The Hubbubist's

2009-05-09T23:14:00.001-07:00

“I will support STV,” said Denise Savoie, the MP for Victoria. It's a personal position, she said, not that of her party. “I'm not sure that's the best alternative, but it's better than the system we have.”

votes that elected no one in Carol James riding 43.0%

The vote was 123 to 31 in favour of STV as the best alternative to First Past the Post by the citizens assembly of bc.

68% percent of the people in Carol James Riding Supported STV in the last election, while 32% voted against it.

The NDP won't take a stance on STV, however they have said that if STV fails they will promote MMP... so they do kinda have a stance on stv

George Lazenby as James Bond

2009-04-01T17:55:00.000-07:00

George is neither over-rated nor under-rated. He only did one bond role in his entire life which was 'On Her Majesty's Secret Service'. The movie starts with Bond saving a girls life. The girl ends up being the daughter of one of Europes biggest crime syndicates. instead of turning the criminals in, bond decideds to befriend them so he can get to know the girl better and also work his way up to bigger criminals such as Ernst Stavos Blowfeld. This plan works, Bond infiltrates into Blowfeld's criminal organization Spectre, and saves Spectre and the Soviets from having complete domination of the Earth.

in the brief prologue to this action packed film, James Bond gets married to the daughter of the crime syndicate. this is the only time in book or film history that bond gets married. The movie ends with Bond and Mrs. Bond's marriage. They are driving through the swiss countryside on their honeymoon.

watch this scene, because it is the final scene of the movie and possibly the most important film moment in james bond history:

The scene is so important to establish James Bond as a character. Bond finally puts his sexual escapades behind him, and decides on a women to hold his attention for the rest of his life. But thirty seconds in film time past their wedding, bond's wife is dead on the side of a swiss road. it proves to bond that given his career as a spy, he will be unable to truly love anyone because he will always put them in danger. it is the same problem that peter parker confronts when he has to withold the truth of his identity from Mary Jane, even though telling the truth would definitely get him laid.

therefore for bond, the only women he can truly love is the Queen, in his duty on "her majesty's secret service." and that is why the title is so fitting for this role. george lazenby sets the stage for James Bond, because he is the actor that endures bonds most emotional moment. it is the moment that bond realizes that he will never be able to truly love anyone.

Something really interesting to keep in mind is the camera angle employed at the 1:05 mark of the scene. We see the police officer pull up in the background. as soon as the officer gets beside the car, the camera angle shifts to the view of the officer. because of the shift in camera angle, the audience becomes the officer and bond is pleeing to us... the police man/audience. From the officer's point of view, it looks like a drunk bride and a car that had a rock hit its windshield. Bond tries to escape the situation of having to show his dead wife to the police officer, by lying to the police officer saying "it's alright. it's quite alright really. she's having a rest." the audience knows much more than the police officer, and they will not be as easily duped. james bond is playing a role for the police officer, and he continues to play this role. we know that as long as James Bond can play this role, he will never truly have to confront his wifes death. if the police officer stays, and gets into a conversation with Bond, Bond can continue playing the role of the husband with a drunk wife. This inability to truly express his emotions, and having to play a role instead, is the male chauvinistic message that george lazenby conveys. and it is a quality that bond maintains even to this day. in the recent casino royale movie, after James bond's girlfriend dies, his words are "the job is done, the bitch is dead, its time to move on." again, Daniel craig continues the george lazenby emotional disconnect, and refuses to handle the death of his girl friend with emotions.

But, in the final seconds of the clip he begins to cry. However, this crying is not something that the police officer has the ability to pick up on. if you watch the 1:48 mark of the movie in mute, you will notice that bond hides his face in his wife's gown so that the officer can not see him crying. Again, refusing to show his emotions and therefore continuing his role as the happy husband. However, the audience has the ability to hear the whimper. And therefore the audience realizes that James Bond is trying to hide the fact that he is crying. But that's all we see! we don't see bond cry, we just see bond hide the fact that he is crying!

This is important because it is the only scene in James Bond history where Bond cries. it shows that he is uncomfortable displaying this level of emotion to others. he sets the male-chauvinistic standard that it is not alright for men to show themselves crying.

Roger Moore as James Bond

2009-03-29T16:10:00.000-07:00

Normally I would write something that has something to do with this blog, but due to the startling inactivity shown by myself, I'm going to go off on a tangent to get myself back into things. Poor Roger Moore! He's consistently named the worst bond... hang on, I have something to say before we say any "Moore":

George Lazenby, the man who played bond in "Her Majesty's Secret Service" was once divorced for punching his pregant wife in the face and breaking her nose while his son was dying of cancer.

You should probably read that twice. George Lazenby later went on to work for AIG Financial Products.

Roger Moore was consistently named the worst bond. Let's try to dispel that rumor with a one movie citation: Live and Let Die. Let's break down some of the things Moore did in this movie with a critical eye towards the "bond-ness" of the actions and the strange view of morality said actions impose. I believe this movie was both a revolution within the bond franchise, and more importantly, one of the greatest trans-racial documents produced in recent times. In short, I want to argue that the actions depicted in this movie paved the way for mainstream acceptance of both African American culture and drug culture as both feasible alternatives to the nuclear family model of the 50's, and legitimate issues to the conservative white community. I would also like to touch upon what impact I feel this movie may have had on the African American community in the United States at this time. As a clear example of "Blaxploitation", Live and let die serves as shallow thesis for the equalization of rights in 1970's America.

Lets start with what is inevitably the most interesting part of any James Bond movie: The girl. We're introduced to Rosie fairly early in the film, and she meets her untimely demise just as quickly. Why is Rosie important? Because she was an idiot. She was ideologicaly driven and all the more incompetant because of it. She was painted as a useless agent whos only saving grace was her good looks. As an African American woman and an undercover CIA agent, she truly embodied the vision of the "outsider". However I think the directors were very clever here: they weren't afraid to depict her as a stereotypical "dumb woman", and they weren't afraid to depict her as a "fearful zealot" of her religion as well. Risky! Archetypes like that are what drive controversy and I don't believe for a second that they're actual phenomenon. There's just as many dumb men and fearful non-zealots. I'm not anti woman or anti voodoo priest. I am pro woman and pro voodoo (as a hobby, not as a belief). Just so we're all clear.

Anyways, the directors make her stupid. She's the first African American woman to ever be a bond girl, and she's horrendously incompetent. Racism? No! This is the sincerest form of anti-racism there can be! Bond girls are always idiots, and they gave her no special treatment. Is it possible Stephen Colbert's "I don't see race" philosophy was shared by the casting director in charge of bond girls? Is it shared with the writer in charge of her part? I postulate that yes, it is. It totally is.

Now let's look at Roger. What a douche! And that's my argument: that he was, in fact, a douche. Bond, despite all his chiseled features and government funding, is a total asshole. Just admit it so we can continue on with this post. Okay? Great. What I'm saying is that Roger Moore does just fine in this respect. In one key scene Bond gives Rosie a choice: either die by the hands of a voodoo priest and tell me what you know, or die because I shoot you in the head after we just had sex in this jungle clearing. He seriously bangs her, then threatens her with death. Guess what? She dies after a voodoo priest uses a robot scarecrow to shoot a blow-dart in her neck. Later, on a boat, he jokes about her being a moron then tells the man he's sailing with that "at least she's good looking"... before he slaps her ass and sends her down into the boat. Several seconds later he follows her, and most likely has 1970's sex with her, which is like the sex we have now, only without protection and with more hair.

Roger Moore is often accused of being a sillier, less intense and more boring version of Sean Connery. I think that anyone who has carefully studied Live and Let Die would disagree. I'd like to end this installment of "Live and Let Die as Socio-racial commentary" with the promise we'll get into the nitty gritty in about a weeks time.

To be Continued...

The Suze

2009-02-24T10:10:00.000-08:00

I was reading an article by David Suzuki today. In the article it seems like he is struggling with the problem of how his enviromentalism makes todays world seem so much worse than the world that he grew up in. Here's his conclusion:

"Have I become a grumpy old man who sees only the past as wonderful and decries the modern? I don’t think so, but I mourn the time when nature was still rich. I know we can’t change the past, but together we can create a brighter future for our children and grandchildren. We know where the problems lie, and science offers many solutions. Now it’s time for action. If I’ve learned one lesson in my 73 years, it’s that everyone, including those in government and business, must pitch in if we want to change things for the better."

Suze puts together a noble article. What he is most worried about is that the future world will be unlivable for his grandchildren, and his grandchildren's-grandchildren. He looks back at the world when he was a child and his ability to drink water right out of the stream, and he romantacizes this world as being better than today's world. Today's world has traded the ability to drink fresh stream water, for the ability to have seasonal chemical grown fruits and buy cell phones every year. For Suzuki, the 21st century is only about petty capitalistic treasures, while the 20th century was about cherishing the beauty of earth.

I am surprised by Suze's vision for the future. He still thinks that it is possible to achieve the change that will make this world a healthier place to live. He plans to achieve this by science and the government. This is where I think Suze goes wrong. He is still caught in the trap of the 20th century thinking that has got us trapped in enviromental devastation and has brought us the luxuries of plasma tv's and blu rays. This trap starts when one thinks that science holds the answer to saving the earth's problems. Many companies are investing in green technology. For example, all the major oil companies have branches of their company devoted to wind energy and other alternative energy sources. This is not done for a love of the earth, but is done instead because there is money to be made off of the growing sentiment of people who love the earth. So instead of drilling oil from the ground, we construct a million dollar wind turbine to use wind to power our homes. Hundreds of thousands of wind turbines would certainly cost a lot of money, and newer green technology could end up being the cornerstone of many failing economies around the world. And just like how many people think that they can buy their way to happinesss with blu rays and plasma screens, many people think that we can buy our way out of this enviromental crisis with green technology. Suzuki provides enviromental optism by suggesting that green science and green technology has a saving power.

In the end, there is nothing left but pessimism. The movie Wall-e becomes not a story of fear about our dismall future, but hope that human beings can still live in this universe even once they destroy earth.

Obamamania

2009-02-20T14:53:00.000-08:00

Given that Obama was in Canada yesterday, i think it is time to pay tribute to him. here is a link to a video that most say won obama the election. he was still fighting against hillary at this point in the election and clinton dug up some dirt about Obama's old reverand. Apparently Obama's reverend thought that America was only about racial hatred. the reverand sees the main battle in america as whites suppressing blacks. he sees wars taking place in the world based on racist elitism... like israel invading palestine. and most of all the pastor hates america and everything that it does and is doing to subjugate him to his place in society. obama obviously disagrees because he is the example of blacks being able to make a place for themselves in society. Fox wanted Obama to distance himself from the revereand, but obama refuses to stop being friends with the reverand even if he disagrees with the stories that the reverand believes in.

link

ffwd to 13:30 and watch until 1600

Things that seem unimportant but are really bad signs. Also there are some positives

2009-02-18T14:04:00.000-08:00

Pontiac, the car brand, is probably going to be a part of history in the coming months. No longer will small badly built Sunfires plague the roads. Unfortunately, we're fucked. Cars exist for one reason: to be exciting. On the surface you can argue with me, but let me elaborate:

Transportation: I think we can all agree that there are other ways to transport ourselves. In an urban environment. Public transit, annoying as it is, is often faster, absolutely cheaper, and scientifically proven to be less stressful than driving (I have no citations). True, public transit has problems. No one likes walking. But there are several ways that this problem can be solved. One solution is what the prophetic and enjoyable Minority Report demonstrates: Personalized public transit. I picture a residence+vehicle program where an existing infrastructure is used to operate a more personal way of "transit". Small capacity vehicles without driver interface can operate together to greatly increase efficiency, and more importantly, comfort. That's why we don't ride trains and buses: they're run by incompetent (other than BC it seems) organizations that genuinely do not give a shit about their riders. How can I be so sure? Ride an old C-train, the ones from the 60's. I want to point out that the trains in North Korea are 8 years newer than ours, albeit of much worse quality. The seats face each other, the spaces inbetween are inadequate, and all this is fixable by a simple retrofit. Cost > customers, because it's publicly run. Counterintuitive, I know, but because there's absolutely zero competition, there's no incentive to improve comfort. There's only an incentive to use as little of the budget as possible, which explains why we spent tens of millions on new trains in calgary instead of tens of millions of fixing the 7th avenue infrastructure with a series of underpasses.
Utility: So fine. Cars/trucks deliver goods. Well, that problem is in the process of being solved. A new design to replace the double-decker buses in London incorporates seating that converts to cargo room. I see no reason that the same autonomous small-capacity transport vehicles cant integrate either their own cargo space, or latch on to other cargo modules. Once up to speed, only one vehicle needs to use its drive, and the aerodynamic gains will make the old way seem insane. Unfortunately, the bus design was rejected in favor of buses designed by Aston Martin, one of the most insanely wasteful and badly run auto companies ever to inhabit the economy. Yay progress.

So anyway, we've solved all the real bits. Except Cars only exist to be exciting. Pontiac is The excitement brand. If they're gone, what's next? We're running out of whimsy. Nothing I mentioned is exciting. If we get rid of cars, what will that segment of society find exciting next? I nominate extreme marijuana abuse, but I have a feeling that wont pass legislation. Drug addiction is unacceptable, whereas addiction to pointless speed and chemical energy consumption is accepted gladly.

Anyways, what I'm trying to say is that Pontiac's dissolution is heralding the destruction of the modern transportation industry, the only thing that currently links the vast, vast, vast majority of urban spaces. The first country to embrace this will increase their economic output by such a margin that only a cable to space would upstage it.

While we're on the subject, WHERE IS THE CABLE TO SPACE? GET ON IT JAPAN.

Into the Wild

2009-02-07T21:35:00.000-08:00

This movie has affected me in a way I was unprepared for. I have never been physically moved to tears by anything other than the time I ran over someone's kitten and I could have probably saved it, but I was afraid to reverse the car back to check on it. Ya, I'm walking a fine line between being a horrible person and a living saint.

The thing this movie is teaching is so much more than what it realizes. It's a rare film that creates such a layered metaphor it becomes a double helix, seen in profile. One of the helixes is the simple story, the timeless classic tale of a young man who ventures off into the wild. Before you openly mock Emile Hirsch's character, you should know he belongs to the ranks of men who ventured off on epic journeys with almost no preparation; a group that includes Charles Darwin, Andy Warhol (read the biography if you think I'm just being a dick), and the possibly fictional Jesus. He wants to get away. He wants to escape what he's stuck in. Chris Candless had a particularly difficult personal life, and came from a middle class family.

The second helix is the essential part of this movie that Sean Penn has succeeded in capturing: it's wrong to want to isolate yourself. It's inconsiderate. To abandon society because you don't like it is wrong for the same reason ants wither up and die when they're outside the ant-hill. Emile said it best at the end of the movie: happiness means nothing if it's not shared. I am unapologetic about this. If you have the desire to fuck off to Alaska, you make sure you're coming back.

There isn't a ton of happiness in a lot of places. To rob your family, to rob your friends of the unique ideas and concepts contained in your brain is a disgusting crime. To isolate yourself from society is a horrific crime, a slap in the face against every single human being who could benefit from your singular opinions and conclusions. I have as little respect for Chris Candless as I do for suicides. There's no such thing as a reason to kill yourself, with the possible exception of inevitable death caused by sickness.

The really interesting parts of this movie are when the Helixes collide. When the Sine curves overlap, you're in a zone where the metaphor is no longer a flashback, you're at the very last scene of the movie where the tree falls in the forest. The tree is the most beautiful, symmetrical fir you've ever seen. It's had a good summer, wide rings and strong, well covered branches. It's the most beautiful thing you've ever seen grow from the ground, and one strong wind topples it. When those two curves hit each other, the sad fact that people need to leave violently clashes with the equally difficult fact that people need to share.

And you were the only one to see it. You didn't bring anyone with you to share it. It never happened. You wasted your life, Chris Candless. You were a smart guy, and you deprived society of an intelligent mind, something we are lacking. Isolationists think they're fixing their own problems by leaving society, but all they're doing is losing the vital social interaction that creates a human, and at the same time, contributing to a society that is arguably getting out of hand.

So fuck you, hermits. Read my lips: fuck you. I give you ironic permission to end your lives so you may never produce children that insist on making life worse by being selfish. Fuck you with a rake.

*note: I noticed upon editing that I subconsciously typed "christ" instead of "christ" each time

*note: I noticed after my last note that I did it in my note too. I assure you I am still an atheist, albeit an obviously Freudian one.

The Medium is the Message

2009-02-06T19:48:00.000-08:00

The medium is the message

Yes it’s all about the media

Not the content on the Googles

CNNs and wikipedias

It’s about electricity.

Just like McLuhan said

Why do you think they call it power?

It’s all extensions of our heads

Accelerating cultures

‘Till they transform or get devoured

Yes our brains give shape to

Commodity chains

‘Mass’ media for the masses

It’s the new gospel truth

Whether communist or fascist

Propaganda has a use

Compressing time and space

With internet and computers

Can you create more change

With a blog or a six shooter?

Scotia Bank Wacky Whore

2009-02-02T17:04:00.000-08:00

possible political strategies to deal with crazy people in canada:
1)send them all to mental hospitals until they are sane
2)send them all to camps in the interior and let them be crazy there.
3)grow to tolerate their craziness
4)ignore them and make them feel like outcasts
5) a different version of number 2 except send them to live on icebergs in the arctic.

Last night i was getting my rent money from Scotia Bank. This very eloquent British woman began talking to me from the ATM next to mine. She looked quite normal and i assumed she was intelligent because of her accent. She opened up the conversation with "Do you know the government controls the weather?"
I replied "what?"
she said "the government controls the weather. they send microwaves into the air and everyone is going to be getting cancer."
I said, knowing full well how conspiracy theorists think "are the build-a-burgers involved?"
"oh," she said, "so you already know about the New World Order?" At this point she warmed up to me quite a bit because she realized i wasn't a skeptic that was completely ignorant of conspiracy theories. "yes the billabergers are likely involved. but its impossible to trace them directly to the weather. the people that are really responsible are the police and the military."
I told her "i go to university and my professors are completely unwilling to enter into the pseudo sciences. if what you are saying is true, then either my professors are lying to me to hide the truth, or my professors are completely ignorant of reality. which one do you think it is?"

Unfortunately she didn't have a response to this. If i had to choose a policy option for her it would be a combination of 3 and 4. the lady obviously had no university education. and because of this she doesn't know how to sift through bad sources and has ended up using unreliable website to form her understanding of the political reality. she asked me to do a search in google for "military's pandoras box" and guaranteed me that a University of Ottawa professor was writing articles on the weather manipulation... i didn't find any evidence of this when i checked out the site.

I believe that this lady is not insane. she is unable to understand reality in a healthy fashion. She is old and bored with how this country works. It is partly stephen harper to blame for being so boring that people are forced to buy into science fiction accounts of politics rather than except the true blandness of the canadian political system. but the problem with this lady is that she really demands to be taken seriously. she really wanted to convince me of her reality. she wouldn't stop talking to me even when i told her my friend was waiting in the car. and then when i ran to my car the lady ran after me to hand me a piece of paper with the website that she wanted me to check out. she almost got in the car with me. does anybody know why this lady demands to be taken so seriously? why can't she just think these thoughts without talking about them?

Michael Phelps Secret Weapon

2009-02-01T13:21:00.001-08:00

Taken in November 3 months after his 8 gold medal performance at the olympics. He got in trouble and had to apologize to the media for setting a bad example. I'm sure he wasn't smoking weed during his training because that would have turned up on his drug tests (although maybe ross robiglatia set the precedent that THC is not performance enhancing). Anyway, the interesting question is does Usain Bolt smoke weed?

(the weed jamaican him win gold)

Owning Thy Self

2009-01-21T14:50:00.000-08:00

There is a big deal to be made whether a country owns itself. if a country relies to heavily on foreign investment, and said country begins to look unstable, then foreign countries begin to pull their money out of that country. Some would argue that this is a big reason why Canada has never became a superpower in the world. Canada relies very heavily on foreign investment, and foreign investors are not willing to keep their money invested in foreign investments that show any signs of weakness. Whereas the patriotic spirit of staying in for the long run, is common when someone invests in their own national economy. This is a big reason why Cooperatives start up. Within a cooperative, the only people investing in the company are those that have genuine reasons (not purely monetary reasons) for investing in the company. These people are typically employees or frequent users of the company, who view it as more than just a capitalistic enterprise.

However, in the global world we rely heavily on foreign investment because its so much easier to get, and it allows a company to have more money than in would if it only asked for domestic investors.

This graph illustrates the percentage of foreign investment as a percentage of GDP for 15 countries. I chose the 13 richest countries in the world, and also included venezuela and Cuba because they would seemingly defy the need for foreign investment. if a countries number is 0.4, that means that 40 percent of that countries wealth comes from abroad.

The numbers for Canada are quite alarming! Canada comes in 4th place for most reliance from abroad, with a number of 41%. Whereas countries like Japan and India only rely on 3 percent of their GDP from FDI. Venezual is surpisingly only tied with Russia and Japan at 13 % (You'd think Chavez wouldn't even accept foreign dollars).

We should not feel comfartable that Canada is not as bad as the UK. The European Union can be treated as one country, and therefore when france invests in the UK, it could still be considered domestic investment on some level. The UK has an allabye for being so high, and that is that investment from other European countries is not entirely considered foreign. If you look closer at the graph and omit the european nations, Canada now comes dead last.

I Mavis Beaconed your Ass

2009-01-20T13:04:00.001-08:00

Many are probably wondering what it means to mavis beacon someone's ass. It means to humiliate them by typing faster than them on a computer. At one time mavis beacon was the fastests typer in the world, and a female nonetheless. But then it was found out that she didn't exist. When tests were conducted to find out the worlds fastest typer, a computer entry specialist from russia, that types numbers into databases all day long, was found to be the fastest.

I found a website that tests typing speed.

My record was 76 wpm with 4 errors on my first try. Does anyone dare challenge me?

Who Will Run out of Oil First?

2009-01-19T14:56:00.000-08:00

Using the Cia world factbook numbers on known oil reserves and oil production per day per country, i will find out which major oil producing country will run out of oil first. i will not focus on imports, exports or consumption, instead i will only focus on oil production. Oil is taken from the ground by a giant pump like object, then it goes to a factory to be produced into something else (diesel, gasoline, jet fuel) and then it is either consumed or exported. This is my logic, and this is my graph.

World Production will run out in 15,670 days or 43 years at current day paces assuming no more giant oil reserves are found.

It is good to know that canadian oil is in good hands with Stevie-H. He's being smart about our reserves and not selling future genereations out to this generation. At this pace, canada will be the second last country to run out of oil and that will be in 142 years. imagine how much we can charge for oil when nobody else has any except canada and America's 51st state Iraq.

It is amazing that America and China will be running out of oil so soon. America, at its current pace will run out in 6 years, while china only has 12 years left. i would say that america is in better position than china though, just because the invasion of Iraq makes them the preferred trading partner of many iraqi businesses.

I'll buy my toyota hybrid in 143 years i guess. but wait. maybe we shouldn't wait for oil to run out and we should start buying our toyota hybrids today? theres something to think about unless your still thinking about my awesome graph.

Newton Minnow, failed prophet of respectable communications

2009-01-17T12:10:00.001-08:00

I've recently been listening to a lot of speeches from mostly obvious sources. I've heard Nelson Mandella's surprisingly frog-like voice after his release from prison, and JFK's almost indecipherable ranting at his party nomination speech.

But only one speech I've heard lately both inspires and criticizes. Here's an excerpt that I will be citing repeatedly:

"When television is good, nothing — not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers — nothing is better.

But when television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there, for a day, without a book, without a magazine, without a newspaper, without a profit and loss sheet or a rating book to distract you. Keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland.

You will see a procession of game shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western bad men, western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence, and cartoons. And endlessly commercials — many screaming, cajoling, and offending. And most of all, boredom. True, you'll see a few things you will enjoy. But they will be very, very few. And if you think I exaggerate, I only ask you to try it."

Right, so he's saying what we all know now. Wait, why IS he saying what we all know now? He was the head of the FCC, and he failed to prevent the problems he's talking about from taking over in his time? Why do we have the problems he's speaking about in 1961, today? The networks must have won! We all know this is in fact the case, but I think the more interesting thing is the FCC in the public eye. We live side by side with proof that Minnow's lofty ideals have little bearing on our day to day life now. We live in a world where our communications are owned by umbrella corporations that little reflect on the lives of their local viewers. Instead of mass dissemination of identical ideas viewed as a bad thing, we are given one viewpoint, from a central location.

http://www.neatorama.com/2008/07/07/who-owns-what-on-television/

Arguably, the problem is communication itself. One of the smarter men to die in our generation, Douglas Adams, brings up a good point in his third party memoirs "The Salmon of Doubt". He believes (or at least he did at that moment) that mass communication is an opposing force to both physiological and psychological evolution. He thinks that small groups working in isolation are the cause for most discoveries, and I tend to agree. But I agree with one caveat.

I think both ways can function for a society.

The question you must answer sooner or later is a toughie, however: Are we as a society at the right stage in our evolution to allow mass communication to connect us all?

I think no. I think we as a society we have proven again and again that the small-group model yields the most discoveries. When we start leaving our solar system and establishing colonies, then yes, proportionally, an entire planet working together will be a small group. Until that time, though, I believe that we may actually be slowing discovery by constant dissemination. Yes more mistakes are prevented, but I'm not convinced that's a good thing.

I cite:

Manhattan project, the first particle accelerator, the first lasers, the first radios, the first airplanes, and lately, string theory. Yes, we communicate about it, and yes that's vital, but no one in their right mind would claim that educating the masses about it in its current state will advance the collective knowledge of mankind. I think science should continue functioning like series of pressure cookers until we as a society have figured out earth. I think we need to start putting moratoriums on idea sharing at a high level now, before we stagnate due to overexposure to others ideas and thoughts.

So did Newton Minnow succeed in creating a device and system that educated at a high standard? Surprisingly, yes. Discovery channel, national geographic, BBC, etc. We have what he wanted. Percentage wise education is losing, but that's not due to a failing, that's due to the changing nature of television.

Say what? It still comes out of a box, y'all!

Well lets look at television in 1961. You had local stations with local programming and local TV shows. Can anyone in Calgary name one original show produced and broadcast exclusively in Calgary? You can't because they don't exist. The model for Television has changed. Instead of a menu it is a buffet, almost as navigable and changeable as the internet. Newton Minnows speech may seem relevant to our disturbing lack of content today, but in reality, he's preaching about a system that no longer exists, and this great man's strong moral guidance and fearsome rules are left by the wayside. We can no longer apply "morals" or "quality" to television. Pandora has escaped the box.

Luckily the internet's still sane.

Haiti or Canada: which is a better place to live?

2009-01-14T11:34:00.000-08:00

The title may seem a little outrageous to the right wing readers of this blog (unfortunately im not sure if we have any right wing readers). But lately i have been doing a lot of thinking about what is wrong with Canada. I will continue my analysis through a comparative political lens drawing comparisons to Haiti. My goal is not to say that "hey guys, you should be happy that you live in Canada and not Haiti", but rather to show how Canadians and Haitains face many of the same problems but on different scales. I will use the CIA world fact book as my resource.

In haiti there is on average 34 homicides per 100,000 people while in Canada there is 2 homicides per 100,000 per year. To me, this does not seem like a significant difference. I don't know anyone in Canada that has been murdered and i think it would be very easy to be a Haitain citizen that does not know someone that has been murdered as well.

According to the Enviromental Sustainability Index, Canada was the 6th best country while Haiti was 141st out of 146. link That being said, Canada has had the benefit of money to invest in the enviroment while Haiti does not even have the luxury of investing money in food for its own people.

Official unemployment in Haitis ranges from 50-70 percent while in Canada it is about 6 percent. Most haitians live off under 2 dollars a day, i already spent two dollars on nanaimo bars today.

28 percent of Haitains have health care which is supplied by NGO's instead of the government while 100 percent of canadians have health care (i could be wrong on this latter number).

In a poll of Haitains 70 percent said they were thinking of leaving the country. of a current population of 8 million in the country, 2 million haitians live in the US. BEtween 1991 and 1995 the US coast guard intercepted 65,000 boat people fleeing the country. i wonder how many actually made it?

The UN ranked countries based on the best place to live:

1. Iceland
2. Norway
3. Australia
4. Canada
5. Ireland

I did not have enough finger power to revolve the wheel on my mouse downwards 47 times in order to get to the bottom of the list and find Haiti. But im sure its there.

Never mind. This post does not work. Haiti fucking sucks to live in. Canada is a way better place to live.

But should it give canadians pleasure to know that we are so much better off and that it could be worse if we lived in haiti? i think this would be the most sickening pleasure in the world. but equally as flawed is the approach that Canada is significantly flawed and needs drastic overhaul because this appraoch values the problems at home over the problems abroad.

I think that Canadians have cushy lives. We are at the winning end of the capitalistic game. we are not subjugating others into poverty in order to maintain our stance as winners of the capitalistic game, rather we just don't care about whats going on in the developing world very much because we are too busy eating nanaimo bars. ignorance is bliss my friends, and it comes in two forms:

1) only thinking about the problems at home rather than the problems in the developing world

2) thinking the world is an aristocracy with natural winners and losers and there is nothing that we can do about it.

New Banner - Permanenté

2009-01-11T12:16:00.000-08:00

After several weeks of multiple drafts and several mediocre banners, I'm gonna leave this one up permanently unless one of my illustrious and handsome blogging partners has an issue, in which case I will make a better one. I hope it more effectively captures the spirit of this blog, with clear references to revolution and, for Barry's amusement, the Seattle Police Department.

I would once again like to thank my fellow bloggers and Barry for inviting me to write on this website.

Dead Kennedys

2009-01-08T14:52:00.000-08:00

Jello Biafra is the lead singer of the Dead Kennedys. You may or may not have heard of him. He's incredibly anti establishment, he's incredibly liberal (actually calling him liberal is insane, he's anti everything, he's like an anarchist who doesn't have any solutions but does a great job of being a loudspeaker for a lot of the anti-government feelings prevalent since 2004. So anyways.

I think the dead kennedy's horse has been beaten to death, but in lieu of M.I.A. I recommend Mr. Jello Biafra instead, because he really does practice what he preaches.

I should also mention that the video contains Nardwuar interviewing the lead singer of the Dead Kennedys.

Paper PLanes

2009-01-07T12:04:00.000-08:00

MIA is a British songwriter with a very large hip hop influence. Her father is part of the Tamil Tigers which is a political activist group that has the goal of making sure that the TAmil ethnic Minority in Sri Lanka is not overpowered by the Sinhalese which are the majority in the country. In 1983 the Tamil Tigers killed 13 Sri Lankan soldiers in an ambush. The Sri Lankan government tried to hide the deaths because they did not want an uprising against the Tamils. But the Sinhalese found out and in return somewhere between 1000-3000 Tamils were killed. The Sri Lankan government has considered the Tamils to be a terrorist organization at certain times. If we can assume that the rumours about MIA's dad are true, and that he was part of the militant Tamil throughout the 1980's with very little contact with his daughter, then we should also assume that MIA is a very political musician. Her most famous song, which was recently popularized in the movie pineapple express will be taken for example.

The opening lyrics of the song are about making Visa's. Mia claims she can make people visa's so they can travel to other borders. she is speaking to the fact that many TAmil's (including herself)had to flee Sri Lanka during violent uprisings against their ethnic group.

The most alarming lyrics are in the chrous whre she uses sounds in order to create a beat. the lyrics go: All i wanna do is (the sound of 5 gunshots) (the sound of a gun reloading) (the sound of a cash register) And take your money.

Why does the sound of the cash register come after the gunshots? Does this mean she is saying that all she wants to do is kill people for money? Or is she ironically taking the stance of the Sinhalese? I think regardless, this is an excellent song for the revolution because it encourages violence. I would put it right up there with Bob Marley's song 'burnin and lootin' which i believe is the song that participated in the battle of seattle listened to on that morning when they woke up.

Paper planes ends with:

Some some some I some I murder
Some I some I let go
Some some some I some I murder
Some I some I let go

What is most interesting for me is that she is making large amounts of money in London and America but it seems that she is making the music for the people of her native Sri Lanka. Her stance reminds me a lot of K'naan, who was Somali born but moved to Canada and writes hip-hop that often speaks to the tragedies and lifestyle of somali citizens. Yet Canadians, who are completely unaware of the political ongoings in these other countries, enjoy the music. And slowly, if they are concerned enough, they will become aware of the activism of people in other countries.

any thoughts detroit on what MIA is actually trying to convey in paper planes?

Abortion - Carlin Style ( sorry dudes, but this guy has been rocking my funny bone the last couple days)

2008-12-29T19:04:00.000-08:00

On a Lighter Note

2008-12-29T18:53:00.001-08:00

Douche-bag and Winnipeg MP, Rod Bruinooge, plans to re-open the abortion debate after 20 years of legalization. Harper says that he'll have non of it, but is this guy for real? Fundamentalists should not be allowed to run in political ridings.

Disclaimer for the post below this one:

2008-12-29T16:44:00.000-08:00

I don't understand anything about Marxism beyond the basics, and I only know it as a stereotype.

Unfortunately, that will not stop me from writing inflammatory posts directed at Marxists. I even plan on using the phrase "worker's paradise" somewhat incorrectly. If you have a short temper and are a Marxist, skip the next post.

-Spineless Liberal (Graham Krenz)

Why the auto union is the cause of conspiracy theories and why they're both out of their minds

2008-12-29T16:41:00.001-08:00

I just threw up in my mouth writing that title. Anyways. I have often wondered why I care at all about cars. They aren't particularly interesting mechanically, there's no mechanism under the hood that's going to blow any minds. I don't even own a car. But for some reason I'm interested in them as objects and thus I believe I am entitled to have an opinion about the recent approval of a payout to the three largest American companies.

So far, the worst coverage I've seen of this was surprisingly on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. His first obvious mistake was comparing the Auto industry to the banking industry. While we're comparing things, why not discuss the salvation army in context with the Marine Corp.? They both have the word "army" in their vocabulary, but lets not kid ourselves by saying that "auto company" can be compared to "banking company".

Now here's why we need to save the auto industry: to get rid of the UAW. I understand the argument for unions, I understand that they do some good things, but at this stage we need to start reigning them in. Mollycoddling auto workers leads to one thing: shitty products with huge health-care premiums.

I used to work in a foundry. I worked in a factory that literally turned molten steel into finished products, and it was a shitty job. Standing in a 6-foot wide by 7 foot tall by 6 foot deep station between a furnace blazing at 1500 degrees and a ten foot tall forming machine rotating in a 10000 gallon vat of toxic oil really makes the paychecks a big deal. We were not unionized. The harder we worked and the more pieces we created the more money we made. Direct capitalism!

Now let me be blunt: The only jobs worse than mine in the auto industry are the ones that involve people doing exactly the same thing I did: forming metal. There's nothing worse.

Now here's the difference: They make 100K a year, they have full health benefits, and if they get laid off, they get paid for 3 years.

Excuse me, what? Is their labor worth more?

Unions would work if it was a unified labor union. Unions would work if they were subjective instead of operating each in their own seperate bubble. The so called "workers paradise" controlled by beneficial unions is a figment of anyones imagination and now we're suffering the consequences: shitty products, bad moral and overhead operating costs that have allowed imports and outsourcing to rape the economy and people's opinions of their country. The UAW has done more than George Bush to damage the American psyche. They have no confidence in their products, their technology or their people, because workers, tired of not getting paid to suck, banded together.

At first this was brilliant. It gave us the 5 day work week and steady paychecks and we finally got all those mafia ties we've been after, yet we still failed to think of a way to get rid of unions once they served their purpose.

There's a few things I'd like to see:

1. No unions in manufacturing and production. Things will get worse before they get better, but in the end we'll have products we're proud of.

2. Moratoriums on negotiation. I want a mandatory period of 10 years before a contract can be negotiated, or better yet, negotiation periods that occur a minimum of 2 years after a government announces a change.

Now part 2 of this post is in relation to the burgeoning world of conspiracy theories. We're so sure the government is out to get us that we re-negotiate a contract based on every rumor or political statement. People's livelihoods are being decided by arguments between arrogant union heads and selfish company heads based on what a semi-educated, melodramatic and otherwise useless to society politician said on a whim. I thought I'd use that as a segue, but I cant see any way to tie it in to what I want to say next so:

Why all of the sudden has this conspiracy theory jazz become such a huge issue? True, we've had this idea of "not everything is what it seems" for millenia, but only in the last couple decades has it started to really affect the normal person's life.

My theory is that its entirely because on confidence, and I think the auto industry is one of the major causes of this. One thing as a society that we all have in common, conspiratorial or not, is the need to move and displace. Our jobs are rarely our neighbors, and our friends and family are often somewhere distant. We need to get there. We need cars, we need buses and we need planes. The people who manufacture these objects are usually unionized heavily (and I mean heavily). The products coming out of those industries with the obvious exception of airliners, were pretty much complete garbage for 30 years. This crucial, massive and widespread part of our society was produced about people who cared for the wage, not the product. We've lost our confidence in our own ability to have a good society, and incompetent governments have only provoked an already annoyed population by claiming "you're being taken advantage of by the current government".

Well, newsflash, you're being taken advantage of by both parties. Self help books work by convincing you that a) you have something wrong with you and b) they are the only ones who can fix it.

a) You cant produce valuable merchandise or services as a society
b) We're going to make this a workers paradise so you have pride again, except products won't be important because we, as quick study marxists and lo-rent swedish socialists, don't understand the intricacies of the economy very well. We are the NDP.

Fairly familiar, non?

Anyways, in conclusion, I believe we have conspiracy theories because we are so filled with self doubt that even our elected officials are representations of our own insecurity. We are a society of isolated groups and individuals who do not trust, and instead must, MUST believe that something else is up. We are so dissilusioned with what we must see every day that we invent things, like the often thrown about "jet fuel is not hot enough to melt steel" which is both incorrect and irrelevent, because steel loses 80% of its strenght at 1000 celcius, well below jet fuel burning temperature, which I believe is 3406 celcius or something. Its bait and switch, every one of them, and we're skirting the root problem:

We don't believe ourselves to be materialistically valuable as a society, and what's more, we now believe that we are idiologically valuable as a more enlightened society due to our standard of living. We are doomed.

Disclaimer: this is not directed at my fellow bloggers, it's directed at the idiot on the train last week who refused to listen to anything I had to say about the september 11 jazz, including me at one point looking up the insurance information on my phone in regards to WTC 7 and completely shutting him down. At least when I'm wrong I allow people to show me why.

The Security State

2008-12-29T13:44:00.002-08:00

The thing i hate about the state of politics so far in the 21st century is the extreme amount of paranoia. From the right, we have the fear of terrorism which caused two wars. and then recently we have the enormous fear of economic collapse. the right chooses to watch news that reinforces these fears, rather than allowing them to live their own lives in ignorance.

The left is paranoid about different things. They choose to be paranoid of their own government. instead of wanting to live in ignorance of the true reality, they create their own reality which is even more paranoid. they revert to a third world citizen who is unsure if the government is working in their best interests. as if capitalism could work for peoples best interests!!!!! the lefts cure is left wing parties winnning election or a revolution. but most are too afraid to do anything because they believe that we live in a security state: a further testament to how paranoid they are.

Paranoia is the perfect approach to fostering peoples political ideology. when the right is paranoid about losing their job, they will rally behind a leader who can save the economy. when the left is paranoid about their president, they will rally against him. both are constructing political ideology.

Is it possible to construct an ideology that is not indebted to paranoia? Or is fear the reason that people turn to their government? Maybe Hobbes is right and without our government wee would be even more scared.

how to set start times in youtube videos

2008-12-29T13:44:00.001-08:00

in the youtube embedded code, after the url you see fs=1. after fs=1 you type "&start=197". this will make the movie start at the three minute and 17 second part. that is what i have done here for this zizek movie

Criticism of the Extreme Left and the Extreme Right

2008-12-29T13:23:00.000-08:00

Robespierre before he achieved the French revolution stated that he wanted "a revolution without having a revolution." What he meant was that he wanted to dramatically change the french system of government without being killed. Robespierre eventually achieved revolution and he was also hung.

Much like Robespierre, the left witnesses a society that they hate. George Carlin actually made a smart comment in his video when he said "why should i want to make the world a better place when i can't even fix myself?" Carlin has so many personal problems that he doesn't even want to think about the problems of the world. He jokes that left wing radicals often transfer their own dissatisfaction with themselves into their vision for a broken world. then by fixing the world they would also be fixing themselves.

Its much like my post about 'the perfect gift'. The left sees problems with the world, and they want to change those problems. But once they achieve their change they are never satisfied. they envision that saving the whales will make them happy and bring them fulfillment. but once they save the whales they will eventually transfer their disatisfaction to another cause. The night before the government announces their policy change on saving the whales, is excatly like christmas eve. and on the day the govenrment makes changes, there will be a celebration, they will go to the bar and talk about what comes next. but can they ever be fulfilled? Can the perfect cause ever be achieved.

You witness the excact opposite (and equally as misled approach) within the radical right. rather than transferring their disatisfaction with themsleves into a political vision of disatisfaction, the right denies that they are disatisfied with the world. they believe the world is perfect the way it is and doesn't need change. the extreme right are too scared to admit that there are shortcoming in the world so they cover their ears and sing themselves lullabyes that their mom used to sing them as a child. they choose leaders who promise not to change things very much and will uphold the status quo of capitalism. for these people, Stephen harper is the greatest PM in history because he's boring, doesn't change very many things, and is an economist before he is a politician.

Global Warming - Carlin Style (Made me think of Barry to the M)

2008-12-29T02:41:00.000-08:00

Why Anarchists are thankful at Christmas

2008-12-24T16:54:00.000-08:00

Another year has rolled around and the capitalist system is still in alliance with greater humanity for another holiday season. Christmas is the perfect opportunity for society to entrench capitalistic desire into the citizenry. Kids think for months on what they are going to include on their christmas lists. They realize that they must earn their present (by being nice not naughty) and they begin to attach values to all of their fall/winter actions. Should i pull susy's hair if i know it will cost me an Ipod Chrome and instead i will only get a 4 gigabyte nano? is the joy i recieve from pulling susy's hair greater than the joy i will recieve from the upgrade to an ipod chrome? If i can settle for the 4 gigabyte nano i will certainly be willing to pull susy's hair.

Kids are taught from a young age that capitalistic desires are more important than "naughty" desires. The kid suppresses his naughty desires for the reward of capitalistic possessions. eventually, all evil desires of the human being are replaced by capitalistic desires. It is interesting that capitalism at xmas suppresses the naughty desires and not the good desires. have we not just proven that capitalstic desire is evil because it replaces the naughty desires instead of the nice desires?

Not only does xmas allow kids to place a material goods based value on all actions (ie. act nice and get an ipod chrome), but it allows them to envision a better life for themselves that is actually fictitious. Kids write their xmas lists, dreaming of the future and how different their life will be with their christmas presents. Life will be fulffilling and happy once i get batman the dark night on blu ray for xmas. unfortunately, the capitalistic desire can never be completely fullfilled. We approach the fulfillment of our capitalistic desire on christmas eve (thats when our fulffillment reaches its pinnacle because we still have not recieved the present and we are envisioning our soon-to-be enhanced lives). However, christmas morning proves very anti-climatic. we get the present, and we pretend to be surprised when we open the present,but as soon as we open the box we realize that this new material good has not completely fulfilled our desire like we initially thought it would. we are happy that we got the gift and gracious to the person that bought us our present. But our capitalistic desire is not fulffiled, we still desire more (we still desire the ideal present that will be completely fulfilling). The best proof of this is how our capitalistic desire does not end on chritmas. In fact, we are so starved to fulfill the desire even more that we go shopping on boxing day as well. why on earth does the most spending all year occur on the day after chistmas? shouldn't xmas have been fulfilling enough to avoid extreme capitalistic desire the very next day? The truth is, we are so depressed about not being able to fulfill our capitalistic desire, that we spend even more the next day. Like the alchoholic who realizes that his drinking is a problem, but instead of facing his problem he attempts to drink away all of his grievances. boxing day spending is the worst type of spending of all, because it occurs in the wake of our own emptiness.

the ideal present would be a present that is so fulfilling that it ends capitalistic desire to purchase more presents. a present so good that it stops us envisioning a better future with new gifts for a while. But, the ideal present is just like santa clause... it doesn't exist. We can never achieve compete fulfillment.

Canada is great?

2008-12-21T18:40:00.000-08:00

Someone told me today that Canada was the best country to live in on earth. I agree. But I reject the concept of the state/country. Indeed Canada is a great place to live; but, we are second in the world for the amount of waste we produce per person, which is not sustainable. Furthermore, Canada relies in part on the large scale exploitation and export of natural resources in order to provide enough jobs and GDP to fund our high standard of living. In addition, we accept a large number of immigrants – which is fine- in part to maintain population growth/economic growth and to maintain some semblance of a tax base in order to fund our generous welfare state. However, when I walk down the street the majority of conversions are not in French of English: our two official languages. Granted, it's not illegal to speak in a language of your choosing, but I personally don't feel comfortable in my own country/city when I can't understand what most people are saying to each other. It's not that I don't trust people; it's that I feel alienated or excluded when it happens and it happens on a regular basis. Next, Canada's idea of 'multiculturalism' is a freedom that many enjoy; however the problem could be a gradual or rapid dilution of what it means to be a citizen. I argue that we are losing social cohesion as a result of growing pains – both demographic and economic; too much rapid economic development and rapid population growth scarcely allows time for 'society' to adjust. Furthermore, in the state's efforts to maintain legitimacy in the eyes of the people, we allow many freedoms: freedom of speech, religious belief, mobility, to name a few, and the right to life, liberty and security of the person. My main issue is with the last right - security of the person. If we are raping the land at the current rate and the emissions and exhaust travel through the air, and the chemical byproducts travel through the waterways and water tables, is it any wonder there is an increase in cancer, asthma and numerous birth defects? These ailment's directly and indirectly affect people's health, a phenomena that is clearly related to the security of the person. The government is supposed to guarantee this right and yet the pass the policies that allow development to degrade our health with little accountability because the effects of development are spread thin and hard to track and locate. This is unacceptable. But – in closing – it is difficult to mobilize in this country because the system of federalism, whereby power is divided between each province and territory and the federal government in Ottawa, makes it very difficult for geographically dispersed and affected populations, to be successful in seeking and gaining positive change. Federalism is designed to further the interests of developers and business to the detriment of the environment and people's health. Thus, although Canada is currently the best country to live in, we are destroying the country at a fast and unsustainable rate and people's health and general wellbeing is currently being compromised on a daily and increasing basis.

Christmas Media

2008-12-21T00:40:00.000-08:00

Dell Driver and Intel Wireless Interface for Dell Inspiron 6000

Politics in the Age of Empire Symposium

Zizek:

2008-12-20T08:37:00.000-08:00

This is why I am glad I joined the blog this year

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/james_surowiecki_on_the_turning_point_for_social_media.html

two different thoughts: George Bush and the Barry Mantelope Recipe to Seduce Women

2008-12-16T11:39:00.001-08:00

bush's approval rating started out pretty good. september 11th helped him out big time. most US presidents are hated by the end of their term. clinton was one of the few American presidents to still be liked when he left office, and i dont think he was over 50 percent. Americans love to build up their politicians and then tear them down via media. It happens in the celebrity world as well aka Tom cruise and britney spears (unfortunaly i think its becoming fashionable to like tom cruise again). a can obama still be liked on his way out of office or has the media built him up as the next messiah just so they can tear him down? nyways, i hope that was some food for thought.

I've been thinking a lot lately about how to seduce political science girls. Many of the girls at uvic read a lot of feminist material. Unfortunately, the feminist debates around abortion and other things are not my cup of tea. However, Judith Butler is a real cool feminist political theorist that talks about everything. chicks love her and reading her would help spark some very interesting first date conversations. If you're going to bring a political science girl home, make sure to have some judith butler on your bookshelf next to your copy of bikini babes from space. heres a link to butlers take on obama:

http://angrywhitekid.blogs.com/weblog/2008/11/uncritical-exuberance-judith-butlers-take-on-obama.html

A Response to Pillon

2008-12-14T12:51:00.000-08:00

I thought this deserved its own post rather than a small comment. I thought Pillon's account of the coalition crisis was very good. his argument surrounds the fact that the coalition is not doing anything unconstitutional. it is probably the most intellectual argument that i have heard from the left yet. he takes a very ironical approach to the scare tactics employed by Harper. Harper's scare tactics stem from making the coaliton seem "separatist", "marxist", "undemocratic". It gets the right scared of the left.

By suggesting democratic values are at stake, Harper is using the oldest liberal trick in the book. trying to cling onto power by telling canadians the fundamentals of democracy will be ruined if he does not hang onto power. this is the same tactic used by American Liberals when they suggested that we shoul have invaded Iraq because the freedom and equality of Iraqi citizens are at stake.

Harpers fear tactics are a response to the Liberals trying to take away his power. But Pillon's argument is very dangerous because it falls into even more horrific scare tactics then those invoked by harper. Heres Pilon's ultimate irony:

"I do not mean to be alarmist in suggesting we may be heading for violence. But the actions of this Prime Minster are coming dangerously close to inciting mob rule. Harper is ramping up the heat of his rhetoric by invoking democracy and patriotism and insinuating that his opponents are attacking our democracy and that they are risking the unity of the country for their own gain."

Pillon sees harpers desperate attempt to cling onto power as a potential cause of mob rule. Thus upping the scariness of "the other" by another notch. I don't think Pillon escaped the rehtoric that he criticizes harper for using. Rather he is bringing the rhetoric to a new level that will be very advantageous for the support of the coalition.

However, now that Ignatieff is the leader of the Liberals i think the coalition is over. Ignatieff will likely wait until another election in a couple years, and compromise with harper in janauary making him look like a cooperative politician. canadians are unfamiliar with iggy and he needs some face time as an opposition leader before winning an election. afterall, the guy has lived in america for the past 20 years of his life. he was even one of those liberals that supported iraq that i mentioned earlier, and criticized chretien big time for not invading (now im caught up in right wing rhetoric). the coalition crisis will go down in the history book as a small win for the liberal party that made the conservatives look very desparate. Dion was the ultimate pawn for the liberal party after he lost the election for the liberals. so he does something very controversial that ends up being a win-win situation for the libs! If it backfires and canadians didn't support the coalition then dion could take the fall. and if it works and you get power, then liberals have the PM. Harper played the only card he could play to hold onto power: prorogue. its a win win for the liberal party and this could be the start of a trend to revitalize the liberal party. if anyone can do it it will be ignatieff... hes a trudeau type.

2008-12-14T02:37:00.001-08:00

http://www.rabble.ca/news/harpers-actions-coming-dangerously-close-inciting-mob-rule

REVIEW OF THE NEW X FILES MOVIE

2008-12-14T01:05:00.000-08:00

spoiler alert (but its not worth seeing anyway)

The movie is a terrible movie for the revolution. It works with the very same principles of the bond movie, except instead of encouraging the viewer to follow the truth at all costs like bond did, this movie suggests there is no point in following the truth. the protaganist fox Mulder (played by duchovny) has been plagued by one desire his entire life: to find his kidnapped sister. his sister disappeared when he was just a child, but he swears it was aliens that did it. The tv show followed him as an FBI agent solvin paranormal investigations that would lead him to his sister.

the movie starts off with a pastor that is having visions of disappearing girls. Fox Mulder is called in to deal with the paranormal side of things. mulder thinks this case might be able to lead him to his sister because it involves disappearing women. He follows the Christian pastor around, trying to have more visions that could explain how these girls are disappearing. mulders partner skully (the scientifical perspective) urges him not to follow through on this case. she feels mulder is still trying to solve his sisters case when he should have put it behind him years ago. he refuses to give up and continues to follow the visions of the pastor.

Eventually we find out that the pastor is having visions from the perspective of a man that the pastor sexually assaulted at a catholic school. this man that was sexually assaulted as a boy, is now kidnapping women to steal their body parts and add them to himself to cure his cancer and a debilatating injury that he suffered at the hands of a garden ho yielding kidnapee. eventually both the pastor and the kidnapper die of lung cancer on the same night. the case is solved concerning the missing women, but mulder does not come any close to finding his sister.

Like usual, Mulder is asked to follow the paranormal in the face of his disapproving peers. he refuses to give up on his sister no matter how many times skully asks him to stop. skully even threatens to withold sex and this does not phase mulder. but in the end what is his reward? not his initial desire of finding his sister. instead he gives up on his initial desire and goes to fiji to make sweet sweet love to skully in a little outrigger canoe.. the movie suggests that some searches for truth are worth abandonding in favour of consolation prizes.

In the bond movie, bond had one ultimate motivation behind his killing spree: finding out whether his lover actually loved him. he succeeded in doing this even though he gave up on getting revenge on mr white. For Mulder it is the other way around. He gives up on his initial desire and instead settles for a secondary desire (skully). che guevera would be turning over in his grave if he saw this movie.

Accountability

2008-12-11T16:19:00.000-08:00

Advocate is right. Harper is confusing representative government with responsible government. the coalition actually understands responsible government according to the constition.

Responsiblity is a simulacrum to accountability. the prime minister must remain accountable/resonsible to the house, by making sure that the house has confidence in him. the liberal government says they don't have confidence in harper and therefore harper is not responsible. why does the liberal government not have confidence in harper? not sure yet.

how is it possible to be responsible when you need the confidence of the house of commons as a presumption to being responsible? and those people that you need to have confidence in you are the same people that want to grasp power away from you. responsibilty and confidence are directly related to each other, and this is unfortanate to the efficeiency of the canadian system.

ps) when you write a post, there is a box above the "save now" icon where you can enter words that will make the posts appear on google.

The Coalition Crisis

2008-12-09T18:14:00.001-08:00

I will try my hardest not to mention anything concrete about political news in Canada on this blog, so don't be scared of the title. The media went crazy over the coalition and there was a big back and forth of support for the Coalition and the Conservatives in the media. I found CBC started out very much in favour of the conservative position, but then loosened its grip as the days past. The ultimate question to be asked from this crisis, is "what is responsible government?"

(im making these quote up myself, but they are very accurate...no doubt

Harper: "responsible government is getting the most votes in the election... its a parliamentary convention."

Dion: "Responsible governmet is having the support of the house of commons... its actually in the constitution...or maybe its not i forget.

The next big debate will surround responsible government. why on earth is 'responsibility' the word we use? Resp gov has been the most important value of the Canadian parliament since 1867. But what does responsibility mean? The Canadian government thinks responsibility means having the support of other people. From the eyes of the Canadian parliament, responsibility stems from ones ability to hang onto power (or grasp power) with the support of others. Other people need to have confidence in you (thats why they call it a confidence motion). But why does responsibility necessarilly mean that other people believe you? In order to be a responsible parent, must i force my children to believe that i am responsible, that i can be a good parent throughout their childhood. If other people believe that i am an unresponsible parent, they can rat me out to Child services and take my kid away. Does responsibility have to stem from 'the other' having confidence in you. or could responsibility stem from having confidence in yourself. Was Brian Mulroney being irresonsible when he introduced the GST even though all of Canadians hate it. Or were CAnadians being irresponsible for not wanting to help the economy by being taxed more?

If the Canadian government and the institutions of Canada are framed in a way that teaches Canadians values, then i think they are misteaching us the value of responsibility. The current capabilities that the Canadian media has at their disposal, does not allow the news to capture a valuable understanding of 'responsibility'. I think now is the perfect time to rethink what responsibility is, and how our government can offer it to us.

A case for apathy

2008-12-05T22:47:00.000-08:00

Denying that humanity is contributing to global warming is pretty ridiculous at this point. There's quite a bit of an evidence gap and deniers spend more time denying than bringing forth actual proof. It's like debating creationists at this point.

But assuming what we do at this point will have any great effect is probably wrong. Imagine the earth's climate as a giant metaphorical balloon. putting air in and taking air out will return the balloon to its original size, but it's not instant. The cause effect equation is not simple, it's a complicated equation

Ya. Enjoy Adam. Anyways, pressure change isn't instant, neither is heat transfer or gas exchange or anything like that.

The current hypothesis is that if we quit outputting carbon into the atmosphere today, the environment wouldn't have noticeable decrease for hundreds of years. Yikes. Anyways I just heard this today I'll post a more coherent and hopefully more optimistic conclusion when I'm less lazy.

A word about consumption

2008-12-02T19:32:00.000-08:00

The world is filled with too much

But not enough

We separate ourselves from nature

But that’s how you lose touch

Impulsive purchases

But can we reimburse the soil?

We hurt the future’s kids

In a world driven by oil

Like the Romans going down

See the omens all around

Consumerism culture

Will be our sepulcher

Dependent on consumption

What legitimacy?

One needs to find the gumption

To oppose explicitly

Not this, not me

But sustainability

We can’t just plant a tree

How many people disagree?

Not just a choice between the isms

Paths are fractured like a prism

Be the change you wish to see

Change starts with a vision

Review of the New Bond Movie

2008-11-30T23:35:00.000-08:00

Fighting for personal justice: Its represented in the movie poster where bond is using the AK47 as his 'weapon of choice' instead of the MI6 assigned Walther PPK and lets the viewer know that bond will going renegade if you watch this movie! Bond is typically an instrument of the state, but in this movie he fights a battle for personal reasons in the face of opposing American and British Itelligence Services. It goes to show how "revenge" and"truth" must be won by the heroe with the most virtu. Bond is sumultaneously fighting a battle where he is extracting revenge for his lovers death, while attempting to discover if his lover truly loved him. If he gives into the demands of his boss (the british government) he'll never know the truth. The movie asks the viewer to fight for truth in the face of one's own authorities. It is an excellent movie for the revolution. Viva la revolution!

Continuation on the last post

2008-11-30T21:32:00.000-08:00

I was going to discuss the viability of ecological terrorism, but what was represented in the movie was not terrorism. The goal of the perpetrators was not to frighten or demoralize, it was to gain money.

Let me first state that I am an atheist. I am probably the most atheist atheist you will ever meet. Now then.

So lets talk about morals, and religion. Are they mutually exclusive? Of course they are, shut your god damn mouth, they are and always will be exclusive. I will fight to the death for that belief, that morals do not have to be religious. But I'd be wrong. We've made them mutually dependent, and we've completely screwed ourselves. Here's the timeline I believe we've been living in.

Prehistory. Morals are defined by religion. Up until this point morals were an abstract idea only enforceable by brute force. A large organization is required to uphold these morals, or we have anarchism.

I realize my audience here. I've been reading the posts on this site closely. I can't tell if you're all anarchists or just think you are, but I will come out and openly say that anarchism is as likely as communism to work, ie. not at all. Anarchism cant work for the same reason unorganized farming cant work. Food production dwindles, people die. The same thing happens without organization of society, laws and rules. Production fails, the economy comes unglued. People can no longer feed their families. Worse, pretend we survive this turbulent transition. Pretend (and I mean pretend, because it will never happen) that we have become an anarchist society. We're back at square one. Does anyone actually believe that barter and helping your neighbor works? What the hell do you think we did BEFORE government? Picked flowers? We brutally killed and tortured each other.

Here's my theory on government: it crystallizes. A lot of otherwise intelligent people think the universe is organized by an outside force. I believe it organizes itself through chemical and other scientific means, but I do not believe outward input is required. A self evident form of this is bees. Who decided a hexagon was the best shape for a cell? God? No. Each bee in each hive slowly but surely evolved a way to work with this shape. There is no organization. This is chaos theory at its most practical. The behavior that causes these shapes, just like salt forming a crystal, grew from otherwise "nothingness" by additive evolution. Each element piled on another element until a general 'hive' idea was formed. They just know how to be efficient. Efficiency creates itself.

A government is the most efficient way to keep people happy, to keep them productive. You can say what you want about oppression, but we have never been as free as we are now, and we have never been as efficient as we are now. We will get better.

Time-line step number 2. We have morals. Unfortunately, the group that could create enough hysteria and fear to crystallize was religion. Religion also crystallizes. You put enough humans together, fear of the unknown will create doubt in themselves. They will seek alternatives, and religion almost always fills the void. Religion becomes at this stage both hammer and sickle. It becomes the law and it becomes the provider. It crystallizes into a hive of humanity, feeding off fear. But we have morals. We have superficial morals that can be bent, but they are literally written in stone (after a few millenia) and that leads us to stage three.

Step three: we question religion. How can any person not? When science became a unified movement towards knowledge (I would love to say it was Darwin, but my hunch says it first became really important and free from religion in either early, early Greece or more likely Mesopotamia). That was the root. Obviously freedom from religion has not occured yet, and it never will. Freedom from religion is a false dichotomy. There is a spectrum of freedom from religion, right now I'd say we're at about 60%.

Now we're at this stage where we realize we've let a group of people run our lives. At one point in the middle ages it's safe to say they were an influence in every single aspect of our lives, and in many middle eastern countries I'd be surprised if someone contradicted me. So is this bad? Is religion inherently bad? I don't think anyone believes that. I can make a fairly short list of reasons I believe religion is necessary.

1. A large group of strong, powerful and charismatic people are initially needed to reform the moral system of society. Religious founders are righteous people who generally want to help people, so more the better.

2. Without a large unified group that says "don't question us" we wouldn't know we had to question them. We don't realize we dont like living in our parents house until we start questioning their rules.

3. They set societies up, they get farming working. This is not to say that an atheist society cant sort this stuff out, but historically they havent.

Now the last step (my fingers hurt from typing so I'm starting to trail off) is the point where we don't have to think about religion any more. It hasn't stopped existing, it has simply stopped mattering. As long as we have zero, AND I MEAN ZERO openly atheist politicians in the leading countries of the world, I don't see this happening.

Sounds sweet right? Step four, the last step, is where society will fail. People are starting to really get behind this anarchism bullshit. People HATE the police. I can't stand them, not because of what they are, but because they are simply annoying. Some people hate them for enforcing morals, they see them as a symbol of the old world. They want to brush them aside, get rid of them, live free and peacefully like hippies thought they were (the idea that hippies were free living is at minimum the most retarded thing anyones ever thought). Bad move. Bad, bad move.

The anti-religious people are playing a dangerous game. They have finally succeeded in lumping morals in with religion, and forgetting they're doing so. They're fighting religion, as they should, but they're fighting the upstanding moral values they created as well. They're questioning some very important societal rules that to be honest, I have no desire to live without. Communal living leads to theft. Polygamy leads to rape, murder and for some reason, sexual deviency. I don't believe this is a fact of life, but again, history says otherwise.

So what if the anarchists win, what if they destroy this religiously saturated society? Reform? Ha! We start over. The steps I've outlined, are in my opinion, set in stone. Anarchy leads to religion, which leads to atheism, which leads people to question religion, which leads to anarchy, which leads to religion and so on.

Again, I don't believe this, but history has taught us otherwise.

Quantum of Solace made very little economic sense

2008-11-30T16:15:00.000-08:00

I don't understand it. By stockpiling the water for an entire country, an evil fake environmentalist plans to profit off the sales of utilities to the Bolivian government. A government, I may add, that has fuck all for cash anyway. A country, I may add, that is harshly divided (like many South American countries) between Government/military and poor traditional tribesman.

So what the fuck was the plan here? Charge more for water, ya I get it. Does anyone think this would go unnoticed? I mean blocking underground rivers and whatever is fine in the short run, but I seriously doubt that that one giant underground river feeds Boliva exclusively. Ya, I get it, Quantum is some big huge organization that controls practically every government in South America. Wait. So basically the plan here is to charge... for water... a human necessity... to a continent.

For some reason I don't see that going over well. What happens when people are dying and cant AFFORD to pay the ridiculous prices? I mean this is, at best, the worlds shortest sighted scheme for domination. People get dehydrated and die in a teeny tiny amount of time, which means this brilliant scheme will dry up (laugh track) so fast that the enormous cost of DAMMING A SERIES OF UNDERGROUND RIVERS will completely bankrupt this collection of well dressed dipshits.

All in all though this movie had better just be the mediocre chapter between two very good action-thrillers. And get rid of this annoying camera-shaking fight scenes. It worked for Matt Damon, but its getting old.

If you want to see a movie that gets it right, watch this clip, it's from a movie called "Old Boy" and you will agree with me when I say:

The directors of American movies have no fucking idea how to represent the brutality of violence actually found in their subject matter. They are ignorant pansies who think this gritty camera shaking is a replica for actual story telling and clever cinematography. Shape up.

Answer: A device that will change how politics function

2008-11-28T16:42:00.000-08:00

Question: What is a space elevator?

Let me explain. Space elevators are a device that connects the ground, literally, to space... via a cable. This was proposed in the late 19th century and has since been fodder for science fiction. Arthur C. Clarke is famous for making the device a pivotal issue and practically a character in several of his books. Why the fascination, you might ask? Well before I answer that, here's some scientific context.

A space elevator consists of three main components. A tether, an anchor, and a carriage system. The anchor consists of an orbiting satellite that (at least, as far as I can figure) will keep the cable tensioned through centripetal (not centrifugal, which is not the correct term) and allow climbers (or gondolas) to travel up the tether (but probably not down).

Probably not down, you say? Confused by the many brackets in the last paragraph? Well most people figure that the carriages used to thicken the cable (think weaving robots) will be most efficient if used to build up the counterweight at the end of the rope, and "down" will come a lot later, probably not until we start sending people.

How cool! But it gets more fantastic. They want to power the cars by either

a) Shooting lasers at them. Seriously.
b) Using the SUPERCONDUCTIVITYof the CARBON NANOTUBE structure of a second, parallel cable. This would require building two cables. Out of motherfucking carbon nanotubes.

Carbon nanotubes were discovered in 1991, and are long fibres of nano-scale carbon tubes that are both stupendously strong and fantastically light.

And the first person to sort out the counterweight, cable and car powering methods is instantly god. You will own space. Literally. No one can compete with this technology. Whichever country gets this first will lower the cost of putting objects into space by so much that chances are the economic boost gained will make that country so fabulously rich that they'll be able to construct cables anywhere and monopolize the space cable industry. Lets put it in economic context: It costs eleven thousand dollars per kilogram of whatever you want to put into space. An elevator could lower this to 200$ at the start, and who knows how little after establishment. That means space based industry, like zero gravity manufacturing and things like that will instantly be ~50 times less insane.

So there you go. If this technology is pioneered by the good old USA, good game. If its pioneered by the Japanese (who actually already have a program working on doing just that), prepare to be assaulted by the most technologically advanced space ninjas you've ever seen. I'm talking actual space pikachu robots that shoot lightning out of their eyes and crush cities with each footstep, spreading mayhem and ichiban as far as the eye can see.

The space cable is the future.

Standing in Relation to Politics

2008-11-27T15:58:00.000-08:00

It calls me,
in the middle of the day,
as i listen to the radio for music,
it calls.

Its not peter Mansbridge,
but it mine as well be,
the voice on the radio squeaks in,
I was enjoying the solitude of my room,
and the classical music,
but the voice becomes political.

A political prisoner of doom,
sitting in my room,
i listen and consume.

Politics is no choice,
I am called to it,
By Pete Mans to the Bridge

My escape:
I turn of the radio,
if its not too late

Oh but wait,
hostages in India,
80 dead,
by brain must be fed

I want more,
and when i've had my share of indian grief,
give me some dion and harper to top it off

What a delicious recipe for an afternoon of schizophrenia

A Universal Concept of Revolution with a Cosmopolitan Intent

2008-11-26T13:00:00.000-08:00

To Revolt is to see,
the anarchy,
within thee.
and know that the future holds,
an opportunity for change,
creating a better reality,
splendiforously

To leaders we look
but the thinking that got us here won't get us out of here
working together with our enemies,
will be our salvation,
and our downfall

Global Catharsis

2008-11-24T22:52:00.000-08:00

Global Catharsis

So in class we were asked what we think is sacred

I said that everything was but can’t forget the hatred

We have family and friends with whom we break bread

And some of us make ends meet on streets we make red

I’m sure it’s right and wrong and it’s been debated

But how many soldiers in the war still feel vindicated?

Still the economy’s recessed and press is syndicated

Do we believe what figures and figureheads have stated?

Conservatives don’t conserve and the Liberals heartless

Am I just pessimistic or are too many hard pressed?

Just trying to speak my mind as a tormented Marxist

Still searching to find global catharsis

Anarchist Potluck

2008-11-23T14:00:00.000-08:00

Yesterday i went to an anarchist potluck and had a lot of stimulating conversation with 'anarchists'. They were selling home brewed beer at their potluck, they had cranberry, eucalyptus and peppermint flavours (the cranberry tasted like cheese but the peppermint was delicious).

Apparently they are already getting organized for protests for the 2010 olympics. It sounds as if a lot of activists are going to be helping Canadian first nations protest the olympics. The goal is to teach foreigners the truth about Canada: that we're not such a peaceful place and we have an evil state just like all other countries.

The most interesting think i heard all night was during a conversation i was having about direct action. I was considering direct action to be when a group of protestors are willing to resort to violence if the police attack them. But one anarchist thought that every moment of one's life could be direct action. Instead of buying a carrot from the grocery store, he uses direct action and grows his own carrot (and brews his own beer). Every movement of his body is an expression of his political beliefs. Pretty cool.

Global Warning

2008-11-21T23:37:00.000-08:00

So what now in the aftermath of G twenty

And deflation in the US with people saving money

You can try fiscal stimulus by borrowing from China

But if we stay the same course then the worst is not behind ya

I speak about a coming shift of power to east

Try to appease the dragon while at home we calm the beast

Don’t get me wrong I know it’s hard to develop strategies

But global markets constrain and yet we call them free

All the while we demand to have social equality

And others take a stand to focus on ecology

Given that what do I see as a corollary?

Collapse and renewal but first catastrophe

Check out:

Beyond the Limits by Meadows, Meadows and Randers

Collapse by Jared Diamond

A Short History of Progress by Ronald Wright

The Upside of Down by Thomas Homer-Dixon

Evolution’s Edge by Graeme Taylor

The Labryinth of Freedom

2008-11-20T16:59:00.000-08:00

Search through the labryinth,
of endless despair,
fighting for truth,
but finding none there.

But wait!
A shining light come hither,
Freedom is near,
its time to give er'.

navigating the passage,
at the speed of light,
get to the end,
and become a knight.

Trade the walls of the labryinth,
for a metal cast suit,
freedom is a drug,
that knights must shoot.

2008-11-18T00:37:00.000-08:00

Free Speech

Interpreting interpretations

Through the double hermeneutic

Asserting verbal permutations

Some spit while others spew it

We should be deconstructing

And reconstructing structures

Now the gears are slowly rusting

So it’s time to cause a rupture

We’ll start it off with words and vids

Supported by subversive kids

Learning through discursive bids

Day by day we can disperse the grid

Is there really any doubt

That we're striving in vain?

While big businesses offshore

Are hiding their gains

It’s not worth it anymore

Who’s deciding the same?

Indeed we’re passengers

And also flying the plane

Let’s get off autopilot and

Start relying on our brains

The Charter of Rights/Restrictions and Freedoms/Unfreedoms

2008-11-17T18:57:00.000-08:00

It is weird to think that a government document outlines our rights and freedoms. It would seem to me that anyone who goes to the government to recieve rights and freedoms is the least free person of all. The charter says i have a right to 'freedom of opinion'. Is the charter giving me the right, or is it explaining a pre-existing right. This is not clear. Maybe the charter is a useless document only to be used by lawyers.

Truduea's Counter Argument: You need the government to help you be free because you can not become free alone. Becoming free is a fight and the charter can help you in your fight. Becoming free is like paddelling a canoe against the stream of the river. Every Canadian must learn to paddle against the stream and seek their own freedom in the face of the homogenizing forces of the modern world.

My rebuttal: if every Canadian is being encouraged to paddle against the stream and find personal freedom, have we not already constructed a homogenizing concept for the freedom of canadians.

Nardwar's interuption:

Justice or Just is?

2008-11-16T23:44:00.000-08:00

Despite uncertainty, our voices still remain

But it’s not clear to me to what extent our choices are constrained

I mean look at all the money the Fed spent for the nation

To perpetuate pervasiveness of gentrification

We can criticize the lenders but the system is to blame

Maybe AIG rejoices but the peasants feel the pain

Citizens losing houses and others questioning their pensions

Passing policies previously beyond comprehension

Struggling to work with realist and liberal assumptions

But Neoliberalism’s dead because the system doesn’t function

So what now? At least a substantial wealth transfer

We can wear a band-aid but that doesn’t cure cancer

To my fellow bloggers

2008-11-16T15:34:00.001-08:00

I didn't feel like sending out an email to you all, and this is relevant to anyone (if we actually have readers) reading this site.

How do you like the theme? I really enjoy the graphics side of the site, and if there's anything anyone wants improved, please comment on this post. If you hate the banner, want the colors changed, whatever, just tell me. If the font is too lame and you're tired of changing it, then maybe we should change the default font. I enjoy this silly fiddling so lay it on me

Note: my sister reading over my shoulder said this sounded sarcastic. Let me assure you that I do in fact enjoy the graphics side or I wouldn't be spending tens of thousands of dollars getting a fine arts degree. I would also like to say that my sister is a doo-doo head and her face looks like a butt.

The death of Canadian landscape

2008-11-16T14:37:00.001-08:00

Landscape painting has died. All that remains are husks, shells of soaring cedar trees that once saw the caress of Emily Carr; naive but strong. We're left with the crumbling cliffs of the group of seven, the eroding Canadian shield, barely represented in its current stage of developed exploitation by soaring brush strokes executed by our ancestral sons of industry. The beauty of Canada is a much more private pleasure now. Art has turned a blind eye to beauty. Art has laced the shoes of context and conflict to the bare, muddy feet of the running rivers of Canada.

You can no longer create a landscape piece. I have no problem with this. The legendary group of seven were rich kids who could afford oil paints, which were quite expensive at the time. If you think it's hard to get your hands on real cobalt blue pigment now, imagine it before the Trans Canada High-way. So this is not a eulogy. This is simply an opinion piece. I believe that the public art domain has removed any form of simple nature appreciation away from the eyes of the viewers. This has happened quite literally in our current time; landscape paintings are bought and sold by a die-hard group of fans, and patronized as wallpaper by hotels and businesses. It's as if there's nothing left to say about nature. It's become a prisoner of cliches.

A major sidestep of the issue is something I came up with when I was thinking of counter-points to my argument. There as a philosopher (epicurius?) who said that positive and negative are all matters of perception. This is obvious, but it does make a good personal mantra when you're cut off driving. It applies to my thesis in this post quite well. All you have to do to appreciate landscape art is treat it abstractly. Focus on the lines, focus on technical skill and composition rather than context and ideas. This is really easy to do with landscape, but it really doesn't get you far in the world we're currently stuck in.

One example is what I deal with the most often: Environmental Art. I capitalize Environmental because currently, it's a proper name for a movement that's been going on since the vague idea of pollution came up. Art that is a picture of a beautiful landscape is now a tool to get people to have shorter showers, and take the bus. Go to a landscape exhibition, and you WILL hear, at least once, "too bad there wont be much left of this to paint pretty soon". Really. Shut up. I don't care, and you don't get it. The world will happily float around after we fuck up the rain-forests. You think we'll run out of beautiful landscapes? Because even one of the worst consequences of desert warming, desertification, creates fantastic spirals and pinnacles of sand and dust. It creates stunning rock formations, it turns urban sprawl into beautiful desolation. Landscapes will always exist. It's the artists that need to adapt.

Leave the message to the curators, I'm tired of not being able to paint Fish Creek Park. I never will, because I personally would rather light myself on fire than paint a landscape, but the point stands.

2008-11-15T08:35:00.000-08:00

I had a dream where I watched the tower fall from on top of it… someone else started to make it fall and I was on the roof with a large number of other people. For some reason, I ran towards the side of the roof that would have hit the ground first but I accidentally slipped because of something to do with my current state.. I slipped and a slid for a long time as the tower was already falling in the direction in which I was sliding… my feet finally hit the short wall on the edge of the building, giving the tower more momentum to fall and at that moment, people saw me , people who had been working on the tower as their job, people who depended on the employment of the tower for their living. There were 8-10 people who knew me as a fellow coworker and a few of those 8-10 who saw me at the moment I hit the edge.. For some reason, one or two of those people immediately blamed me for making the tower fall…Even though the tower was falling long before I slipped and hit the wall they blamed me for bringing about its collapse. How could that be? I spent a good part of the rest of the dream trying to convince people that I was not me who caused the initial collapse of the tower. But the crazy thing is this.. this was a real tower and it was easy to see that it was collapsing because of the angle and the time that it took for it to fall from my vantage point on top.. But in real life when you and I talk about ‘the system’ and the collapse of the system, we socially construct the system and it is not 100% clear the extent to which it is collapsing and where we locate ourselves within the tower (on the roof or close to the bottom levels). Can I still defend myself in real life by saying the system was already collapsing and I just slipped and lost control which cased me to hit the edge and further the momentum of the collapse? Or am I just as guilty as any other person trying to bring about a collapse because we are not sure what the tipping point is that will cause the system to begin to fall, unless it has already begun to do so..? There are still real people with real jobs depending on the system and I happen to be one of them, so not only am I in the tower, I am part of the tower itself. Am I trying to bring about my own collapse? And lastly the whole metaphor of the tower is just an analogy for the way the system might be and we shouldn’t even think about the collapse as a falling tower because that is just some form of imagery I thought up in a dream.. what if the metaphor of revolution was more like tilling the soil and planting seeds in order to make new and amazing things grow?

They Do Not Know That They Hold Their Freedom In Their Mouths

2008-11-14T02:13:00.000-08:00

We call ourselves civilized, however, I would rather call ourselves tamed. We are beasts of a great circus that is run by beasts. We, the people, are as a great and mighty lion, yet we are whipped and starved into a broken dependency upon our master – the ring leading lion tamer. Generations roll by and our offspring are born into the circus subservient and captives to their masters. They accept life in their cages; denied of the truth and freedom of the natural world. To the broken and caged lions, life is the circus; there is no other way to live. They do not know that they could eat and drink freely under a shelter that is free of bars. They do not know that freedom lies in their mouths every night when the tamer is selling his show. They do not know that the tamer has no show without his lion. They do not know that freedom lies in their mouths every night when the tamer sells his show. They do not know that they have the freewill and power to bite the hand that feeds. They do not know that they hold freedom in their mouths when the lion tamer is selling his show. They do not know that they can feed themselves. We, the people, are as a mighty lion, yet we are whipped and starved into a broken dependency upon our master.

On Tom Cruise

2008-11-14T01:49:00.000-08:00

First off: Tom Cruise is an actor. Now he seems to be an actor with an agenda. Fame brings you money, money brings you power, power buys you. However, it is rumored that Tom was more or less wrangled into scientology shortly after Top Gun had blown away the audiences of the 1980's. They kept records of all of his personality testing results. Perhaps Tom was blackmailed into Scientology. Perhaps that is why he gets so intense about what he is talking about - he's pissed off!!

Perhaps he knows that there was a huge opportunity to make a lot of money. Perhaps Tom saw Scientology as a business venture that prays on the stupid and confused sheep of society. After all, he could be not only be raking in the doe, but also be permanently in the limelight of believers - a new messiah. Plus, he would also be able to create a Tom Cruise fan base that would ensure the success of each and every one of his movies. I think Oprah gets a cut too.

Nicole Kidman is so totally hot. She's even hotter to know that she didn't buy into this shit.

Anti Scientology Group

2008-11-11T22:17:00.000-08:00

sorry guys but im still not done with scientology. I found a very interesting movie that attacks scientologists now. the people that made it hold flash mob protests in the streets. they post a date and time on the internet and everyone does a brief protest where they sing songs and dance. im going to be in vancouver this weekend, i might check out the flash raid on the 15th. Even though this is just a group of religious haters, they have very interesting means of politicizing themselves in the 21st century. I think This is a well-done movie and the idea of flash mob protests is brilliant.

Remembrance Day

2008-11-11T16:47:00.000-08:00

Was it rememberance day today? when was the moment of silence? I slept in until 3 today so maybe i was silent.

The moment of silence is a very interesting concept. It makes Canadians sit and think about something (in this case the past wars). Many canadians don't get a chance to think anymore, because they are too busy listening. I don't know what i would think about if i had to do a moment of silence. Maybe i would think of medal of honour allied assault and storming onto the beaches of normandy with my dostovel.

What am i sposed to think about? dead soldiers that got killed because they believed in defending the dominion of Canada in 1918 and 1945. I didn't live in those times, and cant possible try to understand what life was like back then. not even my parents could.

Maybe in the moment of silence, i should think about the future revolutionaries that are bound to lose their lives because they believe in the destruction of the thing called 'canada'. i think even our dead soldiers would be proud of that. even though our government would tell us revolutionary thinking is shaming the dead soldiers. when did the government get ownership of dead peoples ideas?

What is it good for? A few things, actually

2008-11-11T15:16:00.000-08:00

I'm no expert on the wars that plague our past and present, but today I wonder what is going through people's mind at home and during ceremonies around the globe. I am reminded of a quote from a movie called History Boys whereby a professor in the movie says, "The best way to forget something is to commemorate it." I wonder if there is some truth to this.. What do do people think about for that few moments of silence when we 'remember'? Lost family members? Brave soldiers currently engaged in war? Are we grateful for what we have today? I try to be... But with what little I know about past and current wars I do not simply remember THAT we went to war. I think about WHY we went to war and although the intentions were complex, they were not always honourable. In fact, there were and continue to be instances where soldiers have died without even knowing on a grander scale what they were fighting for. Is it enough to say that we are fighting for our families fellow citizens? Or is it clear to most that the biggest war of all is over wealth and ideas? Do people recall that what largely saved us from the economic and social woes of the Great Depression was in fact the economic growth and social cohesion generated by World War II and all the death and destruction that came along with it? My intent is not to be naive or to berate those that have been deeply affected by war. Your emotions and your sentiments are warranted and real. My intent is to make sure that in addition to remembering those who fought valiantly, we also try to learn from past experience, not just the winners' past experience but the losers as well because after all, it is the actions of both that results in an escalating conflict. Those who forget their past are condemned to repeat it. We don't have to be experts on the history of war, but some knowledge could make a big difference.

2008-11-10T23:09:00.000-08:00

Is This Progress?

We watch the world turn

With collective intentionality

Watch the world burn

Rationality’s a fallacy

Individual choices

Can equal public woes

Amidst a plethora of voices

But that’s how the struggle goes

Trying to sift through

What’s knowledge

What’s not

Does it help to go to college?

Or does it make us more distraught?

More and more we specialize

As the game becomes complex

While we’re exposed to special lies

From one leader to the next

Politicians and the rest

with 2050 projections

But no guarantees of success

With successive elections

No telling where crisis lurks

As we progress through the haze

Yet somehow we say it works

I can’t help but be amazed

Comments on the Tom Cruise video

2008-11-10T00:38:00.000-08:00

Tom cruise talks about everything as if it were a movie preview. "It's a blast, it's a blast. I gotta tell you, it's fun". So is flying a fighter jet. Anyway. Interesting. What this is really telling me is that Scientology is for those who do not have an innate sense of morals. Tom Cruise may have been a moral person when he was born, but over the course of hollywood manipulation, he has become cynical, isolationist. He has become courageous but foolhardy. Selfless but blind. I would say then, that Tom Cruise is an example of a concept you may be familiar with: The Imaginary Modern American. Strong, powerful enough to change things, and selflessly courageous.

T.C is an example of how people often develop a reliance on religion, or another set system laid out for them. TC feels that he has to help people, and that this is because he thinks like a Scientologist (this originally said psychiatrist, I edited it). On the one hand, one can argue that cause justifies effect, since the end result is people being helped. In Tom Cruises case, and most scientologists case, they're simply drawn in by cult mentality and, due to its high profile members, some caché as well. It's a god complex, an exaggerated superiority complex.

I simply do not understand the transition stage. How do you not see yourself becoming this when the end product is so radical? This is pure brainwashing, this is the same seductive bullshit spewed by so many religions. And he needs to not pretend that Scientology is altruistic. Scientology is a business based on a commercial novel. Enough already. Fucking give it up. Dissolve your religion so we can start fearing Muslims again.

Time for Change?

2008-11-09T22:47:00.000-08:00

Not so sure about the system

So take some time to discuss its fate

I'm seeing fallout from the victims

While we're trying to resuscitate

In a world where what we know

Is esoteric or cryptic

Deficits hit you like body blows

And ideas are ballistics

Although some of us react

Rather nonchalantly

Now the president is black

And he promotes a vision staunchly

"Yes we can," he says

To the vacillating masses

Dispensing promises like pez

To calm the clash between the classes

Far from crass or brash

And a survivor of the lashes

But can the USA last

Or will it slowly turn to ashes?

Watch how the game is played

Does it depend upon the dissidents?

Can tough decisions be made

Or be upended by diffidence?

How do you tell consumers

That they're victims of their vices?

Possessions serve as tumors

But friends and family are priceless

Tom Cruise the Scientologist

2008-11-09T15:07:00.000-08:00

Th video closes with the words "the world of tom cruise the scientologist has only just begun." If this is true, the world could be in store for a reality worse than the robot aliens that invaded in "War of the worlds." In this post i will take quotes from the video (in italics) and offer my critique of them.

"A scientologist 'does'! they have the ability to create better realities." This is such horse-shit. Which reality is TC talking about? God's objective reality or his own subjective reality? The first one doesn't exist, so therefore tom cruise is shoving his own definitions of "a good reality" onto everyone else. why should a scientologist 'do'? This means they are doing something to effect people and make the world better. They should just mind their own business and cultivate their own personal realities, rather than shoving their definitions of betterment onto everyone else. It seems that scientology is creating totalitarians.

"I won't hesitate to put ethics into someone else". Of course you won't TC. Your totalitarian ways are always trying to make people live by your own standards and ethics. TC should really learn to let each human being live by his own ethics. unforunately, there are no religions in the world that allow every human being to live by their own ethics. all religions share the same principle that every human being should live and act in a certain way in relation to society and humanity>>>>>>morality. When TC says "We can unite culture", he means that if scientology takes over the world and destroys all other cultures then cultures might be united. i dont see a religion being something able to unite cultures... not even government policies of multiculturalism can unite cultures.

"You're either in or you're out, the spectator is something we have no time for right now." This is the first thing he says that makes sense, only because i am assuming that TC would consider me a spectator. At least he is saying that he has "no time" for spectators, which means he won't waste his time trying to convert me. The spectator can live in their own reality, and the scientologists can try cultivating some value laden idealistic reality.

"We have to educate and create the new reality" First of all, why is everyone supposed to abandon their own personal subjective reality to be educated on a stupid mass scientology reality? secondly, education is the worst way to get people to do anything because it proves that your reality does not exist on its own. If the reality did exist on its own, people wouldn't need to be educated and they could just find the reality themselves. Education proves that you are creating a fake reality.

Valkyrie will be released December 26, 2008. Even though Tom Cruise is crazy, i will definitely be there cause it looks like an awesome movie. Its about the attempted assasination of adolf hitler.

a critique of TC

2008-11-09T14:53:00.000-08:00

i was hoping the entire hubbubists crew could get on board and critique this tom cruise video. everyone has seen the simple-minded critiques that youtube has offered. theres usually south park style anectdotes about the crazy unreleased bibles of scientology. but considering that oprah is turning housewives across america into scientologists, it is important to look deeper into this matter. lets have our intellectual think-tank analyze the type of world and human being created by these type of scientological ideas.

Election

2008-11-06T16:39:00.000-08:00

I am heading to my Obama/McCain class. I can't stand to hear any information on the election, so i will hand in my paper and leave. I read some really intellectual coverage of the election on another blog today.

>Link<

Nemmy puts it all on perspevtice. He understands how to be a team player. when George Bush Sr. lost the election in 1992 to Clinton, Bush said "I know i lost but its time to rally behind your new president." In Canada you would never get this. Dion hates harper more than he hates high school english teachers

The Politics of Cool

2008-11-05T15:51:00.000-08:00

This is a post i made 9 months ago concerning Obama. I was really on the ball. i feel i attacked CNN viewers and Oprah Winfrey a little too harshly (but only a little).

Earlier this week, Rolling Stone Magazine announced that they would put Barack Obama on next month's issue. This is the first time that Rolling Stone has ever made a cover story out of a nominee for the leader of a party. In the past, they have made cover stories out of Democratic Presidential candidates. But 'the curse of the rolling stone' proved fatal for both Al Gore and John Kerry. Obama will get his issue now, and it would not be surprising to see him get another cover story, during the weeks leading up to the presidential election this Novemberish. Obama has a knack for capitalizing on crowds that are unable to think for themselves. Earlier in January, he got the free-spirited Oprah Winfrey to tour on his campaign trail, and also appeared on Oprah's show, where she fully endorsed him.

Even with Barack's appeal to all these forms of 'cool' media, the race does not seem to be over. Anybody that has followed the Democratic election (meaning anybody bored out of their mind, who has a full selection of cable channels, yet out of complete disrespect for their own intellectual well-being, decides to watch CNN), has been told several times that election is nearly over. All of January, we were told that Super Tuesday (in early February), would determine the Democratic nominee. When that didn't pan out, CNN told us it would be the next state election. And when that didn't pan out, they said it would be the next one; and this pattern continued for quite a while. Well, there have been numerous state elections, and CNN has been wrong numerous times. But for some reason, i keep tuning in.

This is very reminiscent to the 'kiefer Sutherland effect'. Anybody that has watched the tv show 24, knows that at the end of every episode, there is a delightful cliffhanger and then footage from next weeks show. If you own the dvd's, you have no choice but to watch the next show immediately. If it's on cable television, you book off your next tuesday at 9pm. I fell under the spell of the 'Kiefer Sutherland effect' during my final exams at the end of my second year at Uvic. I awoke in a daze, back in calgary, having done very poorly on many of my exams.

PS) the republicans and democrats have probably begun working on the campaigns for the next election. the party nominee process begins in 2 years. My hope for the next campaign: Obama vs. Shwartzennegger. Or Obama choosing shwartzenneger as his VP so they can run on the ticket: the Obamanator.

Don't let your guard down

2008-11-05T11:19:00.001-08:00

Obama will be the next president of the United States. This is certain. Or at least I hope it is. But we cant simply forget the last 8 years, and more importantly, we cannot forget the last 50. Obama has already been called "the new Reagan" and if that's true, he is soon to be the most polarizing president in the history of the United States. The election was far from a landslide, a 3 percent difference. 3 million people. Half of the country down there doesn't want Obama to represent them. There will be tension, there will be horrible things said, racism will become a new issue in the forefront of our minds.

We also cannot forget that Obama is a religious man. He's a step away from the evangelical policies, true, but he is not a secular man. I hope he, being by far the most secular since... well since Clinton, we'll see some more progression in the school systems and text book authorities, but we must never let that thought leave our mind.

We must also not forget that he is an American president. He is not a representative of the world. He is going to fix his country first, most likely at the detriment of Canada's economy and welfare. Maybe even at the expense of Mexico. We may see a shift away from a strong united North America through free trade to a more globally minded trade system.

Regardless, be vigilant and never forget that yes, this is a significant day for change politics, but simply being a dynamic leader of a large government is not enough. All those people we hated with Bush are still in middle management, in the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, the school boards. New face, yes. New body, no. In the spirit of this blog, embrace and celebrate this man's journey, but do not let your guard down.

Liveblog of the Daily Show, Colbert Report... ELECTION NIGHT

2008-11-04T23:11:00.000-08:00

12:11 - Man with a cockatoo comes on, it's beautiful wildlife with wicked amazing puns by colbert, and deadman insanity. Stewart plays straight man, colbert has a motherfucking bird on his shoulder

12:12 - Election talk! Colbert says Idaho is fucking Cuba. NY is Obama, incredibly surprising that is.

12:14 - Cockatoo still on colbert's shoulder. Jersey for Obama. Dorito Colbert is the greatest thing to ever happen.

12:15 - Wow, first commercial break, this show is amazing. The chemistry between Colbert and Stewart is so perfect I almost forgot for a second they had separate shows. This show makes Stewart's straight faced and stereotyping self deprecating humor seem like a circus act in comparison to his solo work; Colbert's jokes collide with Stewart's like fireworks.

12:20 - First Jason Jones segment, this guy is my favorite field reporter, he's really the anti-news anchor. Very smarmy but smart societal critiques. Woodland creatures are apprehensive. You'll see these images on the internet.

12:23 - John Oliver, my least favorite but most subversive field man is on his A-game, and is actually pretty funny. Worst french accent ever, no new ideas really but some good historical jokes that are actually pretty clever.

12:23a - Commercial! Phew, not as hilarious as first segment but still very clever. I thought they'd both run out of jokes when the bush administration wound down, but they still manage to keep the satire there, and have instead moved into (here ve go!) a Hegelian dialectic. They're now working in opposition towards each other to keep afloat, and can do this successfully with even generic politics. This is philosophically interesting but an interesting TV tactic. Kind of like Ren and Stimpy.

12:28 - Stewart is relaxed, cool as a cucumber. Some advisor guy. Predictably a Gore voter.

12:30 - Advisor is even funny!

12:32 - Commercial!

12:33 - I'm watching Obama's acceptance speach, and it's beautifully amazingly good. Jesse Jackson cries when he sees the results.

12:35 - Louisiana chose Mcain, because all the black people were killed by the Bush administration. Hey now!

12:36 - John Oliver segment, god he's a dick. Samantha B is the only funny female commedian.

12:38 - John Oliver is such a racially motivated comedian, which should be funny but it's counter to what he should be doing. Focusing on race should not be a core issue anymore, I wish there was some way to get rid of peoples vision for 18 months leading up to the election. Commercial right after that segment. Creepy "just for laughs" commercial.

12:44 - Colbert/Stewart banter is great here. Aasif mandvi is predictably funny as the whitest Indian man I've ever seen. He's like an Indian Chow. Sounds like Ron Burgundy. Colbert steals the show!

12:46 - commmmmerrrcial

12:51 - Barack and Michelle Obama's old harvard law professor is hilarious and honest, he said he thought michelle would be the candidate. Hilarious! As if America is ready for a black and female president!

1:33 - I started watching south park

Newton as God

2008-11-04T13:13:00.001-08:00

The reason that religion was so useful as a mechanism of society, is that it homogenized society. Everyone believed in the same thing (that goodness was everywhere thanks to the grace of god), and therefore people were better off at relating to each other.

One day god died (or maybe he never existed) and religion was no longer able to homogenize the masses because many people viewed religion as not true. Welcome the world of science and the religion of the true. Newton's goal (Newton was the evilist man in the history of earth) was to create a universal system of communication that could be used by humans to make sense of the world. The typical aethiest, in the aftermath of finding out that god doesn't exist, turns and clings tightly to something else (scientific rationalism). But at no point does the Human question why they must cling to something at all. Scientific rationalism is always already a deeep faith for all of western thought... even for me. But it is nothing more than a faith that makes us modern western individuals.

There is no way to think outside of scientific rationalism. People that are capable of thinking outside scientific rationalism, are thrown in insane asylums because they can not objectify the world any longer. The only attempts to think outside the scientific rationalism that makes us human beings, is to tell ironical stories like mine yesterday. That is as close as possible without going insane (but what is insane?). Of course time exists, but at the same time, time doesn't exist.

However, people that need science to make sense of the world, are no different than religious people. They need a faith to cling to. Scientific rationalism emerged out of an era deeply indebted to christian thought. Newton's rules of objective truth are narratives that are fed to society... naratives of truth. But when will society learn to make sense of the world for themselves? when will the kid with the tonka truck take over?

Destroy your paintings

2008-11-04T11:28:00.000-08:00

We as Canadians have a rich artistic history, but it is surprisingly antique, and depressingly shallow. The group of seven were Canada's answer to the fat republican party of today, they were old white men, born rich, with enough time on their hands to paint landscapes. Emily Carr was born wealthy, her parents sent her to Paris, London and San Francisco to study art, which at the time was a journey all combined of more than 3 years travelling. Her parents were ridin dirty on dubs, they were sipin on gin and juice, so to speak.

And now we're fucked. We've spent so long idolizing and enshrining these 20~ish rotating members of the group of seven and that Victorian matriarch Emily Carr, and here's the result: 4 degree granting art schools in a country of 30 million. Iceland has more. Only the continent of Africa has less, with 1 single art school in South Africa. We're told we're a cultured people with diverse art, but imagine what we're missing! There's a migration process to art. You score your undergrad degree at a pretty good school, make art for a year, get your masters, try to succeed, if not, teach. Sometimes people skip to teaching because they enjoy it, but it's rare.

That's all well and good. When you live in Toronto, when you live so close to New York, it's a small migration to the capital city of art. Better yet, when you're on the west side you've got Los Angeles, an emerging city that saw its peak in 60's and after. You've got San Francisco, Colorado, all these great schools to chose from. Canadian art is the undergraduate section, it's where you start, and then peace out to good old NY.

Almost no one stays in Canada to make their fortune. Glass ceilings suck.

Time does exist, the word is just misleading

2008-11-03T23:52:00.001-08:00

First of all, tip of the hat and a "well said" badge to Mr. Self Destruct.

Time is decay. Time is literally the decay of atoms, the deceleration of light, and the breakdown of order. Time is chaos. Time does not have to be something we can travel through, it is simply a fact of life.

I would say that the word "time" needs to be separated from its fictional history. The only reason we can measure time to its most exact proportions is because of the decay of a Cesium atom in a laboratory, forming an atomic clock. Time is not real as a word, but time certainly exists as a function of the universe.

TIME

2008-11-03T20:01:00.001-08:00

Time is a human word. A human idea. Yet succumbing to natural aging is inescapable. Unless you can stop the world from turning and the Earth from rotating around the sun, etc, we are all destined to grow a little older every second of every minute of everyday.

2008-11-03T19:18:00.000-08:00

If anyone wants to see death. Take a trip to your local hospital, befriend a fellow senior citizen in a hospice, or watch Al Jazeera.

Death was around long before the idea of religion was ever muttered.

What the sacred and the secular have in common: When we die, we like to think that the suffering of our existence is over.

No one knows what happens after death, either than flesh rotting and being eaten by insects, and those who claim to know are liars.

We are all dying right now. Take a look in the mirror. If you have just done this, then you were experiencing death. Your own death.

Leaving a tombstone, or even a stick in the ground, or scattering ashes in a river, or even being put in a burning boat riding the waves of the ocean are all forms of benevolent gestures if these actions were performed by loved ones.

Sure religious people think of death as a ticket to an afterlife, but not all people are religious.

Religious people are crazy.

There does not need to be a religious message attached to death. Sure the majority of people are religious, and yeah they have a religious stigma attached to death, but if they renounce their atheism at the end, then they were never really an atheist.

Born and raised as an atheist, I conclude that religious people are crazy and the majority of the world is insane and unable to cope with reality so they make shit up. However, I think that the religious leaders of the world know that the whole 'God' thing is ridiculous, but that is another can of worms.

Death is natural and we and all other organic creatures are all dying. Think of it this way and suddenly death is now seen in all aspects of life.

Spread the word brother, and teach your children the objective truth. WE KNOW NOTHING EXCEPT THAT DEATH IS INEVITABLE AND ALWAYS NEAR!!!

Assumptions involved in the word Death

2008-11-03T18:22:00.000-08:00

Obviously our ideas on death are influenced by our western metaphysical gaze. Let us look deeper into the issue, and analyze the assumptions that this group of whities is making when we talk about death

assumptions: time, life, beginnings and ends, somethingness to nothingness.

Lets try and think our way outside of death, by thinking our way outside of time. According to my physicist friend Mann, it is a scientific fact that time does not exist. Rather, it is a construct of the human mind that helps explain the world (why humans need to explain the world is beyond me). The human being has senses, and they use these senses to bring the outside world into their mind. The mind is the only playing field the human can operate with (the computer screen you are looking at exists only in your mind; nobody has access to the computer screen "in itself"). The outside universe is an eternal existing realm that has been around forever (the big bang is just a conspiracy theory). The universe has always been and will always be; the earth is only a hot piece of molten rock that somehow formed in the universe.

Lets take the optimistic young kid that believes that he will never die. Rather, he becomes like the universe (eternal and always having been). He abandons notions of time and decides to sit and play tonka trunks, in that moment, for eternity. That moment never ends. He plays with tonka trunks forever; continously dumping gravel to bring pleasure to imaginary school yard playgrounds. Unfortunately for the kid, the tonka truck becomes boring, and he eventually gets his mom to make him a grilled cheese. He had eternity in his hand, and he abandoned it for mere melted cheese! I curse time and its seductive partner: the grilling of cheese.

Rebutting the rebuttal

2008-11-03T18:20:00.000-08:00

I should have been more specific. Death should take place in a BROADER sense than simply in a hospice. I should have taken my ideas to the logical conclusion that death, in fact, and the processes involved in it, should be completely public and every day. And tombstone makers are, I'm sure to a great extent, secular businessmen, but so are bible printers and by that logic, weapons manufacturers. Secular intentions that lead to non secular execution is simply a way to escape from blame.

And attaching a religious message to death is essential. Churches and hospices have chapels, people recant their atheism in fear on their death-beds at any given time. Death is religious and always will be. Death cannot help, after all the religious history we've had to have it's own religious references. Did that person die for a cause? Then they are compared to a martyr. Did that person die after being executed? Vengeance and smiting. Did that person die after a good life? Then they're moving on to heaven to be rewarded. Are they dying too soon? Perhaps someone would say they're in a better place. Perhaps I have based an argument too much on my own preferences. I believe that monuments and tombstones are a perversion of how I view my own death, but to call them simply a benevolent expression of grief is too far. Wishing to visit the resting site of a dead person has, historically, always existed. Mr. Self Destruct is completely right. But I should have been more forward thinking and taken this statement to it's conclusion as well.

I would also like to differentiate talking about death and talking about what happens after death. I would agree with Mr. Self Destruct that death is often a religious topic, but not exactly. The topic of the actual dying is seen simply as a gateway, as a ticket to an afterlife. You cannot refute this. I have been to churches, I have been to services in almost 7 different denominations now, and this is a recurring theme. The topic of death is avoided, while the after-death is the real topic. Dying for beliefs is even an example for this. What better way to than to hide the nastiness of death by attaching a cause to it?

Another point I'd like to argue is the historical references in Mr. Self Destructs post in relation to mine. I think I may have been, once again, too vague. Cultures in the past certainly DID allow each other to see death, because they really had no choice. When you live in a group of 40 people in a mountain valley, you're gonna see death. I mean modern, 21st century canada. I have never seen someone die. I know for a fact Mr. Self Destruct has seen dead people, and most likely someone die as well, but I never have. I live in a city of a million people. Death is not a part of my life, unless you count the cemetery c-train tunnel. Maybe I've fallen victim to my own ignorance.

I would also like to point out that I don't hate religious people. I have in fact been dating a die-hard Mormon for 6 months now, and the last thing I do is disrespect her views of death or ask her if she'd like a nice solo island vacation. Having a problem with her views does not mean I want them gone. I just think we can grow beyond them.

This is the first lively discussion between two members of this blog and I am honored to be a part of it. All due respect to Mr. Self Destruct, and I look forward to your reply. Unfortunately I have to go to "history of canadian landscape painting" but when I return this will be my first click.

Death and What Have You, Part Two

2008-11-03T12:39:00.000-08:00

You can watch your family members die in hospices. Actually, you do watch your family members die in hospices. Secondly, burying the dead was around before Christian ideas, let alone pagan ideas, in which Christianity plagiarized as its own.

Tombstones are bought and sold by very secular people. These people have watched their loved ones die, like the Natives of the old world and even the Tibetan monks. The idea of a soul is common to most cultures, new and old. I feel that the Christian religion has gotten carried away with the idea of the soul, while exploiting death for obvious reasons, but to say that the problem is only of the religious faction is false. These people are only trying to honor the ones they loved. When someone puts a memorial stone in the ground, however manipulated by those who procure a dollar from exploiting the grieving process, it is a symbolic gesture of great benevolence. It may and may not actually have anything to do with a person rationalizing death.

Seeing dead people first hand, I have seen the eerie stillness of a stiff and cold body. The common description of a dead body as an empty shell that has lost its inhabitant is very accurate. There is a definite light that exists within us, call it consciousness, but when the shadow falls all that remains is a body that is symbolic of who we were.

Moving on with the sudden departure, or not so sudden departure, of a loved one can be tough and not all people can handle saying goodbye as well as others. However, to attach a religious message to death is an insult to the actual spiritual process of death for all who are involved.

Perhaps I have been comfortable with my own mortality for too long, but I really haven't met anybody who seems to disregard the fact that we die. Death is everywhere. We eat death. We see death everyday on TV, in the paper, driving past the cemetery, etc. Even with birth, birth is a huge celebration, a huge welcoming, not a hidden event by any means. I really don't think that anyone tries to put off the idea of death - you just can't. Even if you tired, it would nag at your sub-conscious until you dealt with the mortality issue one way or another. When it comes to the religious faction, I don't think that anyone talks about death more than these people. They even talk about dying for their beliefs. They definitely have a warped perspective on death, but afraid to die - I think not.

Perhaps G.Detroit should have all religious people condensed to a small island and then have it nuked. Perhaps then his qualms with how they deal with death would finally be put to rest.

Revolutionizing death, part II

2008-11-03T09:38:00.000-08:00

The rebuttals got me thinking. Mr. Self Destruct brought up a good point: cemeteries are a reminder of our temporal nature, which interestingly enough, is a supporting point to my argument and I didn't even realize it. In my desire to have the world more comfortable with their own demise, I forgot that we have a fantastic tool out our disposal already, that tool being cemeteries.

Cemeteries do remind us of death, but my main complaint is they don't do it in a secular way. They are imposing areas, with tombs and crypts meant to intimidate and humble. Cemeteries, if we insist upon their existence, need to be places of intelligence, not emotion. Scaring people with glib tombstone quotes and merciless specters of death is not the way to help people rationalize. There is something very final and irrefutable about a cemetery; the stones do not offer many opportunities to question the unknown. So perhaps it's time to open up the world of death, a post-Morten Glasnost if you will. Here's what I propose:

Instead of the wasteful and frankly, overly emotional spaces we currently have, consolidate all death related industries into one building. Instead of hiding our dead away in hospices, give them a comfortable place where (and this is key) their family members can see them die.

I know that sounds horrible, but hear me out: Lewis Thomas talks about this a bit in his amazing book Lives of a cell, and I tend to agree. Even J.K. Rowling makes mention of it in Harry Potter number 6 (or 7, I don't know). As seemingly ridiculous those two references are in relation to each other, they both say some intelligent things about death to different audiences. Thomas says the reason we cannot deal with death in the modern world we live in is because of distance. Like Mr. Self Destruct said, people would never be able to face the embalming process, and that's a problem. Distancing ourselves from death and the processes we create to hide it is the reason philosophy has endless ammunition in this area. Familiarizing ourselves with death opens doors to understanding it. Allowing oneself to witness the end of a loved ones life would probably make it easier to deal with than sitting at their graveside. Death, like birth, is something we all have in common, and yet they're two things we hide due to some insane theological modesty.

So open up the death industry, and start society down the path to realizing it is not immortal, we will die, and there's nothing wrong with that.

I feel like I should explain that Harry Potter reference. Rowling created some horse critters named Thestrals in the books, that you could only see if you had seen someone die. While this makes for some hilarious flight scenes with people on invisible horses, it's also a good metaphor. When you witness death, you gain the ability to ride the horse of knowledge, and in the books it is no coincidence that these beasts have the ability to flawlessly navigate to any destination at speeds we cannot fathom. Rowling for all her idiocy and mediocre writing skills often surprises me with how deep she takes her metaphors. Her belief in a soul is painfully ridiculous to me, but she is at least more willing to deal with death than most people.

Bring Back the Charivari!!!!

2008-11-03T02:24:00.000-08:00

In the Canada of old, men and women of the lower classes formed groups and, donned in costumes, would take it upon themselves to represent the ideals of the majority. They would seek out those who were corrupt and immoral (regardless of class) and create spectacles to humiliate and intimidate those targeted. They would be relentless in their heckling and rabble-rousing until there was an admittance of guilt and a monetary fine was paid to a charity benefiting the working class. Protests are still in existence as we well know, but the amount of corruption and general immorality within our North American borders greatly outnumber the few we hear about. We complacently believe that the centralized control over our police force is strictly for our benefit. Then why is it that the police tend to work against us, beat us down, tear gas us, pepper spray us, arrest us, and mute our voices when we have a sincere claim against crimes and legislation that hurt our communities. We must bring back the Charivari!!!! We must bring back the ability to have our community voices heard!!! We must find a way to stop the corruption and immoral choices of those who hurt our communities!!! We must take action into our own hands!!!

If anyone has any good ideas, please share...

Death and What Have You

2008-11-03T01:03:00.000-08:00

I would agree with G-Detroit that cemeteries do seem rather illogical with our limited amount of public space. However, the idea of burying the dead is said to go back as far as 200, 000 years ago - an act that was probably a symbolic gesture of spiritual and physical connectedness with the earth. This means that we humans have an ingrained desire to give our loved ones back to the earth which has sustained not only all of the lives that have passed, but also our own.

Christians were not the first to bury their dressed up dead, and they definitely are not the only ones who still dispose of the remains of a deceased person this way. I know this first hand from working in a funeral home. The truth is this: most people would not be able to stomach what is involved in dealing with the process of caring for a loved one after he/she has succumbed to the inevitable. Naturally, we try to make the burden of loss as easy as possible for those grieving.

Regardless if you want to agree or not with the business of death - it will always be there in some form. Say one day you come home and find that your girlfriend has jumped 30 stories to her death and now she is a mess of skin, various tissues, bones, hair, and what have you. By now the police and ambulance would have been dispatched and a legal cause of death will have to be assessed. This is how things are done in a western 21st century world. A trip to a morgue is inevitable. Even if you were to burn the body, or what was left of it, you would need to transport it. With what means would one achieve this task. Buying a body bag perhaps, but then you are supporting the death trade. Perhaps a garbage bag then - may I suggest the extra strong ones and layering up at least four times.

It is true that we no longer need to dispose of our loved ones through a dressed up burial (embalming is particularly bad for the environment and also a very disturbing procedure), yet there is always going to be a demand for funeral and disposal services, and there will always be those who will provide it.

Even if we outlawed the burial of people, having an in town reminder of how fleeting our lives and ideas are, in the form of cemeteries, would be a healthy dose of reality.

Psychogeography of the Vancouver Area

2008-11-02T19:36:00.000-08:00

I made this with foto-shop:

Revolutionizing Death: a follow up

2008-11-02T16:24:00.000-08:00

What an excellent article by G-Detroit. It got me thinking about other aspects of death. Heidegger says that death is ones greatest possibility. That when one thinks about death, and their relation to death, they are hitting on something very essential to the human being.

There is a western metaphysical debate about the separation of mind and body. Christians (and most religious people), believe that we have a soul that is separated from our body. that the soul exists outside this earthly realm, and that the soul continues on after death. The body then, becomes some useless vehicle that the soul clings onto for a short period of time during our earthly existence. I really don't see why christians make a big deal about burials and cemetaries, when the body doesn't have a very big importance to their theology.

Maybe a revolutionizing of the way we conceive of the body is in order.

Revolutionizing death

2008-11-02T09:34:00.000-08:00

Cemeteries are a terrible idea. As a strict and sincere atheist, I believe that the moment all the blinking lights go out in my brain, I'm a lump of pinkish goo and hair. I accept that. I don't particularly like it, but I firmly believe it, and I will never be persuaded otherwise. But the actual act of dying and being put through a mortuary is a mental conflict for me, and it should be for everyone. Here's why:

Cemeteries take up an enormous portion of the earth's surface, often on arable land that we could be farming. So what the fuck? I'm an atheist, I don't know if my fellow contributors are, but what the hell is the point of all this coffin and burial industry? The cemeteries are getting full of melting Christians, and we're building new ones, with no public outcry. We're creating the same problem with landfills, except garbage dumps get converted to baseball diamonds and city parks you can play soccer in. No dice for cemeteries, they're sacred ground, blessed by priests and hugged by god. Cremation is just as bad. You pay thousands of dollars to put someone in a suit (they're dead, they don't care), and then you pay thousands more lighting it on fire. With natural gas. A resource we should be saving.

So rise up with me and spread the word, the business of funerals is just that: business, and we need to curtail this now and find a new, inexpensive and non-wasteful way of getting rid of our old dead people. Hi-rise cemeteries for the religious folk sounds easy enough to build. Your family can lease a death suite, they can plant grass indoors and keep your body in a nice shallow grave, or perhaps a wall safe. Give the building tinted windows so us secular folk can get with our lives (or deaths).

For me, like Chad Vangaalen said in his song "willow tree", I want you to "take my body, put it in a boat. Light it on fire... send it out to sea."

Word of the Day

2008-11-01T16:43:00.000-07:00

Reformolution- many believe the 'olution'in this word is derived from 'revolution', however this is a mistake. It is actually derived from the word 'solution'. 'Reformolution' is the word what socialists mean to say, when they use the word revolution. it means to pretend to work radically within the system, and bringing about slight changes that further propogate the system.

On Freedom

2008-10-30T15:44:00.000-07:00

We're always free, but we're never free. we go to the market to buy some fruit, and we feel free in the beautiful sunshine, and the smell of tangerines. But then we go to the counter and pay with currency that the government has issued. And we leave the store and we have to wait for the white man on the crosswalk box to appear, before we walk. But we could just ignore the white man and cross at our leisure. but then we might be run over. or we could just look around, and wait until there are no cars, and then walk when we feel safe. but then my decision to walk is being shaped by the driving patters of others... this can not be freedom.

i think i am confusing freedom and happiness... or maybe freedom and peace of mind. Nietzsche would say freedom has nothing to do with happiness, and that freedom is "the ultimate form of cruelty." maybe that's too extreme for me.

I have been thinking a lot about freedom lately. In its many forms: political freedom, freedom of will, freedom of consciousness, freedom to be one's self, freedom of belief.

It is amazing that a term can be applied to so many broad categories.

One Mind

2008-10-29T16:34:00.000-07:00

I had just remembered something that I had read once and not too long ago - I believe it was Carl Jung. Anyways, it was about how our personalities are all actually an amalgamation of traits that we have all picked up subconsciously from all of those who we have come into contact with. Our ego is actually composed of many reflections that have all been shone into one ray of light. In essence, we are all of the same mind.

Cloning

2008-10-29T15:57:00.001-07:00

Dolly the sheep was cloned back in the late 1990's. We probably are not too far away from cloning human beings. North American laws will likely be skpetical of allowing the cloning of human beings for a decade or two, even after the technology becomes available. However, where there are people that hate the united states, there will be scientists challenging the rights to clone human beings.

Once we clone a famous person, that clone can grow up, and read the literature and watch the movies involving their original. If we continually reinforce who that person will grow into (and considering they have the excact same genetic makeup), it is not too farfetched that they will be almost identical to their original.

What human being would you clone, and how would it bring goodness to the world?

My buddy 'welcome to the spectacle' suggested cloning a think tank of Eintstein's to solve world problems. This is a good idea.

I would likely clone a think tank of Jeff Goldblum's and get them to reinact Shakespearian plays in parks. Each Jeff would play a different character in the play, and they would try and emulate the original actor accordingly. This would really increase the spririts of the human population on earth.

other contributors... who would you clone?

My Clothes

2008-10-29T12:39:00.000-07:00

Today I am wearing a quicksilver sweater. Underneath i am wearing a white t-shirt with the batman logo on it; i paid 5 dollars for it at wal-mart (christopher nolan did not recieve a penny, but some labourer in china did recieve half a penny for the shirt.) I am wearing Kenneth Cole Shoes and banana Republic jeans.

Today i am also wearing a MEC down vest. People that shop at MEC, feel they are escaping the spectacle because its a co-op not a corporation. They don't use slave labour in china, but rather use fairly paid labour in china. The style of the clothes is unique,and has a certain style of its own.

But how do we escape style. If I hand in my Banana republic jeans, for hemp MEC pants, i still am supporting a style. I'm still buying into an ideal that brands me to a certain group of people that buy clothes at a certain place. The hippies were the biggest stylists of this century. They all bought into tie die shirts and Rastafarian beanies.

My solution: burn all my clothes in a fire, and go to Fanny's Fabric and make my own clothes. But then do i become a walking advertisement for Fanny's Fabrics? "hey Barry, where did you get that shirt?" "I didn't buy it, i made it"
But there hasn't been an escape from style. The person that tries to escape style, ends up being an unconcscious marionette for style. Is it better to be a conscious marionette or an uncionscious marionette?

Just Stop

2008-10-29T10:46:00.000-07:00

Last night my girlfriend had shown me a disturbing picture that a child in grade six had drawn. It was a picture of a Converse shoe. Apparently this child is obsessed with the brand and their product. This disturbs me so because it just goes to show that consumer brand brainwashing is still affecting young children as it was when I was young. Children should not be branding themselves. Children should not be drawing Converse shoes when asked to draw something straight out of their imagination.

I highly doubt that this child knows that her Converse shoes are owned by Nike and were made in China. I wonder if this child's parents are aware that they are supporting economic growth in China while they pissing all over themselves. American capitalists are the least patriotic people in North America. It's ironic that they have the "Patriot Chuck" (a shoe that resembles an American flag)- when this shoe is anything but. A rich man owns a company, Nike, and has his shoes made as cheaply as possible in China. He then sells his shoes at an extremely high rate compared to the actual cost of manufacturing to Americans who can barely afford them because they have a hard time finding a job. Where are all the jobs? Oh yeah, China.

People need to start teaching their children that we need to rely on locally made materials and necessities, like shoes. The future is local sustainability and local networking. We must put an end to pigs taking the ground out from underneath us. They are killing us by taking our jobs away and teaching our youngest generations to buy young, as to ingrain the idea at a young age that the current method of North American consumerism is Ok. Being branded at such a young age is like offering a child meth. Once you have them hooked on a nostalgic habit that they use to identify themselves with, the habit will slowly grow into a cancer that will enslave us all. We need to stop buying products from the swine who don't give two shits about North American citizens. They only want to profit as much as they can while they can. It is up to us, the consumers, to decide how long they can get away with it, if at all.

Why don't we understand that we can make a world of difference in bettering our lives and the lives of our fellow citizens by making simple decisions such as boycotting all Chinese made products? Targeted boycotting can change our lives so dramatically. We have the power. Take your eyes off of the spectacle and see things for what they really are. Cut yourself off from the illusion and make a real difference in your world - a positive difference. If we all start to have a conscious approach to consuming and what the consequences of our actions are, we will realize that anything is possible and that we, the people, are those who are in control of our world - not the corporate swine who are enslaving us and dumbing us down. Think - all we have to do is stop. Once we stop giving into their game, we win.

Massages

2008-10-28T12:33:00.000-07:00

I asked my dad to look through the corporate information that outlines my health plan. I was interested in finding out if my insurance covers a monthly massage or two. It doesn't!

What kind of a country do we live in, where a man that wants a massage, gets refused because his dads health plan doesn't stipulate massages. Some word, on a piece of paper somewhere, says that im not allowed to have a professional put their hands on my back. Is my back that hairy? Massages should be free for everybody. In elementary schools, massage therapy should be one of the 5 main courses. whenever someone gets a sore back, they could just lie down in the street until someone came and tweaked out the kinks.

lying down in the streets, and waiting for help to come to you, might be an effective political strategy as well. Let me give another example. Russian soldiers attempted it during long war campaigns, that involved travelling across europe. When the winters got too harsh, and the generals kept pushing on, soldiers would just lie down in the snow and give up. Many thought this was a will to death. But what ended up happening, was the disheartened soldier found his metabolism slowed down and he entered into a state of hibernation. He ends up outliving his comrades that died in battle defending the motherland. Nietzsche says "since you would exhaust yourself too quickly if you reacted at all, you no longer react in any way: such is the logic."(ecce homo, page 14)

This is a possibled strategy of the revolution. I think the African American movement tried it, when they lied down in the streets and refused to move, creating major traffic jams (I could not find any evidence of this on wikipedia so i might have imagined it).

Socialist Club

2008-10-27T22:19:00.000-07:00

Today i saw an ad in town, identifying a meeting of the Socialist Club. The discussion was about the economic crisis, climate change, government and the need for revolution.

I showed up to the meeting, and a lovely lady named Michelle Robidaux was giving the lecture. She is in her 40's and has been a socialist since high school. She definitely was interested in revolution, but when i asked her if the revolutionaries can expect the help of the police in escorting traffic in their rallies, she skimmed over my question as unnecessary.

To be honest, i got the feeling that the entire Socialist Club, were a bunch of liberals that wanted to fight for reform within the system. Don't they understand that it is largely the system to blame for mistreatments of the borgousie whole today.

I had a guest lecture this week. He grew up as a hippy but handed in his reefer for a nice black suit and decided to work for the government. Currently, he is trying to address the problem of the public service diminishing (because of baby boomers retiring) while the services that the citizens need are increasing. The governments plan, is to not address this problem by hiring more people, and to do more work with less people. But the problem they run into, is when someone has a creative idea, all the ministers beat the shit out of that idea, then it goes to the house and the opposition beats the shit out of it, and then this pile of shit which does not resemble the original idea, takes 2 years of paperwork before it officially becomes law.

Wouldn't it be great if the government could announce a plan, and workers could be standing by to build it immediately. One gets to ride on the new buses the city provides, even before the newspapers are reporting the news. is this too idealistic? Or maybe the government is just too slow?

viva la revolution

Welcome Revolutionaries

2008-10-26T16:12:00.000-07:00

This is the new blog. it was created on a saturday in late october 2008. The blog will continue to stay informative, until the revolution takes place. The Revolution will not be televized... but we will have some coverage here.