Rob Ford for ex-Mayor (hey hey hey, goodbye)

Rob Ford is out of office. And there was much rejoicing.

The only question I have...well, I have two, but let's focus on the first. The first question I have is how, exactly, did he get into office? I know much of the city was pissed at David Miller, and not for unreasonable reasons. Transit City, among other things, was a hodge-podge of lines, some of which even made sense (I'm not sold on a Jane Street LRT and I do wish that I had included a sorely needed Downtown Relief Line subway); he mishandled the civil servants (aka, the garbage strike) of 2009; and

Rob Ford, by contrast, was full of hot air, bluster and poorly concieved ideas.

His subways "plan" might as well have been sketched on the back of a napkin, and how exactly extending the underused Sheppard Line further east would have helped benefit the city is a mystery to me. Thank God he didn't get the chance to be rid of the city's streetcars (an opinion that will evapourate when our snazzy new streetcars hit the streets in two year's time). It never had any serious funding behind it, and any attempt to suppose that the private sector would magic a subway into existence was just delusion.

When Karen Stintz succeeded in getting council to return to the Transit City-esque light rail plans, Ford should have learned something. He didn't. Fortunately, he has not succeeded in disrupting Toronto transit plans any further. Chanting "subways subways subways" will not magic them into existence, and the Federal and Provincial governments have bigger problems on their hands than funding subways (and I do not think they have any idea of how urban transport works---looking at you Tim Hudak!).

This does not take into considerationt he many smaller offences, some of which were really trivial but compounded themselves to the point where they were anything but invisible. The point is not that he could be acquitted of them or that they are relatively minor; the point is he keeps accruing them. The point is that he is simply too obtuse to understand why, say, yelling at a reporter for trespassing on land that was not his, or calling 911 on This Hour Has 22 Minutes, or reading documents while driving, is problem both as a mayor or a citizen.

Ford can run in the byelection to be held to choose a successor and the 2014 election. I pray that he does not win either: in his ruling the judge described Ford as having a sense of entitlement, among other unflattering things. The Toronto right wing is hopping mad at this, and would likely make hay of Ford being sidelined by a politically motivated aggressor. If they truly think that this is an appropriate narrative to run under, they are very, very stupid.

Rob Ford lost because he did not understand the law. If he wins again, it will be because we do not want to understand it either.

Straw Feminism and Daria

Daria is one of my all time favourite shows. It is an exemplary show involving a female protaginist and strong women characters. However, for such a woman-centred show it does have an interesting example of a stereotypical feminist in the form of Ms. Barch. A bitter misandrist woman who never fails to espouse her hatred towards men (more specifically a former husband). This is a paradox: how can a show that sets a new high for woman have a straw feminist (and to a lesser extent, Mr. O'Neil, whose sensitivity is played for laughs)? How can a show that challenged gender perceptions be, at the same time, critical of challenging gender perceptions?

I'd argue that the reason for this is the perception of feminism and its usefulness in the mid-90s. Furthermore, I'd argue Daria's feminism is undercut additionnally by the show's focus on Daria as an outsider rebelling against an indifferent world.

The nineties were a more liberal decade than the one that preceeded it. AIDS awareness was challenging both the stigma of AIDS as a gay disease and the stereotype of the liscentious homosexual; women were more prominent in popular culture (eg, Alanis Moresette, Courtney Love, the Spice Gils) and politics (eg, Hilary Clinton) than before. After all, this was the decade of 'Girl Power' and 'Lillith Fest.' The Soviet Union was gone, ending, at least theoretically, the tough macho pose of the decade before. In theory, the 90s should have been a more liberating decade for women, and a time for gender and sexual norms to be challenged. Which, I won't deny, they were.

However, the conservativism of the eighties cast a long shadow. The liberalism of the 90s was still shaped by that, even deferential to it. Bill Clinton was involved in many battles with a Republican Congress, specifically over health care and his eventual impeachment. In the last decade the extremeley popular Reagan and Bush administrations had reinvigorated American standing and the world and prosecuted the successful Gulf War. In effect, the Republicans succeeded where the Democrats had failed and smugly define the course of American politics for the next decade. Politically or culturally there were limits to what liberalism could accomplish. Bill Clinton, for all his popularity and political gifts, could only accomplish so much.

Similarly, alot of what could be seen as "liberating" for women does not hold up to closer scrutiny. The Spice Girls, who were extremley popular in 1997 when Daria premiered, yes, boasted about "Girl Power." However, "Girl Power" is a slogan, not a philosophy. A very useful way to market pop music to young girls, not ideas about equality or freedom. "Girl Power" proved to be as empowering to women as sugary treats are nutritious. While there were examples to the contrary they struggled to be as mainstream as, frankly, women artisits are today. While Lady Gaga and her ilk may not have been as high quality as artisits of the nineties, there are pushing buttons and boundaries alot more influentially than similar artists of the time.

Which brings us back to Ms. Barch's ramblings. If you were an intelligent teenage girl, you could see that Ms. Barch's arguments against men holding women back (and Mr. O'Neil's attempts to talk about feelings) as leftovers from the sixties and seventies---an argument that lost. The feminism of the time that preceeded the nineties would have been seen as quaint and out of touch. If Daria was good at anything, it would be pointing out the difference between what was said and what was lived.

Does Daria consider herself to be a feminist? At no point do "feminist" themes creep into the show: they are not, for example, fighting to get into male dominated spaces such as sports. Daria's anger is focused more on parochial and superfical mind than on gender inequality as a whole---if pressed, I believe she would argue that gender inequlity is part and parcel of living in a world of the self interested and shallow. Daria and Jane defend their freedom of expression; Jane joins the track team with no resistance. Daria and Jane push boundaries and challenge assumptions as intellectuals---not as women.

Does that mean Daria is a success or failure to women or feminism? Its a difficult question to answer and depends heavily on whether it is important that Daria challenge assumptions for the benefit of women as a whole. Daria is focused on intellectual revolt as opposed to feminist revolt: fighting the tide of mediocrity and closed mindedness, frustrated that she was alone in the fight. On the one hand, fighting on behalf of women would have meant forming closer relationships to women not on Daria's level---something Daria could do, but not easily. She was not the sort of person to get close to anyone that did not assure her of being sufficently open minded. Even at its most generous, this elitist attitude would comprimise any efforts towards equality.

If Daria was made today would the show be more feminist? Likely, since the Republican war of women's health and gay marriage struggles have made feminism more relevant to the present generation than probably in the nineties. However, something that defines Daria is the nineties spirit of the jaded, misunderstood loner lost in an empty sea, which, by its nature, is not a feminist position. It is a human position, and it could be argued a superior one.

A Mild Dissent to John Scalzi

...'cause I wasn't just stroking his ego over the SWM-thing.

Don’t get cocky.

Hey, I'm Canadian. Alot of the stuff thats being decided in the states is old hat here. Seriously---you out Canada'd Canada last week. Don't think I don't feel a little impressed.

2012′s electoral coalition isn’t automatically permanent.

No, but its durable. The Republican party, simply put, has no clue on Earth how to engage black, gay or Hispanic voters. They have not played a significant part in the American political process until very recently. Heck, the Republicans lost blacks quite a while ago: check how many black people support the Republican party today.  How many did Bush win? Now how many did Clinton win?

Yeah, there are conservative-leaning factions within those groups, but how many votes can the Republicans reasonably expect from them? Romeny got seven percent of the black vote. It took the Republicans, what, fifty years until Reagan to win the white working class over? Sheer inertia is going to keep the Obama coalition together for a decade and more.

Don’t think the GOP is stupid

I'd believe you if the GOP wasn't doing everything in their power to support that. The conservative movement in America has developed an intellectual appartus that will make actual reform if not impossible, than at least exceptionaly difficult, at least for the next two to three electoral cycles. Conservatisim in the United States is going to remain pernicious and unrealistic for some time, and might actually get a heck of a lot worse long before it gets better. If the Republicans do comprimise even slightly with President Obama, the hue and cry that will result will limit their ability to enact further comprimises, or torpedo it. Republicans operate under an iron clad intellectual discipline and a myopic vision of the world. Breaking that habit is not going to be easy.

My prediction is that the president of 2016 will be a Democrat, though 2020 on the Republicans should make a comeback, at least the way Jimmy Carter was able to become president between two Republican presidencies. The resulting president will be competent, but that will depend on how willing Americans will be to ditch the culture war baggage of the past several decades. Since Nixon the Republicans have tarred the Democrats as being incredibly socially permissive and financially reckless, and a new narrative must arise to replace it. The Republicans don't, and until it sinks in won't, get that.

The Republicans are now the party of unnecessary war and bigotry---even the most moderate Republican candidate is going to be tarred with that brush, particularly from his own ostensible side. A problem because they'll be able to shout him down until he (and it will be a he, let's be real here) falls back into line.

Nothing’s been decided but who was elected president

Quite a few things were decided, in point of fact: Washington and Colorado legalized weed, gay marriage passed in three states, an anti-gay marriage amendment passed in another, the first openly gay senator, and the most women in the Senate in American history. In other words, the ball is no in liberal America's court. The wind is under the Democrat's wings. As I've stated, the whole forty-to-fifty political narrative of the United States has changed. Its going to take time for that to change, and I believe I should be optimistic.

Lovers in a Dangerous Time: The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

One minute you're waiting for the sky to fall, next you're dazzled by the beauty of it all.
---Lovers in a Dangerous Time

Hazel Grace is sixteen years old and running out of time. Dying of thyroid cancer, bought precious months of time by a miraculous cancer drug, she spends her remaining days obssesed with the novel An Imperial Affliction. The book ends in mid sentence, frustrating her to no end. Her mother insists she attend a support group for kids with cancer, wherein she meets Augustus Waters (whose only on a roller coaster that only goes up, my friends), and the two spark a relationship and seek out An Imperial Affliction's reclusive author.

Okay, I might want to drop everything and spend the rest of my life fighting cancer now. This book is fucking miraculous. This is a novel written specifically to spite aspiring writers by being so damn good.

Okay, okay, I'll actually try to review this.

The characters are a little too eloquent for their age, in my eyes. That gets distracting. I think thats the only fault I can think of, since the characters are excellent, and believable. They aren't saintly angles that they mock in the subgenre of cancer books.

Part of what makes this book really good is that in large part it was inspired by a real person: Esther Earl, a sixteen year old girl who had cancer. She isn't an expy of Hazel: Hazel was sullen, Esther chirpy and happy despite the fact she was dying. She was part of the Nerdfighter's, John Green's followers, and had an active vlog that she updated until a week before she passed away. It has an intimate and personal, realistic look at cancer, especially for someone so young.

But its never sad or saccharine. Augustus and Hazel are in love, true and deep. Love that, unforunately, comes with a hefty price tag. But the upside is every second was spent in deep, honest passion. Passion often sought, rarely found.

Some infinities are longer than others, and the infinity spent reading this book was not wasted.

Hypothesis: World War Z as the end of zombie mania

The World War Z trailer is out. I think it looks stupid. I have not read the book. I hear the book is pretty good. The movie's production has been...rocky, to say the least.

If the movie fails, which is a very realistic possibility given stories of reshoots and reedits, and changes to the script after the movie was done (never a good sign, that) what will that mean for the humble zombie? I submit that it will make any production of zombie related movies and TV difficult.

Example: The seventies fad of disaster movies. 'The Towering Inferno,' 'The Poseidon Adventure,' 'Airport,' and The Swarm. After the movie 'Airplane!' satirized the genre it became impossible to take it seriously, and despite the odd movie hither and yon (there was a moderate renaissance of disaster movies, in the form of Twister, Armageddon and Deep Impact, and Volcano and Dante's Peak) disaster movies haven't taken off as they have.

Genres are incredibly fragile things. Granted, the zombie apocalypse sub genre is reasonably robust with a broad body of media, such as The Walking Dead, which is reputed to be good. However, it dosen't take much, just a few bad entries, before it becomes impossible to take seriously. That, and the whole zombie craze has been going on for a decade, and while its been a fun ride, you really have to ask yourself: how much farther can this thing go?

I think within the next half decade we're going to start seeing serious parodies come out, which is always the sign that the powers that be who give us our books and movies have grown weary of putting the same thing over and over. Remember The Da Vinci Code from five years ago? Apparently, we're beginning to be on the downward slide from the YA dystopia boom of the past five years. After the Hunger Games movies are complete, and after the adaptations of related works, we'll start seeing something new---never a bad thing. A disappointing thing to be sure, but not bad.

I feel kind of the same way about superhero movies, which have no doubt hit their peak and by 2015-ish we'll have a rejuvenated Star Wars boom to provide large scale sci-fi action. Just an organic process, really, just the beat of time, and the beat always must go on.

An open letter to Orson Scott Card

Mr. Card,

It is with great interest that I read your Civilization Watch article that appeared following the reelection of President Obama. I was most interested in your opinion, because, frankly, I cannot fathom how someone who has written one of the most treasured works of science fiction can be so absolutist and projecting most ferociously your own faults onto President Obama. I would also like to speak to you about certain opinions that are, being most sincere in my honesty, destined to condemn you to self imposed obscurity. Your right to hold these opinions is not in dispute: the innate quality of them, however, most definitely are.

I

Your opinions regarding same sex marriage should not be condemned automatically. I am Canadian, where we have had same sex marriage for the better part of a decade and I would defend to the end the right of homosexuals to marry; however, I would not disrespect your religious beliefs which you hold so strongly. I do not understand them, I do not share them, but I will concede that you can hold them and not wish ill will upon a homosexual. Opposing same sex marriage legislation is in my mind a horrible mistake, but I will no doubt that you can do so and truly not possess any malice in your heart.

I daresay that your grasp of the same sex marriage isue is at the level of an obnoxious child.

I would like to state the goals of the same sex marriage movement: to bestow upon homosexual couples the equal dignity of marriage that heterosexual couples have; to allow for homosexual partners to have equal access to their partner's medical benefits and medical insurance; to recieve spousal benefits that heterosexual couples enjoy. Furthermore, to protect from harassment and violence of adolescents who are developing an understanding of their sexual identities.

It is an imperfect process, to be sure. Immoderate and unreasonable people within the movement are trying to shout down the opposing side. However, assuming that by enlarging the circle of values we have to include people whose behaviour you disagree with and rationalize that its proponents are doing it out of hatred for traditional values and those who hold them---that is inexcusable. Contemptible behaviour by a few is not an excuse to decry the aspirations of the many.

Your response to a government that would sanction homosexual couples to wed is, in your utterly disgenious words: "Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down, so it can be replaced with a government that will respect and support marriage, and help me raise my children in a society where they will expect to marry in their turn. Only when the marriage of heterosexuals has the support of the whole society can we have our best hope of raising each new generation to aspire to continue our civilization.."

Your attempt to "contextualize" this statement is appallling to the intellect. I am disappointed to be unable to find a copy online of the article in which these words appear, in high likelihood that the publishers have deleted it out of sheer embarssment.

In your recent novella "Hamlet's Father" it has been reported that you have written a very skewed work of fiction regarding same sex relationships, and I think that your attempts to reply to your critics are utterly, utterly disingenous.

To wit: "But the lie is this, that "the focus is primarily on linking homosexuality with ... pedophilia." The focus isn't primarily on this because there is no link whatsoever between homosexuality and pedophilia in this book. Hamlet's father, in the book, is a pedophile, period. I don't show him being even slightly attracted to adults of either sex. It is the reviewer, not me, who has asserted this link, which I would not and did not make."

From your essay Homosexual Marriage and Civilization:

"The dark secret of homosexual society—the one that dares not speak its name—is how many homosexuals first entered into that world through a disturbing seduction or rape or molestation or abuse, and how many of them yearn to get out of the homosexual community and live normally"

These are your words, sir.

II

I would like to address now your most recent Civilization Watch article. Namely, the self righteous sense of fury that you extend to homosexuals extends to the Obama government and the media. You attribute Obama's victory to the machinations of the media, who allegedly duped the American people by unfairly highlighting the good deeds of Obama while overplaying the mistakes of the Bush administration.
  "If Barack Obama had a propaganda minister with the power to shut you down if you ran stories that embarrassed him or his administration, would your station, your network, your newspaper, your magazine still be in business?   If America had a Joseph Goebbels who would arrest any journalist who reported anything that would make the administration look bad, did you write or say or report anything during this election campaign that would have put you inside a jail cell?   Everybody at Fox News would have been jailed, and Fox News would have been shut down. But you already do everything you can to get people not to listen to Fox, so the actions of such a propaganda minister would merely make official what you already try to accomplish by other means.

Don't you dare say I'm lying or exaggerating, because the Democrats did try to shut down conservative talk radio, and you supported them in that effort, allowing them to get away with calling the proposed action "fairness."


In your preferred source for News, Fox News, Barack Obama states the Fairness Doctrine is not now, nor has it ever been, an objective of his government. I am reluctant to include any news postings from the internet about Congressional Democrats, at least, from any news sources I do not consider to be anything but hopelessly prejudiced. I do not have the luxury of selecting my sources based on my convictions.


"But far more likely is the other alternative -- that, faced with your monolithic groupthink, your insistent flacking for the Beloved Leader, your dishonesty that is equal to his dishonesty, your emulation of Pravda, the Republicans in Congress will give up, Fox News will drop the story, it will all go away, and the Beloved Leader will continue in power.   Then, when his appeasement of our enemies results in a nuclear explosion in Tel Aviv ...   When more and more Al-Qaeda-style attacks kill more Jews and more Americans around the world ...   When Obama's incompetent and anti-scientific economic policies have the consequences that such policies always have, and the American economy collapses under the weight of debts and entitlements ...   When Obama's crushing policies result in American healthcare sinking to the low level of service, the endless waiting lists, the needless death and suffering in the name of "fairness" that already afflict Europeans and Canadians ...   When the burden of ever-steeper taxes moves capital and industry and innovation to other countries ...

Will you step forward and take responsibility, and say, "We should have known; in fact we did know, but we did not tell you"?

I do not relish having to explain to a multiple award winning author what the Slippery Slope fallacy is. I also find it hilarious for you to lecture the allegedly liberal media about hyperbole and misinformation when you have so much on display (to wit). Everything you attribute to Obama has been done by the Republican Party, particularly debt and outsourcing everything in the American economy that isn't nailed down. But all that is covered by the liberal media, isn't it? The vengeful, biased mainstream media. You don't want to be "misled" by the liberal media, so you would rather hear from true, real Americans? Right?

I consider your inability to be receptive to anything other than conservative media and arguments to be a major failing---and you can throw in my face any accusation that I am doing the same, preferring strictly liberal sources of information. Fine. So be it. I actually expect it. Let the first stone fly.

 Your article is a frenzied tantrum of a man unable to conceptualize a positive way to interact with the larger world.

For that you have my pity.

III

Mr. Card, you are living in self imposed isolation. You risk destroying your aritistic reputation and legacy. I am neither the first nor the last person to be disappointed with you. Ender's Game is a landmark in science fiction. I have enjoyed it every since I was eleven---my first "grown up" science fiction novel. I would like to thank you, sir. At a time when I needed it you provided me with the first step into the larger science fiction genre. The praise for that is inexpressable. But I must be realistic about Orson Scott Card the author of Ender's Game and Orson Scott Card the author of jeremiads and polemics.

I haven't decided whether or not to see the Ender's Game movie coming out next year. I don't wish to support the National Organization for Marriage. I do not wish to interfere in the private lives of others. But I am confident in 2016, when the Republican Party (assuming it survives the brutal civil war that will follow this election) will be forced to make a choice between pragmitism and your branch of outrageous politics, you will be disappointed.

I am not asking you to change your opinions out of an attempt to enforce intellectual conformity. What you must do, I am afraid, is to adjust your manner and patterns of thinking. For the past decade you have not only been swimming against the tide of history, but justifying with with utterly disgusting arguments and alarmist rhetoric. You are increasingly unable to take seriously. You risk alienating a new generation from enjoying your classic work, and that is not fair to art. As an individual, not so much.

You can denounce me as another brainwashed left of centre useful idiot. I won't throw any gauntlets down demanding you change your opinions. I doubt I alone can accomplish that.That is your buisness. I have said my piece.

Sincerley,

Ian Cordingley

My thoughts on the Lucasarts sale, as it is probably a requirement

The Mouse House now owns the Star Wars trilogy. I am saying this for the benefit of the one person who does not know this, in his comfortable bubble. The internet has been all a Twitter (I made a funny!) over the news, especially the news that a seventh episode of Star Wars is a comin' for 2015. George Lucas will be "consulting", although its probably no secret he wants out of the empire he created, which probably motivated the decision to sell Lucasarts.

Lucas was never the biggest force in creating Star Wars, and it is to the detriment to the movie series that he had iron-fisted control over making the prequels. It wouldn't surprise me if he wanted out, and probably has for the longest time. Star Wars has been a creative albatross around his neck. He cannot do story and characters as well as he would like to (as evidence, look at the fact the best Star Wars movie, The Empire Strikes Back, had a cowriter and a different director), and its for the best if he sticks to the avant garde visual stuff he's always wanted to do but never got the chance to because of his indebtedness to the Star Wars trilogy.

He's out of his cage now, and I hope he uses his new resources wisely. Ideally he should be a producer, nuturing and encouraging a new generation of talent. I'm not forbidding him from making movies: I'm not a spiteful fan who hates him from everything he's ever done. If he wants to retire, put his feet up and enjoy having enough money to give everyone in the United States a university education twice over, then good for him.

Good news is that Lucas cannot release anymore insipid revisions to the Original Trilogy. Furthermore, a release of the original, unmolested trilogy is pretty much guaranteed---yes, Disney loves money and there are legions of nerds who want it badly enough to pay considerably for it, a match made in heaven. Original trilogy fans will sleep comfortably.

I am suspecting that a Star Wars revival towards the middle of the decade would work out well for science fiction the same way the original Star Wars did back in 1977. Expect more science fiction movies coming out and probably more adaptations of science fiction novels. I've been suspecting that more adaptations of novels into movies, in the vein of the Hunger Games, will continue, accelerated by the Ender's Game movie that comes out next year. I don't think it will affect literary science fiction one way or another but for the genre I think it will create good optics. Frankly, superhero movies are getting tired, and I look forwards for a cinematic Sci-Fi (capital S, capital F) renaissance.

For the most part, good news. Granted, Disney dosen't have a sterling reputation, especially regarding the most picayune lawsuits regarding its intellectual property. Still, I suspect the Force is strong with this one.

I am the circle and the circle is me: The Chaos Walking trilogy by Patrick Ness

To my pride, and slightly to my annoyance, my SWM privilige post is the most popular thing I have written on my blog, even months after it has been written. I imagine there are still people out there wondering why privilige is a bad thing, or even whether it exists. They need something to trigger their understanding, something to illuminate the point. They need a catalyst, a perspective change.

So what do I recommend? Simple: read these books. The Knife of Never Letting Go, The Ask and the Answer, and Monsters of Men by Patrick Ness.

Set on the unoriginally named planet New World, there exists a world of only men. A war with the native inhabitants of the planet, the Spackle, has left the survivors telepathetic (and apparently unable to think of more original names to places). In this world lives teenager Todd Hewitt, unwillingly saddled with his dog Mackee. All the women are dead, the result of a plague unleashed during the Spackle war. The town of New Prentisstown is under the strict thumb of Mayor Prentiss and the local dingbat preacher (seriously, the Joker would think this guy is nuts) Aaron.

Then a girl falls from the sky: Viola, daughter of a survey party for the second wave of colonists. The two team up, eager to stay ahead of Mayor Prentiss who is up to no good, and reluctantly into the arms of Mistress Coyne, who is no better. On top of this the restive Spackle are returning, and the humans and Spackle find themselves in a deep conflict that will be very difficult to resolve, putting it mildly.

These are really deep books, dealing not only with the nature of masculinity and gender roles but violence in general, especially terrorism and warfare. If I had to sum up The Ask and the Answer in a sentence it would be what would happen if the unstoppable force of self righteousness hit the immovable object of tyrannt? Answer: nothing positive. Warfare comes across a necessary evil that needs to be balanced and restrained: the point of warfare, and too many are too willing to overlook this fact, is to compel your enemy to do what you want them to do. Unlike Starship Troopers, which makes the same point, the Chaos Walking novels are under no illusion about what warfare does to people, psychologically and emotionally.

We live in a complicated world. I don't think that we can go back to, say, the Nineties culturally: a time without some external threat or interal division. Thanks to September 11, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Great Recession my generation, and the younger one following it for whom these books are intended, are scared. Books like The Hunger Games are unafraid to examine things like the use of propaganda and covert operations such as false flag operations.

Culturally attitudes towards gender are changing too. We're at a point where traditional masculinity, with all its violence and iron clad restrictions, is waning but not fully lost. If more people read these books, we'd be there a lot faster. Because if Chaos Walking does one thing right, its showing the toll of SWM privilige not just on those who are not SWM, but on those who are. The Knife of never letting go cuts both ways.

And that I should write more. That too.

What is mind? Yes, matter?

Within the past couple of days there have been two things published that I have been thinking about.

Firstly has been the two part series of the irrationality of Substance Dualism by QualiaSoup.

Secondly has been Newsweek's recent cover story: Proof of Heven by Eben Alexander. Its certain to give the people who agreed with QualiaSoup a headache. I don't have my finger on the pulse of the neuroscience community but I think that there has been a resurgence in the belief that the brain and the mind are distinct entities, or at least there is a distinct aspect to the human mind. Mario Beauregard and Pim Van Lommel have written on the experiences that people who have been on the threshold of death; Eben Alexander is an inductee to their ranks. Nobel Prize winner  Sir John Eccles also has argued for an external element to consciousness; so has Dr. Stuart Hameroff.

I'm not convinced that their position is correct: to be fair, I do believe that mind states are different from brain states but it is unarguable that the former depends on the latter. The squishy grey meat in our skull is required for there to be a you or me. Yes, I've listed a bunch of bright, intelligent people who believe in a non-material component to the mind, but I know that appealing to authority is a logical fallacy. Plenty of smart people have believed in things that have been disproven.

In the case of Eben Alexander, first hand experience of a Near Death Experience would be very convincing. He isn't starting a cult or anything like that, but he has written of his experience in the good natured, good faith manner in the interest of scientific exploration. No doubt this will provide comfort to those suffering a loss, and many people will smile, nod and accept that their mortality is nothing but a transition. Speaking from my perspective, I'm just too intellectualy honest to accept that at first blush. It hurts. I'm happy they're happy, but I cannot share that happiness.

The argument in vogue is for quantum processes of some kind to be influencing our mental state. I'm not prepared to dismiss it on the face of it: new evidence suggests a link between photosynthesis and quantum physics. Evidence of quantum effects on the brain would not surprise me, though neither would it fully convert me. Its a controversial position, and in the wrong hands it could be used to handwave away any aspect of substance dualism that cannot be explained. Convinenent---but is it correct?

I don't know of any way to prove the influence of quantum whatever on the brain---again, I am neither a neuroscientist, and I am not very topical on the subject. I do not know how, much less why, quantum processes would be required to turn the human mind from a near robotic state into the creative, organized thing that it is. Maybe quantum processes are involved, but I'd hesitate to associate that with dualism or immortality.

I think that the mind emerges from the brain, the idea of a self. I believe in a more tiered idea of the soul: the brain produces consciousness, consciousness produces the mind, the mind produces the soul. No great theological or philosophical challenge; this revises, but does not erase, any such position. I do not believe this heart and soul, though I would argue for this interpretation. Its eccentric, unprovable, but dammit its mine!

Or perhaps our memories and our personality survives but both are reliant upon the brain to turn them into consciousness---after we die our selves float blissfully like old books on a great library shelf? Thats not so bad, we get two out of three, we're not gone forever. Again, eccentric, unprovable, but mine! I think I'd prefer a pantheistic fate than the traditional Abrahamic interpretation of the afterlife.

***********

A month ago I was reading something that shook up my worldview. My secular, milquetoast property dualist worldview. It was the death of someone two years ago that I did not know personally. Nerdfighter Esther Earl, dying at the absurdly young age of sixteen, by all accounts with her head held high, accepting death as the next big adventure. I would have, in her position, died stoically. However, I think I would be more resigned to my extinction than embracing of death as a change from one state of life to another.

About a decade ago I decided that I was an atheist. Not that this was a terrible transition from belief to disbelief: I was just honest to myself. I'd whittled down God to glorified flipper of the great light switch. Losing God was just jettisoning dead weight. I never liked throwing away the afterlife, for understandably selfish reasons. I'm afraid of oblivion, of the great nothingness, though after I die its not like I'll be dwelling on it. Okay, so I backslide into spirituality from time to time. Richard Dawkins can burn me at the stake for insufficent apostasy.

Hopefully it will be awhile before I find out firsthand. It better be good.

The Hugo Winners, This Year and Next

I'd say that the most deserving novel won. On the whole I am satisfied with this year's winners---I think Leviathan Wakes was an excellent novel, fun and exciting, but Among Others had more substance. A true classic.

Now we have the better part of a year to anticipate next year's nominees.

Possible 2013 nominees

Redshirts by John Scalzi

Deeply enjoyable: I read it all in a day. Scalzi deserves a Hugo for his fiction, and will win one at some point. For this novel? If competition is stiff enough, likely not, but if anything Redshirts proves he has the chops.

Isles of the Forsaken by Carolyn Ives Gilman

Haven't read it yet, but it has got a lot of good press. Probably the best recieved novel that has been published by Chizine. When I'm next at Chiarscuro I'll pick it up and make up my mind for myself. I do hope that Chizine Press gets wider attention.

Blackout by Mira Grant

Feels like its inevitable. A much stronger book than its predecessor: this has been a strong series, but I don't think that its as worthy of the Hugo award than others. Deserves an audience more than an award.

2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson

I'm not a big Kim Stanley Robinson fan, so I'm not going to run out and get this book. I'll read it at some point to be fair. Still, he's a talent too prestigious and established to ignore, and hopefully the book will be worth it too.

Existence by David Brin

Ditto. Kiln People was the only novel by Brin I loved (Startide Rising and the Uplift War were good, though I didn't find them exceptional; the less said of Sundiver the better) and would have been a worthy Hugo winner. Will give it a chance at some point to make up my mind.

Colder War by Ian Tregillis

Curse me for not buying this book yet! Bitter Seeds was excellent and its abscence from the award ballot is obscene. Tregillis has potential to be a major talent, even if Tor has bungled the handling of the Milkweed Triptych. Want this book so badly. I've been assured its worth it.

Caliban's War by James SA Corey

Solid novel but, like its predecessor, dosen't have the larger picture stuff that a good winner would have. Great to read, a strong nominee though it will be up to its competition to decide whether its a winner.

The Mirage by Matt Ruff

Again, haven't read it yet, so I cannot fairly comment on it. A unique and interesting perspective, that much I can say, which at least might be enough to get it on the ballot.

Do we still have the right stuff?

With Neil Armstrong dead its a fair question to ask. Manned space flight has not developed very well since the Apollo program.

Of course, this is a relative perspective: China has the first module of a space station in orbit with the intent of expanding it. A Chinese moon mission is not out of the question. Iran has stated that it wants to put a man in space; I'm surprised India does not have a manned space program; and Japan could easily put a man in space if they really wanted to. Space exploration is more global now than half a century ago, which is of course a good thing.

Private enterprise is increasingly becoming a major part of space exploration. The first privately funded spacecraft made its first flight eight years ago, and Virgin Galactic, slowly but measurably, is taking progress towards routine tourist space flights. SpaceX is being set up, largely by NASA, to ferry supplies and crews to the international space station. This is happeningly a lot slower than I think alot of people would like, but it is happening, and that matters. By "we" I am speaking from the Western/American perspective: I am Canadian, and our space program and is tied up with theirs.

But we could be so much more. Its so hard to argue against what we could have, should have, may have been.

By the eighties we could have had a presence on or above the moon. Maybe not a complete moon colony, nothing like the Apollo program, but maybe smaller, more frequent flights to the moon with an orbiting laboratory. We should have had a smaller space station. We should have designed the shuttle more intelligently. Columbia and Challenger could have been avoided if there had been no external fuel tank or solid rocket boosters, both of which were concessions to keeping the cost of the program as low as possible.

I'd like to pin the reasons for the decline of the American space program, in ambition as well as materially, on knee-jerk drown-the-government-in-the-bathtub conservatives who view any tax increase as a declaration of war on their sacred freedoms and think science is strictly optional. But let's be real: even in times of prosperity the space program is difficult to rationalize. Remember eight years back when Bush promoted a moonbase? He may have been sincere, I won't deny him that, but I doubt that would have been his highest priority compared to Iraq and everything else he was mismanaging.

Our expectations for the future were inflated, yes. If we had gone back to the moon in the mid-nineties, hypothetically, I doubt much of consequence would have resulted. Going to Mars is complicated, people, even if you strip it down to the bones. We're not likely to have a large Apollo scale mission for at least a decade, no matter what country ends up pursuing it, and we have to live with it. Proposals will come and go.

We don't have the spark to truly motivate us as we did during the Cold War. That is deeply frustrating, knowing that our most commendable drives are tied to our reproachable ones. But that, unfortunately, is the way the human race works. We inflate our virtues---but I believe we equally inflate our vices.

I don't believe America or humanity is in terminal decline. Going through some of the most sucky times in a century, to be sure, but this is just the wheel of history going through some muddy ruts. Our eyes are still on the skies. I don't think our young are any more deprived of imagination than the one that preceeded it. We're definitely better off by having a glorious, albeit inaccurate perception of, history to help inspire us.

So we will have a glorious future. Its taking its sweet time to get here, but that is the problem with history. Once we slog through the bad parts, of course, we will somehow get there. Such is history.

I still want to be an astronaut when I grow up

Neil Armstrong is dead.

If you were around me as a teenager, you know how much I love space exploration. I always felt pride when I learned that Armstrong and I had the same birthday. I feel bad I never had the talents to go into science and space exploration. Science fiction is the next best thing.

An era has ended: NASA put an atomic powered rover on Mars, the biggest achievment in space exploration in years, not long ago. I hope this is the beginning of a new era.

I don't think America produces as many heroes as they think they do. But when they do, they make them big.

In which I continue this month's theme of sighing in despair in reaction to today's news

The Republican party wants to add a plank to the 2012 platform outlawing abortion in all cases. All cases: rape, incest and life of the mother included. Just...just gimme a break.

Look, I get it: abortion is controversial. Plenty of people, good honest people, have deep reservations against terminating a pregnancy---I get that. There are people who use abortion as a form of birth control, and I don't think thats right. In a perfect world abortion wouldn't exist; it would be inconcievable. But we do no live in an ideal world.

Leaving the decision to have an abortion should be left to the individual, because that is the only way that abortion can be handled. Trying to legalize it out of existence only creates more loopholes and complications. Its not perfect, its not always used responsibly, but only the individual can make the decision to have an abortion.

This is horribly unrealistic. It is the exact opposite to both realistic policy, and it is not as pro life as its proponents would think.

There are situations where an abortion is essential to save the life of a woman. No, its not fair, but, again, the world is not a perfect place. Maybe in five hundred years all medical conditions requiring abortion will be solved, and that will be a great day. Until that day, however, we have to accept the fact that women's needs to have an abortion must be guaranteed. Not just in preserving a woman's freedom but also their lives.

Asking a woman who has been raped (yes, Todd Akin, I am looking at you) to bear her rapist's child is utterly disrespectful. Someone who has had their body violated once now has to live with the consequences, endure the pain of childbirth and cope with a child they do not want (yes, they can adopt, but still). The rapist practically gets off scot free. Don't even get me started on incest. You completley will lose me if you try to argue that incest is not grounds for abortion.

There are situations where abortion is the lesser of two evils. Maybe they can be handled better. Hindsight is 20/20 and a maze is easier to solve from above. I think its condescending to judge someone for having an abortion: they've done the agonizing for you.

The sole consolation is that women (who Republicans will discover can vote in America), I believe, will overwhelmingly reject the Republican party, growing the demographic group wedded to the Democrats: what I would like to call, the League of Everyone Else. By 2016 I'm hopeful, however irrationally, that reality will sink in and the Republicans will begin to get their act together. I doubt it, and I will await to see the level the Republicans will sink to if the lessons of 2012 are not learned.

I need to do some blogging about science fiction, history, rock climbing or SCUBA diving...anything to take my mind off of all the misguided bullshit Republicans and conservatives have been spewing. Granted, I'm Canadian, I shouldn't be as concerned as those poor Americans, but I can't help but feel sorry for them. I feel sorry they have to live with such crap.

Whisky Tango Foxtrot: The Numbing Racism of Revealing Eden

This exists.

In the year 2012.

People, remember the post I wrote about Scalzi getting shit for writing about white male privilige? Consider this Exhibt A. This is a dystopian future where white-skinned people are in the minority and darker skinned people are dominant and tyrannical....I don't have to say any more, do I? If you can read more than a few paragraphs without closing the preview window you are a stronger person than I am. If you can fight back the urge to weep in despair you are made of iron.
Recently, Weird Tales magazine did a silly thing by giving this book a positive review, saying that it was not a racist book. In fact, if anyone had a problem with the book's racial dynamics, its the fault of the reader! Yes, if you are sufficiently open minded, you can enjoy the different perspective this book brings! According to Weird Tales editor Marvin Kaye:

"The blessing is to wish they acquire sufficient wit, wisdom and depth of literary analysis to understand what they read, and also the compassion not to attack others merely because they hold a different opinion."

You saw the video links of people reading the novel I posted and the Amazon link to check it out for yourself. You saw what was written. Make up your own minds. Irony or irresponsibility? You decide---but the answer is the latter. Yes, it is truly an opinion not commonly expressed, in no small part because this isn't the reconstruction era south anymore and its not tactful to denounce people based on their skin colour anymore.  They're also allowed to sit wherever they want on buses too, and they don't have separate drinking fountains anymore.

Saying you need to have an open mind to enjoy this novel is pure chutzpah. It completley ignores the issue, and arguing that if you treat it ironically or symbolically its okay is an excuse that nobody who wishes to be considered an adult should make. I'm not saying Kaye is a frothing at the mouth bigot but he is being very disingenous, towards the contents of the novel and anyone who objects to it. Ignorance of the implications of the text is dishonourable at best, inexcusable at worst.

The internet response to it has not been pretty. Anne Vandemeer, who was a supporting editor for the magazine, has resigned in disgust. NK Jemsin laments what the magazine, who published some of her work, has become. No professional talent is likely to want to be published in Weird Tales. Since the magazine was purchased by a new publisher and fired the Hugo Award winning editorial board, the future will not look bright. I'm slightly disinclined to supporting a boycott solely because we need more short fiction venues---an incredibly weak line of defence, I know, but if Marvin Kaye can resign and go into exile hopefully the reputation of the magazine can be repaired.
My favourite Tweet on the matter.

Racism did not disappear in 1965; if anything I'd argue its making a comeback. Not legally, but in the mind where it finds fertile ground. Since Barack Obama...well, existed, the level of racist discourse in the United States has risen, and it has never been so blatant . Clothed in symbolism and metaphor, but its very obvious what perspective they have in mind. A lazy other mooching off the successes of white people. Food stamp abusing, malt liquor swigging, gangsta rap listeining jigaboos. Welfare cadillac single moms. The content of Republican agitprop of the last thirty years.

Its a vanity press published novel, so the audience the book recieves will not be large. I hope. I pray. It is gaining a well deserved infamy, and will be spoken of in geek circles as an object of ridicule, an unfortunate and inexplicable atavism. I hope that it is also seen as a cautionary tale. All the negative attitudes about race we think went away before we were born? They haven't: they're still around and finding an audience. They'll never go away but hopefully they can be minimized. The fact it is not available in shops is a very good sign, but believe you me this book will find defenders.

Crosses aren't burning on the lawns of America, not anymore, but in the quiet privacy of too many minds they are blazing.

Yes, this happened

So. Rape does not get a woman pregnant. We have Tony Atkins, Republican (can you believe it?), of Missouri to thank for this relevation. If he wins in the forthcoming election I am both going to be very, very surprised and very, very sad. Anyone fleeing from this wacko can crash at my place.

So, what to say about it, except what hasn't already been said by people more skilled than me?

Its ignorant: it ignores a great deal about biology, revealing the depths of Atkin's knowledge about a crucial cultural issue.

Its disrespectful: I cannot for the life of me understand how so called pro lifers can wax lyrical about the poor little fetuses slaughtered by the evil abortionists, ignoring the fact having children is a major emotional, physical and economical investment. Demanding you carry the child of your rapist is inconcievable to me.

Its misogynistic: women can easily shield themselves from being raped, of course there is nothing similar being expected of men. This is just the tip of the iceberg as to the condescension rape victims recieve, and I am not going to elaborate on it because, frankly, I really don't want to feel bummed out right now.

You can say that a cretin such as Atkins will never get elected, but here's the thing: if someone as much of an ignoramus can get that far in politics, its not out of the question that he will be elected---yes, even on the strengths of his moronic arguments. Because of those very arguments, in fact.

It is a disturbing trend in American politics over the past twenty years that politics has been contaminated, in complete honesty, by willfull ignorance if not right out misinformation. I am hoping that Obama's 2008 election victory was a turning point against that, and his likely 2012 reelection will cement that, but given all the birther nonsense since he was elected as the American cultural right doubles down on fantasies and lies....

Is this situation ever going to improve? I just don't know.

The Girl Who Lived: Among Others by Jo Walton

"Don't you want to find out?" he asked, his eyes gleaming. That's the spirit of science fiction.

You know the post I made awhile ago where I elucidated my preliminary thoughts on the Hugo Awards? Okay, Among Others has upset my caluclations: its already won the Nebula, been nominated for the World Fantasy Award, and is on a fast track for the Hugo. It will deserve all three.

Imagine if Harry Potter was a girl, been sent to a more grounded high school in Wales and dealt equally with fairies and her evil witch mother and school, science fiction and her emerging sexuality. Boys and magic mingle together, the magic of early adolescence shared with the magic of...magic.

Morgenna (I hope thats her name: I kept confusing it with her sister's name, which are frustratingly similar and long and Welsh) Phelps Markova has been sent to boarding school following her sisters death, during a confrontation against her mother who sought to use magic for her own ends. Mor has acquired a stern limp, and her father (who has been distant and absent for much of her life) plays a more active role in her life, sharing her interest in science fiction novels (the book namechecks virtually everything published in the seventies).

The book unfolds as a journal as Mor chronicles her life at boarding school, depicting how science fiction fans of the late seventies got together before internet was invented, which now seems hopelessly primitive and almost terrifying. Mor seeks to find a karass, a group of people she can belong in, as well as dealing with her mother's magical attacks against her and coming to terms with her sister's death, whose ghost she can visit on particular dates.

I don't think this book can be reviewed as much as nitpicked. All my problems are those are form: I found the pace to be a little lacking, considering the book's length. It pieces out the backstory carefully, and somehow I don't think worrying about boys is on the same level of trying to survive your aspring-Disney-villan mother. Yes, I know its written from the perspective of a fifteen year old girl, who is trying to figure out her life and her body, but still. I wish more attention had been devoted to the fairies, how Mor acquired the powers to communicate with them (or am I just that inattentive a reader---either is possible).

But the strength of the novel is Mor finding herself, first finding a group she can fit in with and a family with her father who has been absent much of her life; becoming an independent person from the death of her mother; using magic responsibly (her powers are used seldom but powerfully: magic is both incredibly innocous and threatening) and confronting her power-man mother. Her mother dosen't have any other aspiration except using magic to enhance her own power, commented on by her daughter as an irrational goal like something out of Lord of the Rings.

This novel has done something I never thought would be possible: make me want to be young ago, really young, when the world is still unfolding and as I make the awkward transition from childhood to adulthood. Adolescence the way we wish we all experienced it: wise, or wise enough, to handle the challenges we face, and do a mostly good job of it.

If you love books enough, books will love you back.

Land of the free, home of the closed minds

Red Dawn has been remade. The jingoistic, implausible American movie about the United States being invaded by the Soviets has been repackaged with North Koreans (substituting for the Chinese) invading the United States to steal everyone's guns and generally be dicks. In fact, it was remade several years ago but the movie has been sitting around on someone's shelf, and now it will finally be released to a dismal box office performance, critical thrashing and praise from unseemly quarters on the internet.

The trailer does not incline me to think that the movie will be anything but a disaster. Quoting my own remarks on YouTube, a considerable ammount of people will consider this movie to be a documentary. I especially enjoyed the American flag in the frame of the bad guy's planes dropping laughingly huge numbers of paratroopers. I suppose there wasn't enough time for the North Korean bad guy to eat and/or rape a puppy (not in that order, of course) but there's always the director's cut.

After this movie ingloriously crashes and burns, my expectation is that it will be considered a sign that the uber masclininity fostered during the eighties, when Americans were licking their emotional wounds from the disgrace of the Vietnam War and learned all the wrong lessons, namely that they needed to be super tough and that was why we lost to the goddamn Commies; and accelerated after 9/11, when the freedom-hating non-Christian foreigners attacked the sacred temple of American capitalism and Americans had to man up to bring freedom and capitalism to the Middle East, will finally have cratered. Unfortunately there will be enough people out there who will care to disagree.

On certain blogs and radio stations Red Dawn's failure will be attributed to squishy left wingers, or whatever the argument will be, the same way that Atlas Shrugged: Part 1 failed. I'm not going to counter the dubious supposition that America is fundamentally a conservative nation with the equally flawed proposal that in fact it is a left wing nation, but I think anyone who thinks that Red Dawn in some way reflects or is supported by some facet of America, its cultures or traditions or history, really needs to reexamine their premises.

Red Dawn has a spectacularly flawed concept: in addition to America's formidable military, the United States is geographically isolated enough to prevent easy invasion. At least the 1984 version was slightly more credible since the invading Soviets were augmented with Central American forces. Anyone who believes North Korea (as opposed to China, an equally unlikely opponent) is a clear and present danger to the security of the United States is mistaken (though it should not be underestimated as a regional security concern) and there isn't any any other country capable of fighting Americans on their own soil.

Conceptually that dosen't matter. The point is that Americans are defending their homes from the rampaging hordes---context is irrelevant, what is important are guns and a clear enemy to fire them at.

One of the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare games, the second I think (I have no desire in finding out) has the Russians invading America, inspired by Red Dawn. It is pandering to fantasies of half-understood memories of partianship and half-remembered stories of American patriots: the desire to redeclare American independence, though exactly against how is unclear. Muslims, certainly, but also Russians, who never got around to being nearly the threat alot of Americans would have liked them to have been. A confused, bloody snarl at the country's illusory enemies.

Its been a decade since 9/11 and the unsuccessful wars that followed it. For much of that time alot of pop culture, mostly video games though to a lesser extent movie and TV, has been devoted to following the military, and for too many anything less than uncritical praise would be construed as American-hating defeatism.

We are living in trying times, especially in the United States. While there is alot to dislike about Barack Obama's handling of the various problems facing the United States (namely, his timidity and circumspectness, and at times unwillingness to act like a left-winger), I truly believe that alot of the opposition is not based on common sense. Obama has tried to address America's problems like a grownup, and alot of people think that they are only a hearbeat away from the jackbooted thugs from kicking down their doors and dragging them off to the reeducation camps.

Thankfully, the United States is moving away from what I consider to be its worst impulses and towards a broader, more tolerant, more compassionate society. Would that it get there quicker and more effectively, but that is a matter to speak of later. Alot of people are scared of that: they remember a simpler time when white people and well behaved black people dominated, grounded half in the Fifties and half in the Eighties. Anything else scares them.

On my birthday a bigot went on a rampage against people who did nothing to deserve it; and following the Aurora shooting panicked Coloradans purchased as many guns as they could, exactly the wrong reaction. Red Dawn reflects a pernicious strain of thought in the United States, one that is slowly unravelling. Its going to take another decade at least culturally for Americans to move on, hopefully wiser, from the miasma of the 80s-00s mindset. Its going to be a long and bloody fight.

Its going to get worse before it gets better, and I sincerley hope the body count is as low as possible.

I heard the news today, oh boy

Seven people, including the perpetrator, are dead in Wisconsn following yet another shooting in the United States. These are my thoughts:

Guns don't kill people, people kill people is a bullshit argument.

People kill people, yes---thats why guns were invented. So, yeah, maybe its time to reconsider America's attachment to guns, and maybe make them harder to acquire, or at least ensure the irresponsible and the wicked do not have any easy time to access them. Don't throw the Second Amendment under the bus but emphasize that "well regulated" precedes "keep and bear arms."

Americans have a fondness for guns that precludes any sense of reasoning. Yes, guns are easily available in Switzerland, but Switzerland has compulsory military service where responsible gun ownership is no doubt drilled into every citizen; as well, there is a sense of community in Europe that America lacks. Frankly, Americans are too wedded to their concepts of freedom for their own damn good. I won't deny the United States did well by giving its people greater latitude than exists, past or present, in many countries around the world, however I do think that there needs a public influence to counter its worst affects. Ideally by the government---but that is unspeakable.

Freedom in the United States precludes competence and responsibility. As long as the people have guns they are free is a load of bullshit. A country needs a legal appartus to shield people from abuses of its government, and likewise, the abuses of their fellow citizens.

A hundred and fifty years ago guns were an essential tool for settling the broad American frontier. But America is no longer a frontier country, a concept that has trouble sinking into the heads of Americans. The idea of America as a nation of strong, free gun toting cowboys makes for great movies, but translated into reality it is anything but desirable.

Don't think that more ownership of guns will make the United States safer. The perpetrator in the most recent shooting was killed by a police officer. Guns are just a glorified security blanket, feeding into the myth of American self reliance and poorly formed perceptions of heroic resistance.

Guns are unessential to a free country. Granted, the Canadian experience is not the American experience. I don't think that differences are that profound.

Certain firearms should not be in the hands of the public. Full stop.

Having a handgun for self defence is one thing, and I am not threatened by hunting rifles (shotguns, maybe). Having a semiautomatic weapon, however, crosses the line.

Klashnikovs, M16s, etc. are designed to kill large numbers of people in a very short time. No other purpose. Their use for hunting, and by that I mean hunting anything other than the Viet Cong, is limited---and I have to ask, what type of person is cruel enough to go after deer with teflon coated bullets and a semi automatic rifle? Really, if it takes more than six shots to hit people, learn how to aim better.

In Canada firearm ownership is an alienable right: you have to fight for it, prove that you need it. You cannot buy it the same way you can buy a shovel or a car. Some would think that this is an imposition upon our freedom. Why? The government imposes limits all the time, and I think it is hypocritical and absurd that firearms, that exist solely to take life, are outside any regulation. I don't think it is unfair to explain why you need a gun, and it better be a better reason than "because I want to."

I'm probably trampling on toes by suggesting that the government have a greater say into who can carry a gun and what is acceptable for self defence. I don't care. Asking you to have reasonable expectations and resonsible behaviour is not tyranny. A more aggressive system to filter out the unstable and the criminal from firearm ownership is common sense.

MURIKA, Fuck No!

I live in hope that this incident causes Americans to reconsider how they've been percieving Islam or non-Abrahamic faiths and their increasingly multicultural country. The perpetrator in question was an avowed white supremacist who was no doubt hunting for turban heads to kill, if the 9/11 tattoo he was purpoted to be wearing was any indication. Attacks on Sikhs have increased considerably since 9/11, since they are a clear visual target. However, Sikhism is not Islam---a distinction that is not stressed enough.

Education as to faiths outside of the Abrahamic tradition, and even within, is very cursory, if at all. Misinformation about Islam abounds, exacerbated by a pitiful education system and a media full of howling jackasses. It is embarssing how the United States can assert the diversity of its people if they have to scratch their heads and wonder who, exactly, are these people. If you're going to be bigoted, do your damn homework.

Everyone wearing a turban is "The Other" and it is very easy to make the connection to "The Enemy." Over the past decade, over the course of two unsuccessful wars, Americans have formed impressions of fighting primitive savages in glorious wars of freedom. They're not. They are not doing their cause any favours by substituting imagination for information. Anyone who suggests that, of course, is a terrorist appeasing liberal who hates America, or whatever it is Fox News will tell them to believe.

Thats not fair. Not to America's values, and certainly not to the people who live in the United States, especially the ones that left their homelands to find better lives in a supposedly tolerant country. I'd like to think that this is a moment where sophmoric attitudes about them dirty stinkin' turban heads is reexamined. I'd really like to. But it probably won't.

Once again, following the Colorado shooting a month ago, firearm sales will skyrocket, and the media will babble on about what should be done, though I'm pessimistic that this shooting will capture the public imagination the same way the Aurora shooting has. This happened not to God-fearin' good Christians but a faith that is neither in significant numbers nor well understood, which will probably drive many in the worlds to frenzy.

I just hope that a long, long time will pass before we revisit the issue (because there is no other way to approach the issue). But I really doubt it.

Embarssing their grandkinds

Gay marriage is a beautiful thing and should be allowed to exist in as many places as possible. Period. End of discussion.

I cannot fathom how anyone could think to the contrary.

Gay marriage will not harm your marriage. Gay marriage will not lead to an explosion in pedophilia. Any arguments against gay marriage come from an ignorant (at best) to an outright bigoted (at worst) place, which, like all other forms of prejudice, evapourates the moment you fail to rationalize it.

Canada has had same sex marriage for nearly a decade. We lack the organized religious fundamentalists that the United States is unfortunately plagued with. To his credit Harper has not touched the issue because he would certainly lose, and decisively, though I have no confidence that he would if somehow it became possible to do so. However, public support alone resolutely ensures that Canada will remain proudly in the elite circle of nations that allow its homosexual citizens to enjoy the same status as its heterosexual ones.

Today is Chick-Fil-A appreciation day in the states, organized to support the fast food outlet who is under siege for donating to anti-same sex marriage organizations. There has been grumbling of booting the chain out of cities like Boston and Chicago, which I do not hope succeeds, as it is a massive overreaction that will backfire when similar powers falls into the hands of people that harbour even worse bigotry.

On Twitter mocking pictures have appeared of long lines at Chick Fil A by smug people who stand with the restaurant's stance. No doubt many harbour sincere beliefs that they are standing up for traditional marriage against decadent, out-of-touch elites, though more than a few are probably thinking that they just gave "the faggots" the middle finger.

Frankly, anti-gay marriage advocates sicken me. To intrude severley into the private lives of others, to denounce their relationship to the point of writing it into the constitution of a state and do it with a shit eating grin, explaining that marriage is about 'tradition' just makes me skin crawl. Anyone saying that they harbour no ill intentions against gay people while trying to ruin their lives is lying. I suppose it helps that the Abrahamic invisible man in the sky is on their side, thanks to assurances in the so-called good book.

Marriage has been an institution so mallable over human existence that arguing for a 'traditional defintion' is an excercise in futility. I doubt that the advocates of traditional, heterosexual marriage would want to go back to the days when 12-13 year old girls were married to men in the Fifties or older because her father pledged several goats so that some bearded patriarch to guarantee more children to use as instruments in furthering his family name. Marriage has been a tool for families to play games of thrones for centuries; its only been in, what, a hundred and fifty years or thereabouts since people were allowed to chose their mates because they actually loved them?

If we could transplant some great thinker from five centuries ago he would throw a fit at the immorality he would have seen: woman not taking their husbands name, intiating divorce and protesting when their husbands beat them. For shame! A woman not as the personal property of her husband!

Barack Obama "evolved" to the point where gay marriage will become a plank in the Democratic platform this election. Once elected, like everything else Obama has tried to do, it will be fiercely resisted. Stuck up congressmen from the South will moan and whine and I especially look forwards to Mitt Romney trying to spin his involvement in making gay marriage legal in Massachussetts to the saintly hoi polloi in the deep red states. The road of progress is a bumpy one but I'm confident that in ten to fifteen years---much to short for my liking---Americans from coast to coast will be able to get married to whoever they please.

Today, however, the bigots make their stand. Its discouraging to see. Granted, I live in Canada, but I do feel so for those trapped with this spiteful hate. 

Gay marriage is harmless and I wish all homosexuals who want to get married could do so. Gays only want what everyone else enjoys---full stop. End of discussion.

The enemy's gate is...where?

Ender's Game has been my favourite novel since I was eleven. I was delighted to see Linday Ellis take on the novel, or rather, the infamy the novel has recieved because of the beliefs of its author.

The movie is coming out in 2013 and I am torn whether or not to see it. I once had an exchange with Nash of That Guy With the Glasses on Twitter about the issue, he being of the opinion that Orson Scott Card does not deserve material support. My belief was that a work of art can stand apart from the beliefs of a creator unless the creator is intent on cramming it down your throat.

When the movie comes out, expect calls for a boycott, given the recent attention regarding Chick-Fil-A in the States. Gays haven't quite reached the levels of marriage equality we enjoy in Canada, and they're fighting back hard, fighting against the tide of obstinate conservatives.

I am an apsiring writer. I am looking to Orson Scott Card, not as a role model, but as a cautionary tale.

Within recent years, to be undiplomatic, Card has gone over the deep end. No, I haven't read his latest books, but all the negative buzz around it has discouraged me. Yes, it could be argued I should read them and make up my own mind. Thing is, I don't belive people are piling up on Card without merit. Freedom of speech entitles you to be heard, not respected---particularly if what you have to say is the stupidest idea on the planet.

Card, to be blunt, has forfeited his ability to write, by which I mean explore themes and ideas, in favour of twisting his talents into polemics. That is very, very sad. Someone who became a major talent and write some of the most influential and seminal works in the genre has hauled up the drawbridge so he can be the little king in the empty fortress in his own mind.

I'm scared of that being the inevitable fate of a writer. I'm hoping this is a fate that can be avoided.

An over-examined life

I am impatiently waiting to hear back from York University, who interviewed me for a temporary position in the university bookstore, and who said that they would call me at the end of this week. This is anything but a definite time so I am trying to stay cheerful but panic, inevitably, is taking hold. If I don't get this job, I haven't the foggiest idea of what I'm going to do.

What pisses me off the most of it is that everything I want to do with my life, just about everything, has to be placed on hold until I get a regular paycheque. Hopefully, unlike my past job, it would actually impact my savings. If I do not hear back from them by two o'clock tomorrow I'm calling them and requesting an answer. I have been given the silent treatment so many times over the past two years I will not accept it anymore.

What makes me anxious the most is that my lack of money is cutting into my ability to live my life.

A happy life is a proactive one. I have never been a daredevil, or someone who just casts his anxieties to the wind and pushes forward boldly, but I have never been completley inhibited either. In fact, the past five years, while having their ups and downs, have been mostly positive for me. When it was not positive it was sheer tortute, and I am trying, so far without success, to dig myself out of the latest trough. I have not let unemployment interfere with my life, but I have been unemployed for so long that if I do not find a job soon it is going to get highly problematic.

My previous post was about my fears about death and any existence thereafter. Really, the only guarantee of freedom from fear of death is a well lived life.

If you truly have lived you don't need to fear permanent unconsciousness. Anything coming after life, that's just gravy. There are people I wish to emulate because I believe that they are living their lives to the fullest, and I want to follow their example.

I have anxieties, even in the best of times, that I have not lived enough. I have never been an extraverted, outgoing person. But I don't consider myself deprived: I've been to London, Paris and New York; I have gone SCUBA diving (I haven't certified yet, in the same way you don't always pass your driver's test the first time); I've performed volunteer service I am proud of; I've been to  Worldcon; I've lived in a city other than the one I was born in; I've met favourite authors; and I probably could keep going on. You could credibly say that I am proud of my accomplishments---and I am. I want to do more.

I'm insatiable; I am a perfectionist who wishes that his zeal for perfection would trickled down into his life. Lacking money drives me crazy, though lately I have made peace with my poverty. The worst thing about being unemployed? You get used to it.

Even if I did have the money I need I would drive myself crazy since I am very careful with my money to a fault. More or less, more than most people, I think. Once I get a steady paycheque I can relax a bit about spending, since I have never been loose with my money. I really should relax about money though not having any is a major problem.

Socrates said the unexamined life is not worth living. I have the opposite problem: I've examined my life, know what I want to do, and I'm almost frantic at making my life the best it could be, and the world seems to be sadistically blockading my path. I am happy pretty much with myself and my accomplishments and want to further my life and my goals. Unfortunately my life has other plans.

All in my head?

I've been in a slightly melancholy mood today, during which my mind inevitably drifts to the topic of death. I am a young, physically active young male in a postindustrial nation with a very good health care system so I am not at risk at dropping dead in a heartbeat. However, in six decades, or less if I am unlucky, I, probably, won't be around anymore.

Sartre said that life loses all meaning when you lose the illusion of being eternal, or something to that effect. Granted, there are existentalists who never feel despair or hopelessness in the grand face of eternity. When I was eighteen, inspired by the works of Camus, I was on an existenalist high. I've never been a churchgoing type, and have waivered between the most softest shade of deism and the lightest shade of atheism throughout my life. I have never had any interest in organized religion, neither the obtuse belligerency of Islam, nor the sanctimonious smugness of Christianity, or any other shade. Buddhism, probably, would come closest to satisfying my spiritual needs, since it largely exists without complicated creed or alienating ritual.

I do not believe in the Abrahamic God or any sort of active creator: I don't think there is any empirical evidence for such a supposition. I can't go through life saying that a tiny flame of faith burns within me and use that as assurances that a God exists. I don't put stock in anything that can be easily explained as delusion or imagination. A lot of philosophy about God seeks to establish that there is this force that exists outside the universe, who flipped on the switch---and walked away.

My opinions on Near Death Experiences are complex. Yes, I want to believe that an afterlife exists but the wanna-be scientist located within me is hesitant to accept stories of going into the light as evidence. Of course, it can be countered with evidence (which I will not get into right now) that maybe, just maybe, there this something to the NDE phenomenom; and I do agree that materialism has a superiority complex. We don't know everything about the brain, that is obvious.

When I was twenty I was really interested in the mind-body problem, and the Peterborough public library had a copy of Sir John Eccles and Karl Popper's The Self and Its Brain which argued for a nonmaterial theory of mind. I skimmed the book, the neuroscience confusing me. I wanted assurances that the mind was immaterial and there was life after death. I was in a morbid place---Terri Schiavo and the death of the Pope dominated the news at the time.

But what would noncorporeal existence would be like? I don't put much faith into religious explanations of an eternal paradise. Most of what makes us human (our drives for food, sex, our sense of self preservation, etc.) would naturally be discarded in a world where they were not needed. That would not appeal to alot of people. One part of the afterlife I find interesting is what would such a place be like where medieval serfs could rub shoulders with modern people---could you coexist with such people?

What evolutionary advantage would life after death grant us? There must have been one. Granted, it could be argued that our brains collapse consciousness into a waveform, or something to that effect. Something wibbly-wobblyt-timey-wimey. Something vaguely plausible. Mario Bureaugard and Pim van Lommel immediatley spring to mind, but I cannot endorse them whole heartedly. Not without more evidence confidently defended.

I'm not a very spiritual person: that much is obvious. I cannot consider myself a staunch materialist either.

Six decades or so until I find out.

And our figurehead is not what she seems

We're all British now, apparently.

I spent part of Canada Day in a pub watching the festivities on Parliament Hill. It began with a singing of God Save the Queen. On the Google Doodle for today, there was a beaver wearing a crown. These are very recent developments.

I am committed believer in democracy. I've held a lukewarm opinion of the monarchy, which in recent years has turned negative since Harper has decided to ram the monarchy down the country's throat. Harper has been playing the pro-monarchy card so cynically if I were a member of the royal family I'd be insulted.

I don't get the warm fuzzies when the head of state of another country comes over to wave at us once every four years or so. Yes, Canada has always been under some form of monarchy---so what? Its part of our history (at least, part of the history of a third of the population: ask a French Canadian or Aboriginal what they think), and, again, so what? A proper study of history reveals what deservedly should be left in the past.

Frankly, the monarchy has never unified us. Quebec has loathed the Queen since day one, and, seventh generation English Canadian grandson of an Orangewoman me, the number of people who consider themselves English Canadians are dwindling as we embrace a new identity as a multicultural nation.

We make our own policy without the blessings of the Queen which makes me wonder why we should entertain the illusion---respect her as a foreign head of state, yes, but as the head of state of Canada? Really?

I don't like the idea of being a constitutional monarchy because it shows we are not a real country but a British protectorate, and I do not like one bit the idea that  family of people by virtue of birth has acquired the right to be the head of state. No, they hold no real power---which makes my opinion of them worse since not only are they foreign and redundant but powerless.

I believe Canada must, and indeed one day will, discontinute the practise of constitutional monarchy. Removing them from Canadian politics will be thorny and hard but one day this country will remove the crown from Canadian politics.

What have they contributed? Nothing What do I think they deserve?

My Stories

I write stories. My favourites:

Vox

Singapore

Baby Stay Young

Joanna Banana

Executives of Neon Death (Coming Soon to Bewildering Stories)

Any Empire by Nate Powell

At TCAF this year I purchased the second graphic novel by Nate Powell. Swallow Me Whole, which I bought the year before, was an examination of schizophrenia and the perceptions of reality. Any Empire deals with the intersection of violence and power. The protaginist is Lee Powell, an army brat who escapes from the pain of constantly moving into the fantasies of his action figures. He falls in with Sarah, a compassionate girl who seeks to emulate both Nancy Drew and her own social worker mother. Turtles have been turning up half dead, the result of the gang run by Donnie Purdy, who, like Lee, is an army brat who adores his special forces father, or rather his idea of him.

All three of the kids have their own fantasies: Lee as the heroic ninja with his kick ass girlfriend fighting evil; Sarah as the crusader against injustice fighting mind games from the shadows; and Purdy as the biggest badass imaginable. Purdy holds onto his gang by virtue of being as antagonistic as possible, cherishing a laser tag gun and refusing to relinquish it because of the feelings of control he gets. He constantly has to assert his dominance over the turtle-killing twins in his gang.

The drawing style is minimalistic and the plot dips between the characters and not necessarilly in chronological order with nothing to distinguish the borders between past and present. Any Empire can thus be a disorientating read, and while Swallow Me Whole had some of the same problems, since the book dealt with schizophrenia (I had to read the ending of Swallow Me Whole four times before I understood it, a result of the art style working against itself) it was more forgivable.

One point that Powell makes is that, for all the sentimental patriotism that surrounds the military, some recruits will not be motivated by a desire to preserve their country and their citizens but for the power they recieve by having social and legal sanction over human life. This becomes true at the ending where Purdy's unit participates in "excercises" against "Domestic Destablized Zones." You could argue of the benevolent nature of the American military, but it stands to reason that an institution comprised of those wanting the biggest stick they can find to smack people smaller than them around.

Overall Any Empire is a quality graphic novel but I cannot say that it grabbed me the way Swallow Me Whole did. The latter's plot was more straightforward and did not swerve wildly through perspectives and time periods like Any Empire. Still, I recommend both easily.

Make this boy shout, make this boy scream

Like a million fellow Canadians I am in my twenties and unemployed. I've managed to have, in the past year, several small jobs that didn't pay more than minimum wage, last more than four months or hire me for more than twenty hours a week. At this point in time the job market is swimming in university and high school students who will fight like demons for the few positions open.

Come September I am hoping to have a job. Any job: I've long since abandoned hope of finding a job that I can live off of, especially given the nature of the Toronto real estate market. It has been two years almost since I lost my last regular job, the one that allowed me to live if not luxuriously at least comfortably---and that was at Canadian Tire.

I cannot travel. I would like to have a Masters degree, and probably a doctorate, but cannot pursue that until I get the courses to elevate my GPA. I cannot look at an ATM without fighting the urge to vomit. And I'm among the lucky ones: I have no outstanding debt to pay off. A piddly credit card bill, but I never let that exceed two hundred dollars.

I'm tired of being considered entitled or lazy. I'm sorry that a decade ago I didn't think of going into the trades, for you see I lacked the precognition to foresee the rise of the Alberta oil industry and the collapse of the white collar industries. At the rate we're going the Harper regime is going to decide to throw EI away and legalize slavery, and Albertan slavers will go door to door kidnapping the idle.

So why don't you move from Toronto to Alberta?

Easy for you to say. Sure, leave behind my friends, my favourite places and activities, and move to a part of the country where I know next to no one and start from scratch? Not easy. I won't adapt to the more conservative political nature of Alberta, and, frankly, I've had enough of conservative dolts from living in Toronto.

There are a million young people like me. One million. Population of Edmonton numbers.

So why isn't the government doing anything about it? Especially given that the youth unemployment rate isn't changing one bit...oh, right, Harper canned Katimavik, closed youth job centres---fiscal reality. To me, nobody in Ottawa, Queen's Park or City Hall has any idea how deep the problem is unless it is forced upon them, as in Quebec.

That will come to the rest of Canada. Mark my words.

When the hell will things get better?

Scazli, Privilge, et al part the second

So the debate on white privilige Scalzi started marches on and, God willing, we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Not on the debate being over as much as people losing interest in the debate. After kindly getting several thousand hits from him and braving the comments section on Whatever and Kotaku I think we'll all be glad that this will soon blow over---though an argument ended is not the same as an argument won.

The majority of objections to the SWM thesis have validity until the first third of the Twentieth Century.

Being Irish may as well have been the same thing as being black. Class divisions may as well have been as insurmountable as the Berlin wall. If you were Jewish...yeah, that was a barrell of fun in and of itself. It bears repeating that "White" is not a perfect point of origin but exists (thankfully!) because enough discriminations within being "White" have subsided to the point where being white outweighs being English, German, whatever.

At this point in time enough discrimination has subsided to the point where we can tell where the margins were and we've realized discrimination is bad, but not the point where we understand that discrimination still is a fact of life for many, many people. Less amongst women, white women especially; less amongst black people but still lingering; a heck of a lot more towards people of different sexual orientation. We acknowledge discrimination is bad and have removed the painful edges but now have to contend with the chunky debris.

"Privilige" is not a fight of polar extremes but rather a mass of Venn diagram circles overlapping with each other to different extremes: white and black, man or woman. A hundred years ago there would have been slim, if any, overlap. Now there is more. There needs to be more.

The first part of the fight against privilige is the journey to understand that there have been many other experiences in parrallel to your own. The second part of the fight against privilige is the journey to understand that these experiences may be different than your own.


(+25 Paragon)

Holidays

When I was last at the Chiarscuro reading series I purchased a copy of Enter, Night by Michael Rowe, who, in his autographed dedication, wished that every day would be Halloween for me. I think that are many merits to this holiday that elevate beyond those of Christmas, another favourite holiday.

September is not a very pleasant month because autumn is coming but it has not yet arrived so summer lingers unpleasantly. The best Septembers are when the hot, sticky summer weather subsides quickly after Labour Day; the weather should be shirtsleeves and comfortable throughout the month but it is imperative that the heat departs immediately.
The leaves can start to change colour around Canadian Thanksgiving, a more agreeable time for autumn to come. The weather gets cooler (preferably not colder) and the days get shorter. Early evenings are not my favourite thing, though darker mornings are: once the clocks go back it becomes delicious to while away the hours in bed while in spring and summer I must leap out of bed and be active.

I love the macabre nature of Halloween. By the time Halloween comes around naked trees tear the sky like witches' fingers. I hate snow though Christmas is incomplete with out. Halloween's dominion is the unpleasant time after the last traces of summer have gone but before Christmas' comforting white blanket. Wet, dark and cold when you being to feel afraid of the world.
Christmas is a bloated holiday stretched artifically from the time Halloween ends to just a hair before the year ends. By then the weather gets worse: leafless, cold, occasionally snowy. Christmas magic is saccharine; Halloween magic is mischevious and malevolent. Christmas magic is innocent and naive; Halloween delves into the darker parts of the soul.

I think the Simpsons' Halloween specials are superior to their Christmas episodes.

During Christmas you are forced to endure crowds, congestion and opulent foods that weigh on your stomach. Halloween is a shorter holiday: the candy goes faster, the sugar rush ends quicker.

Halloween is the superior holiday though as a side order Christmas is a pretty good. But no more than that.