Awhile ago I talked about "Mommy porn" which is the depiction of famous parents (Angenlina Jolie and Brad Pitt, say) on the covers of magazines with their incredible careers and packs of beautiful children. Of course they don't actually raise those children themselves, so this is really just a ridiculous fantasy, hence the name. A couple days ago I stumbled on an article that is of an entirely different type and which I think warrants the title "Revolution porn". The article talks about the desperate situation in Greece and the violence and destruction that has been going on there. It includes a picture of a police officer being burned by a fiery explosion created by some protester's homemade bomb. The thing that makes my mind explode is that the author *celebrates* the violence, indeed he would have been crushed if there weren't arson and violent revolution in the streets of Athens.
The ridiculous fantasy here is that by burning down your neighbour's house or by trying to murder police officers you are striking a blow against the rich bankers who rule the world. You aren't. There are certainly police officers who are bad people that abuse their power to support awful regimes but the great majority of police really are normal people who are willing to do a hard and dangerous job to protect people from each other. It must be tremendous fun to sit in an office in a country that is in pretty good shape and wax poetic about how wonderful it is to be a violent revolutionary and how much those random police officers deserve burning but the reality is something else entirely. It is a fictional situation, one that is inspiring from a great distance and without thinking too much.
Random violence is not a useful response to this situation. There are situations that do call for violent responses but your country's politicians trying to run a balanced budget does not warrant chucking firebombs at people. I can almost imagine the author of the article sitting at his computer desk saying "Heh heh, they are totally burning those cops, heh heh" like a Beavis and Butthead video. Is it understandable for someone to feel this way? Sure! There are plenty of people who want to see someone sticking it to the man and are glad they can do so from a long way away. We shouldn't credit this desire with any more a glorious name than Revolution Porn though, because that is what it is.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Friday, February 17, 2012
Boys and girls
I read an interesting article today about gender based attitudes and teaching styles in schools. It talks about how a specific teacher dealt with a gender variant child and what they learned about their themselves by carefully examining the issues once they became personal. I liked it a lot. Gender is an extremely important concept for small kids (and everyone else, too!) and no amount of simply ignoring the issue will keep their minds off of it. Wendy and I decided before we had Elli that we would raise her as gender neutral as possible: No pink outfits, no Barbie dolls, and no gender based expectations of her. Fat lot of good all those intentions did! She only wants to wear pink, is interested in nothing but shiny sparkly princess unicorn ponies wearing fancy crowns and jewellery, and wants to wear dresses all winter inside her snow pants.
Moreso than her obvious acceptance of societal gender norms though she is desperately interested in gender roles in all ways. When a boy does something she talks about how boys do that thing. When I tell a story about an ogre she wants to know what gender the ogre is. Any time she describes something that happened to her she is careful to frame it in terms of gender roles and stereotypes. We do our best to tell her all the things we want her to believe (and which we believe) about people being able to have whatever sort of life they want regardless of gender and that gender roles and tendencies are never requirements or universal but our words fall on deaf ears. She *wants* to divide the world into simple boxes and gender is an easy way for her to divide up people.
That isn't to say I think teaching these things is wrong or even hopeless. I am sure in her later years when she is capable of more nuanced understanding she will recall our attitudes if not necessarily our words. We have had conversations with her about homosexuality, transgender people and other such topics that she doesn't have a close personal experience with and I hope that this will convince her to eventually believe that is it okay to be nonconformist even in these most fundamental ways. Right now I think she would be quite comfortable with gay people or gender variant people but she would probably be completely unable to square that with her day to day habits of defining everything in terms of boy vs. girl. Aside from trying to shove a bunch of LGBT people into our daily lives I don't see a lot of ways to accelerate that reckoning; eventually she will have to reconcile her incompatible ideas when it hits her in a really personal way, as we all do.
For the moment she is still a very stereotypical girl who is interested in growing up, meeting a prince and becoming a mommy. Not that finding a heterosexual partner, getting married and having kids is so bad (I quite like it, thanks) but someday we hope that she gives up on being rescued by Prince Charming for other dreams, whatever those may be.
Moreso than her obvious acceptance of societal gender norms though she is desperately interested in gender roles in all ways. When a boy does something she talks about how boys do that thing. When I tell a story about an ogre she wants to know what gender the ogre is. Any time she describes something that happened to her she is careful to frame it in terms of gender roles and stereotypes. We do our best to tell her all the things we want her to believe (and which we believe) about people being able to have whatever sort of life they want regardless of gender and that gender roles and tendencies are never requirements or universal but our words fall on deaf ears. She *wants* to divide the world into simple boxes and gender is an easy way for her to divide up people.
That isn't to say I think teaching these things is wrong or even hopeless. I am sure in her later years when she is capable of more nuanced understanding she will recall our attitudes if not necessarily our words. We have had conversations with her about homosexuality, transgender people and other such topics that she doesn't have a close personal experience with and I hope that this will convince her to eventually believe that is it okay to be nonconformist even in these most fundamental ways. Right now I think she would be quite comfortable with gay people or gender variant people but she would probably be completely unable to square that with her day to day habits of defining everything in terms of boy vs. girl. Aside from trying to shove a bunch of LGBT people into our daily lives I don't see a lot of ways to accelerate that reckoning; eventually she will have to reconcile her incompatible ideas when it hits her in a really personal way, as we all do.
For the moment she is still a very stereotypical girl who is interested in growing up, meeting a prince and becoming a mommy. Not that finding a heterosexual partner, getting married and having kids is so bad (I quite like it, thanks) but someday we hope that she gives up on being rescued by Prince Charming for other dreams, whatever those may be.
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Siding with Child Pornographers
Apparently I am on the side of child pornographers. This, according to the Canadian public safety minister Vic Toews, is because new legislation in Canada is designed to stop child pornography so Canadians can either:
"stand with us or with the child pornographers."
You heard it right, if you oppose a government bill you are supporting child pornography. In this case the government bill makes it legal for law enforcement to monitor all phone conversations and internet communication without a warrant. Because, you know, the police don't lack the tools to catch child pornographers now, you see. Perhaps it is because judges won't grant warrants when the police have solid grounds to believe someone is creating or distributing child pornography? Or perhaps it is just that the government wants the option to spy on any person at any time without reason, oversight or a record.
This government boggles my mind. Generally speaking they toe the conservative (note the small c) line of smaller, less intrusive government. They want people to fend for themselves without the government interfering and they want to encourage self reliance. They are also extremely motivated by protecting people's privacy, like when they ended the long form census which provided critical, *anonymous* information to hundreds of government programs and charities across the country. They are apparently against privacy though when it is actually relevant, as in the case of police monitoring a person's email or private phone calls without any sort of reasonable grounds.
The hypocrisy maddens me almost as much as the actual policies. Ending the long form census was either just randomly idiotic or a deliberate attempt to reduce the information available such that the government can make any decision they want without being contradicted by facts; depends on how conspiratorial you feel. This new bill is about giving law enforcement information and denying it to everybody else; the common thread here is the government deciding that it gets to know everything that happens and nobody else does. It is time for them to admit that they aren't for or against privacy but rather just looking to increase government power in any way they can and are willing to use loaded terms like privacy and child pornography to justify it.
"stand with us or with the child pornographers."
You heard it right, if you oppose a government bill you are supporting child pornography. In this case the government bill makes it legal for law enforcement to monitor all phone conversations and internet communication without a warrant. Because, you know, the police don't lack the tools to catch child pornographers now, you see. Perhaps it is because judges won't grant warrants when the police have solid grounds to believe someone is creating or distributing child pornography? Or perhaps it is just that the government wants the option to spy on any person at any time without reason, oversight or a record.
This government boggles my mind. Generally speaking they toe the conservative (note the small c) line of smaller, less intrusive government. They want people to fend for themselves without the government interfering and they want to encourage self reliance. They are also extremely motivated by protecting people's privacy, like when they ended the long form census which provided critical, *anonymous* information to hundreds of government programs and charities across the country. They are apparently against privacy though when it is actually relevant, as in the case of police monitoring a person's email or private phone calls without any sort of reasonable grounds.
The hypocrisy maddens me almost as much as the actual policies. Ending the long form census was either just randomly idiotic or a deliberate attempt to reduce the information available such that the government can make any decision they want without being contradicted by facts; depends on how conspiratorial you feel. This new bill is about giving law enforcement information and denying it to everybody else; the common thread here is the government deciding that it gets to know everything that happens and nobody else does. It is time for them to admit that they aren't for or against privacy but rather just looking to increase government power in any way they can and are willing to use loaded terms like privacy and child pornography to justify it.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
End the war (on drugs)
If we ever needed more reason to stop the War on Drugs, here it is. Ten years ago Portugal decriminalized all drugs and changed their national strategy to one of rehabilitation and treatment instead of incarceration. The result: Drug use is down by more than half. Rather than paying to incarcerate 100,000 people Portugal is now paying to treat 40,000 people. Those people being treated still have jobs, social lives and hope for a better future instead of a criminal record and years of isolation. The cost to the state in direct terms is drastically less both in terms of police, court time and jails and the benefits are incredible even if you discount the massive reduction in drug use. There is no doubt that jails are brutally expensive and socially destructive affairs so they should be employed only when all else fails.
We should also consider how much better off the addicts are when their drugs are legal. Getting people involved with violent criminals to support their habits is going to generate all kinds of problems from increasing the power of organized crime to creating worrying issues with quality. Being an alcoholic is bad, but if we imagine that every alcoholic had to go to the mafia to get their booze and then sometimes ended up becoming a criminal as a result we can see how crazy fighting the war on drugs is. Mixing desperate addicts with organized crime is a recipe for disaster.
I wonder if Portugal has had a change in how criminals are portrayed in media. It is dead common for the bad guy in action movies to be a drug lord here in Canada and I wonder if that is true around the world. If being a professional seller of drugs was no longer illegal would our heroes in books and film would start fighting a new type of baddie? Imagine an alternate world where we tire of the constant accidents and occasional death that results from downhill skiing and criminalize *that* behaviour. Would we see a new generation of action films where the final evildoer is someone providing illegal access to pristine powdery slopes for those who just can't get enough?
If people want to get messed up they can sniff glue or gas, buy perfectly legal alcohol or just take a couple cold tablets from the drug store (those mess me up good!). You can't stop people doing dumb things, getting addicted or being high by pursuing the war on drugs. What you can do is push people who are doing stupid things into hanging around with criminals, provide money for biker gangs and give leverage to violent, dangerous people. We need to take Portugal as an example and stop this pointless war. People love the idea of 'justice' for those that step outside the lines but it is far more efficient and effective to simply treat those who go too far.
We should also consider how much better off the addicts are when their drugs are legal. Getting people involved with violent criminals to support their habits is going to generate all kinds of problems from increasing the power of organized crime to creating worrying issues with quality. Being an alcoholic is bad, but if we imagine that every alcoholic had to go to the mafia to get their booze and then sometimes ended up becoming a criminal as a result we can see how crazy fighting the war on drugs is. Mixing desperate addicts with organized crime is a recipe for disaster.
I wonder if Portugal has had a change in how criminals are portrayed in media. It is dead common for the bad guy in action movies to be a drug lord here in Canada and I wonder if that is true around the world. If being a professional seller of drugs was no longer illegal would our heroes in books and film would start fighting a new type of baddie? Imagine an alternate world where we tire of the constant accidents and occasional death that results from downhill skiing and criminalize *that* behaviour. Would we see a new generation of action films where the final evildoer is someone providing illegal access to pristine powdery slopes for those who just can't get enough?
If people want to get messed up they can sniff glue or gas, buy perfectly legal alcohol or just take a couple cold tablets from the drug store (those mess me up good!). You can't stop people doing dumb things, getting addicted or being high by pursuing the war on drugs. What you can do is push people who are doing stupid things into hanging around with criminals, provide money for biker gangs and give leverage to violent, dangerous people. We need to take Portugal as an example and stop this pointless war. People love the idea of 'justice' for those that step outside the lines but it is far more efficient and effective to simply treat those who go too far.
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Athens burns
There are some disagreements on what exactly is a rational stance for a random Greek citizen to take given the mess their country is in currently. I feel like they need to follow the lead of the EU and aim for serious austerity measures to try to get funding to pay their bills but clearly there are plenty of people, Greeks in particular, who don't buy that. I completely believe that lots of people there want to protest and are extremely upset about their situation; their economy is melting down and their government seems to be run by foreign bankers. I think we can all agree that this situation does not warrant arson and armed conflict however, and that is their situation now. On Sunday 34 buildings in Athens were on fire and the police were involved in running battles with protesters, criminals and malcontents in the streets of the capital where they were regularly being attacked with petrol bombs as well as rocks and other improvised weapons.
It is something of a worst case scenario for a modern economy where usually the trend is ever upward. There are always plenty of countries where economically speaking things are very rocky but this sort of collapse and descent into barbarism is really unusual. I wonder if these sorts of things could be predicted somehow based on the nature of a country and the culture of the people there. Greece certainly has all kinds of aspects of its character that suggest that financial prudence is going to be a tough sell. Any country that has an unspoken agreement that the government won't bother to collect taxes on election years is going to have issues when people are looking for German quality financial restraint.
Greece may well be the keystone in the whole world economic construction, the thing that is stopping a even greater collapse from coming. They have demonstrated that a first world nation, even one backed by the EU, can collapse spectacularly. Not just collapse economically, of course, but also socially and politically. If Greece had been willing to take a 50% writedown in exchange for real reforms I think things would be much more secure for all the nations teetering on the brink but with the capital burning and the country in chaos nobody can be sure that any nation will be interested in paying back what it owes instead of just declaring bankruptcy. What the EU desperately needs is a clear, unmistakable signal that nations that get in trouble dig themselves out instead of just throwing in the towel. That certainty may well be the sole thing that keeps Italy, Portugal and Ireland afloat and Greece seems like it will not provide it. The EU needs investor confidence and every day that Athens burns that confidence evaporates.
What would I do if Canada were in the same situation? If the government were slashing salaries, pensions and indeed any other expenditure to the extent that the Greek government is? I think my answer would be to just sigh and keep going; I am not the protesting type, particularly when that protesting seems to be synonymous with arson and looting. Paying back their debt and reforming their finances may be a huge burden to the Greeks but I think they are on the path to revolution and destruction, not financial independence.
Photo from: http://ca.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idCATRE8120HI20120212?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=0&sp=true
It is something of a worst case scenario for a modern economy where usually the trend is ever upward. There are always plenty of countries where economically speaking things are very rocky but this sort of collapse and descent into barbarism is really unusual. I wonder if these sorts of things could be predicted somehow based on the nature of a country and the culture of the people there. Greece certainly has all kinds of aspects of its character that suggest that financial prudence is going to be a tough sell. Any country that has an unspoken agreement that the government won't bother to collect taxes on election years is going to have issues when people are looking for German quality financial restraint.
Greece may well be the keystone in the whole world economic construction, the thing that is stopping a even greater collapse from coming. They have demonstrated that a first world nation, even one backed by the EU, can collapse spectacularly. Not just collapse economically, of course, but also socially and politically. If Greece had been willing to take a 50% writedown in exchange for real reforms I think things would be much more secure for all the nations teetering on the brink but with the capital burning and the country in chaos nobody can be sure that any nation will be interested in paying back what it owes instead of just declaring bankruptcy. What the EU desperately needs is a clear, unmistakable signal that nations that get in trouble dig themselves out instead of just throwing in the towel. That certainty may well be the sole thing that keeps Italy, Portugal and Ireland afloat and Greece seems like it will not provide it. The EU needs investor confidence and every day that Athens burns that confidence evaporates.
What would I do if Canada were in the same situation? If the government were slashing salaries, pensions and indeed any other expenditure to the extent that the Greek government is? I think my answer would be to just sigh and keep going; I am not the protesting type, particularly when that protesting seems to be synonymous with arson and looting. Paying back their debt and reforming their finances may be a huge burden to the Greeks but I think they are on the path to revolution and destruction, not financial independence.
Photo from: http://ca.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idCATRE8120HI20120212?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=0&sp=true
Monday, February 13, 2012
Valentine's Day, once more
It is almost Valentine's Day, which means two things. First off it means people will be shoveling money to Hallmark, flower companies and purveyors of crappy candy, balloons and heart shaped trinkets. Secondly it means I need to write my annual rant on how much this holiday sucks rocks.
Elli needed to bring Valentine's cards to school for her whole class this year. They sent around a class list so that we would be sure to get cards for everyone; this is nice in that the unpopular kids don't just get left out as they did so much in the past but it is crappy in that every kid is going to get ~20 paper cards they will immediately throw in the garbage. There isn't a good way around this that I can see... I can avoid paying for cheap, trashy mass produced cards by doing them up myself but it only costs $5 for cards and candy for her entire class if I buy the junk and way more than that if I buy decent art products to do it myself. Because I procrastinated to the last minute on buying all the junk hoping to find a way around it I ended up being stuck buying cards that came with lollipops attached so now I am not only killing trees to celebrate the worst holiday of all but also poisoning the children.
I went to her teacher at lunchtime hoping to have her tell me that candy was barred from the Valentine's envelopes and that they were refusing to promote the Cadbury lifestyle but I had no luck. The teacher was happy to take candy and it looks like all kinds of kids got the same sort of thing Elli did and they will all be celebrating Valentine's Day at school with a deluge of high fructose corn syrup. These sorts of events leave me really stretching for an answer that works for everyone; I want to communicate to Elli how crappy this event is without leaving her miserable because she is singled out as the one kid who didn't give anyone else cards.
"My Daddy hates Valentine's Day and shouted lots of incomprehensible things about environmentalism and Type 2 Diabetes... that is why none of you get cards or candy from me."
I just don't think that is going to fly in Kindergarten. I think avoiding this holiday really needs to be supported by the school because when they send around the class lists and make sure to constantly remind the children to bring in their Valentine's gifts they really put the parents in a bind if they don't support it. Not that I particularly expect the school to back me up on this one of course, but I can dream.
There you go, my yearly rant. If you want something on the same topic that is funny instead of a vitriol infused diatribe then I suggest watching this:
Elli needed to bring Valentine's cards to school for her whole class this year. They sent around a class list so that we would be sure to get cards for everyone; this is nice in that the unpopular kids don't just get left out as they did so much in the past but it is crappy in that every kid is going to get ~20 paper cards they will immediately throw in the garbage. There isn't a good way around this that I can see... I can avoid paying for cheap, trashy mass produced cards by doing them up myself but it only costs $5 for cards and candy for her entire class if I buy the junk and way more than that if I buy decent art products to do it myself. Because I procrastinated to the last minute on buying all the junk hoping to find a way around it I ended up being stuck buying cards that came with lollipops attached so now I am not only killing trees to celebrate the worst holiday of all but also poisoning the children.
I went to her teacher at lunchtime hoping to have her tell me that candy was barred from the Valentine's envelopes and that they were refusing to promote the Cadbury lifestyle but I had no luck. The teacher was happy to take candy and it looks like all kinds of kids got the same sort of thing Elli did and they will all be celebrating Valentine's Day at school with a deluge of high fructose corn syrup. These sorts of events leave me really stretching for an answer that works for everyone; I want to communicate to Elli how crappy this event is without leaving her miserable because she is singled out as the one kid who didn't give anyone else cards.
"My Daddy hates Valentine's Day and shouted lots of incomprehensible things about environmentalism and Type 2 Diabetes... that is why none of you get cards or candy from me."
I just don't think that is going to fly in Kindergarten. I think avoiding this holiday really needs to be supported by the school because when they send around the class lists and make sure to constantly remind the children to bring in their Valentine's gifts they really put the parents in a bind if they don't support it. Not that I particularly expect the school to back me up on this one of course, but I can dream.
There you go, my yearly rant. If you want something on the same topic that is funny instead of a vitriol infused diatribe then I suggest watching this:
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Big things and small things
The Naturalist sent me a great link today to a site that lets you scroll through a set of pictures and descriptions of objects in the universe sorted by size. It goes right from Planck length through quarks to humans to planets to galactic superclusters. The nice thing too is that this isn't all dry science as the descriptions are fun and sometimes silly. I really enjoyed plowing through it and reading the various descriptions of the astronomical features involved - I have some sense of how big things are out there but I was completely blown away by how utterly enormous some of the stars are in comparison to our own. There sure were a lot more orders of magnitude between quarks and Planck than I really had intuitively understood there to be. This is the sort of thing that I think most people can click around in and enjoy but should be mandatory for kids to look at while they go through school. Seeing just how far out of our normal range of experience these things are can give you a real appreciation for what scientists do and just how much we can learn about the universe when we set our minds to it.
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