I have been having trouble sleeping lately. I am up, late at night, struggling to turn my stupid brain off and not able to actually take that last step. There are lots of places to get advice on how to deal with insomnia but I already do most of what they recommend so generally it isn't very helpful. Normally I look at the 'get more exercise' recommendation and just sigh because I know that I am not going to do that. I have tried it before and always got bored; it never stuck for more than a few months.
Today I decided to hop back on the wagon with a new (to me) twist; music. I did an hour of yoga with much of it consisting of simply holding a single pose while listening to an entire song. I stayed in tree or downward dog for a very long time while the Corrs pumped through the condo and just closed my eyes, turning off my bodily sensations and ignoring the discomfort. It worked, I think, and I feel really good about it.
Hard to say if this will end up being any different than the other times I tried to incorporate regular exercise into my routine. I always struggle with exercise not being hard, not requiring me to push myself, not scratching that competitive itch. Leagues don't run at times I can make so I am stuck doing it solo and that is a recipe for giving up in my experience. Strange that I took this long to try music; this isn't exactly a new idea for the world even if it is new to me.
Monday, April 1, 2013
Sunday, March 31, 2013
The word is vagina, again.
/sarcasm/ Talking about sex is dangerous. We can't give those teenagers information about it or they will be doing the big nasty in the backseat of cars, on couches at parties, or behind the bleachers. The most important fact we must conceal from their delicate minds is this: Sex is fun. /sarcasm/ Ike linked me to an article about a high school teacher facing disciplinary action for such things as saying the word "vagina" during a science lesson on reproduction, discussing the biology of orgasm, and talking about climate change. Obviously the first charge is preposterous (how exactly can you discuss reproduction without saying vagina aside from silliness like 'vajayjay' or 'lady-parts?') but I expect the real problem was the discussion of orgasm.
There is an irrational perception out there that teenagers might not know that sex is a blast. Perhaps if we only tell them about the nuts and bolts of reproduction they won't figure out that sex is a gigantic party and adults spend an outrageous portion of their lives chasing it... and perhaps not. How one arrives at this position is a bit of a mystery considering that masturbation is a thing that kids do - no parent can possibly have missed that even if they do respond by saying "Don't touch your naughty parts or baby Jesus will cry." Even ignoring that completely though you can't possibly miss the conclusion that sex is on everybody's mind. Look at the magazines in grocery stores, type in any search term into google, or watch any sort of TV show or movie aimed at adults and the constant presence of sex and our insatiable pursuit of it cannot be missed. Teenagers know that we all aren't chasing sex just to make babies!
Orgasms rock. We can't conceal that fact from teenagers no matter how hard we try and we shouldn't try in the first place. Chocolate cake also rocks, as do deep fried Mars bars, candied bacon, and calling in sick to work to play video games. You can't build a good relationship with a temptation by denying the temptation entirely nor can you emphasize good habits when you can't talk about the habit in question. You can call in sick to work to play Mass Effect once a year and it is no problem. You can eat candied bacon once a month and have no worries, or have a slice of chocolate cake every couple days. Orgasms require a slightly different sort of moderation as you can have one every half day or so without issues (that's normal, right?) but other sorts of care and caution are required.
I will say it again: Orgasms rock. The teenagers know this. We can't stop them from desperately pursuing them. All we can do is tell them how best to manage the inherent safety risks anyone chasing orgasms must deal with.
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
The Devil you don't
People are afraid of Facebook and Google. The level of knowledge they have about their users is immense and the world is worried about what is going to happen to that knowledge and how it will be controlled. For example, it is now possible to accurately predict a person's IQ just by looking at their Facebook Likes. (I know IQ is flawed, but predicting it is still both impressive and useful.) Not just that, but all kinds of other things about us that we don't necessarily think should be obvious can be teased out of such data such as our political affiliation, whether or not our parents divorced, whether or not we use drugs, and our incomes.
Obviously we have a reason to be worried about this data being used in ways we don't approve of. I would tend to agree with the majority that this is unfortunate but what people don't seem to get is how prevalent this sort of thing was already. It isn't exactly hard to figure out what profession a person is, how much money they have, what their sexual orientation is, and other factors after only moments of communication face to face. I should know since I did that for a living years ago. An incredible amount of data that we have no control over pours out of us at every one of our meetings - Facebook likes offer a new data stream but the idea that before this no one could figure these things out is ridiculous.
People can tell an incredible amount about you with only tiny amounts of information. Your name, the way you write, where you live, and who your references are are hugely important on a resume even though they cannot make use of facial tics, clothing, or appearance to give up information you want hidden. We stumble through life blithely unaware of how much people can determine about us without our consent or knowledge; the only difference now is that we aren't used to that information stream coming from a website. There is an implicit acceptance that the brand of your watch says volumes about you as a person but a fear that hitting Like on a brand of watch could somehow be a problem.
Sure it might be nice if all that could be eliminated, if somehow we could interface with one another in a sterile vacuum free of any information aside from that which we put in deliberately. That isn't going to happen though, not least because people don't *want* to live in such a place. You can have your sterile passing of information and I will take the messy, ugly, poorly understood real world. Shared glances, knowing smiles, waggling hips, and raised eyebrows are part of my world and I want to keep them. The same goes for trash talking people on Facebook posts and having awesome free email.
The information we reveal to the world digitally can be scary but when compared to what we are already used to revealing it isn't anything special. This is a case of fearing the Devil you don't know rather than sound risk assessment, I think. That doesn't mean we shouldn't push for good privacy controls on platforms such as Facebook and Google; we should, but we need to get over how dangerous companies knowing things about us is. They don't know more than a talented salesman who talked to you for 10 minutes and you hopefully aren't terrified of *that*.
Obviously we have a reason to be worried about this data being used in ways we don't approve of. I would tend to agree with the majority that this is unfortunate but what people don't seem to get is how prevalent this sort of thing was already. It isn't exactly hard to figure out what profession a person is, how much money they have, what their sexual orientation is, and other factors after only moments of communication face to face. I should know since I did that for a living years ago. An incredible amount of data that we have no control over pours out of us at every one of our meetings - Facebook likes offer a new data stream but the idea that before this no one could figure these things out is ridiculous.
People can tell an incredible amount about you with only tiny amounts of information. Your name, the way you write, where you live, and who your references are are hugely important on a resume even though they cannot make use of facial tics, clothing, or appearance to give up information you want hidden. We stumble through life blithely unaware of how much people can determine about us without our consent or knowledge; the only difference now is that we aren't used to that information stream coming from a website. There is an implicit acceptance that the brand of your watch says volumes about you as a person but a fear that hitting Like on a brand of watch could somehow be a problem.
Sure it might be nice if all that could be eliminated, if somehow we could interface with one another in a sterile vacuum free of any information aside from that which we put in deliberately. That isn't going to happen though, not least because people don't *want* to live in such a place. You can have your sterile passing of information and I will take the messy, ugly, poorly understood real world. Shared glances, knowing smiles, waggling hips, and raised eyebrows are part of my world and I want to keep them. The same goes for trash talking people on Facebook posts and having awesome free email.
The information we reveal to the world digitally can be scary but when compared to what we are already used to revealing it isn't anything special. This is a case of fearing the Devil you don't know rather than sound risk assessment, I think. That doesn't mean we shouldn't push for good privacy controls on platforms such as Facebook and Google; we should, but we need to get over how dangerous companies knowing things about us is. They don't know more than a talented salesman who talked to you for 10 minutes and you hopefully aren't terrified of *that*.
Monday, March 25, 2013
Preventing Harm vs. Freedom
On Saturday I talked about changes to Canadian marriage law. Initially I talked about more mainstream effects but the comments went lots of interesting places, particularly when we got to talking about polygamy. Some important definitions:
1. Polygamy. One person married to multiple other people. Often confused with the following:
2. Polygyny. One man married to multiple women.
3. Polyandry. One woman married to multiple men. Relatively rare.
I read the Canadian law against Polygamy and it is completely nuts. In short if you are present (not even participating!) at a commitment ceremony for three people you are guilty of polygamy and subject to up to five years in jail. Five years in jail for *witnessing* three people committing love to one another. You can get the same for just having a sexual relationship with several people concurrently - singles who are playing the field beware! It is abundantly clear that this law is completely idiotic, especially because it explicitly states that the prosecution does not have to prove you had sex, intended to have sex, or even how you intended to commit to one another. All they have to do is disapprove of your life and toss you in jail. Obviously the government doesn't go around actually doing any of this crap. They don't even usually prosecute serious religious polygamists so normal people doing reasonable things are in no danger but having this sort of crazy garbage on the books is dangerous because somebody will eventually try to use it.
The law is nuts but is there an actual argument against polygamy? The difficult part of this question revolves around the fact that if polygamy is allowed it isn't equally split into polygyny and polyandry. There are no societal issues if a few people of comparable ages and social status decide to form some permanent MMF and FFM triads. Nothing bad happens. The problem is that when you allow polygamy in general you get tiny communities like Bountiful where powerful old men marry multiple teenage girls who are under extreme social pressure to accept. In such situations there is much greater abuse, child suffering, and the giant swath of problems that crop up when young men realize their mating opportunities are nil. You want to wreck your society? Convince all the 16-30 year old males that they have no good way to improve their lives and constructively build a home and family.
I don't see any good way to prevent the kind of terrible problems that crop up in religious backwaters that promote these sorts of destructive social constructs. What Canada does not need is an archaic, overly broad law that criminalizes all kinds of perfectly reasonable things. We can vigorously enforce existing laws against child trafficking, kidnapping, and coercive marriages but small religious communities are often insular and difficult to police. You can't even fix the problem by making it illegal for old folks to marry 16 year olds because their marriages aren't legal in the first place. Basically we are stuck cleaning up the mess that the nutters and abusers create because we don't want to deny other people their freedom of religion.
1. Polygamy. One person married to multiple other people. Often confused with the following:
2. Polygyny. One man married to multiple women.
3. Polyandry. One woman married to multiple men. Relatively rare.
I read the Canadian law against Polygamy and it is completely nuts. In short if you are present (not even participating!) at a commitment ceremony for three people you are guilty of polygamy and subject to up to five years in jail. Five years in jail for *witnessing* three people committing love to one another. You can get the same for just having a sexual relationship with several people concurrently - singles who are playing the field beware! It is abundantly clear that this law is completely idiotic, especially because it explicitly states that the prosecution does not have to prove you had sex, intended to have sex, or even how you intended to commit to one another. All they have to do is disapprove of your life and toss you in jail. Obviously the government doesn't go around actually doing any of this crap. They don't even usually prosecute serious religious polygamists so normal people doing reasonable things are in no danger but having this sort of crazy garbage on the books is dangerous because somebody will eventually try to use it.
The law is nuts but is there an actual argument against polygamy? The difficult part of this question revolves around the fact that if polygamy is allowed it isn't equally split into polygyny and polyandry. There are no societal issues if a few people of comparable ages and social status decide to form some permanent MMF and FFM triads. Nothing bad happens. The problem is that when you allow polygamy in general you get tiny communities like Bountiful where powerful old men marry multiple teenage girls who are under extreme social pressure to accept. In such situations there is much greater abuse, child suffering, and the giant swath of problems that crop up when young men realize their mating opportunities are nil. You want to wreck your society? Convince all the 16-30 year old males that they have no good way to improve their lives and constructively build a home and family.
I don't see any good way to prevent the kind of terrible problems that crop up in religious backwaters that promote these sorts of destructive social constructs. What Canada does not need is an archaic, overly broad law that criminalizes all kinds of perfectly reasonable things. We can vigorously enforce existing laws against child trafficking, kidnapping, and coercive marriages but small religious communities are often insular and difficult to police. You can't even fix the problem by making it illegal for old folks to marry 16 year olds because their marriages aren't legal in the first place. Basically we are stuck cleaning up the mess that the nutters and abusers create because we don't want to deny other people their freedom of religion.
Saturday, March 23, 2013
Divvying up the loot
Governments are on a slow path to recognizing alternate forms of marriage from the 'classic' definition. Obviously gay marriage is the big one today but there are other small steps being made; in BC common law marriage is being upgraded to being exactly the same as official marriage. The biggest difference is the 50/50 split of assets accrued during the common law marriage but spousal support and pension benefits are pretty important too.
I have seen some people complaining about this law as being good for con men/women who can get into a relationship and then demand half of their partner's stuff down the road but I think that sort of objection is utterly ridiculous. For starters a confidence game that lasts a number of years and which is worth nothing if detected 18 months in seems like an unlikely proposition. Not only that but this only matters if you can't get the mark to marry you; if you can manage to live with them for years at a time is it really so unlikely that you can't get a ring on your finger?
Really this is just a good step to protect people who have children in a common law relationship, particularly if one of them ceases working to raise the children. After a breakup it is going to be difficult enough raising children alone without the added burden of a career that is broken or nonexistent and having no support. While I went about getting married officially I don't think that there is any particular reason to enforce that. If people want to get married, great, but we should strive to arrange things so that the people in a position of power (those with good careers in common law relationships) cannot abuse their position and leave their former partner out in the cold. There is no need for an official marriage to be required to protect the vulnerable.
This got me thinking about polyamorous relationships and how complex marriage law can be when you consider them in the mix. It is a little complex but certainly not impossible to imagine a cohesive set of laws for 3+ people marrying each other all at once but situations where 1 person is involved in several separate marriages are potentially insanely complicated to work out (graph theory applications!) and adding common law recognition into the mix is nutty. If you have a married couple with a roommate who they sleep with, is the roommate part of their marriage as common law 2 years in? Complicated!
While I would love for polyamorous marriages to be part of the law every time I sit down to figure out exactly how it would work I end up with a bunch of impossible problems and no answers. I guess my hacked together solutions might be better than the current nothing, but making laws on the premise of 'well, this probably isn't worse than what we have...' isn't a great starting point. If anyone knows of somebody who has worked this out in a coherent fashion I would love to read about it.
I have seen some people complaining about this law as being good for con men/women who can get into a relationship and then demand half of their partner's stuff down the road but I think that sort of objection is utterly ridiculous. For starters a confidence game that lasts a number of years and which is worth nothing if detected 18 months in seems like an unlikely proposition. Not only that but this only matters if you can't get the mark to marry you; if you can manage to live with them for years at a time is it really so unlikely that you can't get a ring on your finger?
Really this is just a good step to protect people who have children in a common law relationship, particularly if one of them ceases working to raise the children. After a breakup it is going to be difficult enough raising children alone without the added burden of a career that is broken or nonexistent and having no support. While I went about getting married officially I don't think that there is any particular reason to enforce that. If people want to get married, great, but we should strive to arrange things so that the people in a position of power (those with good careers in common law relationships) cannot abuse their position and leave their former partner out in the cold. There is no need for an official marriage to be required to protect the vulnerable.
This got me thinking about polyamorous relationships and how complex marriage law can be when you consider them in the mix. It is a little complex but certainly not impossible to imagine a cohesive set of laws for 3+ people marrying each other all at once but situations where 1 person is involved in several separate marriages are potentially insanely complicated to work out (graph theory applications!) and adding common law recognition into the mix is nutty. If you have a married couple with a roommate who they sleep with, is the roommate part of their marriage as common law 2 years in? Complicated!
While I would love for polyamorous marriages to be part of the law every time I sit down to figure out exactly how it would work I end up with a bunch of impossible problems and no answers. I guess my hacked together solutions might be better than the current nothing, but making laws on the premise of 'well, this probably isn't worse than what we have...' isn't a great starting point. If anyone knows of somebody who has worked this out in a coherent fashion I would love to read about it.
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
Clean cut boys
A lot of people are talking about the Steubenville rape case. The short form: Some young men get a girl passed out drunk and rape her, take pictures, get convicted to a few years in jail. Much of the media spends endless time talking about how tragic this all is for the rapists (because they are good at football) and pointedly ignores how tragic it is for the victim. The internet then explodes with anger over how so much of the mainstream media engages in slut shaming, even if it is passive.
I gotta side with the internet. These boys committed terrible crimes and deserve serious punishment. While their suffering brings me no joy it is a necessary thing to prevent such crimes in the future. We should spend our time feeling sorry for the real victim if we are going to feel sorry for anyone.
What I do think though is that this misplaced sympathy is easy to explain. Obviously a culture of acceptance of rape as normal or no big deal is partly at fault. However, I think that a big part of the reactions we have seen is simply due to the pictures the public has had access to when viewing this news. I read a bunch of articles to see what exactly was portrayed and repeatedly saw a picture of two young, clean cut young men in nice suits and a picture of a girl passed out drunk at a party in casual clothes. Even if viewers had no particular tendency ahead of time to sympathize with the rapists they sure would after seeing that portrayal of the people involved.
Imagine if the articles instead printed two very different sets of pictures, one with a teenage girl made up nicely in a fancy dress and the other with two high school boys half naked at a party with a beer in each hand leering at the camera and making obscene gestures. You know who everyone would suddenly be sympathizing with, right? There is a reason that lawyers make sure their clients are shaved and dressed up fancy for court; people on the jury are far more likely to believe them innocent.
Of course we shouldn't have to dress people of either gender up in order for others to have sympathy for them. We shouldn't judge people worthy of rape because they drink too much and pass out. Yet, this is what happens. Humans make snap judgements based on appearance that blithely ignore facts and reason. What we should do is recognize this tendency and do our best to correct for it. We all need to focus on what happened in a particular circumstance and try to ignore how the people in question appear. It isn't something we are good at but the more we understand the ways in which we make bad decisions the easier it will become to mitigate this problem.
Pictures from: http://www.newstatesman.com/laurie-penny/2013/03/steubenville-rape-cultures-abu-ghraib-moment
I gotta side with the internet. These boys committed terrible crimes and deserve serious punishment. While their suffering brings me no joy it is a necessary thing to prevent such crimes in the future. We should spend our time feeling sorry for the real victim if we are going to feel sorry for anyone.
What I do think though is that this misplaced sympathy is easy to explain. Obviously a culture of acceptance of rape as normal or no big deal is partly at fault. However, I think that a big part of the reactions we have seen is simply due to the pictures the public has had access to when viewing this news. I read a bunch of articles to see what exactly was portrayed and repeatedly saw a picture of two young, clean cut young men in nice suits and a picture of a girl passed out drunk at a party in casual clothes. Even if viewers had no particular tendency ahead of time to sympathize with the rapists they sure would after seeing that portrayal of the people involved.
Imagine if the articles instead printed two very different sets of pictures, one with a teenage girl made up nicely in a fancy dress and the other with two high school boys half naked at a party with a beer in each hand leering at the camera and making obscene gestures. You know who everyone would suddenly be sympathizing with, right? There is a reason that lawyers make sure their clients are shaved and dressed up fancy for court; people on the jury are far more likely to believe them innocent.
Of course we shouldn't have to dress people of either gender up in order for others to have sympathy for them. We shouldn't judge people worthy of rape because they drink too much and pass out. Yet, this is what happens. Humans make snap judgements based on appearance that blithely ignore facts and reason. What we should do is recognize this tendency and do our best to correct for it. We all need to focus on what happened in a particular circumstance and try to ignore how the people in question appear. It isn't something we are good at but the more we understand the ways in which we make bad decisions the easier it will become to mitigate this problem.
Pictures from: http://www.newstatesman.com/laurie-penny/2013/03/steubenville-rape-cultures-abu-ghraib-moment
Monday, March 18, 2013
Destroying a country with no shots fired
Cyprus has been having some financial difficulties and are now in the unenviable position of needing a bailout. The EU and IMF were willing to step in with some conditions. This story is nothing new as lots of EU countries have been bailed out with strings attached. The strings have been painful and caused all kinds of strife but they have at least been very defensible: Insisting that a government try to balance its books before loaning them money isn't crazy. In Cyprus' case though things went to bonkerstown.
The EU demanded a one time tax on all bank savings between 6% and 10%. (Even funnier, the tax is such that someone holding 99,999 pays 6,749 and someone holding 100,000 pays 9,900!) Not a tax on all holdings, or net worth, or investments, or anything else but specifically bank savings. Can anyone predict what would happen next? Well gee, I guess every resident of Cyprus will run to the bank, get their money out, and put it under their mattress! Which they tried to do, until the government shut down the banks to avoid a run that would bankrupt every single bank in the country. So now the country is effectively operating without banks, the citizens are righteously outraged, and revolution is on their minds.
How in the hell does an idea this colossally stupid get rubber stamped by so many people including the leaders of Cyprus? Nobody in the entire chain of events noticed that this tax could be avoided by a full withdrawal? I know that a flat tax on all cash and assets (as in Monopoly) wouldn't be practical but at least it wouldn't immediately cause a run on every bank in the country.
Sthenno was talking to me about this and he pointed out that this is tantamount to the government of Canada simply nationalizing Bell and Rogers and taking all of their money. No foul, right, because the IMF officially sanctions the seizing of private property... hell, they require it!
The EU was an interesting experiment that sure seems to be unravelling at a ever increasing pace. Having no way for a country to get out of nasty debt and deficit problems is a disaster. There are really good reasons for countries that can't get it together to have their own currencies and be responsible for their own problems and this certainly provides a great illustration of that fact. Not that leaving the EU will necessarily help those countries, mind, but at least the tensions between Germany and the rest of Europe wouldn't be going so bad so fast if they weren't in a position of enforcing lunatic policies on deadbeat nations.
The EU demanded a one time tax on all bank savings between 6% and 10%. (Even funnier, the tax is such that someone holding 99,999 pays 6,749 and someone holding 100,000 pays 9,900!) Not a tax on all holdings, or net worth, or investments, or anything else but specifically bank savings. Can anyone predict what would happen next? Well gee, I guess every resident of Cyprus will run to the bank, get their money out, and put it under their mattress! Which they tried to do, until the government shut down the banks to avoid a run that would bankrupt every single bank in the country. So now the country is effectively operating without banks, the citizens are righteously outraged, and revolution is on their minds.
How in the hell does an idea this colossally stupid get rubber stamped by so many people including the leaders of Cyprus? Nobody in the entire chain of events noticed that this tax could be avoided by a full withdrawal? I know that a flat tax on all cash and assets (as in Monopoly) wouldn't be practical but at least it wouldn't immediately cause a run on every bank in the country.
Sthenno was talking to me about this and he pointed out that this is tantamount to the government of Canada simply nationalizing Bell and Rogers and taking all of their money. No foul, right, because the IMF officially sanctions the seizing of private property... hell, they require it!
The EU was an interesting experiment that sure seems to be unravelling at a ever increasing pace. Having no way for a country to get out of nasty debt and deficit problems is a disaster. There are really good reasons for countries that can't get it together to have their own currencies and be responsible for their own problems and this certainly provides a great illustration of that fact. Not that leaving the EU will necessarily help those countries, mind, but at least the tensions between Germany and the rest of Europe wouldn't be going so bad so fast if they weren't in a position of enforcing lunatic policies on deadbeat nations.
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