Idea for the Charleston Confederate Flag

You know what, it’s pretty late. Instead of writing a blog post I’m going to copy what I posted on facebook a few hours ago. Nobody seems to have read it there, I might as well let nobody read it here too.

The big news this week is two things: James Horner and violent white supremacists in Charleston. Believe it or not, they mix well.

If they decide to take down the flag, I recommend it go to the 54th Massachusetts Volunteers. If they vote to keep it... I recommend it get stolen by the 54th Massachusetts Volunteers. Actually it might be more satisfying that way.

Stand Up and be Counted

I generally try to confine my posts here to issues where I have something to contribute… hard as it is to believe, I have usually put some thought into them. When news broke of the attack in Charleston this week, I kept quiet and let those involved do the talking.

In doing so I think I missed the other important part I could have played… being a voice of support and solidarity.

There’s not enough time in the world to write about every mass shooting in the US, I think it’s about three a week. But this one stands out: because of who was targeted, because of the motives, because of the response.

This was a political assassination, one of the victims was a state senator. He had just spent the day campaigning with Hillary Clinton. It’s not clear that the shooter knew that, but it’s certainly possible.

This was also clearly and obviously a racist, white supremacist hate crime. There has been an effort to ignore or deny this… but come on, there’s a manifesto. The last notable shooting in Charleston was the murder of Walter Scott, and it’s pretty clearly a white supremacist hate crime as well, but that one’s harder to prove. If nothing else manifestos are really good for establishing motive.

Fox News called this an attack on Christians in Church. Which is true, but highly misleading. When a White Christian attacks Black Christians in church, the religion might not be the most important factor. Neglecting to mention the race is not merely poor journalism but dereliction of duty.

The response… well, there’s an effort to remove the Confederate flag from the state capital. Which is… good, I guess? I’m shocked that they had it up in the first place. I suppose this qualifies them for an Extremely Low Bar Award. I’d prefer for it to be treated like the Swastika in Germany… displayed in museums and history textbooks, but otherwise banned for display.

The gun control angle is getting mostly ignored due to the futility. I suspect that once the deaths of 20 children in Newtown proved not enough to inspire any gun control, those attempts have been abandoned for this generation. I don’t even want to think about what sort of tragedy will be required to change that.

Oh, and one last thing: there’s absolutely no reason to think the shooter was mentally ill.So everyone can just stop calling it that, please and thank you. I know we’d all like to think that healthy people can’t be violent, but that’s just not the case.

Happy Solstice!

Happy Solstice! It’s also Father’s Day, World Humanist Day, National Aboriginal Day, International Yoga Day, and Edward Snowden’s birthday. I decided to celebrate all these things by not taking the day off. Oops.

Well, I haven’t been called out yet, so there’s a little time to write, at least. I guess at some point today I ought to stretch a little. maybe try to see the sun? I don’t think I’ll be jumping over a campfire, but I might jump over a BBQ if I’m really on the ball.

I checked, and it looks like the only event close enough for me to go to while I’m on call is Horse Dressage & Opera at a winery. I thought that ridiculous sport was made up just to poke fun at Mitt Romney… I think I’ll give it a miss.

Maybe I'll watch A Midsummer Night's Dream. It's pretentious, but not nearly as pretentious as Dressage & Opera. Or if I don't have that kind of time I might just listen to it. Yeah, that could work.

Too tired to write, part N+1 of ∞

So I’m just past the midpoint of my 6th night shift in 7 days. It was perhaps not my brightest move. But the extra $500 was so tempting… the search didn't come with a set schedule... and who needs the sun anyway? It’s too hot to work days right now.

Hopefully I’m up to some thinky-stuff tomorrow. Uh, later today. Whatever time period 20 hours from now gets called.

Goodnight.

This Gangster Thing Just Gets Worse and Worse

After four all-nighters, I went out hiking today around Peachland.

And now I’m back on another night… this was not particularly well planned. I should probably have had a nap or something. Well, too late now.

I don’t really have the time to write much, and I haven’t really had the chance to check the news either. But I did spot this story: “Gangsters should pay their own medical bills.”

This sort of ties in with a post I wrote a couple months ago, on disclosing the private information of shooting victims. But I think this one is even worse. Because, hey. If these people were accused of crimes they could be tried. And if they had been convicted of crimes they could be imprisoned. But they haven’t been, have they? All we have to go on here is unsubstantiated suspicions. This is hardly a reasonable cause to deny people medical care.

It could be worth noting at this point that convicted criminals get medical care, the same as anyone else in Canada. Is that important? It seems like that might be important.

This is effectively denying medical care not to criminals but rather to anyone the present government disagrees with. The only remedy, as far as I can tell, would be to sue the government for libel, and get the accusation retracted.

Bad mayor. No cookie.

Changing the Default

Every couple years I see news of an effort to declare Bigfoot an endangered species. It’s always presented by a believer, anxious to get some government acknowledgement of their delusion. It typically results in much mockery.

If Bigfoot were put on the endangered species list, I can think of one immediate benefit. People might be a bit less likely to shoot at whatever grunting hairy bipeds they stumble across in the forest. Any such being they find are less likely to be Bigfoot than to be, well, me. So the plan gets my endorsement on that alone.

But I don’t think it goes far enough, because there’s a much broader issue at stake here.

Near the end of this week’s episode of the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, they talked about newly discovered species. They mentioned several new finds from 2014 that aren’t fully described in the scientific literature. Some of the details are being kept secret to prevent poaching.

As it turns out, when a species is first discovered, it’s not considered endangered. This despite the fact that it must be extraordinarily rare, if it hadn’t been discovered already. These days when new species are discovered it’s often something that just lives in one very small patch of field. Anything more widespread would have been found.

There are exceptions, of course. It’s certainly possible to imagine that genetic testing might reveal that Antarctic Krill should be split into an eastern species and a western species, each of them outnumbering all land animals put together. But such cases will be rare and shouldn’t form the basis of the broader policy.

No matter what your view on the matter, there must come a point where investigations of the earth’s inhabitants have been thorough enough that anything yet unfound is on the verge of extinction. I think we’ve long since reached that point. I think the default stance should now be to put newly found species on the endangered list automatically, and only remove them if it can be established that they aren’t endangered. That would protect Bigfoot, and the Chupacabra, and the Ogopogo, and the One Eyed One Horned Flying Purple People Eater. But it would protect the long-toothed pipistrelle bat as well, and that bat needs help faster than we can give it.

Hibernating

I’m still in my endless block of night shifts, so there’s not much time to write today. But when I awakened from my nap just before noon I found out that the Philae lander had awakened too! So if nothing else I can put up this picture rather than just having “Too Tired to Write 6: The Revenge”.

The lander apparently woke up sometime in the last few months, didn’t feel like talking, and went right back to bed. Yeah, I’ve had days like that. I think that’s what I did on Thursday.

Cultural Genocide

This month saw the completion of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Residential Schools, and the delivery of their final report. The process has been fraught with problems, beginning with the lack of cooperation from the government, and ending with the breach of privacy when the commission decided to preserve the private stories of victims who spoke up only on the guarantee that the records would be destroyed.

The final report has labelled the Residential School system a cultural genocide. This term seems like a fair way to sum it up. It doesn't have a legal meaning, and thus no required punishments, which is probably the only reason the commission was willing to go that far. Even so, it’s causing a lot of distress among those who would prefer to ignore history.

But the elephant in the room here is the more traditional Genocide genocide. You know, the kind that involves killing and starving and enslaving people. I think a compelling argument can be made that the treatment of Canada’s aboriginal peoples counts. Sure, the government would ignore such a finding. But let’s be honest, they’ll ignore the watered-down recommendations of the commission anyway.

Even if you ignore the rest of history and focus on the residential schools in isolation, it still looks a lot like genocide. The death rates in those schools were catastrophic.

I wonder if there will ever be a commission willing to address that.

Wouldn't it be really cold up there?

I’m getting ready for my second of four nightshifts, which is why my blog posts have been largely absent or incoherent. More than usual, I mean.

I actually fell asleep twice while writing the June 7 post, then put it up without any editing. That was while I was on days… we’re in for a rough time, I think.

Do you remember the Boobquake? Five years ago, an Iranian Imam said this:

“Many women who do not dress modestly … lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes,”

In response, blogger and activist Jen McCreight organized the Boobquake. The idea was to pick one day, April 26, 2010, for women to dress immodestly in order to cause earthquakes. And yeah, the earth moved, but no more than on an any other day.

I was reminded of that this week when this story made the news: “Malaysia detains 2 canadians among 4 westerners for naked pose on mountain.” The thinking was that, by posing naked on the sacred mountain, these tourists had caused an earthquake that killed 18 climbers.

It’s tough to discuss this at all without laughing. I mean, I’ve made my feelings on sacred mountains clear before, but this is even more ridiculous than usual. Which is why I found this article particularly out of place: “Travel is a privilege, not a right.” The author, Wade Davis from UBC, argues that tourists have a responsibility to respect the superstitions of the host country, no matter how bizarre.

Well, actually, that’s not strictly true. He actually argues that this taboo isn’t very bizarre at all. Perhaps this mean that means his bar for weird is extraordinarily high, and that there might still be something so outlandish that he wouldn’t want tourists to play along. But when ‘nudity causes earthquakes’ doesn’t make the cut, I really don’t know where that bar might be. It’s hard to tell whether Davis still has enough between his ears to consider anything unreasonable, or if any practice could be considered a quaint local custom to be respected.

Frankly, even the headline is a problem. Travel is a right, not a privilege. It’s in the Declaration of Human Rights and everything.

Look, if Malaysia wants to have oppressive customs than I can’t stop them. But it’s still right to consider them oppressive, and to oppose them where I can. Sure, these particular people might be unimportant and these particular pictures banal. But if these mountain climbers were locals, rather than tourists, the pictures would be heroic. There’s nothing good in respecting a rule just because it’s the local custom.

Kurdish women remove dark dress after fleeing #isis west Tel Abyad nr #Kobani.#Twitterkurds #Syria #Rojava #Kurdistan pic.twitter.com/u8NKtXgEeO

— Kadar Sheikhmous (@kadaroza) June 4, 2015

Red Cross Under Fire

The American Red Cross has been getting lots of criticism over the years for their lack of transparency over where donations go, due to a policy of putting disaster-specific donations into their general fund. They got a bad reputation after Hurricane Sandy, for squandering their funds and not offering any help on the ground. And now they’re in trouble again, due to problems with their response to the Haiti earthquake.

They raised half a billion dollars to build houses, and built six houses. These aren’t the sort of opulent palaces that would normally cost $80 million each, either. Just ordinary houses. The sort that makes you think they could have got the whole job done for half a million instead of half a billion… probably considerably less, given the low cost of labour there.

It’s not at all clear where the rest of the money went… that same lack of transparency that’s hurt them before. Perhaps all but a paltry few thousand were redirected to some other natural disaster, but if that’s the case, why would they hide it?

I’ve been thinking for years that private charity is a poor substitute for government. An inefficient, unreliable, and biased substitute. Not least because you can fund charities at cross-purposes… one charity to educate and one to misinform, for example. Or one to increase voter turnout and one to suppress it. This is my go-to argument whenever I’m told that people are more charitable in conservative countries than in liberal countries.

I had thought disaster relief was largely immune to this phenomenon. Nobody is out there supporting the disasters. Surely the charities, though not as effective as good government, must come close to being as effective as mediocre government?

I have some hope that the Canadian Red Cross doesn’t have the same problems as the American. But it’s not much hope… after all, the blood donations that are most of the American Red Cross’s business were stripped away from the Canadian Red Cross after their shocking negligence in spreading Hepatitis. Perhaps that was the shock to their system they needed. But I doubt it.

Budgets

There’s been an ongoing problem in the Canadian government of having too much money and too little all at once. What happens is, there’s a meaningless campaign promise. The sort of thing we all expect politicians to lie about. They promise to spend a certain amount of money on something, and then they don’t follow through.

But unlike most governments, they actually put that money in the budget. The money is actually there, it exists, it is available to be spent. But it doesn’t get spent. At the end of the year it returns to the treasury without accomplishing any of the things it was set aside for.

Last year, I heard about this happening with Veterans Affairs. Offices were shutting down, benefits were being reduced, but at the end of the year it turned out that there was still plenty of unspent money left over, and it went right back to the government.

This year, the news is about the the department of Aboriginal Affairs. It’s having money problems, too. The sort that you would ordinarily ascribe to there being not enough money in the budget. But it turns out that the budget is bigger than expected, and every year 200 million dollars gets returned to the government unspent.

So what does this all mean? It’s a little different from your standard election promise. The budgets are law, passed by parliament. Voting against a budget counts as a non-confidence vote to unseat the government. What does it count as if you vote for a budget you know to be fabricated?

The Problem of Forgiveness

A couple weeks ago I read this article by Libby Anne, about when forgiveness becomes a problem. Which seems to be at the exact point where forgiveness becomes a duty rather than a bonus. I didn’t plan to write anything about it, usually Libby Anne covers things well enough that I’m happy to leave it as the final word.

Then I saw this terrible article: Boko Haram kidnapping survivors look to the future with hope. It’s all about forgiveness, too. And the similarities are worth commenting on.

Libby Anne has written other articles on this which elaborate on the idea. The forgiveness problem seems to arise when it becomes expected, or mandatory. No more “to err is human, to forgive divine”. Forgiveness becomes viewed as a necessity. Once that happens, a show of contrition becomes the only punishment necessary. And failure to forgive becomes viewed as a weakness of the victim. In some cases in these evangelical cults the inability to forgive is considered a sin in itself, worse than the original crime.

Back to Boko Haram. The news article presents forgiveness necessity. Two of the victims interviewed have forgiven their captors… one of them specifically saying “Forgiveness is something that must be done” and “You must forgive to continue”.

A third hasn’t forgiven. She pities them, but as the article describes she “isn’t there yet”.

In this case the damage forgiveness can cause is more limited… they have escaped, while the Duggar girls have not. Forgiveness isn’t likely to result in further abuse for them. But that is only true if the outside world remembers who to sympathize with. If everyone around those girls expects them to forgive, than all of the sudden there’s nowhere for them to escape to.

In a better world forgiveness might be viewed as a symptom of Stockholm Syndrome, and discouraged. Perhaps such a world would have fewer sex slaves in it. Perhaps the slavers would be more likely to be caught and stopped.

I don’t know if we can make that world. There aren’t a lot of people tilting at that windmill. But it could be worth a shot.

In Lieu Of Posting

I have two excellent posts, both half done. And by half done I mean I have thought about them but haven't written anything down. So in lieu of that, I'll just copy a facebook post that I'm particularly proud of:

I think I've been robbed! I'm not absolutely sure... it's one of many possibilities in a list that also includes me being forgetful and mischievous elves. But robbery seems like the most likely possibility.
It happened sometime in the last three days, but most likely this afternoon while I was parked at the Myra Trestles. I say that's the most likely because not only is that when I first noticed it but I had also parked right next to the spot where last year there was a sign saying "Thieves Operating In Area, Do Not Leave Valuables In Your Car".
The sign might still be there, but I didn't see it. Maybe the thieves got it too. If I was a thief, that would be the first thing I'd take.
Anyway, I obeyed the ephemeral sign and did not leave any valuables in my car, mostly by virtue of not having any valuables. The thieves got a grocery store discount card and a tupperware holding loose change. But I bought a ludicrously expensive burrito last Thursday, so all it held was $2.15 in nickels.
I've been known to misplace nickels but a tupperware full of them would set new records, so I'm pretty sure some thieving was involved.
I never did get around to activating that discount card. I'd filled out the application form but couldn't be bothered to mail it in. Postage these days, you know. With the crummy discounts those things give you it takes an awful lot of groceries to be worth a dollar stamp.
I don't know what the world is coming to. Time was thieves had some brains, no thief worth the title would break into a ten year old compact car with a cracked windshield.
Anyway, I ran the trestles, 22km round trip. Nearly two and half hours but I'm not really sure how long because my hands stiffened up too much in the cold and I accidentally reset my stopwatch app. I made the mistake of using my phone as a stopwatch, and my clumsy fingers managed to somehow open up 16 diffferent apps all at once and then they all crashed.
At any rate it definitely wasn't my fasted pace but in my defence there were no water stations. All the water was in the sky. I nearly drowned.

The Most Transparent Metaphor in the World

A couple years ago I was driving between Spokane and Seattle. There’s a section of I-90 somewhere near Moses Lake that runs through cultivated fields, and all the different plants are labeled. As you drive along you’ll pass a sign that says “Alfalfa” and, oh, I guess that’s what a field of Alfalfa looks like. Then a sign that says “Wheat”, which didn’t look much like the wheat flour but I’m sure must be what wheat looks like before you pulverize it. Then there’s a few more fields of Alfalfa… popular stuff. Then there’s a sign that says “Rape”.

Well, actually, that’s not exactly what it says. It really says “Canola”. But Canola’s just a name for that particular breed of Rape. It’s not like the sign for wheat said “Red River Wheat”, or even something more general like “Emmer Wheat”. It just said “Wheat”. So that field of Canola was really a field of Rape. It turns out that rape is rape, no matter what you call it.

Well, I was a little familiar with the stuff from kitchen oils but I had even less idea what it looked like in the wild than I did with wheat. And it really stands out. Those little yellow flowers are hard to miss, at least in June, when it’s blooming. If I’d driven past there a month later I probably would have missed it completely. In fact, I had. That wasn’t the first or the last time I drove I-90, and I only really noticed it that one trip. Then I came home and promptly forgot all about it.

Last week a friend of mine pointed out a patch of rape on the side of the road. I hadn’t noticed it before… perhaps it had only just started to bloom, or perhaps I just wasn’t paying attention. But there it was. Sometimes rape is hiding where you least expect it, and you have to hope a friend brings it to your attention.

Then the other day, I was driving to Kamloops on the Falkland road. That route isn’t exactly overwhelmed with yellow flowers, so the rape really stands out. And it was everywhere. In the fields, in the ditches, along the train tracks. You couldn’t help but see it… as long as you knew what rape looked like. Otherwise you’d just wonder what that flower was without comprehending… or without even remembering, like I must have done last year every time I drove that road.

Just outside of Westwold I saw the reason for the abundance… someone was cultivating a field of rape. Where rape is encouraged it grows far thicker than elsewhere. But it wasn’t staying confined. It was spreading out along the fenceline. It was blowing in the wind. It was falling off the trucks and leaking out of the trains. Sometimes rape can grow nearly as abundantly where it is merely allowed as where it is actively encouraged.

It’s not just passive, though. It never really is. It thrives along the roads because the sheltering trees are trimmed back, so short shrubs get to dominate. But since nothing else is actively cultivated there, the rape is never mowed down.

It almost makes me sympathise with the anti-GMO people. Most of their arguments are nonsense. But the argument about Monsanto suing farmers who get rape blown into their fields… well, that’s almost believable. It’s never actually happened, but it’s easy to believe. Because rape just gets everywhere.

I wrote most of this post in my head last night. I procrastinated a little writing it down… and a good thing too, because I saw that last link about Monsanto just this morning. Saved me some research time. Then a couple hours ago I was out running, and I saw the rape my coworker had pointed out last week. I started wondering what the source was. When I looked past it, turns out there was a whole field of rape just beyond my view. I never noticed it until I was looking for it... until I realized it was most likely there, and tried to find some evidence.

On the way back, coming down Lodge road, I thought I saw some in the distance. Turns out they were just daisies… I guess I was looking too hard. But there yet another field of Rape sitting just behind them.

Taslima Made It Out

I’ve had my disagreements with CFI over the years. Mostly because they have an unfortunate tendency to give a balanced perspective through false equivalency, what Mike the Mad Biologist would call “Compulsive Centrist Disorder”. This manifests itself in trying to give equal time to bigots and non-bigots. They are particularly prone to this when it comes to islamophobes and misogynists.

Over the years I have sometimes let my membership lapse because of this, only to have a new membership be included in the purchase price for various events. So I’ve kind of been an involuntary member, I guess.

Today, though, they did something we can all be really proud of. They got Taslima Nasrin out of India!

This is probably not the best picture available of Taslima, but it’s my favourite for some reason.

Taslima is one of the writers most threatened by the Ansar Bangla death cult. The Bangladeshi police are ignoring their activities, not responding to the attacks as they happen and leaving all the writers unprotected. They’ve killed three other writers so far, and she’s on their list.

They’re establishing an emergency fund to help her get settled in New York, and any excess will be used to help get other writers out. I’ve just donated, although it took a few tries. Hopefully that means their servers are overwhelmed by all the donations.

By all means go and chip in if you are able. I’m eager enough to call out CFI when they do lousy things, I might as well help bring them some donations when they do good things.