Gutsy move on Hallowe'en

Tonight we went through the Hallowe'en ritual.  Elli got really into it and was rushing ahead, desperate with excitement.  She mostly behaved herself though we did have to discourage asking for seconds and remind her to say Thank You regularly.  The obligatory shot of the loot gathered in 1 hour and 15 minutes:

She made her Daddy proud and still had just a couple leftovers from last year's candy when we went out tonight - I did the same thing when I was young.  Good thing she plans to spend the whole year eating this stuff because the amount of candy she has here is completely ridiculous.

One thing I found really interesting was that we met up with a group of Trick Or Treaters who had a couple members passing out cards and speeches instead of begging for candy.  They were campaigning for people to not give out gummy wurm type treats due to them containing animal parts (gelatin) and talking about making Hallowe'en vegetarian friendly.  Their other talking point was asking for people to not give out Nestle products on the basis that Nestle relies on child labour in poor countries to produce their goods.  A cursory internet search bears out this claim and even Nestle doesn't deny it - they basically use the defence that they don't employ children but that the only places they can get their resources are places where children are used and abused by the local institutions.  I don't like the idea of child labour one bit but I wonder if this is a fight I want to get involved in.

We were Trick Or Treating with another family and their reaction to this was along the lines of "Wow, it is so sad to see kids being politically active so young instead of just enjoying the holiday."  I don't see it that way at all.  A 10 year old who is aware of these issues and has the guts to go out on Hallowe'en spreading the word and making their protest known peacefully gets a huge thumbs up from me.  None of them need a sack of sugary crap and missing out on that is nothing compared to the experience of getting out there and trying to make the world a better place.  I don't buy into the vegetarian argument personally but that doesn't diminish my admiration one bit.  Mad props for having the guts and initiative to go out there and do that.

I wish

Charlie Stross posted twice recently on the subject of three wishes.  The first was a simple "You get three wishes!" and the second was "You get three wishes but your worst enemy gets double what you wish for!"  Of course the second one isn't very interesting - the classic answer is to wish to lose one eye, but wishing to lose one kidney, wishing for half of a nuclear weapon which will detonate in 10 seconds or other such notions are the same, if funny.

I don't find it very interesting to sit around trying to determine who can come up with the most legalistically bulletproof Happiness For All wish wording so I tend to restrict myself to wishes that just work on me.  Without that distinction I think people generally end up spending all their time wishing for happiness for all (as defined by each individual) and then wishing for nobody else to get any wishes to prevent some jackass from later ruining everything by wishing for a gajillion dollars and for everybody else to be 1 centimeter tall.  This also hopefully means that the genie/god/witch granting my wishes won't get all bitter on my ass and destroy my life since they tend to have issues with people trying to do too much.

1.  I wish to be able to prevent or repair any harm or degradation that may occur to my body, memory or mind at will.

Sort of like invulnerability, except I can allow myself to die or be hurt if I want to.

2.  I wish to have the ability to teleport myself safely and comfortably at 99% of the speed of light to any location I can clearly identify.

Best to not risk violating causality, hence the 99% restriction.  Unfortunately this means visiting other star systems isn't feasible.  I could take a jaunt out to Mars though.

3.  I wish to be completely unaffected by wishes made by other people.

This seems prudent since apparently I live in a world where wishes exist.  I want to avoid preventing other people's wishes entirely but I don't want to get ganked by them.

If my worst enemy got these powers I wouldn't actually be overly concerned.  Mostly the people I hate the most are people who are powerful socially in terms money or influence and I while I wouldn't especially want them to become more powerful I am not sure this would even change that overly much.

Apocalypse

Wendy sent me a linke to a marvellous little poem about the impending apocalypse - that is, the way in which every generation has its own set of apocalptical predictions.  I normally abhor poetry but this I like.  Not to say poetry is bad, mind, just that it generally isn't my cup of tea.

Go read the poem!

Not to diminish the fact that nuclear weapons, global warming or the second coming (okay, maybe not that) are actual threats and need to be taken seriously but we need to understand that hysteria and doomsaying will do nothing to solve the problem.  The solution, as always, lies somewhere in the realm of careful examination and measured responses.

Proving a Point

I was perusing Google+ today and saw a link by The Cheerleader to this video.



It is a short video of the Peter Schiff, CEO of a major investing firm, going out to talk to the Occupy Wall Street protesters.  In the video Schiff looks like a smart guy and the protesters look a bit foolish and inarticulate.  There are plenty of videos on Youtube about this event of course and the great majority have a major slant one way or the other.  The ones generally linked off of boingboing show the 1% looking foolish and the ones linked off of right wing sites and new sources generally show the 99% looking foolish.  Neither of those things is particularly convincing since you can find a nervous, ill informed advocate of any point of view and demolish them on video and it proves nothing about the fundamental issues being discussed.

More than posting 'my side wins!' videos on Youtube we actually need to look at the underlying issues that are causing this discontent and see how best to address them.  There is a major increase in wealth disparity going on in the US and the combination of that, a major economic slump, inflating debt levels and the recent meltdown are making a lot of people angry.  You can't get rid of their anger or the real concerns they have with the way government is handling the issue by trivializing them.  You also can't get real action on the issues by chucking things at police either; extremist action on both sides is counterproductive.

Shiny new things

Take a look at the following picture and tell me what the object in it is useful for.

Maybe you are a wiseass and you answer "It is a kitchen counter, useful for putting other kitchen implements on."  However, the most common answer would be "It is a toothbrush, useful for cleaning teeth."  Both answers are wrong: It is a tummy smoother, hairbrush, nose cleaner, magic wand, gun, pen and table polisher.

Elli got a new toothbrush at the dentist today and it has served all those purposes and more since.  She has been utterly unwilling to part with it to the extent that I had to use this generic toothbrush in my picture because her new pink and purple Ariel the Mermaid toothbrush is tucked into bed with her for the night.  Adults get stuck on new things and love to wear or use new possessions but this is a whole new level of attachment.  The toothbrush is her all, her everything, and must travel absolutely everywhere with her.  All imaginative play is based around what her toothbrush is at this very moment.  Bizarre.

Madness down south

I have been perusing the Republican presidential candidate's pitches and websites a little and it is a completely bonkers world that they live in.  Herman Cain, the current leader in the latest poll that I found, has some really juicy and terrible things on his website talking about his plan for taxation and economic reform.

First off, he proposes a 9/9/9 plan, which will reduce income taxes and business taxes to 9% flat rate and will also introduce a sales tax of 9%.  While I agree that shifting the tax burden to sales taxes rather than income taxes has some merits I must question the need to massively shift the tax burden away from businesses.  Cain also plans to eliminate taxes completely on capital gains - which of course means that the wealthy might well have income tax rates as low as 1%.  Essentially this is an undisguised attempt to shift the burden of paying for government spending almost entirely onto the shoulders of the poor by reducing the taxes of the rich by 50-90% and business by 75%.  The hilarious thing is that even though the plan is pitched as a good thing for the average taxpayer it is, for 84% of the bottom half of the country, a tax hike instead.

There is also the obligatory pandering to Christianity, but Herman Cain is not one to sit on the sidelines, but rather he credits the success of the US entirely to its being the country favoured by God.

And to send a message to the rest of the world when Communism was on the rise in the 1950s, Congress added the words “under God” to our pledge of allegiance. They were not just words. It was a collective reaffirmation that we know the ultimate source of our greatness as a nation.


 Link


Gak.

There are plenty of other things that made me sigh when Cain talks about healthcare, education or other such matters but in those arenas I think the waters are more muddy.  He is wrong about everything (or at least everything he cared to put on the website) but it is much more difficult to pin down exactly where and how he is wrong.

The thing I wonder is whether or not having someone with such incredibly hardcore pro rich, pro religion policies is a good thing or a bad thing.  First off, if these things help him not get elected then it is a good thing.  If he does get elected and tries to implement them though... yikes.  If you think Occupy Wall Street is a problem now, imagine what will happen when the rich pay 75% less into government coffers and the poor can expect no health care nor welfare to pay for it.

God thinks the USA should rule the world.  Also, screw the poor.  Vote Cain!

And yet this works.


Hilarious addendum:  A Cain promo video showing how cool Cain's chief of staff is by smoking during the video.

Searching for truth

I went to a funeral today for someone I have met, but could not recall in any meaningful way.  I had to reassure Wendy that I would not cause problems beforehand as we were going to a traditional Catholic funeral in a church.  There are plenty of versions of Christianity that I don't like but which aren't really that harmful but Catholicism is the big baddie; making massive efforts to prevent distribution and use of condoms in areas that have HIV infection rates over 10% (I have seen reports as high as 40%, which is really awful) is just unforgivable.

Things actually went less badly than I had thought as the great majority of the service was conducted in Polish, a language I have zero comprehension of.  It is tricky to be irritated at what is being said when you can't even figure out what that might be.  I did find though that everything that was said just set me off; a long speech about the value of searching for truth was the capstone.  Searching for what truth exactly?  Doing whatever some old white dude in the Vatican says?  Doing whatever it was that people like you have always done regardless of how much trouble that caused and how much suffering will ensue?  Bah.  The search for truth is looking for answers to questions and being willing to change based on the answers you find, not just deciding that what your grandparents' cultural leader did must clearly have been true and right and ignoring all evidence to the contrary.

It continues to amaze me that people within the church can be so supportive of its policies that discriminate against them in particular.  The Catholic church is massively discriminatory against women and homosexuals (though they often try to pretend not to discriminate against women these days) as well as other groups and yet there are women happily? serving in subordinate positions despite the sexism that prevents them having any significant authority or visibility.  It drives me bonkers to listen to church leaders talking about women in glowing terms and complimenting their accomplishments while simultaneously slamming the door in their faces.  Sorry, I like you well enough, but God hates you.  Go read the Bible if you don't believe me!

I probably should just avoid churches entirely.  Sitting there seething isn't helping anything; I should either get out my spray paint and bucket of blood and have at their symbols with a vengeance or just stay away entirely.  I really want to utter some kind of binding oath to never darken the doorstep of a church again but practicality has stopped me thus far.  Eventually this would cause me to miss the wedding or funeral of someone I cared about, that or renounce my vow which makes it not much of a vow at all.