Why Gay Marriage Forces Me to be a Democrat

Bunnies: Proof Homosexuality Happens

So, in case you fell asleep recently and slept through one of the larger SCOTUS decisions in our generation's history, you should know that DOMA was struck down and Prop 8's appeal for survival was defeated, meaning that gay marriage is once again legal in the State of California and can be made to be legal in any state in the union that so wishes. This has been seen largely as a civil rights victory for the gay community, and speaking as a straight guy with a surprising amount of gay friends on both sides of the border, I'm pretty pleased to learn that the American ones will at least have the same rights as the Canadian ones.

Now, I'm going to save the morality of homosexuality for a later discussion. Being mortal and strictly adherent to Matthew 7:5 I'm not entirely sure I actually get to have that conversation, but since controversy is the bread-and-butter of hits and hits are the bread-and-butter of those of us who are trying to make a living with a single ad box, you can probably expect me to be not so strict in my adherence.

As it happens, I am enjoying the reaction to the ruling more than the ruling itself. Remember, for those of you who need it, that the force and effect of the ruling was that "gay marriage is once again legal in the State of California and can be made to be legal in any state in the union that so wishes." No more, no less.

What's this have to do with me never being able to be a republican? The tea party. Speaker of the House Boehner actually did a very good job of addressing the ruling in a tasteful, responsible way. Then, the right wing of his own party jumped up and shot the chances of a Republican presidency in 2016 right in the rear.

I'm going to start with the statements that are truly egregious-in-fact: the statements from elected Republicans that make it clear that there should be an exam on civil procedure before you're allowed to run for office in America. I refer, of course, to Rep. Stephen Scalise. My source, of course, is the CBC.

“It’s a sad day when unelected judges change the definition of marriage and turn their backs on the will of voters and … their elected representatives,” he declared. 

Unelected judges  overriding the tyranny of the majority is precisely why the US has a supreme court. If it didn't, there is a strong possibility that schools and businesses would still be segregated along racial lines.  In the 60s, when the Jim Crowe laws were still in force an effect, they were very popular among the majority. Sometimes, the will of the voters is wrong in light of the US Constitution, and that's why Judges don't have to run for office. And shouldn't have to.

“Marriage has been debased by this decision, and the moral fibre of our country is affected greatly,” said Doug Lamalfa of California, adding that churches will now somehow be forced to “perform things that they are against.”

Tortoises also occasionally show gay behaviour

 There's actually a factual error in here, but I do want to wade into the area of morality in order to address the first half of the statement. To say that marriage has been debased by gay marriage, in a country where Kim Kardashian was married for about a week and made $17 Million in the process, where overnight drunken weddings in Vegas are so common that they have become a staple of comedy movies, and where the divorce rate is higher than the marriage rate (meaning most divorcees have already been divorced) is a little like saying my applying whiteout to that graffiti over there debased the wall. Moving from that, however, there is a factual error here, and an oft repeated one.

No Church, anywhere in the United States, is forced to perform anything. Not by this ruling or any law on the books I can find. They are simply allowed to do so. Some chruches actually embrace gay marriage: The United Church of Canada is one example, though I'm certain there is an American one. To to say that they were forced to do so only admits something the Con-Equality side doesn't want you to know - some churches bow to public opinion and allow marriage rights to the homosexuals. Admitting that would be admitting that the majority actually does want gay rights.

Redefining marriage, declared Louie Gohmert of Texas, is “usually tried at the end of a great civilization.”

I've um, I've never been a fan of this argument because it lacks an appropriate humility. Rome, you ain't. Damascus, you ain't. But, ignoring for a moment the definition of great civilizations, I've never been able to find a scrap of evidence for this assertion. None. And, once tasked with arguing against gay marriage for a Logic and Debate project in college, I can actually say this was an argument I tried before. Or rather, considered trying - no evidence means no argument.

Of course, Boehner and the mainstream Republicans had the right side of this issue - we disagree, but SCOTUS is SCOTUS - but that doesn't matter, because once again, the Tea Party is hijacking the issue. And that's a shame, because, until there's a legitimate counterpoint to the Democratic Party in the US, the Dems are pretty much going to run the show.

Charity, Morality, and Welfare

Shown: Not Goofing Off on the Clock
Working for a Living

 I live in one of the richer American republics (actually, it's a constitutional monarchy, but it functions as a republic would in everything but name). As it happens I'm actually not pro-republic, I'm pro-democracy, but my rantings and ravings about electoral math are both, by now, well-known, and overdone.

However, living in one of the richer American states, I live in a country with a disproportionate amount of pseudo-socialistic thought, and at some point way before I was born, Welfare became a thing.

Now, I should begin by saying that up here Canada we have a variety of different welfare programs, not all of which are welfare, and all of which need to be considered on their own merits and not the merits of their esteemed confreres. For the purposes of this discussion, it's enough to know that there's basically Welfare, Disability, and Employment Insurance. I'm going to try to talk briefly about all of them, but I also have to get some obligatory disclosure out of the way first, so that you can spot my confirmation bias and point it out to me. Remember, dissenting opinions feed developing intelligence.

I'm a Christian. What particular denomination you attached to that statement is ultimately meaningless because I don't recognize denominational boundaries as legitimate for any purpose other than sociology. My developing understanding of Christian morality comes from direct reading of the bible and also pursuit of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.I consider mine a faith of charity in all senses of the word. Looking out for the less fortunate is probably the most noble thing a person can do, whatever the context.

Shown: How I cook when I'm working-poor.

Let's talk, though, about our welfare programs. We'll start with the one actually called Welfare. This is a program that anyone who is not presently employed may collect from, if they meet certain, rather low criteria, and can produce paperwork reliably to prove they are actively looking for work. Welfare is funded from the general taxation revenue in my country, which means that anyone who pays any tax of any kind pays for welfare, though obviously not proportionally.

Welfare is not available to anyone who's working over a certain wage, either, and the line for the welfare cutoff is well below the poverty line. What's more, provisions are made in the welfare system for certain conditions, like being a single parent, or having children. Additional children mean additional money is paid out by the system to help keep you afloat. It's a way for the state to enforce charitable ideals upon even the most bitter-hearted of us.

I used to like welfare. Now I know I live in an area with a lot of claimants. I know enough about how the business world works to recognize that many claimants, who come to my area looking to get their "I applied here" paperwork signed, have no interest in getting an interview. They're failing first impressions deliberately, and doing it in a way that is painfully honest. The system is gamed, with parents who live together but are unmarried listing separate addresses and one or the other collecting single parent benefits while the other collects an ordinary welfare cheque.

The people who abuse this program spoil it for everyone else. It gets to the point where refusing to be on welfare becomes a matter of pride for people who have a genuine need of it, and where people who are otherwise charitable want the program abolished on principle.

Shown: How I eat when unemployed.

Employment Insurance is even better on principle. This is a system everyone who works pays into. It's deducted from your pay on top of your taxes, and then it's matched-and-then-some by your employer. It's intended as an insurance policy against loss of work due to layoffs. If you quit, or were fired for cause, you're not entitled. If you don't have a certain number of hours logged, you're not entitled. And the payouts only last for so long, no matter how hard you're looking for work. But hey, it's something, and I have no problem paying for it.

I often complain about it, of course. I've been unable to draw upon it when I really needed it in the past, wuch as two months, recently, where I was unable to find work. This was before I decided to go back to college for my second bite at the post-secondary-education apple, so there was no savings to draw on, and precious little work to find. I hadn't been fired for cause. The business I worked for was doing poorly, and the owner basically decided to drop all staff that wasn't family. I was laid off.

I still couldn't claim it, because too long of a period had elapsed between that job and the previous, which had been a summer practicum I was released from at the end of the summer work term. Such things don't count for EI claims so I was no better than the person who gets fired for throwing a knife down the line during a heated argument with a holier-than-thou server during a breakfast service where everything that can go wrong did.

Well, let's be honest, I really am no better than that, but you would think a program you pay for - directly - would actually pay out. Particularly where other seasonal workers can, or at least, could (there's reform in the tubes) draw on EI benefits during their off season.

So I'm against Welfare and on the Fence about Ei. This is the part where I look like a crypto-fascist and argue against disability, right? Wrong. Disability payments serve a legitimate purpose. People have a right to the necessities of life in this country. Those who are unable to work to earn those necessities should have an expectation for the government to provide for them within reason, because there is simply no other alternative.

These positions aren't going to be very popular. If I ever ran for office with any of the parties that I actually liked, or indeed ever ran for any office of any kind in the area I live in now, all it would take to sink my career would be for someone to dig up this post or another like it. But it needs to be said, becauser enforced charity is no charity at all.  Instead of encouraging people to work less, we should be helping them find ways to work more. I've known plenty of people on any of these programs who made more money than I did while working, being paid, in essense, to sit around all day and be online, railing against the unfairness of a political system that forces people to work, fails to raise the assistance payments to the level they think is necessary, or else-wise simply play their favourite facebook, pogo, or miniclip games.

The legitimate users of these programs deserve every penny they get, and the illegitimate ones deserve to work off every penny they stole.

History Lessons

"You're involving yourself in centuries-old conflicts without sufficient regard for history."
-Lord John Marbury of Aaron Sorkin's The West Wing

Canada has a rich and varied history that it shares quite well with its renegade older brother to the south. It takes only a cursory examination of our politics to realize there are really only five factions in the country, in terms of people.

• "Old Clan" whites with history in Britain, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, etc;
• "Ancien Famille" whites with history in France;
• "Wang ming guo wai zhe" Chinese-Canadians whose family lines came over during the expansion of the railways;
• "De Novo" immigrants in their third, fourth, or fifth generations;
• "First Nations" aboriginals who have been on this continent for longer than anyone else.

A look at current-running tensions felt in the first and second groups to everyone else (including each other, and often in mutual ways) can usually be summed up as simple xenophobia or racism, with only a cursory examination, but in truth, the matter runs far deeper. Things were not always at peace between the British and French colonies, and in fact the only reason why Quebec is a part of Canada at all was that it was under British rule basically from the end of the 18th century onwards - by the time of confederation in 1867, Britain had ruled over the Province of Quebec for nearly a century and defended it against revolutionary forces in the American Revolutionary War. The resentment is still felt in the Quebecois desire to have as much freedom and independence as possible in both real and cultural terms, and the insistence in many English communities that the Quebecois should embrace the same bilingualism that they must.

To be fair, I live in the only formally bilingual province in Canada (historical note: most of the province used to be the French colony of Acadia), and speak very little functional French - something I'm hoping to rectify.

The animosity felt between the Quebecois and the Anglophone community is largely of a deep-rooted, resignation-type feeling, with no good reason for it other than "that's what we've always done". It is still nothing, however, compared to the relationship between Old Clan and Ancien Famille whites and the First Nations.

Our history with the First Nations is no better than the history to the south - the current situation was preceded by centuries of war, ranging from skirmishes over land, to outright conquering and through on to full-on genocide. The image we have in our minds of the First Nations being far-flung, primitive, and sparsely-populated tribes is somewhat belied by modern archaeological understanding of the situation. While they might not have build such wonders as Tiahuanaco or Machu Pichu, the First Nations of North America are generally thought to be on a par, technologically speaking, with the Aztecs, Mayans, Toltecs, and other aboriginal peoples of the South American continent.

To be fair, much of the early slaughter was unavoidable - in spite of relatively peaceable and open first-contact, the First Nations simply could not resist our European pathogens. Whoops.

But it's the memory of that conquering and pillaging that moves on. We displaced huge populations onto reserves, and backed the people into treaties while we imposed upon them our culture and belief systems. Even to this day, many First Nations don't have formalized treaties with Canada, meaning we're either there as a de facto occupying force, or our maps are wrong. Reservations appear not unlike third-world countries, lacking proper infrastructure, and as I reported a year or so ago, even proper housing.

There's a genuine class- and race-war not terribly far in the offing if the current trends in rising tensions continue. We cannot ignore so rich a piece of history for long. History is like a time-bomb - if you don't study it and diffuse it, it's going to blow up in your face.

Christmas, Rest, and Due Diligence

There's a halfway decent chance
this Alexandrine will
outlive you.

It's the day before Christmas, and I'm up at half past six getting ready to go to work.

Partly due to the fact that I'm pretty much inoculated against it these days, I'm used to having to work on and around Christmas Day, and I don't really have a problem with it. Whether I'm selling or cooking, this is simply the best time of year to ply my trades, and it would be silly to rail against that.

I am, however, growing tired, and I think all of us are. I know many people out there are thinking of getting pets for people for Christmas, and I wish you all would stop and think about the situation a little more clearly.

A pet is a serious responsibility. You're adopting a life, often a longer-lived one than you think, and giving it to someone else to care for. I don't really have a problem with pets as a family gift so long as the giver is willing to assume responsibility in the event the recipient cannot or will not. There's nothing wrong with a whole family adopting something like an Alexandrine, a Lorikeet, or a dog.

Where I get temperamental is when people give pets as gifts to, say, small children, and expect the children to take perfect care of them. They won't. They might try, sure, and an unusually responsible 12 year old might even do the research on how to care for a pet. But on average, I just can't trust any of your children to do that when you yourselves won't.

There are plenty of pets that this is especially pronounced for: every breed/strain of goldfish I know of exceeds six inches (often dramatically) in length and has a lifespan potentially measured in decades rather than single years - that's right, even those two-and-three-dollar feeder goldfish you've never seen live longer than six months. Goldfish need exorbitant care. If you are looking for a simple fish needing a minimum of care, look no further than a betta, but still expect to do frequent water changes - a well-cared-for betta can live for years.

Ditto for rodents. Hamsters are about the worst pet you can give a child and quickly go feral if not regularly handled - a task difficult at the outset as they start feral to begin with and have to be hand-tamed. A rat would be better, but expect it to live for a couple of years.

There's no pet I can think of (except perhaps a Mantis) who should not be expected to live at least three years, and most pets I can think of (and have kept) have had lifespans potentially reaching ten years or more. Birds and reptiles are among the clearest examples of this.

These turtles are called red-eared sliders. They're a common enough species in the pet trade that I've never actually seen another kind of pet turtle. They're cute and tiny now, but Red Eared Sliders live for thirty years or more and have an adult size approaching on a foot. Turtles, particularly aquatic ones, are some of the most care-intensive pets I can think of, and require that care, unfalteringly, for the better part of the rest of the recipient's life. If you give this to your child, they can reasonably expect to be caring for it while they're studying for the bar exam, or even, potentially, administering it.

"Affordable Dental"

Parrots are worse. The Alexandrine, above, has a lifespan exceeding 70 years, when properly cared for, and is about 18-20 months old. They're good little birds, and easy to maintain, but he's a lifelong companion for most who could afford him, and one you will in all likelihood be bestowing upon your friends or family when you pass on. That's a pretty big responsibility - many humans don't live as long as Alex will.

Conures, like this sun conure helping Mandy fix her loose crown (no, not really), have an average lifespan of 25 years. At their price, I doubt anyone would give them as an impulse gift, but it's still helpful to know what you're getting into.

As a family matter, pets are actually fantastic gifts. But the giver must always be willing to ensure that pet's standard of care, just as the adopter of a child must be willing to care for that child. That's why we try not to say you have "bought" this or that animal. You're adopting them. It's a life, and once you've let it out of the box it came in, you can't put it back in.

Pre-Tea Pontification: Foreign Trade

So, while I'm sitting at my desk waiting for my Earl Grey White to steep, I've been reading stories through the CBC, La Monde, and BBC websites detailing a deadly fire in Bangladesh that killed 112 workers over the weekend - believe it or not, this is the first mention of it on the CBC since the weekend. The coverage, by and large, is more concerned with the protests surrounding the deaths than the deaths themselves - probably because 112 faceless Southeast-Asian workers don't pull much weight in a predominantly white readership.

Still, the protests highlight important points - Bangladesh clothing factories such as the one that burned down have claimed 300 lives this year, largely due to poor safety regulation, and, in this one particular case, managerial snafus. The Bangladeshi clothing industry is second only to that of China, with major retailers like Disney, Sears, and WalMart sourcing from this one particular factory. La Monde reports that these workers are paid between 40 and 80 euros a month, which is my take home pay in a week at minimum wage, and they work far longer hours than I do.

Sears and Disney did not comment, but Wal-Mart claims that the factory was subcontracted by a supplier (which they refuse to name) which no longer does business with the company. The BBC has also reported that three middle-management officials from the factory have been arrested in relation to the fire.

The western economy has become dependent on South-East Asian manufacturing - at this point, nobody can dispute that. Even products designed in Canada are manufactured in China and by and large we don't pay nearly enough to the people who make them. Because we can all live comfortably on the minimum wage (or so they would like us to believe), people like me have the time to passively consider the issue and pontificate on it without due thought for the consequence.

The problem, as I see it, is not the salaries of the workers per-se - we do not live in a post-scarcity society and until we did I think that the pay rate a person can eke out for themselves will have to suffice - but the safety standards we are willing to effectively underwrite by purchasing products produced in these factories.

Having said that, there is one important consideration to make. If someone such as myself purchased clothing exclusively from western manufacturing, or even locally, I'd own perhaps two of each article of clothing, or need to be making a lot more money than I am now. The fact of the matter remains that the reason there are so many middle-class families in the west is that we exported our lower-class to the nations that make the things we luxuriate in.

It's time to bust out your keyboards and printers and send a letter to the retailers you frequent, protesting use  of manufacturers located in countries without adequate safety standards for their products. I know I for one have even less motivation to go back to Sears or Walmart in the near future. In fact, let's throw down a blanket boycott of all department stores and support local business at the same time.

There Oughta be a Law

B. Splendens of a veil-tail trope. (c) Athena Slater
Bettas are easily the most abused species of freshwater pet.

Preventing animal abuse is one of those things everyone says they support whether they mean it or not. In that respect it's a lot like a few other issues I can name.

For some reason, at least in my experience, fish seem to be the most abused pets in the western world. It might have something to do with the fact that fish are relatively cheap, and they're perceived as a relatively easy pet. This unfortunate consequence of economics and perception has lead those who are passionate about the subject to shake their head and quietly mutter about the need for a law.

Now, I could go on and on about the different common abuses of fish I see or hear about on a day to day basis but that matter less than the story I actually came to tell.  As we all well know, thoughts are circular and so tangents are common, and very often the lesson in one field is imparted by an experience in a totally different field. But now I'm getting ahead of myself; let me tell the story.

One of my fellow fish and reptile experts is a guy with a real fondness for snakes, skinks, monitors, and arachnids but possessed of no real affection for fish. I can't say I blame him, as all of the pets I just mentioned are more interesting and the first two certainly more friendly than fish, but even then he knows a thing or two by virtue of having to work directly with fish. Now, he came to me today to ask me about a customer he had in the fish room a few days before. This person was looking for a plecostomus, which are the armoured catfish commonly called "algae eaters".

One of the many plecostomus loricariidae seen in the hobby.

Now, plecos are unfortunately the first most abused fish in the hobby after goldfish. They're usually ill-bred, and the ones unlucky enough not to get picked out by enthusiasts of their genus often get pressed into service as janitors in tanks too small, warm, cold, acidic, basic, or heavily stocked for them. As a result, many die prematurely. With the dwarf "bushynose" species being too new to the local hobby they are often ignored despite being better suited for the average aquarist's tank, which means that I'm constantly having to hunt down a sufficiently small pleco to face a slow and agonizing death-by-stunting because there's obviously no good reason to pay an extra two dollars for the right fish for the aquarium. There's no law against stunting fish, corporate has no problem with it because they consider the fish a step above feeder animals, and I have surprisingly little wiggle-room when it comes to telling people they cannot adopt a pet they're obviously not suited for.

The reason this particular customer stuck in my partner's mind (and mine, now), is that they asked for a pleco in this way:

"I want an algae eater. Give me the cheapest one possible because it's just going to die in two weeks anyway."

My coworker did the right thing - he followed up with questions about tank conditions, all of which should (in my opinion) proceed every fish sale, and all of which were met with assertions that the tank was perfectly fine (which it obviously couldn't be) and that the tank conditions weren't any of my co-worker's business.

In the end, as I recall, she wound up getting frustrated and didn't get her fish, but I'm certain she'll be back when someone less inclined to be troublesome isn't working, and likely wind up with another plecostomus.

All of this, however, sounds like another issue. See, my friends and I get mad about bad fishkeeping because it's an abuse. Most of the fish we carry are captive-bred, but there's always exceptions to the rule, and in either case, I can't think of a single species of fish that didn't at least have its roots in the wild. Even if that weren't the case, it would still be true that we as keepers owe these fish the best possible shot at a long, reasonably happy, and reasonably healthy life. After all, fish, perhaps moreso than any pet, experience a reality totally dictated by their owner.. An aquarist has the last word on every aspect of tank layout, water conditions, food availability, and tankmates. Even the feeder insects at work get better treatment than many of the fish I've seen in private aquaria. In this respect I'm no saint and I've been the unwitting abuser of plenty of fish in my day.

The point of realization, though, was that quiet shaking of the head, and the muttering of "there oughta be a law" that usually follows such encounters. Interestingly enough, the epiphany actually had nothing to do with animal abuse, though it did have to do with another form of human cruelty.

For those who missed it, I managed to wade hip-deep in the mirky soup of abortion debates (however briefly) over at Cam's blog. It's one of those sleek and sexy issues that seems attractive before someone's had their tea but which should have, frankly, been resolved well before I was born. As I recall it, I had expressed the idea that one can be personally opposed to abortion but still be in favour of its legality as a mechanism of personal choice.

Bear in mind that this is an extremely nuanced subject. We're dealing with layers and layers of consequences which must all be considered from every angle. The reason that I never seem to express a concrete position on it is that the subject is simply too complicated to encompass with a short-form answer. 

So far as it goes, though, I understant the pro-life argument quite a bit better standing over here. If I can get teed  up over people abusing fish, people being needlessly cruel to human fetuses should bother me too, I would expect.

The idea of where life begins is complex and varied. At the moment, I'm leaning toward conception. Ask me again tomorrow.

Prison Inmate's Life Threatened with Unassisted Birth

Well, what I really wanted to write was actually a fish profile, but real stuff happens from time to time, and since writing about events seems to work in my style, I thought I'd keep doing what I was accustomed to doing.

The CBC reported recently that a woman being held awaiting trial at the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre gave birth under some "less than ideal" circumstances. It seems that the woman went into labour in detention, and guards removed her to what's called a segregation cell, believing her labour to be counterfeit, or else false. As it happens, her son was breech-born, and he was born without assistance.

Now, holding aside that the woman was yet to be convicted and the rather obvious issue of the fitness of felons to be parents, we have a rather serious problem here.  I know for a fact that there will be people out there who disagree with this assertion, but we have a moral duty to properly care for prison inmates. Canada's legal system does not legitimize a death penalty, nor cruel or unusual punishment. We're not Finland, but we do have fairly forward-thinking ideas about prisoner rights.

I'm shocked to learn that "prison hospitals for female detention centers should be used in the event of labour" isn't one of those ideas. A breech birth is not a little thing -  it has real risks for the health of both the mother and the child.

How can this happen?

Drama For Her Own Sake

I've mentioned Doctor Philip Mason before, when I did a post a little while back about the ludicrous Draw Mohammed Day public event. As always, I have to point out that I enjoy watching his videos on the Thunderf00t and BeautyInTheUniverse channels. As should probably be expected for a biochemist, the scientific content is bang-on stuff and explained so simply that a bag of hammers could comprehend it.

As always, though, I have a few criticisms of everyone's styles, if only because there are actually right and wrong ways to make an argument. Social Graces have been the hallmark of the gentleman for ages and the greatest heroes of the intelligentsia have always been those who could dissent with grace, poise, and an absence of invective.

Now, don't get me wrong, Dr. Mason's videos are good. He's a marvellous scientist, and I've had a lot of fun with his experiment in using water, a rechargeable battery, and a blast shield to create a plasma the temperature of the surface of the sun inside a coke bottle; watching his aerial photography using nothing more than a camera mounted to an inexpensive styrofoam plain, and particularly his astronomical sightings. When he talks about science he is bang on the mark.

Now, I should preface the rest of this rant by paraphrasing the usual Voltaire: Dr. Mason has the right to say anything he wants on any subject. Absent approval or disapproval of his statements I will still fight with my life for his right to do so. Likewise, anyone else has the right to express dissent or assent to his statements. I'll even go so far as to say I actively encourage him to respond to the following criticisms.

The next sharpest tool in Dr. Mason's chest after his scientific literacy has always been his invective, and that is not for a lack of use. It's generated him quite a fan base, myself included, and as always, invective is fun to watch. I've got a bit of ichor in my pen as well and I know how easy, tempting, and satisfying it is to add the odd insult into an argument.

Thing is though, it only works if it's an add-on to your argument, and even then, you're going to be taken more seriously without it. In a few cases, invective is used by Dr. Mason as a substitute for an argument, as in his recent obsession with... well, it takes some explaining.

The atheist community rarely thinks with one mind, but one of the central ganglia has always been the Freethought Blogs operated by PZ Myers. Recently, Dr. Mason was given an authorship position by Dr. Myers on the blogs. As I understand it, Dr. Mason commented on issues facing just about every society that has large conventions - the perception of sexual discrimination, radical feminism, and chauvinism. Whatever the comments made in this First and Only post on FTB, Dr. Myers removed Dr. Mason's authorship privileges. This has sparked a rather graceless drag-out, knock 'em down brawl between the two and has resulted in countless blog posts and videos tackling the subject on each side - in doctor masons' case, largely continuing to hammer on the original point, as here.

Now, I appreciate that Dr. Myers essentially promised Dr. Mason absolute freedom of speech and then promptly removed him over a disagreement of how far that freedom actually extended. I even agree with Dr. Mason that he should be reinstated and FTB, though it's hard to see why anyone would want to be now that it's clear content is being controlled over there. Where my irritation comes in is that this whole argument has turned something that is a reasonably valid concern (the potential mistreatment of women at skeptic conferences) into something more ridiculous (though admittedly, there was a lot of help coming in from the "skepchicks" themselves).

Dr. Mason, I have a reasonable assumption you will at least click on the link to this post I am leaving in your comment feed. I feel you are fighting a losing battle on this one issue. The more often you write about it, to the exclusion of your ordinary, science-based content, the less and less people are going to care about it.  Unfortunately, and this should not be taken as an insult, your content dealing with social issues and political issues has never been as effectively rendered or as exciting to view as your scientific content. In the same way that I do not write about sports, dating, or issues of race, it behoves your style and your intellect to remain in the scientific arena, where, quite frankly, you are a king among men. Choosing a hot-button issue like Rebecca is a marvellous way to generate page-views. Drama, for her own sake, sells, but they are empty calories, Doctor Mason. Unfulfilling, and, when all is said and done, you will still be hungry in five minutes.

To borrow your own signoff: Best Wishes,
-ZJA

The Radical Notion of Dissent

Creative Commons Image

A recent article by the CBC brought my attention to the fact that both CSIS and the RCMP have put it into writing that "environmental radicalism" is on the rise, without sufficient detail into what constitutes a radical.

Radicalism is a strong word, and it implies a number of things that are antithetical to the environmental cause, and to a proper sense of morality at large.

For the most part, I've been uninvolved in the latest environmental snafu's to make waves in the Canadian Media, because I've been focusing (in that regard) on my two pet projects: a sustainable alternative housing proposal for the provincial legislature, and shelling out the framework to be able to talk about Nuclear Power (and a possible proposal for the legislature in that regard as well). Some of these projects have taken years because the relevant data is industry-limited and difficult for the general public to get access to. But that's not the point.

The environmental issues Canada is facing are nothing new, even if the locations are. We've known Hydrofracking was questionable technology for years, but we employ it anyway. We've known oil pipelines have risks that border on criminal liability, but we construct them anyway.

I don't believe you have to be a radical to dissent on those points.

This all reminds me of the occupy movement, which might have been one of the most overblown protests of all time. Millions of people worldwide, stopping in their tracks and skipping shifts in order to protest corporate corruption, but able to present no tenable solution or do much more than air their grievances and lose their minds when they're removed from public property in month three of the protest.

I recall a friend of mine involved in the local occupy who was furious that he was arrested for spraypainting some graffiti on the park steps in front of two police officers. As far as I know, he still considers that to have been protected speech under the Charter. He's wrong of course, but that's not going to stop him, nor is it the point.

This generation seems to have a pretty low bar for what's considered radical. Sabotage, now that's radical. Not that I'm calling for sabotage.

This trick, of labelling opposing views as "radical", is nothing new, though the extent to which it's being deployed lately in my neck of the woods is. Seems to me like ever since the conservative party took the PMO, anything that involves a change (apart from "staying the course") is labelled as radical. We must do better, and we can do better, and we will do better.

It's one of the great things about this country; every four years we get to overthrow the government.

Equality's Truest Sense is Blind

One of the things I always liked about "managing by spreadsheet" was that I can look at such digital schedules and scorecards without having any idea what the face is for the name. Sure, you get the odd tip-off to statistics you don't care about, like demography, if you're tracking by name, but "Alex Watson" could be a man or a woman of just about any race, age, or religious differential. It means that you have only merit upon which to evaluate people, and the practice of judging solely on merit is the most admirable and fair-handed practice one can employ in dealing with people.

Being born at the turn of the century I have had the remarkable experience in growing up in an age of melting borders, in one of the most diverse countries on the face of the earth, and in an age where understanding is the means and stereotypes are no longer an end. I was born just early enough to understand the Racial Profiling issue in the post-9/11 atmosphere even as it was being discussed, and I was born just late enough that even my small town and the surrounding towns were populated on a mixed level, rather than the single-racial image we are presented in the televised media. I grew up hearing people in the mall speak Punjab, learning French in school, babysat in a Korean Restaurant, exposed at once to the foods of any of nineteen different nationalities, exposed to the history of any of a dozen, and interested in (to date now) the history, language, of culture of any of a half-dozen more.

I was not raised with race as an issue, because it shouldn't be. Morgan Freeman is famously quoted for saying the best way to end racism would be to "stop talking about it", and while I can't say I grant his premise I can certainly say I understand it. I don't look at a person's skin colour and make assumptions about their behaviour, because in this day and age I know more white people who "act black" and more black people who "act white" than any stereotype that could apply. People are just people, and they act according to the dictates of their personalities and values.

I never even understood some the stereotypes that I encounter because they are overblown. "Asians are the best at math" doesn't make sense to the kid in grade 6 who was doing math on the high school level. I don't need to be told that "Germans are precise" when the two ethnic germans I know are no more precise, orderly, or "uptight" than anyone else I know in their age group. I identify more with the phrase "terrorists are to islam as the KKK are to Christianity" than with the phrase "Islam is a religion of the sword". Women are not "more artistic" when you surround yourself with artists, nor are they "less athletic" when you observe the practice of athletics.

The more you understand about people in general, the more you understand they do not come in flavours. Men, women, blacks, whites, hispanics, asians, Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Jainists, Zoroastrians, heterosexuals and homosexuals are all just people. We all want the same things in life and we all find our own way toward them, and if we are going to engage in the futile exercise of trying to judge people (for what purpose I deign not to specifity), we should do it for that. For the things we choose, rather than the things we are. For the way we behave, rather than the way we were born.

I hate to keep cribbing Aaron Sorkin, but he said it best when he said this. "Now that we have abandoned discrimination in our laws, it's time that we abandon it in our hearts and minds as well."

All Opinions are Sacred, Except Those That Aren't

I sometimes have difficulty talking to people who haven't worked in a kitchen. Being a professional cook is a lot like cooking for a 70 person dinner party, and everyone is arriving at different times and wants different things. You have to juggle multiple trains of thought at once, and if you can't do that, you simply won't keep up.

Chik-Fil-A, which I understand to be a fried chicken chain (I really haven't spent all that much time south of the border), is the subject of a recent boycott by some on the left after their president made a statement, while stalking to a religious reporter, no less, that they supported the biblical order of marriage. Film at eleven.

In seriousness, such a statement, made inside a church, isn't exceptionally rare. Neither is the position, within churches, that marriage should be of the biblical variety. The only reason this became an issue is that the speaker has what passes for notoriety in the States, and that, for the most part, the entertainment media leans left (in contrast to every other business, which inherently leans right). Cue an uproar. Chik-fil-A is anti-gay! Film at eleven.

Thing is, Chik-fil-A hasn't actually done anything wrong. They do not discriminate (on protected grounds) in hiring or in service. President Dan Cathy wasn't necessarily speaking for the entire company, and even if he was, there's nothing wrong, legally, with what he said. The problem with this particular boycott is that it is the result of a difference of opinion, which I suppose is ultimately true in all cases, but this particular difference of opinion is predicated upon an unwillingness or inability to understand the opposing point of view.

To the boycott-supporters, I can only say that you're fighting this one stupidly. Taking the things that people honestly believe on religious grounds and bigotry is fine. You're allowed to do that, both here and in the US. The problem is that it doesn't work. You aren't going to change minds. You aren't going to pursuade anyone. You're just going to piss them off and set their heels more firmly into the muck. This has to be made clear: you must frame the issue properly.

There is a fear, a palpable fear, whenever any ground is lost, that the Churches will somehow have to change their teaching in order to coincide with the new laws. It must be made clear that this fear is unfounded. "Congress shall establish no law establishing a state religion or abridging the freedom of religion", I believe is the line. Religious Marriage and Civil Marriage are two different but often entangled things. The church marries you spiritually, and the marriage licence marries you legally. That's all gay marriage is. Civil marriage.

To the others, as is said, I disagree with what you are saying but will fight with my death to defend your right to say it. I hold that the old covenant has been fulfilled (as we are taught) and that includes the abolition of homosexuality. For those who insist that homosexuality is still a sin, I have a few questions, and must nod generously to Aaron Sorkin.

My mother-in-law is thinking of auctioning off her daughter as permitted in Exodus 21:7. She's special to me and if anyone's going to own her I'd rather it was me. What price should I offer? My team lead insists on doing work on the Sabbath; Exodus 35:2 clearly says he should be put to death - do I have to kill him myself or is it okay to call the police? There are 90,000 people in this city: do they all have to gather to watch me be put to death for planting different crops side-by-side? Can I burn my mother in a small family gathering for wearing clothes made from two different threads? And one more thing: you like shrimp, right?

While we all have generally forgotten that morality comes from within and justice comes from without, I want to make it clear that we can't pick-and-choose which proscriptions in the bible we get to follow. If you're a Christian who thinks they have supreme moral authority, then speaking as a Christian - Go to bed, would you please?

Auditing Assisted Suicide

Even though this originally came up a few weeks ago when the Supreme Court of British Columbia ruled that  the status-quo prohibition of Physician-Assisted Suicide was in violation of the Constitution Act (in not one but two sections of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms). Unfortunately for you, perhaps, I chose to stay out of the matter. The date that the ruling was handed down was surprisingly close to my recent birthday, the stress of work was mounting, and wading into a topic as controversial here as abortion is in the United States wasn't high on my priority list. Fortunately, now that I'm back up to my fighting weight, I've been given a second shot because the Vancouver Sun is now reporting that Ottawa will appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Better part of half a decade ago, now, I took my first formal course in Canadian Law, through my high school. The teacher was lively, and often deliberately induced class debate, particularly on issues related to the Charter specifically or to the Constitution in general. One of those issues was assisted suicide, specifically the case of Sue Rodriquez, pictured left, who won a battle in her lifetime to earn the right (it would seem temporarily) to end her life with the help of her doctor.

Now, the exact specifics of her case elude me at the moment, but I remember arguing rather vociferously that she should be allowed to do so. I used s. 7 as the cornerstone of my argument, which reads:

7. Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.

As I recall, my argument chiefly revolved around the idea of life and liberty. I argued that the only way you can have a right to do something was also to have the right to refuse it, otherwise your "right" was more of a mandate and in that case the Charter wasn't as useful a document as one would hope.

Times have changed a bit since then, however. For one thing, I no longer feel the need to come down on the liberal side of every issue on-spec. I've also learned to separate my issues and prioritize them.  In much the same way as governments in a federal system divide powers along federal, provincial, and municipal lines, I divide my opinions on law and morality. They aren't the same, but for wishing making it so. As I've written before, what is just is not always legal, what is legal is not always moral, and morality, no matter how objective we insist on it being, is subjective, and you need look no further than any argument on any moral point ever to see that.

The Catholic Church teaches that assisted suicide (what it refers to erroneously as Euthenasia in the Catechism) is morally unacceptable on the basis of  an equation to murder that is not-well cited, and before you try to point out that it DOES have some form of scriptural support, that citation simply isn't made available in the supposedly "complete and updated" version of the catechism I was given by my sponsor when I was baptised late last year.

Now, I could wrap myself up in my usual arguments: as a Heisenburg Christian (that is to say, uncategorised), I don't necessarily consider the Catechism to be binding to everyone. I could also give the "assisted suicide =/= murder" speech, on the basis of consent. I'm getting quite good at those arguments. The problem is, I can't put real conviction behind either argument. Believe it or not, at the age of 22, I don't have a solid opinion on every subject in every field any more. I miss and regret the teenage years of absolute certitude because I miss the feeling that I know everything, a feeling which went out the window at the moment I realized I didn't.

Now, am I saying assisted suicide is therefore moral? No - I just finished saying I don't have a coherent position on that particular subject. The deeper question is whether or not a ban on purely moral grounds is constitutional. As I've mentioned in previous posts on abortion, I don't believe that my morality should be allowed to set public policy guidelines. Some morality requires going above-and-beyond the call of the law - ask anyone who keeps kosher or halal, chooses to be a vegan, or chooses to dress or act in a certain way on the basis of their religious beliefs. If this was a question of politics, there would be some merit to putting my shoulder behind a party that would respect my moral views on the matter.

This isn't a question of politics, either, but the constitution. There's nothing to do now but pray, I suppose, for the mental clarity and wisdom of the Justices of the SCC. Whether you're for or against assisted suicide, I'm sure you agree that these are attributes the ultimate legal authority in this country would need in spades.

On Misogyny

Content advisory. Hostile language below the jump not suitable for minors. Parents - you know what to do! (Extremely mild, mind you.)

So, I know I promised a second tea-related post in the twitter feed, but something more important has come up. Those of you who know me well know that schedule changes tend to irritate me more than just about any other non-insult, so I want us to think for a minute about just how annoyed I've let myself become over this particular thing.

I'm not sure how or when it happened, but somewhere between "girls have cooties" and suddenly boys like girls again as normal, we've gone back to misogyny. Now, the original post for the night was going to dovetail tea and the art of gentleman-ship in the 21st century, so I suppose taking the night to yell at the males of my particular species of the Homo genus sort of fits.

The oft-mentioned Greymane supplied the straw that broke the camel's back tonight with his dissemination of a post on Cookies for Breakfast regarding Daniel Tosh, a comedian whose repitoire leans rather heavily on (among other things) rape jokes. It's not my story to tell, and enough people are ripping Tosh a new one that I don't even have to - click the link if you want to know exactly what happened.

A Rare Frown at a Cardinal

There is a bill before the Ontario Legislature today called the "Accepting Schools Act". While it isn't a national issue and I try to stay within my own province, the bill came to my attention today when a buddy of mine sent me a link about protests of the bill on the Legislature grounds. Among the leaders of the protests are Thomas Cardinal Collins, Cardinal Archbishop for Toronto. His grievance? The bill would allow students at all schools receiving funds from the Province of Ontario to form clubs similar to what is known as the Gay Straight Alliance - a group built on finding common ground between heterosexuals and their homosexual friends.

The main problem is that public schools are governmental entities. Not allowing groups such as the GSA to form chapters in their schools would be a violation of their Section Two rights. There's a concern that this would also affect catholic private schools, since many do in fact receive provincial funding.

Here's my take: your religious freedoms (under Section Two) as an institution don't trump the rights of your students. If you want to take provincial funding, you must be willing to accept that there is an extent to which the government has to cover their liability. Charter Rights only apply to protecting you from government action. If His Eminence would prefer not to allow his students to form these groups, he is more than welcome to refuse the provincial funding.

What's more, the Gay Straight Alliance is being misrepresented as an organization that promotes homosexuality. While there's a way to make that argument, it's intellectually dishonest. The state goals of the GSA is to promote tolerance of all sexualities. That is to say, as an anti-bullying group, their aim is to prevent harassment. It is an exercise in politeness, a value I rarely get to harp about given how rough-around-the-edges I usually am. We can ask the students to change the name if you like, but there's nothing any thinking catholic (or any other Christian, for that matter) should find objectionable in their aims.

I admit that I stand well to the left of the Church on just about everything. Let's take as read that homosexuality is immoral... so is bullying. We can't pick and choose our favourite evils. If a group wants to cut down bullying, let them cut down ALL of it.

Draw Muhammed Day

Those who know me by now realize that I have a tendency to follow Dr. Philip Mason's video blogs (thunderf00t and beautyintheuniverse on YouTube - both excellent channels deserving attention), and I generally tend to agree with his social and scientific arguments, even if I don't always grant his premise. However, there's one initiative he's supporting that I just categorically disagree with: the second (or is it third?) annual Draw Muhammed Day.

A Discipline to be Retained

Occupy Toronto is calling for everyone to call in sick on May 1 as a protest. While I certainly support the right of the people to protest, and the general call for higher taxation on the top income brackets (actually, I advocate a flat tax for everyone over the poverty line, as opposed to the current graduated system), I think this is about the dumbest idea I've ever heard.

Granted, I just got my job. But I've lost jobs in the past for exactly this kind of a stunt. Moreover, I've had to pick up the slack on people who pull this kind of thing. If you want to protest, fine. Declare it. You have legal protections in this country if you wish to protest. If you wish to defraud your employer you get no protection. And if you really want to protest taxation structure and a culture of entitlement, don't do it by allying yourself with Occupy. It always struck me as funny that such materialistic people would espouse socialist ideology, until I realized it was largely malfocused envy and their own sense of material entitlement.

You know what? Feeling entitled to having nice things is fine. Having a hissyfit, taking the day off and making the rest of us work harder is not. It's puerile. And God forbid now, that anyone actually happens to be sick on May 1. The odds are pretty good, given the time of year, that you might be, and now you're going to get lumped in with the protesters whether your illness was genuine or not.

The rest of us, though, are thankful we're working in an economy with 7.2% (StatsCan) unemployment (and that only counts the people who haven't given up on trying to find work). Pick eleven friends at random and one of them is probably unemployed. Some of us even have jobs where we need to work hard to hold onto them. Some of us would rather advance our positions as opposed to wallowing in self-pity. If we collectively work hard, earn money, and spend it, we create new jobs. We help that friend of ours find work.

Hard work and forbearance are virtuous. Protest is only valid if it's open. And if you don't have a potential solution, you're just complaining.

We Might As Well Play The Sims

I suppose I should not be surprised and there's probably a reason why I never really spend any time on NationState's "General" subforum, and stick largely to the roleplaying sections of the board. The website is, at any given time, consumed with debate over socialism, abortion, or a children's show called My Little Pony... in any and all possible combinations of any or all of the above, up to and including aborting socialist ponies, though I suspect that was quite a bit of satire.

It probably goes to show that we do tend to get a little more mature as we age that I've manageed nt to get myself sucked into any of these arguments. If I respond at all, I include a line to say I won't be actively following the topic, and that anyone who wishes to debate details should send me a message to my inbox (what we call a TG or Telegram) to let me know that they've responded. I don't have the time or the inclination to spend days upon days, quite literally, following a single topic waiting for people to tell me why I am wrong, so that I can simply tell them how they didn't understand my argument. My style of discussion has matured, along with my need for it, I guess.

However there's always been something that bothered me about the abortion debates, and that's the language used by the pro-choice crowd, using words like tumor and parasite to describe the foetus, and words like disease and disability to describe the pregnancy. Topics spring up all the time (in an attempt, I suppose, to get the not-inconsiderable right-wing portion of the forum to start admitting conditions where abortion would be "Okay, I guess", such as one topic that sprung up late last night asking if, and I quote the original post in full:

 If a doctor found a way to with 100% accuracy pinpoint the sexual orientation of fetuses, would an abortion be OK if the parants found out that their baby would be born gay?

Let's ignore the natural asshole-factor of taking two issues like homosexuality and abortion and stapling them together (expecting to get logical responses), and take as read that a great many members of the forum gave one-word answers and posted pictures of the famous jet-pack "nothing to do here" image. Essentially, this is an argument from eugenics.

Eugenics is, of course, the idea that we can basically breed better people by eliminating genotypes we consider to be "subversive" or "undesirable". In the past it's been used to justify genocide and at present it's a justification for aborting children with birth defects and mental disabilities, such as those who show signs of developing Down Syndrome. Admittedly, some of these diseases, acquired during foetal development,  are entirely unsurvivable. Many others aren't, and questions like this one and the current practice of aborting children with the genetic markers for mental illness are an indication of what people have been telling me for years and I've been refusing to listen to:

We, as a society, are sick.

Now, I'm not going to get up on too high of a moralistic horse, being, generally speaking, who I am. It's hard to take a firm moral stance when you're as close to a live-and-let-live mentality as one can ever actually be without giving up one's own identity. But the fact that we've got it into our minds that, unless the baby is precisely the one you want, carrying it is a disease  which needs to be "cured". One female poster called any limitation on abortion an "attack on bodily sovereignty" and "forcing women to essentially be blood donors for 9 months".

Now, I've always been in the "I'd never abort" crowd, but being male that's easy for me to say as the closest I ever get to being pregnant comes from eating too much red meat. Even then, respecting the right to abort when the child is actually in-viable or the mother's life would be put at risk is an easy step to take. I've argued long and loud when I was younger for total legality and freedom of this particular choice. It's funny that it's the language of what was, for a long time, my own side, is what's convinced me to be about as anti-abortion as I'll likely ever become.

Consequential Inconsequentiality

We have a tendency to declare things to be inconsequential,, as a society. In Canada in particular, we often look at certain laws, declare them to be inconsequential, and summarily ignore them. They're usually little laws: digital piracy, using a mobile phone while driving, under-age drinking, smoking marijuana, et cetera. Sometimes we're right, and sometimes, over a few years or decades, we're able to get those laws revoked in the interest of general freedom (though this happens only rarely). The problem is, we're just as often wrong: see my first three examples. Still, the citizenry considers themselves the end-all-be-all authority, and circumvent the laws they see no need for at their leisure... most people I know have, from time to time.

The problem is that we really don't know what we're doing, most of the time. What seems of no consequence at one moment can be of grave consequence in another, and very often, one evasion begets others. For example, what starts as lighting up with the fellas on the post-finals weekend might turn into nightly use, which might turn into keeping a potted plant in your closet under lights, which could potentially turn into filling the attic over your garage with several such plants.

The general scene around here seems to be that smoking pot isn't a crime. I mean, it is, on the books, but in general, you get your stuff confiscated, maybe spend a couple hours in a cell waiting for your parents or guardians to come pick you up, and are told very sternly not to do it again. By contrast, growing marijuana is serious business, netting real jail time and first-hand-experience of RCMP home invasion techniques.

This is just one example in a room and country full of them. I'm looking chiefly at those of you who pirated enough Eidos games that they went under. Thanks fellas. Now I have to put up with the lame SquareEnix reboot series.

Bugs in my Beverage? Absolutely!

Starbucks in the US (and possibly here) is changing some of their ingredients.

Their Strawberries and Cream Frappucinio, which is the absolutely coffee-free beverage shown on the right, has inspired a consumer backlash. Why's that? Well, that's because they're replacing the old synthetic red dye with extract of cochineal, a natural red dye that was the benchmark for the hue we now call Crimson.

This is excellent news, right? One less synthetic ingredient in mass-consumed food.

But Zac, you only ever use this space to complain!

The Penalty for Slave Trading in Canada?

Toronto Star Image

We've come a long way from The Underground Railroad.

This is Ferenc Domotor, a Hungarian-Canadian man who today was sentenced for having lead what was called by the CBC "The leader of what has been called the largest proven human smuggling ring in Canadian history", along with his wife and son, who helped him orchestrate the slavery of 19 Hungarian men. They were held against their will and forced for years to work for table scraps, under threat of violence to their families back home in Hungary. The family and twelve fellow gang members essentially helped ruin the lives of these men and their families for years at a time.

Domotor was given a nine-year sentence for his part in the crimes, which, less time served (and sundry other deductions) means he'll be spending another four and a half years in federal prison, which is where I come in.