar actions when they are committed by people we despise. Oh sure, we can write long essays about various high-minded religious, cultural, or philosophical justifications for our judgements, in which we seize upon some distinction between our enemies and ourselves (as if they can’t do the same), but doesn’t it seem like a lot of smoke and mirrors? Especially when we find ways to justify actions from party A while condemning them from party B even if they produce very similar outcomes?

There’s probably no more blatant example of this than the abortion debate: why is it so important for anti-abortion activists to paint a picture of a self-centred sexually promiscuous woman when they attack what they call “abortion on demand?” Because that way, you will associate abortion with people you despise. That way, you will want to ban it. And yet, if a rape victim wants an abortion, very few are willing to stand up and condemn her for the exact same action. Why not? Because it’s not about the action itself, and it never was. It’s about the people. In order to attack certain groups of people, we pretend to hate particular actions they commit, when we actually hate the whole package. If we don’t hate the whole package, we mysteriously find a way to forgive the action.

Am I being too cynical? Maybe, but when you look around at the massive double-standards that people have, it sure as hell looks like people do exactly what I’m describing here. Maybe not everyone does this, but the people who rely mostly on intuition for their moral judgements certainly do. And take a good look at typical Internet arguments: how often do you see people defend some group or individual who’s accused of an unethical act … by pointing out that he (or they) did something good elsewhere? How does that have any bearing on the accusation? It doesn’t, unless you’re trying to paint the defendant as “good people”, thus implying that somehow, the action isn’t as bad.

Is there some reason why womens’ jackets don’t seem to have the inside chest-level pocket where men normally keep their wallets? Rebecca has several jackets, none of which have that pocket on the inside. I guess it’s assumed that they’ll use a purse, but how silly is this? Meanwhile, every single one of my jackets has that pocket, and many of them have several.

Are women not supposed to store their wallets anywhere but a purse? Is there some concern that bulky objects in a womens’ jacket inside pocket might create an unattractive bulge? Is there any reason for this? Inquiring minds want to know.

Rebecca was talking about something she heard on the radio about how Rudy Giuliani is surprisingly popular even among people who oppose his views on abortion and marriage, and it’s pretty much widely accepted that it’s because he was the mayor of New York on 9/11. But do people ever stop to ask why this is so important?

Sometimes I hear people ask why it’s important that kids learn about evolution in school. “What difference does it make”, the argument goes, “since the origin of humans has nothing to do with anyone’s daily life anyway?”

Leaving aside the obvious retort that we can’t teach falsehoods about science just because they’re not relevant to daily life, I think politics is a good forum to demonstrate why people need to understand that we did, in fact, come from stupid hairy primates. And not just because politicians themselves are often stupid and hairy, although that is often true. I’m talking about the alpha-male syndrome.

You see, we humans are still stupid hairy apes, but we won’t admit it. That’s why we mindlessly follow the alpha-male. Why do you think George W. Bush won the last election against Kerry? Do you really think it was because Kerry’s policies were worse than Bush’s policies? Hell, 9 out of 10 voters aren’t even sure what to believe about anything any more, except for the core group of foaming-at-the-mouth Bible thumpers who would gladly vote for a hamster if he opposed gay marriage. People voted for Bush because he seemed like the alpha male, not because they thought he had better judgment.

Why do you think the accusation of indecisiveness was so devastating to Kerry’s political campaign? Because an alpha male makes a decision and stands by it. He is proud. He would never do something like re-examining his original position, or changing his mind in light of changing circumstances, or lying awake at night torturing himself with questions about what to do. Oh no, the alpha male stands strong and proud and makes his decision, no matter how stupid, with conviction! And we want to follow this kind of man.

Why do you think that every study of executive compensation shows that there is a direct correlation between height and promotion, as well as salary? Do you think that an extra three inches of height actually makes you a better executive? Of course not. We’re the smartest apes on the planet but we’re still apes, and we want to follow the alpha male. Why do you think there has always been a strong contingent of people who think that the rulers of the country need more power concentrated in their grubby hands, not less? Because we’re apes, and we want to follow the alpha male. Why do you think those same people tend to think the rulers need less oversight (or as they put it, “meddling”) from other branches of government? Because we’re apes, and we want to follow the alpha male.

Think back to your childhood. Who did the kids look up to? Surely not the smartest kid in the class. They looked up to the alpha male. There’s always an alpha male, and because we’re nothing but smart apes, we want to follow him. Many people don’t even question this or dispute it. Some might even argue that it’s healthy and normal (funny how those two words are often spoken together, as if one necessarily includes the other).

But ask yourself why you want to follow the alpha male. Is it because the alpha male will necessarily make the best decisions? Of course not. History is littered with examples of alpha males making stupid decisions, such as Alexander marching his entire army across a barren desert, Napoleon advancing deep into Russia, or General Lee ordering his men to walk into a perfect killing zone at Gettysburg. And in so many of these cases, the bad decisions were not just a coincidence. They were directly caused by the alpha male’s weaknesses: his pride and his stubbornness. Worse yet, these are the best alpha males that history has to offer. Most alpha males skip the “brilliant success” stage and go straight to “arrogant and foolish”.

So why do we follow these kinds of men? Why do we want to follow the man who seems most like an “alpha”, rather than the man who seems to have the most prudent judgment, the most knowledge, and the most intelligence? Once again, it all comes back to our origins. We don’t make decisions like this for rational reasons. We make decisions like this because we’re apes, and we want to mindlessly follow the alpha while beating our chests and scratching our privates. We’re apes. Accept it.

Holy Christ, I can’t believe how much salt the city is throwing down on the streets and sidewalks. The blacktop is white. There are literally piles of salt at corners and around posts.

I know they need to limit ice accumulation for safety reasons, but this is ridiculous. They’re burning dogs’ feet and corroding cars into wreckage out here. I think I saw Lot’s wife at the fucking corner of the 401 and Highway 10.

Yesterday was Friday, February 16, 2007. The day I discovered that my 8 year old son David is on the American Homeland Security Department’s “No Fly” list.

Luckily for us, we ran into Customs agents who recognized the inherent absurdity of my little boy being identified as a possible terrorist, so they let us go through. After all, he’s 8 years old.

Of course, it has occurred to me that if he were a man rather than a boy, we might have very well missed our flight. When our flight took off (an hour late due to interminable Customs delays, by the way), we could have been sitting in an interrogation room trying to convince some bureaucrat that we are not secretly working for Al-Quaeda.

I hope you Americans feel really safe knowing that these kinds of smart security measures are in place, because it’s nothing more than a pain in the ass for the rest of us, and guess what: if I were a terrorist who was known to intelligence services, do you really think I’d travel under my real name anyway?

Today’s entry in the “pointless and absurd” column has been brought to you by America’s Homeland Security Department.

Today the morning conservative talk-show host Bill Carroll was doing a bit on evolution. Interestingly enough, I counted 8 people in a row who called in against evolution. I tried calling in myself, and instead of getting put in the queue to go on the air, as soon as I made it clear I was pro-evolution, I was told “I’ll pass your message onto him” and got hung up on. Was this because the message queue was too long, or was there a bias against pro-evolution callers? On most subjects, they’ll bump someone up the queue if he’s expressing an opinion that goes against the opinions of most callers, because they know they need to hear from both sides. But apparently (and rather ironically) they didn’t feel this was necessary on this subject.

Anyway, if there’s one thing that really pisses me off, it’s the way call-in shows about evolution are dominated by fundies. Now I know that this is partially because of zealotry; the fundies rush to the phone and speed-dial the instant they know it’s about evolution while I wait until I have a free minute. But it’s also partially because their message is so radio-friendly. Telling people that evolution is a crock is OK on the radio, but telling people that God is a crock will elicit a stream of angry E-mails, phone calls, letters, pulled advertisements, and boycott threats.

Carroll was pushing the standard middle-ground line, which is that evolution is “just a theory” but it should be taught because children “need to know what scientists believe”. Of course, he also emphasized that children “need to know what religions believe” as well, thus painting it as a neat issue of two competing sides, neither of whom is intrinsically superior to the other. And naturally, the children are supposed to decide on their own.

Well I hate to burst anyone’s bubble but that is just flat wrong. Children are not supposed to decide on their own. I don’t know where people got the idea that education was about children choosing for themselves rather than being educated by people who have far more knowledge than they do, but it’s simply idiotic. When you’re an adult, you can choose for yourself. But when you’re in 9th grade science class, you do not have the intellectual tools necessary to do that kind of thing. You do not choose for yourself whether calculus is valid; you are told that it is. You do not choose for yourself whether atoms contain protons and neutrons; you are told that they do (and by the way, for the science philistines out there; the atomic theory of matter is “just a theory” too; have you ever seen a proton?).

This “middle ground” idea is completely insidious and totally dishonest. Do we teach about Louis Pasteur’s germ theory and the Medieval Church’s demonic possession theory as two competing explanations of sickness and disease in health class? No, we teach Louis Pasteur’s germ theory, and guess what: we teach it as a fact. Not because it technically is one, but because children at that age are not ready to understand the distinction between “the only explanation which fits the facts” and “facts”. Hell, many adults don’t understand that distinction either.

In this world, the only people qualified to judge the effectiveness of a new civil engineering idea are qualified panels of civil engineers. The only people qualified to judge the effectiveness of a new neurosurgery technique are qualified panels of neurosurgeons. So why do we think that regular people (never mind children) are qualified to judge the validity of a scientific theory when it happens to be evolution? Do we give children competing theories of subatomic particle physics and ask them to judge for themselves? “Of course not”, a reasonable person would answer; “that’s much too complicated for children to figure out on their own”. And why isn’t biology also too complicated? It is very complicated, and people spend years learning it in university. Christian distortions of biology involve oversimplifying it so that people who do not really understand evolution think they do, and they even think they can poke holes in it. But in the end, they’re not qualified to make that decision, especially when they’re children.

Yes, you heard me right: children should not be given a choice about evolution. They should not be “making up their own minds” about evolution. They should be taught evolution and if they don’t get it, they should fail science class. If they reject science and all of its methods, they should not get a passing grade in science. And by the way, that’s no exaggeration; you must indeed reject the entire scientific method in order to choose creationism over evolution, as Dr. Behe was forced to admit on the stand in the case of Kitzmiller vs Dover Area School District when he admitted that in order to classify “intelligent design” as a science, he was forced to redefine “science” so broadly that it now included astrology. And “intelligent design” is supposed to be creationism’s more reasonable cousin!

Of course, religious people will screech that if they must reject science in order to reject evolution (something which the more honest among them will admit openly), they have the right to do so. And that is true. I absolutely agree that free people in a free society have the right to reject science. But they do not have the right to reject science and then get a passing grade in science class anyway.

You know what I hate about cell-phones? The fact that you can’t look up the owner in a directory listing. There’s some asshole that’s been periodically calling my cell-phone for weeks. His phone number is 416-919-5435. I never pick it up because I don’t know the number. But I finally decided I’d better find out who this persistent caller was, so I read his number off the caller ID and called him back. Here’s how that conversation went:

“Who’s this?”

“Who are you? You called my number.”

“Fuck off! I made a mistake, OK? Fuck off!”

He than hung up. Interesting how he didn’t even bother asking any questions (and what kind of person answers the phone with “Who’s this” instead of “Hello”?). He obviously knew that he’d been calling me, and knew that it was the wrong number. But he’d been doing it for weeks! What kind of brain malfunction leads someone to act like this?

Am I the only one who’s sick of seeing people on TV (and in real-life) telling you that they know more about relationships than you because they’ve been divorced three times?

Maybe I’ve only had one marriage, but I didn’t fuck it up. So don’t talk down to me because I had one success, compared to your three failures.

Can you imagine a guy who flunked an exam in school three times, telling people that they should look to his expertise on how to pass the exam? People would laugh their asses off at him. But for some reason, when the exam is marriage, this kind of bizarre logic convinces people!

People are so incredibly irrational.

Even though I had no idea who Glenn Beck was, I had a feeling I would hate his show as soon as CNN started advertising for it. Call it a bad vibe, or a premonition, or just the fact that something about the short clips in the ads struck me as worthless. But it would be unfair to actually dismiss it without viewing his show, right? So I did watch his show, and as I expected, I hated it. But why? I suppose it could be his particular views, but I’ve known plenty of people with views like that in real-life, and I got along with them.

So what was it about his show that pissed me off and made me hate it? Curious, I tried watching a second show. Once again, I hated it. What’s more, I even started hating the commercials themselves, and even any mention of his show. When the vapid news anchors started spouting ads for his show at every turn, it set my teeth on edge. “Watch the Glenn Beck show for his unique take on current events”, they would say.

“Unique take”, eh? I heard that phrase a few times and I think I figured out why I hate his show. When I watch regular news, I want to see information I would not be able to easily get on my own, or that I wouldn’t bother seeking out. Or I want to see footage from foreign correspondents who are on the scene and can show me things that I obviously couldn’t see on my own. When I read Businessweek Magazine, I’m expecting them to offer insights and information that are new and interesting, and which I couldn’t pick up casually if I hadn’t read it there.

But what does Glenn Beck’s “unique take” on life offer? That’s the problem: there’s nothing “unique” about it at all. Instead, he offers the same kind of useless half-assed unresearched blue-collar opinions that I heard countless times at the cafeteria table when I used to work in tool-and-die shops. In short, there are millions of Glenn Becks out there; he represents the voice of the Guy In Overalls. But I’ve worked with plenty of guys in overalls; I don’t see any fucking reason to turn on CNN to watch a whole show devoted to one particular example of the breed. He doesn’t offer any special background or knowledge to offer any particular insight into the news, and he doesn’t offer news itself. All he offers is the opinion of the Guy In Overalls demographic, and that is anything but unique.

You know, you can call me an elitist, but I figure that if some guy gets a national TV show to discuss current events, he should be able to offer some special credentials to make his opinion more interesting or well-informed than mine. Otherwise, why should I watch it? To hear the kind of half-assed knee-jerk opinions that I could easily get from my mailman? No thanks. There’s something wrong with news channels when guys get TV shows precisely because they don’t have any special background by education or experience to cover the news. Of course, there’s also Glenn Beck’s belief that he’s genuinely funny; that’s yet another thing he shares with far too many guys in overalls.

_____________

EDIT: Today is September 13 2009. It has been three years since I wrote the above post. Interestingly, I notice that criticism tends to be what conservatives would call “politically correct” complaints about my lack of respect for people who aren’t qualified experts in a field, as compared to people who are. It’s not that I think they necessarily know nothing, but blue-collar workers should stick to pontificating on subjects they are qualified in; if I want to know which type of cutter to use when milling Stavax tool steel, I won’t hesitate to ask a milling machine operator. But they should quite frankly shut up when they feel the urge to explain why all the experts are wrong about some subject outside their particular oily expertise. And yes, I do think that people who can’t do calculus are not as smart as people who can. Boo hoo.

According to FOXNews’ commentators who defend knuckle-draggers like Joe The Plumber (and ironically love to use the term “politically correct” on others), it is wrong to treat uneducated people any differently than educated people. Of course, no rational argument can be advanced for this position, so the critics tend to use the tactic of moral righteousness: my statements about uneducated people must mean that I’m a terrible person, a sad person, an angry person, a hostile person, a vicious person, etc. It doesn’t even matter whether a statement is true; according to the thought police, the truth or untruth of the statement has nothing to do with the question of whether I should dare say it. Welcome to the idiocracy.

Imagine a headline in the newspaper that said “Arsonist sentenced to 18 months for fatal fire”. Imagine if the accompanying article indicated that this arsonist had been convicted several times before for setting fires that didn’t kill anyone. Imagine if he asked for clemency based on the fact that he didn’t know anyone was home, so the death was an accident. Imagine that he tried to explain his behaviour by saying that he was deeply depressed after losing his job.

How would you react? “String the bastard up!” you might say. But what if you replace “arson” with “drunk driving” and “fire” with “crash”? Will you react the same way? If not, then why not? Because let’s face it, the above story has happened before with drunk drivers, and on many occasions.

For some reason, we as a society have collectively decided that drunk drivers cannot be held fully responsible for the results of their actions, in the way that an arsonist would be. They stand up in court and say things like “I can’t help myself” or “I will never do this again” and “I have made mistakes, but I am a good husband and father” and people cut them slack.

But why? This is something I have wrestled with for a while, and I cannot come up with a good reason for the double-standard. If anyone else has any ideas, let me know. Because for all the outrage and anger and calls for change that I hear after a homicide, I just don’t see the same kind of reaction to drunk drivers. And drunk drivers kill more people than murderers every year in this country. Do you think their dead victims feel better knowing that they were killed by a drunk instead of a robber?

Seriously, how sickening are these people?

“But wait Mike, what the hell are pop culture geniuses”, you say? Well, I freely admit that I just made up this term, because I couldn’t find an already-existing term for people who think that their choice of entertainment somehow makes them smarter. Still don’t understand what I mean? Maybe this will help you understand:

Words to remember:

• Watching “The Matrix” does not make you a philosopher.
• Listening to “U2″ does not make you a humanitarian.
• Owning all the “Star Trek” movies does not make you a physicist.
• Watching the “Left Behind” movies does not make you a futurist.
• Reading Stephen Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time” does not make you a cosmologist.
• Reading Tom Clancy books does not make you a military strategist.
• Reading “New Scientist” magazine does not make you a scientist.
• Owning a copy of “The Day After Tomorrow” does not make you an environmental expert.
• Reading “Popular Mechanics” does not make you an engineer.
• Watching “The Passion” fifty times does not make you an historian.
• Listening to gangsta rap does not make you an expert on inner-city sociology, and it sure as hell doesn’t make you any tougher.

Oh, how easy it is to become a pop culture genius. All you have to do is listen to the right music, watch the right movies, or read the right novels and magazines, and whammo, you instantly duplicate the effect of years of higher education and/or experience. How convenient. It’s almost as bad as creationists who think that the best way to study evolution science is to ignore what virtually all actual biologists are saying.

Is it just me, or are bathroom fans weak and pathetic? Listen to the pitiful, apologetic whirring sound that a typical bathroom fan makes: it’s quieter than a woman’s vibrator. Now compare this to one of those good high-powered fans that you find above a large stove or better yet, one of those Japanese places where they cook food on a giant hot-plate.

Why aren’t we using those fans instead of these pansy little quiet whirring things behind the effete white plastic covers? Try going into your bathroom and turning on the fan. Do you really get the feeling that any significant amount of air is being evacuated from the room by this weak-kneed device?

The stench produced by a man’s shit cannot be dealt with by an effeminate little fan. A man’s shit requires a man’s fan. Or maybe two.

Have you seen those residential room air cleaners that are increasingly popular? The air cleaner on a home furnace is OK, but it’s nowhere near as efficient as these specialized room air cleaner units. And have you seen how there are several types, such as HEPA filters and electrostatic air cleaners? Did you know that an electrostatic air cleaner can burst into flames? Neither did I, until about ten minutes ago.

I have an Oreck electrostatic air cleaner in my basement. I had been remiss in cleaning it, and it got full of dust. I took out the metallic filter element, cleaned and washed it as per instructions, and then stuck it back into the machine. I started it up, and the airflow out of the outlet was definitely restricted. The design of this machine is such that you can’t take apart the blower and the outlet, only the inlet and the filter assembly. So the only way to get the dust out of the outlet area was to try and suck it out with a vacuum. That got out a lot of the dust, but I suspect it must have also kicked quite a bit loose which fell back down into the blower area.

Anyway, I started it up again, and whooomp, great gouts of flame shot out of every orifice in the machine. A fireball literally shot up about one foot out of the top, and if I’d been leaning over it any closer, I wouldn’t have eyebrows now.

Naturally, I immediately shut it off. It was quite obvious that whatever dust shook loose from the outlet and fell into the blower must have somehow gotten into the electrostatic filter unit despite the mesh screen, and it was also quite obvious that the voltage applied to the plates in the electrostatic filter unit was sufficient to ignite this dust.

I took the machine apart and discovered that while the metallic electrostatic filter unit was OK, the mesh screens on the front and back of the unit were destroyed by the fireball. I don’t want to blame Oreck because they probably have a warning in the manual about letting the unit get too dusty, but I thought I had taken reasonable precautions, so I was rather taken aback to have this happen.

In any case, since I happened to have a small Honeywell HEPA air cleaner sitting in a box (it’s the old-fashioned kind which simply blows air through paper and charcoal filters, with no high-voltage plates), I plugged that in and now I’ve got an air cleaner running in the basement again. So, if you’re ever thinking about getting an air cleaner, bear my story in mind. Electrostatic air cleaners can burst into flames if they get too dusty. Maybe I’ll just stick with the Honeywell.

Do you ever have one of those days when you wake up, and as you go about your daily routine it suddenly strikes you how very, very lucky you are?

Today was one of those days. Nothing special happened; I dropped off Matthew at school, had to go to work, etc. But as I kissed Rebecca goodbye for the day and got into the car with my son, I was suddenly struck by the revelation of how many people in the world have never achieved what I have.

A boring middle-class job, two great kids, a cute little dog, and a loving wife is not the kind of “life of significance” that gets written up in newspapers or glorified in the movies, but do you really need any more out of life than that?

Personally, I don’t think so. I’ve grown up in a first-world nation, I’ve found the love of my life, I have enough to get by financially, and my kids are not brats. I’ll probably never make the newspapers, but I think, in the end, that I don’t care. There are plenty of people who have become rich and famous but who never attained some of the simple things.

Allow me to take this opportunity to say that I’m sick of people out there (such as local radio talk-show host Bill Carroll, although he is by no means the only one) attacking Toronto as Canada’s Murder Capital. This is a complete falsehood, and it is based upon the apparent inability of radio talk show hosts, other assorted media alarmists, and rural bumpkins to perform simple mathematics. Now of course, I know that some of you will get angry and write me to complain that I used the term “rural bumpkins”. You will no doubt complain that I shouldn’t generalize about the education of rural people despite all of the statistical evidence showing that you are much less likely to be well-educated. Don’t worry, I won’t hold it against you. I understand that you don’t know any better.

In any case, for those of you who flunked grade-school math (and it appears, based on calls to radio talk-shows and letters written to newspapers, that many of you did), a city with five point two million people living in it (ref: StatCan) can have a low crime rate but still produce many dozens of murders in any given year. I know some of you people out there are allergic to numbers, but the fact is that numbers tell an objective tale, as opposed to a sensationalist one. And here are the numbers, from Statistics Canada’s The Daily report from July 21, 2005:

Oops, that’s not what you expected, is it? It looks like Winnipeg, Vancouver, Edmonton, Regina, Saskatoon, Abbotsford, and Halifax all have much higher homicide rates than Toronto. It also appears that Montréal and Calgary are in the same ballpark as Toronto, despite hardly ever being fingered as high-crime cities by the national media. In fact, the highest homicide rates among Canadian cities (defined by this source as census metropolitan areas above 100,000 population) are found in Winnipeg (pop: 700k), Regina (pop: 200k), and Abbotsford (pop: 150k). Yes, that’s right: the worst murder rates in Canada are in some of the smallest cities, not the biggest ones.

And hey, how does this compare to American cities? Well, based on the FBI’s statistics for 2002 as reported in Best and Worst Cities for Crime, Toronto has a lower murder rate than all large American cities, most mid-sized American cities, and even a majority of the tiny little burgs ranging right down to 55,000 population (try looking through their charts for a murder rate below 1.8; you won’t find that many).

But of course, those are just numbers, and as Bill Carroll would say, “don’t give me statistics”, and “just try telling that to the parents of the 4-year old who got shot”. Yeah, I’m sure all of those other murders in other cities did not leave grieving parents behind. This is the problem with fearmongers; they appeal to emotion and hysteria in order to dismiss these odd and annoying things called “facts”.

And the facts say this: Toronto, which is Canada’s largest and most multi-racial city (in fact, with more than a third of the population consisting of a highly mixed group of visible minorities, it is one of the most multi-racial cities in the world), has the lowest overall crime rate among all of Canada’s large cities, and it has the third lowest overall crime rate even if you include the small cities. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Bill Carroll.

I think it’s high time that people who keep their mouths shut are charged as accessories to a crime. From the Toronto Sun:

Catholic Children’s Aid Society investigator Osiris Villalobos wiped away tears of his painful memory of the 5-year-old boy at the Hospital for Sick Children on Nov. 30, 2002.

Villalobos was testifying at the trial of Baldwin’s grandparents, Elva Bottineau and Norman Kidman, both 53, who are accused of first-degree murder. Jeffrey died of acute bronchial pneumonia, but extreme malnutrition was the underlying cause.

…

While all the other rooms at the home were heated, properly furnished and clean, Jeffrey’s room was barren, freezing and disgusting, court heard.

Jeffrey’s bed was literally soaked in urine and caked in dried feces. The floor around his mattress was urine-stained and rotten, Villalobos testified.

A bag of soiled diapers lay on the floor and food remnants lay in what appeared to be a dog bowl, he said.

…

“Every adult in the house had knowledge of what was happening to Jeffrey (and the other girl) and had failed to report,” Villalobos testified.

Now, it goes without saying that Elva Bottineau and Norman Kidman are worthless subhuman scum who should be tortured to death. But what about the other fucking people who were living in this house, who had full knowledge of the torture being inflicted upon this helpless child, and who did nothing? According to the article, there were four other adults living in this house, apparently related to the grandfather. One of them was asked if he knew, and he said that he knew but he didn’t want to report them because he would get kicked out of the house. Yes, that’s right; he turned a blind eye to child torture so he could get free rent.

People love to talk about “personal responsibility”, but there is also such a thing as “social responsibility”, and when you know that a child is being starved, frozen, made to eat out of a dog bowl, and forced to sleep in his own feces, you have to fucking tell someone. Every single adult who lived in that house should be dragged into court and charged as an accessory to murder. I’m sick of this notion that you can’t charge someone for failing to act. Charge these fuckers for failing to act, goddammit. If it were up to me, I’d make them starve, freeze, drink their own urine, and eat their own feces. This poor kid had fecal matter in his lungs, goddammit. News stories like this make me want to vomit.

Do you remember how, after 9/11, Pat Robertson got in trouble for saying that it was God’s divine retribution upon America for her sins? Well, I guess it’s deja vu time; fundies all across the nation, before the city’s corpses have even been recovered, are already blaming “sin” for causing the disaster.

There is, of course, the Woodland Hills Baptist Church in Jacksonville TX, which put up the sign at right. According to KLTV 7, its pastor says “New York City’s 9/11 was a call of judgment and New Orlean’s horrible incident was judgment on a wicked city.” Agape Press says “God is speaking”. According to them, New Orleans City Council President Oliver Thomas fears “God’s going to cleanse us.” According to the Jerusalem Post, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef declared that Katrina was divine retribution upon the USA for supporting Ariel Sharon’s pullout plan. According to one of the many “Islamic websites” known to publish Al-Quaeda propaganda, Katrina was God’s wrath for the oppression of Muslims. And of course, “this act of God destroyed a wicked city” according to Repent America. These nutcases are everywhere.

No doubt some apologists will say that it’s only a tiny minority of fundies who believe this, but I’m not buying that bullshit any more. It may not be all fundies, but it’s obviously not a “tiny minority” either. Ancient primitives always assumed that natural disasters were caused by the gods, and no matter what science says, people still seem to think this way. After all, we still can’t exactly predict the behaviour of hurricanes, so it must be Jebus! No wonder creationism is so popular in the United States.

If Katrina was God’s wrath against the “sinful” city of New Orleans, why did he trash the shit out of the rest of Louisiana too, not to mention Mississippi? Bad aim? Louisiana is #1 in church attendance and the state banned gay marriage by a whopping 78% vote almost exactly one year ago, so if “God is speaking”, one could just as easily say that instead of supporting these southern fundie churches, he’s actually sick of them speaking on his behalf.

Or maybe we should leave the Dark Ages behind and try a radical new idea: why don’t all of you idiots ask the scientists why it happened? Or is the idea of this disaster being caused by physical forces, thermodynamics, and poor urban planning just too logical for you? American fundies think the world is polarizing into Christians and non-Christians, but the similarity of their behaviour to that of Osama and Co. shows that this polarization is not between Christians and non-Christians. It’s between wackos and non-wackos. Which group do you want to be in?

For years, I’ve been hearing about how Louisiana has one of the highest poverty rates in the nation. According to Eric Johnson, testifying before the Subcommittee on Oversight of the House Committee on Ways and Means in May 2002, the region of Orleans and Jefferson Parish has a staggeringly high poverty rate of 54%!

But after Katrina, I’ve been hearing about how important New Orleans is to the national economy: how it is the country’s largest shipping port and responsible for a significant fraction of the nation’s oil refining capability as well. So here’s my question: if Louisiana is so important to the national economy, why is it so fucking poor?

Or is it really poor at all? Perhaps it is not poor, and the wealth is simply distributed in an extremely uneven fashion. I discovered recently that according to the US Department of Labor at dol.gov, Louisiana is one of six states that has no minimum wage law. Assuming the DOL is not in error, this does not sound like a state which is particularly interested in helping the poor work their way out of poverty. Of course, a minimum wage hardly guarantees that anyone will climb out of poverty, but the total lack of a minimum wage reveals a certain cavalier attitude about the poor, does it not?

Of course, if someone can explain how Louisiana can be so important to the national economy while simultaneously being one of the country’s most impoverished states, be my guest. I freely admit that I am not an expert on the American economy, so perhaps there is something I have overlooked. It does certainly seem incongruous on the surface, though.

Holy shit. That’s all I can say about this. It’s fucking unbelievable. Everything about it is unbelievable.

Here’s a piece of advice for you all: don’t buy Sonic MyDVD, and don’t listen to those fuckers on PC Magazine and ZDNet who recommend it (PCMag even gave it an “Editor’s Choice” award). I made the mistake of buying based on those reviews, and naturally, I got burned.

Well, it’s only a hundred bucks, right? That’s true, and it’s not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but the fact remains that I wasted time and money on a shitty product because I was stupid enough to think that a software review might actually be telling the truth.

First, both ZDNet and PC Magazine highly tout the software’s comprehensive DVD authoring featureset, and neither of them mention any serious bugs. All I can say is BULLSHIT. I bought the download edition of MyDVD Deluxe 6.1 online, and where can I start? First, I discover that the software absolutely refuses to import MPEG2 streams intact; it insists on transcoding them (decoding from MPEG-2 and then re-encoding to MPEG-2) even if they are already DVD-compliant. This has rather huge implications if you want to use this software to rearrange tracks from an existing DVD, because it means that each time you do it, the quality will drop. Congratulations, we’re back to VCR technology.

But it gets better! You see, first I signed up with their support site (yes, you have to register to get support) and asked about this missing feature. I received the terse reply that no, this feature would not be added. No apology, not even a sheepish “aw shucks” tone, no vague promise that they might add this feature someday, just a flat No. Go away.

Oh, but does the story end there? No sir! Because when I tried to author a DVD, not only did it insist on clumsily transcoding imported MPEG-2 video clips even if they didn’t need it, but it crashed with a “Vobulator error”. So I go back to the support website and ask what the fuck is going on. Well, it turns out that if you edit a video clip in their software (even if all you do is cut out a blank portion at the beginning), it can’t author the DVD. If you edit a clip, you have to export it out to a video clip on the hard disk, then re-import it as a fresh video clip. And of course, it will be re-encoded both ways. Thanks a lot, Sonic.

Am I done yet? No! At this point I discovered that even without video editing, I still got the error! The support people said that one of my video clips might be imperfect, and I should blame the video clips. Fair enough, I used a process of elimination to identify the “bad” video clip and removed it from my composition. Now, I can author the DVD, right?

Sort of. Because now, I discovered the final insult: it’s slower than fucking molasses. When I use the software, the machine bogs down to a crawl for hours, and there is no way of configuring its task priority.

Is the story done? Almost. You see, by now I was so fed-up with this piece of shit software from a well-reviewed leading brand name (these are the same guys who make Easy CD Creator) that I decided to buy a competing product from a tiny and not very well-known vendor. So I shelled out some more money and got TMPGEnc DVD Author 1.6, from Pegasys Inc.

And guess what: all of my concerns have been addressed. I can now import my MPEG-2 DVD-compliant streams without forced transcoding. The speed is vastly improved. And remember that video clip that I had to remove from my composition because it wouldn’t work? DVD Author sailed through it without any crashes.

Moral of the story? ZDNet reviews aren’t worth shit, Sonic software support staff suck, and these people should learn to understand that this shit is why so many people use piracy rather than going the legal route. You really don’t know what you’re buying beforehand, and even if the product is defective, you can’t get your money back. And to add insult to injury, ever since I signed up for Sonic’s support website, I get a constant stream of spam, encouraging me to buy … Sonic MyDVD 6.1. Is it bad enough that they make a buggy, slow product with critical feature holes? Is it bad enough that their support staff is totally unapologetic about this? Is it bad enough that they spam me? No, they have to spam me repeatedly with offers for the same POS product that I just bought from them! Fuck you, Sonic. Fuck you long and hard.

What the fuck is wrong with people? Seriously? Look at an excerpt from the article “Religion can trump medical advice, docs say“:

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Many US doctors believe that the religious convictions of their patients should outweigh their own professional advice when it comes to making certain medical decisions. When the patient is a child, however, a large majority of doctors say that they, and not the child’s guardian, should have the final say, regardless of the guardian’s religious beliefs.

…

More than half (57 percent) of the physicians surveyed said that a patient’s religious reason for a medical course of action should trump a doctor’s treatment advice. In contrast, the other 43 percent said it should not.

When it comes to making healthcare decisions for children, however, nearly 84 percent of doctors agreed that a physician’s medical decision should not be overridden by the religious beliefs of a child’s guardian.

The respondents were almost evenly divided about whether saving a person’s life justifies violating their religious beliefs, with 51 percent saying that saving a person’s life does not justify that religious violation.

How can more than half of American doctors surveyed believe that saving a life does not justify violating someone’s religious beliefs? At least they still seem to value the lives of children (although apparently, roughly one sixth of them don’t do even that), but don’t doctors have some kind of oath which keeps them from sitting around and doing nothing while someone dies?

I just heard this on the radio a while ago. I know you’ve heard it before. It goes like this: “and we saw these wonderful people in <insert name of shithole country here>, who live such a simple lifestyle and were so thankful for the aid we were giving, and so warm, and so friendly, and it really teaches you something about our frenetic western lifestyle.”

Yes, yes, our western lifestyle is fast-paced, and technological, and we’re not in touch with nature, and we’re not thankful for the simple things. But if these people are living such a wonderful existence, then why do they need our help?

I’ll tell you why: it’s because that wonderful simple slow-paced existence of theirs isn’t getting the job done. Reactionaries out there can rail against the modern fast-paced western lifestyle, but that lifestyle gets the job done, and with enough left over to spare that we can actually send stuff over to those simple people.

Don’t be ashamed of western civilization, people. Yes, we’ve made mistakes: slavery, nuclear proliferation, chemical warfare, and even Michael Bay movies. But if the whole world were like these "simple people", we wouldn’t even know what a virus is. We’d still be sacrificing goats when our children get sick. No thanks.

Well, I just got back from a little party where they had some Arabian dancing going on, and I have to say: their dancing is a helluva lot better than ours. North American dancing is klunky and disjointed. At its best, it’s more gymnastic than sensual. At its worst, it’s utterly ridiculous, and wanders perilously close to the appearance of an epileptic seizure.

I have to wonder if this is a cultural holdover of America’s Puritan roots. The Puritans, after all, thought of dancing as a shortcut to sin. Now look at homegrown American forms of dancing such as line dancing. Was there ever a form of dancing which was less sensual than line dancing? I honestly think dishwashing is more sensual than line dancing. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that sensual dance forms in America are generally imported or bastardized from other cultural dance forms, such as Latin or Arabian.

The only homegrown American attempt at a sensual dance form I can think of is the Britney Spears "jump around in tight clothes" style, and to compare that to Arabian belly dancing is like comparing a Big Mac to filet mignon.

Arrggh!! I was at the coffee shop today getting a sandwich, and somebody came in with that stinkboy smell. You know that smell certain people have when they sweat? It’s a foul, acrid, nose-curling smell that a normal person will never emanate even after a sweaty workout, but which certain people emit as a matter of course.

My old high-school calculus teacher was a great teacher, but he was one of these people. Every day, if you came to him early in the day it was OK, but by the end of the day he stank up the room. Let’s just say that you didn’t sit in the front row if you knew what was good for you. Is it diet? Is it genetics? Is it both? And why have I only observed it with males?

My brother once floated the idea that people like this probably suffered from chronic constipation, and their bodies were so loaded with toxins that it was oozing out of their skin pores. It’s certainly an amusing idea, but I have no idea whether it makes medical sense. In the meantime, can’t these people buy some deodorant? Or Lysol themselves every few minutes? Or perhaps wear one of those pine-tree car air fresheners around their necks, like a pendant?

It’s just wrong to buy a sandwich and suddenly have your nostrils violated by someone’s high-powered underarm stench. Spoils your whole damned appetite.

Yet another frightening development in America’s journey to eternal FatAssitude. This weekend, I was on a trip and ran out of clean clothes, so I skipped out to the nearest store (which happened to be a Wal-Mart) in search of a T-shirt and a pair of shorts. Lo and behold, I found what I was looking for, but I had to buy size “Small” shorts, because the other ones were way too big!

Does this mean that I’ve lost weight? Nope, I’m still 5′7″ (1.7 metres) tall and I still weigh roughly 180 pounds (82 kg). I still consider myself somewhat overweight and would like to get down to about 170 pounds. But then I looked at the label, and guess what: a “Small” sized pair of shorts from Wal-Mart now has a waist size of 34″ to 36″! I’m actually on the low side of the range for these shorts, and sure enough, they fit quite loosely.

Now, I don’t know what planet these Wal-Mart people are from, but in my world, a guy with a 34″ to 36″ waist is not small. I’ve bought size “Medium” for 15 years, and suddenly I’m a “Small”. Of course, we all know what this means: it means that people are getting so goddamned fat nowadays that a man with a 36″ waist is considered small. I can only look forward to the day when normal people have to wear kids’ clothes because all of the “new” adult sizes are tent-like in proportion.

This isn’t just an isolated observation or a brain-fart by Wal-Mart’s marketing people; according to the CDC as reported by NCHS, the average weight for an American adult male has ballooned from 166 pounds in 1960 to 191 pounds in 2002, and the average weight for an American adult female shot up from 140 lbs to 164 pounds over the same period. Looks like we really are becoming a nation of fat-asses.

I suppose this means that according to Wal-Mart, I no longer have to lose weight. But I think I’ll keep trying to get down to 170 lbs anyway, and I’ll just have to make sure to shop at more upscale stores than Wal-Mart if I ever have a clothing emergency in future.

Did you ever notice that every political extremist, no matter how predictably he hews to a party line, makes sure that the first thing to come out of his mouth is “I’m not partisan?” When Bill O’Reilly (yes, the same idiot who likened a refusal to teach creationism in school to “fascism”) came on Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show”, he spent most of his time talking about how he’s actually a moderate, he doesn’t take sides, he’s neither left or right, etc. When Rick Santorum (yes, the same moron who says that a woman’s place is in the home and that governments should only let “ideal” parents get married) came on the same program last night, he did the exact same thing: professing repeatedly that he’s not an extremist, and that he’s actually a centrist.

But here comes the question: if a man who thinks that it’s “fascist” for scientists to dismiss creationism and another guy who thinks that gay marriage threatens “homeland security” (yes, Santorum really said this) can call themselves non-partisans, then what the hell is a partisan? Osama Bin Laden? Is that what we’ve been reduced to? Anyone who doesn’t murder people in pursuit of his beliefs can call himself a centrist now?

I’ve seen a lot of debates, and there are many kinds of debaters out there. Some are very calm, and carefully dissect their opponents’ logic. Others wear their feelings on their sleeves. Some combine the two approaches. And then there are the fucktards who spend all of their time on personal advertising, telling everyone how reasonable they are. The sad thing is that a lot of people are actually dumb enough to be fooled by this act. Here’s a tip for all you new people: the harder someone tries to convince you that he’s (honest / upstanding / non-partisan), the less true it probably is. If he really is (honest / upstanding / non-partisan), it will become obvious as you deal with him. He shouldn’t have to “helpfully” remind you on a continuing basis.

Oh joy. My sister-in-law is learning to drive, and her driving-school instructor told her that when she’s in a lane on the highway that’s about to end, she should accelerate to the very end of the lane and then cut back in just as the lane ends.

Of course, I’ve known about people who drive like this for years. Who hasn’t encountered one of these assholes? But it’s certainly news to me that there are driving instructors out there who are teaching people to drive like this! Other gems from this imbecile include “you don’t have to slow down in a school zone”.

When any asshole who can spell his own name is allowed to teach driving school, it’s no wonder we have so many shitty drivers on our roads. It’s funny how we will commit huge resources to saving relatively small numbers of lives in other areas of society, but we don’t seem willing to do something about the absurdly high casualty rates on our national highways. Idiots like this driving instructor are a big part of the problem, along with the bizarre notion that a driver’s license is for life.

Personally, I’d strongly push for periodic re-testing. Everyone should have to re-test for his license every 5 years. And as for driving instructors like the cretin who’s giving bad advice to my sister in law? They should be drawn and quartered. Slowly.