Not at all Like Riding a Bicycle

There's an obnoxious little phrase: "It's like riding a bicycle ..."
Usually the bit about "... you never forget how" remains an exercise for the listener.

So after some years of listening to it without thought I realized that in fact the open end of the aphorism made for some interesting rejoinders:

"... you can get your trouser leg all greasy?"
"... you can ring a little bell and people will get out of your way?"
"... it's easiest when you're going downhill?"

It is this obnoxious phrase, O Avid Fan, upon which I wish you to reflect today, as I share with you:

Metro's First Bike Ride


So technically it wasn't my first. I don't recall how old I was when I first rode a "two-wheeler." I know there was a kid in our apartment block in Hamilton who owned a small one--It was painted sparkly gold, as most things were at the time so it seemed. It may or may not have had training wheels.

I remember vaguely, in that dreamlike haze all childhood memories have (For me--Yours may be perfectly clear, in which case you may freely assume your memory is lying to you) riding this bike about. I could frickin' fly on that thing. It was too small for me, even at five-ish. It had no gears. And I had to stand on the pedals because the seat was set so low my knees would have been pistoning into my forehead. Ah, how flexible we are as kids!--But I digress.

When we moved east, a schoolmate of mine took me home one day. She wished to go for a bike ride. I'm guessing I was about six, maybe just turned seven. The trouble was that while she had a bike, it wasn't suited for "doubling" (Young people ask your parents--Doubling was an astoundingly dangerous practice in which boys and girls risked life, limb, and testicle in an attempt to prove that all bicycles were in fact built for two).

There were two bikes, her mum's and her dad's. But as I recall with my lying memory, we knew the ones with dropped crossbars were for girls. And it would be wrong for a boy to ride a girl's bike. It made perfect sense at the time.

So we decided I should try her father's bike. On the surface, to any observer over the age of about ten, this would seem absurd. Her dad (whom I cannot recall now--Hell, I don't think either of her parents were around, but then what was she doing home alone?) obviously had an inseam about the same as my height.

Still, we pushed his big blue bike to the back steps of her house. It was a typical, probably CCM, sit-up-and-beg bike, painted sparkle blue, as most things were at the time, so it seemed. It definitely did not have training wheels. And with serious trepidation, I mounted. I balanced wobbly-ly atop the seat. My toes could touch the pedals until a little way short of their lowest point. After some discussion possibly involving the questioning of the wisdom of our actions (but I doubt it), I pushed off with a toe, and set off down the back alley behind the rows of tiny fenced yards.

The bike spun readily away, picking up speed from the slight downhill, and from my full weight against the pedals. I was probably going about fifteen kilometres per hour, approaching the point where the alley I was in T-ed to a stop at an intersecting alley, a garage door across the alley providing an emphatic full stop. I would need to slow down to make the curve, so my instincts told me.

At what I figure was about eighteen kilometres per hour I stepped backwards to slow the bike--the common practice on the coaster-brake-equipped units I was used to. The pedals rotated freely. I tried again, harder. The pedals flew counterclockwise, the left one turning upward and striking my shin while my right foot lost contact and flailed at empty air. At the same time, because I had been standing up to pedal, I slipped down, with the result all young men have experienced. Young ladies, I cannot explain, but if you hold a pair of baseball bats with the end of the handle against the point of your abdomen containing your ovaries and run at a brick wall you may get a similar sensation. The discombobulation led me to look down, attempting to untangle myself and regain control whilst trying not to retch too loudly and relieve the hideous pressure of my probably-about-fifty-pounds from my crotch.

At this point the die was cast. I looked up and saw the phone pole, swerved late, ang glanced off of it, then careened, brakeless, across the end of the alley and fetched up with a "CRUMP" and a rattle of ironmongery, in a heap against the garage door, curled around my private pain and experiencing a series of novel sensations, including my first real case of road rash, as well as some old ones--the scraped knees and elbows, the sensation that I wanted to "$#!7 myself and blow lunch simultaneously" as Stephen King put it so gracefully in "Christine" ...

My friend seemed to feel responsible for my injuries. That's probably why she waited until I had gotten up and brushed myself off and more-or-less stopped crying before she checked to make sure her dad's bike was okay. Then she led me off to her mother, who did whatever magic other people's mothers do when a boy's knees, elbows, and testicles are bruised. I don't really recall much beyond that. The girl and I stayed friends awhile. She may or may not have attended my next school.

Oh ... And the reason the brakes didn't work was that I hadn't noticed the odd little levers protruding from the handlebars. I'd never ridden a bike with hand brakes.

And that's really all I recall. But it's the incident that springs to mind when someone says "Hey, it's like riding a bicycle ..."

And I finish for him or her: "... if you fall off it's really going to hurt."

Failure to Re-Launch?

Okay, so this is my first post in a month or so. I'm running into unanticipated difficulties.

1) Work.
My current job demands that I awaken at four-thirty, or possibly five, or three-thirty, or sometimes one, a.m. Then I work eight, six, ten, or nine hours at work that is sometimes extraordinarily physical (i.e. lifting five hundred garbage cans weighing between five and twenty-five kilos) or stultifyingly not-so (sitting in the passenger seat of a dumpster truck, occasionally pulling a bin out).

This leaves me in the early afternoon with no desire or motivation higher than a beer in front of the tube and an early night. Yeah, I apparently have become one of those three-B guys. Beer, Boob Tube, and Bed.

2) Personal life.My personal life is complicated. Not in any serious way--Mme Metro and I just celebrated over a decade together. But in a way that requires planning and co-ordination between a number of people, mostly because of my:

3) Social life.
For the first time in many years, I have most of my evenings free. This is due to relocation. I used to occupy my time with jam sessions and acting both are on hiatus because see #1. It's hard to commit to a schedule of rehearsal when you might arrive home at eleven having to work at three the next morning. The days when I drank 'till four then went to work at seven are kind of behind me.

However, evening commitments are creeping under the door. You know the way of it. You meet people, you like them and are interested in them, you share an interest, and join a community, and next thing you know you're chairing the Thursday night meetings ...

4) How far do I wish to let you in, O Avid Fan?
I am not the same Metro who started this blog. I am no longer pseudonymous to a number of people out there, and that can constrain what I want to write publicly. In fact when I am having an experience I consider writing-worthy, I now seem to think of the experience in three categories:

• Open: Anyone could read this. Fit for consumption by the general public. Mind you, if Glenn Beck is still seen as fit for public consumption ...
• Semi-private: My friends and Avid Fans are unlikely to judge me too harshly for this. Not for sharing with strangers or co-workers.
• Private: I might mention this to Mme Metro. Other than that, forget it. I am a great fan of the quote "Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead." (B. Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack), and am equally sure the compulsion to "talk it out" is usually little more than an ego-driven vice that makes a virtue of hurting someone one should know well enough not to hurt in such fashion, or even have a reason to do so in the first place.

Part of the problem is deciding what filter I let things pass. Obviously most of my life is fairly public. If I were outed from the house-tops I doubt most of the people who know me even in passing would be astounded at the content here at the Ol' Metroblog. But I still dither about posting some of it.

But I will persevere. I believe the cure for the after-work flops is exercise. I'm taking up swimming. It's a good fit for my body type (Whales swim, right? Not many of them do a lot of weightlifting or aerobics), and it's relatively low-impact. I also find I have a bit more energy in the evening after a swim, and that I sleep very well too.

Likewise, I believe the cure for Writer's Rust is the same as the cure for most rusty things: Apply lubricant and exercise the moving parts. Alcohol is considered an excellent lubricant for most related purposes.

People say "Write what you know." I'd rather write things I know to be fiction. But I'm back to baby steps, clinging to the couch or coffee-table of certainty for support. But I expect it's like riding a bicycle.

Not the classic aphorism about never forgetting. Rather, think back to the time you first rode a bicycle.

And with that, I have an idea for my next post.

Refurbishing the Blog

Having decided to try blogging again, the first step was to look hard at the ol' metrotemplate. Not looking too spiffy. Needs a coat o' paint, for starters.

But there are more important issues: For starters, the gaping holes in the blogroll. Frontier Editor appears to have disappeared, Canadian Cynic got tired of the endless inflatable-bozo-boxing that is critiquing conservativism in the modern North American political landscape, etc, etc, ad nauseam.

So I need to rebuild. And if you're reading this, I'd like to hear from you: What are your indispensible must-reads online? Not just blogs, though I'm happy to learn about them, but any sites at all. What's the first site you hit in the morning while the coffee's brewing? The last one you have to see before you can sleep at night?

In other news, I'm also noticing that I don't write the way I used to. I don't feel as clever, the words don't turn in my hands and mind and line themselves up as easily.

Rust is a bitch.

But if the corrosion doesn't run too deep, I think I should be able to loosen up in a while. Maybe a year will do it.

Gratitude

So when we moved, I transferred. Managed to keep with the same company. But sadly, I'm pretty much the most junior guy in a shop where instead of four guys, there are thirty.

So I'm on the spare board. This means I take the shifts no-one at all wants.

So last week I was slated to work the lowest-paying job in the shop on Monday and Friday, and that was it. Then they called me in on Wednesday and Thursday.

Thursday arvo I come in and notice my name's off the board for Friday.

Oh well, I oh-welled, No worries. I don't need the hours and I don't exactly love that job anyway.



At six-something-ty this morning, the boss phoned. They want me to come in. To do exactly the job they pulled me off of yesterday.

I am not thrilled. My back hurts a bit, I had bad sleep and wound up being awake three hours last night ... Wah, wah, wah.

Somewhere out there, a person possibly named Miguel, or Rosa, or Frank, is dragging himself (or herself) off of his bed (or her bed) and putting his feet (her f-- ... You know, I'm gonna stop this now) on the floor.

Miguel is undocumented, and so makes less than minimum wage. The work is physically brutal, the shifts, while officially ten hours long, run twelve to fourteen, but nobody complains. There are no health benefits. The workers have a joke about "work 'till your break or work 'til you break." There are no benefits, and no breaks. Frank blew out his back last week--He's worried one of his discs may be ruptured.

Last year, a guy named Fidel started a drive to unionize. He and six other workers got a sign-up sheet going. Fidel got picked up by Immigration last month. And five of the other six haven't shown up to work since. The sixth guy just got promoted to shift supervisor, night shift--A position understood to mean "Company Stool Pigeon, Third Class."

Miguel can barely make rent, and can't afford to go to a doctor to get his back fixed. Besides, under new Immigration laws he thinks the doctor might have to report him as undocumented.

So he rises, grimacing, and slouches down to the bus stop with a cup of coffee in hand, trying to shift as he walks to ease the pain.

As he waits for his bus, he takes out the letter in his back pocket:
"Dear Husband:

The baby is better, but we miss you so much. Thank you so much for the money you send ..."

The bus hisses and chuffs to a stop, and Miguel grimaces, rises, and goes to work.

My job is unionized, with benefits, and I make a good bit more than the minimum here in Canada, and a $#!7load more than the minimum in the US.

Gratitude. I haz it.

Abominable Things From the Depths of the Net, #341

Once in a while we who haunt the interwebs run into something so vile, so wrong, so against the laws of gods and nature that we wish we could un-see it. Here, then, from the "cultural blog," "dog's breakfast," and unholy lair of the Forgotten Ones that is Nag on the Lake, is one of those things.

I urge you to hide children, lock doors, douse your monitor in holy water, and ideally blindfold yourself prior to watching. At least put on some goggles: They'll keep you from clawing your eyes out.



You can't unsee that, can you?

Happy New Year

Well the 00s were, to quote Garry Trudeau on the 70s, "a kidney stone of a decade." I'm glad they're gone, and I hope that the 10s will be better.

I was going to tot up some of the best-and-worst of the decade, but I'm sure it's been covered by better people, and who wants to hear me go off on Bush the Lesser again? Personally, I don't.

What I really want is to wish you and yours every good thing this next year and decade.

What I really want of the next year, and the decade to come, is that it be better.

Goodnight, and good luck to us in 2010.

Constitutional Monarchy: The Stephen Harper Edition

I'm not even dully surprised at the grotesque wankery of Canada's Conservative Government.

We don't have "democracy" the way the rest of the world has it. Our head of state is the Queen of England, our Senate is appointed, not elected. At one time Mr. S. Harper made much of this, promising an elected one, which I personally don't want for reasons I've mentioned here before. He also has expressed a dislike for the monarchy.

A year ago, threatened by a move to establish a coalition government that would have represented the 60-odd-percent of Canadians who are currently shut out of Bushland North, Stephen Harper, demonstrating a quick-change in principles ummatched except in every other thing he's done, ran for the umbrella of the monarchy he previously deplored.

He asked the Governor-General to protect his failed government by shutting down, or "proroguing" Parliament for three months. And for no known reason she acceeded.

At the time, his excuse was that Parliament wasn't functioning. Which it wasn't, because he'd ordered his winged monkeys not to co-operate when working on Parliamentary committees.

This year, he ordered his people to do this again, especially in regard to the Afghan detainee investigation. He's in contempt of Parliament, and should be under indictment for such.

Now the news says that he's asking the GG to prorogue again.

The only thing worse, if she once again bends Canadian democracy over the table for him, will be the conservative wankersphere orgasming all over itself at Harper's "statesmanship."

Is it any wonder that half the electorate stayed home last election?

I hope the GG tells him to go ₤µ©λ himself with a rasp.

Pre-publication update: The CBC reports that the PMO is announcing proroguement has been achieved.

If there were a god I'd ask him/her/it to damn these lousy bastards to hell. As it is, I'm stopping just short of expressing a public wish for a competent assassin. Let me be clear: I don't actually want Harper assassinated. But I do think about wishing for it.

What democracy remained in this country just died.

A Wee Prediction About Copenhagen

The world will agree to a "framework" at Copenhagen. Maybe even sign an actual deal.

It will not be binding, with real penalties for failure to reduce emissions

It won't adress consumer-level pollution

It will be based on cap-and-trade, but will be watered down, with incentive-destroying loopholes for many nations

Here's Canada's loophole: The Conservative unnatural governing party claims it wants to penalize "polluters." To that end they have advanced cap-and-trade, to be imposed on industry rather than their fickle taxpaying electorate.

There are two problems with that:
First, if those financial penalties are imposed on companies, the cost of goods and services will simply rise by that much, plus a bit extra to reflect the cost of administering the new penalties, if any (whether the Conservatives are willing to slap on penalties with teeth remains to be seen, and I wouldn't hold your breath). In other words, the cash still comes out of the consumer's pocket.

Secondly: As I mentioned below, we're not an industrial nation anymore. Companies in Canada account for about half the pollution we emit. The other half is mostly from our cars.

There's a simple, market-based solution for this. However, it's not a Conservative-friendly solution. It's taxes.

Yes, taxes. Those things Harper's now considering re-raising as we slither along the economic trench in the wake of his economic stewardship (which has heretofore been comparable to the stewardship of Joseph Hazelwood on the Exxon Valdez).

It's simple: You tax crap that pollutes, and use the revenue to reduce the price of things that don't. Tax gasoline, pass the savings on to hydro or wind power. Tax heating oil, reduce the taxes on home heating gas. Increase incentives to buy energy-efficient appliances, drive cleaner cars, and build green buildings, decrease the incentives to buy SUVs, hang onto antique toasters, and live in poorly-insulated boxes.

But our Conservative government can't go that route. Look at how they demonized Stephane Dion's "tax-on-everything."

There's another solution of course: Elect someone else. Which I'm afraid is what we have to do ... if we can find someone else to vote for. Because the Opposition Liberals aren't making any noise about it, and the Bloc Quebecois doesn't care.

We Shouldn't Use the Term "Skeptic" For Climate Change Denialists

When "moran" will do.

I've been at a loss to explain the lemming-like rush to claim that the famed CRU e-mails show that climate change is all some sort of sham. Often the claims dribble out of the mouths of the same people who claim that Obama doesn't have a birth certificate.

We have some thirty years' worth of stolen e-mails. From that thirty-year sample, a handful of idiots have repeatedly hammered away at two or three messages, none of which mean what the denialists claim they do.



We have some fifty years' worth of research on climate change. It's real, it's happening, and there are extremely good reasons to be concerned. The impacts go from health to terrorism, and none of them are good.

The morans are throwing sand into the cogs of machinery that wasn't spinning along smoothly to begin with and providing a distraction, with the willing silence of the Canadian Government, that will help water down any agreement that the more civilized bits of the world might make at Copenhagen.

Hell, Canada's not even an industrial nation. Almost all our heavy industry, along with its pollutants and labour costs, has been offshored long ago. Yet we have some of the highest per-capita emission levels on the planet. Part of that, admittedly, is that we live in big houses in a cold climate and drive farther than anyone else on this continent.

We only produce two percent of global emissions. But that's a lot for a country containing about half-a-percent of the global population. And we can do better with a few simple changes.

Deniers scream that change costs money. Yet we're all too willing to pay for the privelege of polluting, so it seems. Ten years ago, gas was between fifty and seventy-five cents per litre. Now it's over a buck with the possible exception of Alberta (where low transportation costs almost make up for the incredible environmental scarring and other effects of the Tar Sands, if you squint your eyes just shut).

I've come to the conclusion that deniers stand for one thing: The right to fight change. They don't want to sacrifice their two cars and opt for public transport. They don't want to trade incandescent bulbs for fluorescent or LED. They don't want to switch from coal-burning electricity to hydro or wind. They simply don't want to.

They don't stand for science: The science, CRU emails included, clearly demonstrates the validity of the data and the conclusions therefrom. But morans refuse to accept this and instead stamp about, fingers in their ears, screaming "It's all a CONSPIRACY!" and "NO! NO! NO! NO!"

Do you remember the last time "I don' WANNA!" worked as an argument for anything?

Meanwhile, Arctic Sea ice is melting at a record rate (which Canada's New Greeneriffic Harper Conservative Government of Canada(tm) love because now we have an excuse to scrap with the Russians again), our snow-capped mountains are no damned good for skiing, and the lakes by my house haven't frozen to significant levels in decades.

It's real, it's happening, we're watching it happen. And thanks to denialism and political fear, we're not even attempting to do anything useful about it yet.

I'd like to believe Copenhagen will bring forth a real agreement with targets (not "intensity targets") and penalties for failing to acheive measurable successes. I'd like to believe that the Stephen Harper New Conservative Greenistic Government of Conservative Canada (tm) might actually try and live up to such an agreement, instead of letting it rot and then saying, "Well the Lib'ruls did it with Kyoto!"

But I'm skeptical.

A Few Tweaks

I've been away a lot lately. Scrabbling for work, mostly.

Let's see, what's been happening. Well I've been spending a lot of time reading about the so-called "Climate-gate" scandal, and I've concluded that a handful of emails, even if they contained a plot that would make Dan Brown wet his shorts, don't in fact change thirty or fifty years of science, backed by the actual data.

There's a lot more. But for some good reading on the subjects, I'd try Deltoid and DeSmogBlog. This is a debate where style has heretofore trumped science, and those two are trying hard to counter that.

What else ... Oh yes, I've been sort of outed. I left a rude comment over at Canadian Cynic and one of the subjects took the two minutes it took to Google me. He says my name is Ted, and I'm willing to take his word on that. But I knew, and was warned by no less an intertubes big gun than Raincoaster, that no-one's really anonymous on the 'net. So it isn't as though I hadn't expected this to happen at some point.

It'll be interesting to see whether the idea of having a name linked to this blog is likely to change the way I express myself. I hope not. Metro's the little bit of me that I keep locked away when someone's saying something that makes me want to grab their lapels, haul them up to my nose and scream "Are you ₤µ©λing NUTS!?"

Such as when a pleasant, white-haired old lady tells me that Barack Obama is the devil, and means it ... So instead I smile and nod, and when I get home I write it down and try to dissect it.

Anyway ... As you can see, I've updated the blogroll a bit to more accurately reflect where I've been spending my time. If the links look a little left-ish, well I'm hoping to find some reasonable writing from the other side of the spectrum. But it's often a matter of luck. For example, there's today's smart, sensible piece:

At Dr. Dawg's Blawg, I stumbled across a link to this. I linked to Little Green Footballs once, and only once, way back in the prehistory of the ol' Metroblog. I didn't hang about because teh crazy seemed infectious. I forget how I got there, but the Nazi site Stormfront was involved. And no I'm not linking there.

But now I find this post "Why I Parted Ways With the Right, and it so well traces my own retreat from Conservatism that I had to clip a few choice bits off and post them here:

...
4. Support for anti-science bad craziness (see: creationism, climate change denialism, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, James Inhofe, etc.)

5. Support for homophobic bigotry (see: Sarah Palin, Dobson, the entire religious right, etc.)

6. Support for anti-government lunacy (see: tea parties, militias, Fox News, Glenn Beck, etc.)

7. Support for conspiracy theories and hate speech (see: Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Birthers, creationists, climate deniers, etc.)
...

There's more. I reccomend reading that piece.

Partly as a result of hanging around at places that define the extremes of the argument, I'd been very dispirited and bitter lately about the quality of ideas out there. So it's nice to see that sometimes reason does, in fact, prevail.

Meantime, I'm pleased to meet you.
Now you know my name.

Play me off, Mick and Keith!

This is News?

The Aspers have apparently decided that their flagship, the National Post may be folded under an umbrella or something. It's all a bit complex to me, but has to do with the Global bankruptcy or something.


Mr. Asper heads out to pasture

Couldn't happen to a nicer paper. Really. Even if they never did get the spelling of "Nazional" quite right. The problem was that, although they tried to claim an audience, Canadians actually have a limited tolerance for right-wing, blindly-pro-Israel garbage on the editorial pages (The odd thing is that Izzy Asper, who eventually sent the paper to hell, was at one time president of a Liberal Party arm).

It cannot be co-incidence that this announcement comes immediately after this guy was killed the other night. Their sole remaining reader? We just editorialize, you decide.

Among it's dafter content, the paper published screeds defending Mark Steyn. They also publish the ramblings of a number of what are known as Blogging Tories. Such as one Mr. "Raphael Alexander" a.k.a. Adrian McNair. I honestly haven't the familiarity with Mr. Alexander that others have cultivated, but I know what I like, and most of his writing is garbage by that fickle and arbitrary standard. Although I place a caveat by his coverage of Vancouver's Great Boondoggle.

The paper's recent hagiographic coverage of the Stephen Harper New Conservative Government of Canada (for which it functions much the way that FOX Noise did for the Bush White House--as a PR organ) is unlikely to be missed. At least by a majority of Canadians.

Okay, so I'm not entirely unmoved. Whatever its manifest and grotesque failures of conscience and decency in its editorial pages, the Post was known at one time for good journalism. But the rot set in when the Aspers forbade the publication of editorials criticizing Israel. And what may die in the coming days is a shell of addled opinion and relentless conservative cheerleading that not only doesn't represent Candians, but in recent years seems to have broken with reality.

Though the paper claimed to be a free speech champion, it ended up proving that censorship for the wrong reasons rots political discourse. God rest whatever's left of its soul.

I will, however miss John Moore, the Post's token lib'rul.

Bad Thoughts on Religion

Catholic Metroboy: "Jesus died for your sins."

Atheist Metroman: "So what?"

CM: "So what? So what? I mean, the guy, right, the guy actually experienced an agonizing death in return for which your sins were forgiven."

AM: "But why'd he have to die?"

CM: "So that your sins were forgiven."

AM: "Who said they needed forgiving?"

CM: "God."

AM: "Okay, so lemme get this straight: The all-powerful Lord of the universe invents sin, gets mad at us for doing it, and then essentially sacrifices himself to himself to square the books?"

CM: "Well ... Yeah ... You're trivializing His agony on the cross, you know. Would YOU want to experience that?"

AM: "Sure. Why not?"

CM: "You would?"

AM: "Look, according to your philosphy, Jesus = God, right?"

CM: "Yes."

AM: "They're the same guy?"

CM: "Well, pretty much, yeah. It's a bit mystic."

AM: "So Jesus is immortal and omipotent and omniscient?"

CM: "He'd have to be."

AM: "Could have gotten down off the cross and showed everyone a thing or two at any time, right?"

CM: "But he wasn't using his powers."

AM: "Well he did use prophecy, right, seeing into the future?"

CM: "Okay, so ..."

AM: "So he's been alive since the beginning of everything ... billions of years ..."

CM: "Well, okay."

AM: "So to sum up: God pops down to earth for a quick thirty-year holiday whereupon he spends a few hours dying in agony to appease himself, after which he goes back to being immortal."

CM: "Uh ... If you put it that way ..."

AM: "Moreover, he knows he'll be up and around within a few days."

CM: "I really ..."

AM: "So Jesus had a long weekend for my sins?"

CM: "Well ... "

AM: "The dude spends, let's say eight hours dying in agony ..."

CM: "Uh ..."

AM:"I mean, eight hours out of six thousand years ... that's about 1/6,570,000th of his life, right?"

CM: "Well, yes, but I don't think ..."

AM:"And then he goes back to being alive ... If I were offered immortality in return for being crucified for one-six-millionth of my life*, I'd take that deal."

CM: "Uh ... You got any Aspirin? I think I'm developing a headache."

AM: "Not only that, but why'd he have to die in the first place? He makes the damn rules, couldn't he have just given himself a good spanking or something? And how the hell is anyone supposed to learn a lesson from an apocryphal tale six thousand years old? Couldn't he have left us at least a videocassette? Or perhaps he could have engraved it into a diamond the size of a mountain or something? Or created letters of fire a hundred feet high, visible from every place at once? Written it on the moon ... Instead he relies on semi-literate nomadic desert kids to scribble it down on goatskins and parchment. Make a lot of sense, doesn't it?"

And the wrangle, unevenly, continues.

*It'd work out to about 0.06 of an hour, which is three minutes and thirty-six seconds.

LOL of th' Day

xkcd is teh ossum.

Matt Taibbi: Now Known as "Dances With Nuts"

From an article entitled "Jesus Made Me Puke":

By the end of the weekend I realized how quaint was the mere suggestion that Christians of this type should learn to "be rational" or "set aside your religion" about such things as the Iraq War or other policy matters. Once you've made a journey like this — once you've gone this far — you are beyond suggestible. It's not merely the informational indoctrination, the constant belittling of homosexuals and atheists and Muslims and pacifists, etc., that's the issue. It's that once you've gotten to this place, you've left behind the mental process that a person would need to form an independent opinion about such things. You make this journey precisely to experience the ecstasy of beating to the same big gristly heart with a roomful of like-minded folks. Once you reach that place with them, you're thinking with muscles, not neurons.

Noble Words ≠ Nobel Deeds

Four brief words on the Obama Nobel:

What were they thinking?

More words on the topic:
I like Obama. If nothing else, the determination of the wingnuts to see Satan, Hitler, Stalin, and possibly COBRA Commander in his shadow makes for grimly amusing TV. I mean, where were they when their boy George was actually busy tearing up the country's vaunted Constitution? Mostly cheerleading.

But the sight of wingnut heads exploding like so many dandelion clocks at the news is accompanied by annoyance and disbelief. No-one seems to know why he received this award. He's still bombing in Iraq and Afghanistan, hasn't shut down his country's torture prisons, is still claiming that FISA is legal ...

One might be forced to accept the winger talking point that he received it for giving speeches.

Hell, he's up against the possibility of civil war in his own damn country if he doesn't figure out a way to disarm the disproportionately stupid citizens. Several people have called for armed insurrection, a poll was circulated on Facebook: "Should Obama be Killed," and redneck morons, almost inevitably white, male, and Christian, threaten to do to Obama precisely what Al-Qaeda would like to do. All without either a) being taken behind the woodshed for a little lecture on civil discourse and factuality or b) being taken to Gitmo for a little lecture on civil discourse, civil rights, and the nature of terrorism.

Okay, so he's not George the Lesser. But there are people far more deserving of a Nobel even for that.

If Obama has any brains he'll outright refuse the award saying: "Why not wait until I earn it?" He'll also put out some other candidates who may actually have done work that might lead incrementally to peace. How about recognition for the translators in Iraq or Afhanistan, perhaps? Those people literally put their lives at risk every single day.

And then the wingnut wurlitzer could no longer go on and on about how it's some sort of Nobel Affirmative Action.

And maybe a few of the people parading around at those teabagger parties will STFU and actually do something useful or helpful. Too much to hope for, I guess.

Another Threat to Marriage

Doubtless the right wingers will want to campaign against this one as well.

Pathetic.

In Defence of Offenders

In the news today I see that sex offenders in Georgia and Florida have reputedly taken to living in tents.

The group of nine men were told to live in the woods in the southern state after they were unable to find housing far enough away from areas where children congregated, such as schools and playgrounds.

Georgian law bans the state's 16,000 sex offenders from living, working or loitering within 1,000ft of schools, churches, child-care facilities and other areas where children gather.

Yeah, that law makes sense. Just like the current fad of "outing" such offenders online, or posting their mug shots in the neighborhoods where they get released.

Look: A sex offender by definition is one who's been caught. Many, if not most, of the ones who do time can't be fully rehabilitated. They need watching, pure and simple. And they absolutely need access to the support systems everyone else has to ensure they're at the lowest possible risk of reoffending.

These guys probably aren't the problem! They're trying to comply with the conditions of laws that would be regarded as unfair if imposed on many other classes of offender.

What's needed isn't exclusion. What's needed is a way to ensure that these guys can return to the community in safety, or conversely where the risk of re-offence is unacceptably high, what's needed is a mechanism to keep them under direct and constant supervision.

And that's why the Stephen Harper Conservative Government of Canada™ pisses me off. They're trying to kick over one of the few frail anti-re-offence agencies that exist. Wish I could find the link to that, dammit ... It was right here a minute ago. They've apparently chopped funding to one of the few working sex-offender post-release counselling-and-treatment outfits. I'll keep looking.

But in any case, the Stephen Harper Conservative Government of Canada™ has an embarrassingly fluffy relationship with the desperately disfunctional US prison system.

The problem is the fundamental difference in perception. Canadians regard the purpose of prison as an attempt at rehabilitation. A machine which turns crooks into citizens (albeit at a very low rate).

US Republicans and the Stephen Harper Conservative Government of Canada™ (if that's not a redundancy) see prisons as a massive private machine where inmates=profit, and rehab and trying to open doors gives way to punishment and training the thugs to damn well stay in their place.

Nonethless, Public Safety caveman Peter van Loan asserts that such places will "return people to the community better able to live law-abiding lives." Despite the fact that it doesn't work. Hasn't worked in the US, and--surprise!--Hasn't worked here.

Note: Yes, I know the government said privatization isn't on the table. Let's consider this like adults, shall we?

Stephen Harper, alleged economist either mistook or lied outright when he claimed there wasn't a recession coming. Immediately after winning his second minority, he said strong measures had to be taken to blunt its impact.

Stephen Harper passed a law saying an election had to be held, was mandatory, this October. Last year he broke his own law (As a lawbreaker himself, doesn't he worry about being carted off to a US-style jail?).

So this government isn't known for what you'd call "frankness". Drop the "f" and you'd be about right. Their ideology calls for privatization of public functions, without regard to inconvieniences like "facts" or "reality."

You want to know where opposition to relaxing marijuana laws comes from in the US? Three guesses and the first two don't count. When prisoners=profit, sacrifices have to be made, eh? Sometimes human sacrifices.

Quote of the Day #349

And it's from "E!" network, fer FSM's sake--The gut-spilling, wrenching void of celebrity goss and toss.

"The truth, no matter how uncomfortable, is never too much information."

It's the last sentence of a surprisingly deep blog post that must have been handed out to E!'s headline writers without notification that this was a genuine piece of thoughtful opinion.

The headline is "Mackenzie Phillips Is Not Oversharing!" The headline is a damn-near-slight to a woman who seems to be determined to unburden herself publicly of some of the most asocial revelations anyone could put themselves through. Money quote:

We don't want to hear it. Any of it.

And that might be the ickiest thing of all.

My feeling when a semi-celeb comes out with revelations like this is that you do need to look for the motive. But while Phillips has been doing the talk-show circuit, she could have done that by simply asserting that Papa John had beaten her, or something less ... icky.

An Israeli Perspective on the Goldstone Report

And not the one you've been hearing about.For those of you tuning in late, the Goldstone Report, realeased today, offers stern criticisms of Israel's actions in the late wars:

" Although the U.N. investigation found that Palestinian militants also committed war crimes, the overwhelming majority of the criticism in a summary of the 574-page report targets Israel.

Israel "committed actions amounting to war crimes, possibly crimes against humanity," the report says."

~CNN

I happen to rather like the Jerusalem Post. They'll happily print genuine debate on real issues in their pages. Amongst the pro- and con- Goldstone opinions we have Larry Derfner calling the report "A wake-up call from Judge Goldstone". One of the most interesting points of his analysis of the report--which was criticized by Israel's deputy foreign minister as "a dangerous attempt to harm the principle of self-defense by democratic states [which] provides legitimacy to terrorism"--is this one:

And we don't see that we did anything wrong. Somebody's got to tell us. Lots of people have tried, including Amnesty International, the Red Cross, Human Rights Watch and, last but definitely not least, dozens of our own soldiers.

We've tried to smear them all, to silence them, to drown out the message that keeps repeating itself from one source to another. Now we have the message, the same message again, from one of the world's most respected, accomplished men of justice. South Africa's Judge Richard Goldstone has a record that no one in this country would dare try to tarnish. What's more, he's not only a Jew (and a former president of World ORT), he's also a friend of Israel. He was on the board of directors at the Hebrew University, got an honorary doctorate there, he's visited this country any number of times, his daughter's lived here for awhile.

So there we have it. From an authoritative and sympathetic voice, a stern warning to Israel that it has to stop acting like the people it purports to be defending itself against.

Why Ask Why?

Over at the theoretically-leftish Toronto Star, an editorial asks the question: What's the reason for an election?

The question is: why an election now, other than that it would save the Liberals and the others from the embarrassment of having to continue "propping up" the Conservative government

Now personally, I feel that that question answers itself. However, Randall Denley at the usually-rightish Ottawa Citizen expresses it better in an editorial entitled "Ignatieff has nothing to lose if the writ drops" (subtitled "And neither do we, so bring it on"):

Ignatieff's decision to push for an election now is being portrayed as odd or inappropriate, but it's neither if one considers it from his perspective. Simply put, all the alternatives are worse.

Minority government is tough for the party in power, but it's just as bad for the opposition. It's pretty lame for an opposition leader to condemn the government and then vote for its policies to avoid triggering an election, but that's Ignatieff's other choice.

But it doesn't end there:

As he tries to show why an election is needed, Ignatieff has found an unlikely ally in Harper. Harper gave us a clue as to the breadth of his vision for the country when he reminded Canadians that an election now could deprive them of the cheques they have been counting on from his home-renovation program. There is no real chance that the Liberals will cancel this witless crowd-pleaser, but it tells us where Harper thinks our interests are. Canadians, in his view, can't see beyond the flaps of their wallets.

Yup, that sums it up nicely. Harper believes we're so venial and myopic that we're willing to sit still for the dismantling of our nation in return for a mess of pottage.

And while I personally quite like pottage, I prefer an election.