My Two Cents

Some days I'm outraged by big injustices. Some days I'm annoyed by the most petty of complaints. Today it's the latter... but there's a bigger injustice to be seen within.

When Canada abolished the penny there were some straightforward guidelines published for how cash transactions could be handled. They followed sound mathematical principles of simple rounding. 1 or 2 cents round down to nothing, 3 or 4 cents round up to a nickle. All else being equal, people would be no better or worse off. Some people might game the system a little, doing the calculation and then deciding to pay with plastic if it saved them a penny or two. With any luck they would get buried in credit card fees. But for most people, both customers and businesses, it would balance out.

McDonalds doesn't want to go along with this. If there's a penny to be taken, they'll take it. They don't round down! If your drink costs 2.01, you'd better have saved a penny from the before times, because otherwise you're out 5 cents. And it's not like they have pennies to make change with... if your sandwich comes to 2.99, you pay three dollars and get nothing back.

No one person is terribly inconvenienced by this on any particular day. But scamming people out of, on average, two cents per cash transaction... McDonalds must be pocketing millions from this. A hidden fee for using cash, on the backs of the people least able to afford it, calculated to be in amounts small enough that nobody can make a legal claim.

Yeah, I'm feeling petty today. But this looks suspiciously like a big injustice.

World Class Oil Spill Response

There has been an oil spill in Vancouver. Looks like a pretty small one, but threatening a fragile marine environment.

I went looking for ways to blame people I disagree with... surely the best approach, yes? Well I found this. Christy Clark, Liberal premier of BC, stating the BC in unprepared for a major oil spill. That to allow oil on the coast we would need to have a world class oil spill response, and it just wasn't there yet.

I don't often agree with Christy Clark. In fact, I'm a pretty upset that it didn't come out the other way. But there it is, in black and white. A warning.

Published two years ago, it included the optimistic note that the Feds were looking at safety on the coast and the Coast Guard resources.

Nine days later, the Vancouver Coast Guard station was shut down. I suppose that does count as "looking at" resources.

It's nice to know I can still disagree with Harper.

Too Busy to Write, Part N of ∞

I didn’t get the chance to do any writing today… my folder of “things to rant about” is running thin because I didn’t do much reading today either. Instead I was frantically cramming for an exam. I passed, yay.

So now I’ve got my Ham radio license. I don’t think I’ll use it too much… but I figure at some point in my life I will break my ankle in an area with no cell phone coverage. Probably McCullough Lake. Probably in February. Probably an hour after sunset.

That does seem to be the sort of time when a radio would come in handy.

Book Review: The Human Potential for Peace (Douglas P Fry)

I’ve just finished reading Douglas P Fry’s “The Human Potential for Peace”, which I reviewed the first few chapters of back in March. I think my previous review was unnecessarily critical, and it was a little unfair to compare it to Stephen Pinker’s “The Better Angels of our Nature”. The books really deal with different (though similar) topics and address them in different ways.

As I mentioned earlier, ‘Peace’ addresses war specifically, rather than trying to cover all forms of interpersonal violence. When other violence is mentioned it is dismissed in a way which can at times be infuriating… surely endemic rape deserves more than a passing mention! (chapter 3) But focusing one specific form of violence makes it easier for this book to look at root causes and possible solutions.

The main argument is in two parts: First, that peaceful societies exist, and second, that war was invented when nomadic hunter-gatherers began settling. Both are demonstrated thoroughly and convincingly… to the extent that it seems like attacking a straw man until you realize that there really are people who believe the opposite.

Fry doesn’t claim that all hunter-gatherers are peaceful. He does claim that peace is more common than not, and presents some statistics supporting that, but his argument doesn’t require peace to be the norm. The existence of any peaceful societies, however rare, provides an opportunity to study them and learn how they manage it.

The claim that warfare is new to the human species is also convincing, though as I mentioned in the first review it depends on the somewhat arbitrary distinction between war and other violence. The causes are addressed only briefly, but the uselessness of war to hunter-gatherers is a key part of it. It does no good to raid your neighbour’s food stores if all they have is that evening’s dinner, and you can’t very well keep slaves if nothing prevents them from simply walking away… or from simply sitting still when you have to walk away you find your own next meal.

Little of the evidence presented in this book addresses overall rates of violence. One of the very peaceful societies discussed had only two murders in living memory… still a terribly high murder rate in a band of only 50-100 people. But all the peaceful societies had clever ways to prevent that violence and the reactionary violence from spreading beyond the victims and their immediate kin.

In the modern world, where nations start wars that kill millions to avenge single deaths, that is a lesson we desperately need to learn.

Chapters Link

Trevor Noah Backlash

There's a raging internet controversy right now on the newly announced replacement host of the Daily Show, Trevor Noah. As a blogger I am required to throw on my 2 cents on all raging internet controversies.

In Canada, at least, pennies are gone and two cents rounds down to worthless. Seems appropriate.

Noah has a twitter problem. His twitter account or seems is controlled by a raging misogynist, anti-semite, and transphobe; also named Trevor Noah. The usual suspects (including me) are upset by this.

The outrage seems a little out of place, though, given that the previous host Jon Stewart had a lot of the same problems.

Noah is quite new to the show, joined just this year, and has only had a handful of segments. That might have something to do with the outrage. And a lot of people have lingering affection for Stewart that might help them look past his problems.

I'm in a somewhat rare position here, because I got fed up with Stewart a few years ago and quit watching. I was appalled by his coverage of the Occupy Wall Street protests, he was far more concerned with dumping on the protesters than with getting at the root causes. Sure, he's a comedian, he has different priorities. Fine. But I'm looking for more than comedy, so I quit watching.

After I quit I was a little embarrassed at how long it had taken, by what I'd been willing to overlook before then. Like the conflict of interest in his reporting of American Atheists' 9-11 Memorial lawsuit. Stewart was on the board of the memorial... he was party to that lawsuit and didn't feel the need to disclose that.

Or like the unceasing onslaught of transphobic jokes. I ignored that stuff for far too long... 9 years I watched that show.

Or all the racism. OK, admittedly that's mostly Stephen Colbert, not Stewart. Whatever, close enough.

It would be nice if the change in hosts could be an improvement. But of it's just more of the same, I'm not sure it merits this much outrage. No more so than if one bigoted host on any other show was swapped out for the next.

The Daily Show doesn't deserve this much attention.

Holiday Shopping

I discovered today that a grocery store in Ottawa is being investigated, and probably fined, for violating Ontario’s holiday shopping law.

What? This is a thing? How does this still exist?

I had to do a little investigation. It turns out that most businesses in Ontario are required to close for holidays… nine specific holidays, in fact. I’ll get back to that later.

This is a little different from the situation in BC, where employers must either give a paid day off (for regularly scheduled employees) or an unpaid day off (for irregularly scheduled employees) or pay double (for anyone who still has to show up).

In BC, there are a lot of places that shut down. I went shopping today, for example, and though two of the stores I visited were open the third was closed. But the flexibility of BC’s law makes things easy for those of us who don’t have time to stock up on the days preceding the holiday. In other words, for those who don’t have a pre-holiday holiday in which to get work done.

Or who just forget, I suppose.

The news article cites a union leader, Hassan Yussuff, who wants Ontario’s law enforced (I was unable to find an exact quote). He stated that retail employees deserve to spend time with their families. I agree with the sentiment… but I don’t think it needs to be today.

A little personal background here: I am irregularly scheduled, and wasn’t working today. So I won’t see a dime. I am on call for Monday, and might get double pay… or I might not, if I don’t end up getting called. Holidays are pretty slim pickings in my business.

There are a lot of people in my position. Many industries don’t shut down for holidays… some don’t shut down for anything. And even when there is a relatively slow day people are still needed to be at work. To say that retail employees should be allowed a break is to deny the importance of what they do. In effect, saying the the world can go on without them.

Sometimes it’s just a way to prop up an otherwise limited sector, in the same way that Sunday Shopping laws are. They benefit the businesses that can stay open (pharmacies, gas stations) at the expense of those that must close. And of course, by pushing consumers into gas stations rather than real stores, they will encourage people to buy things that are both less useful or healthful and more expensive.

So what’s the solution? I suggest letting people vary their holidays. The list is, after all, biased. Ontario’s list of 9 mandatory holidays includes three which are explicitly Christian and one (Thanksgiving) which I doubt many First Nations people are eager to celebrate. Why not mix it up? Let those who want time off for Easter get that time. Let those who want time off for Yom Kippur or Eid or Diwali get those days off. Let those like me who want time off on Pi Day, Darwin Day, and the Solstices get that time.

Seems like it just might work.

Germanwings

Everyone else is guessing, so why can't I?

As I'm sure you're aware there was a plane crash in the Alps on March 24. During the early stages of the investigation it emerged that this was not only a tragedy but also a travesty. The cockpit recorder showed the copilot had locked the pilot out of the cockpit and deliberately crashed the plane.

The world has had some difficulty coming to terms with this because the reasons are a complete mystery... and the absence of evidence has left many people eager to fill the void with their speculations.

Terrorism was ruled out as soon as the prosecutors tested the copilot's skin tone against a paper bag. It seems to have been a good call, though, despite the haste. No manifestos or anything have emerged.

Depression is the next most popular speculation, divided into two camps. There are who think he crashed the plane because of depression... to them the solution would be to ban all pilots with untreated (or even treated) depression from flying. And there are also those who think he crashed the plane because he feared losing his job if his depression became known... this seems a little more plausible, given the torn up doctor's note. But still unproven.

These two causes would have the exact opposite solution. Just to make things fun.

The MRA's came out with a ludicrous theory, as usual (you'll feel better if you don't read that). And there's an opposite there as well: perhaps he was just an angry dude. Like, Elliot Rodger angry. Neither seems likely, though the latter has the advantage of being, you know, sane.

Perhaps he hated his employer and went postal.

At this point finding a manifesto might be the only way to untangle his motivations. But my favourite theory is one I haven't seen mentioned anywhere... maybe he just wanted to be remembered. To be famous. It's an idea I first read about from David Brin, back in 1999. And it's popped into my head ever since then, with every terrorist attack, mass murder, school shooting... there have been lots of things to remind me. That's why I've been careful not to use his name here.

You'll go down in history.