George W. Bush popped up on my TV this morning, and declared twice in as many minutes, that Abu Musab Al Zarqawi had been brought to justice.
Now, I would never want to contradict someone whose every utterance comes with a stamped and signed guarantee of truthfullness (Mission Accomplished!) but I think he misunderstands something about the nature of justice.
First, Zarqawi was killed. By two 500 pound bombs. Before he was arrested, tried or convicted of anything.
When I think of people being brought to justice, it involves courtrooms, impartial judges, juries and the introduction of evidence. There are a wide variety of justice systems in the world, each flawed in its own way, but by and large they do not begin their processes with the launching of weapons from F-16 jet fighters.
Do I have any doubt that Zarqawi was guilty of horrible crimes? Very little. I’m even pretty certain that he deserved to die, although I would add that I don’t believe anyone had the right to kill him, if there was another alternative available.
So when Bush claims that Zarqawi was “brought to justice,” he is misusing the very meaning of the word justice. What happened to Zarqawi was a military assasination. Men in uniforms and suits decided he would die, and killed him. The fact that no one cares very much that he is dead does not mean that it was justice.
If the warhawks want to justify extra-judicial killings, there are arguments to be made on that score. Just don’t take the word justice and try to tack it onto a military assault.
Friday, June 09, 2006
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
Hero Stories
A strange blog item appeared the other day on New World Notes, and will be little noticed by the world at large.
In the online Snow Crash-inspired world of Second Life, a volunteer group of guards has appeared.
They have spontaneously joined together to protect a charity organization: a group that has been using an island in the game to create a simulated refugee camp in Darfur. The group is trying to raise awareness and funding for the refugees. Unfortunately, people on the Internet, seemingly rational adults, sometimes behave like assholes. Someone has "griefed" the site repeatedly, trying to crash the island's simulation, throwing the volunteers around with "push guns."
The guards are now patrolling the area, asking anyone suspiciously hanging around what they are doing there, and trying to prevent future acts of griefing.
The guards? They're the Green Lantern Corps. A bunch of Second Life residents who have been role-playing as members of an alien police organization from DC Comics. They wear green spandex outfits and glowing rings, and they have created little bits of computer code to give themselves special effects related to their comic book alter egos. Now they are playing hero in a tangiable, albeit still virtual, way.
The power of stories is something often commented on, but little understood in the practical sense any longer.
It is not hard to see why not. The sweeping narrative poems of the ancient world are only studied in schools. Shakespeare is admired and revered more often than felt and loved. The didactic stories, the Boys Own tales of the Victorian era, are regarded, by those who know them, as the cheap struts that held up a hypocritical empire.
(Socialists even have a rigid taboo against storytelling. There is a refusal there to imagine future socialist worlds of any kind which I find appalling, but that is a post for another day.)
What is the power of stories? It is ultimately the power of making people find in themselves what they wish to find. If you hold a story inside, you learn from it. Fiction is ultimately a shaping force on the human mind. How many knights rode into battle with the Song of Roland's words ringing in their ears? How many Greeks entered the phalanx thinking of Homer's Achilles? How many American soldiers went to war thinking of Davy Crockett at the Alamo?
Stories, as the above examples indicate, can lie to us, send us cavalierly into combat, make us sell our lives for lying politicians. But they have also inspired some of the noblest actions of human history. Yet when I look around at modern literature (that's capital L literature, books that Matter) there aren't a lot of stories that stir the soul to greatness.
There are a lot of things to be said for modern literary fiction, and the boundaries between that genre (yes, it's a genre) and the fantastic and adventurous ones is thinner than those on either side imagine. But the division is usually seen, by the partisans of each side, as one between fascistic, juvenille power fantasy (SF and superheroes) and carefully studied middle class misery posing as realism (Literature). The raw, inspirational stuff has been left to the genres considered less serious.
The Second Life Green Lantern Corps is not going to save the world. They may get bored with their guarding job next week and wander off. They might never stop another griefing attack. And all in all, it's a pretty insignificant conflict, as we are reminded by the presence of the real Darfur.
But the very fact that it was the Green Lantern role players who stepped in makes me hopeful for the power of story. There are a lot of role playing groups in Second Life, everything from air pirates to furries to vampires. It doesn't surprise me at all that none of them stepped in before the super heroes did. The tales of a bunch of green-clad aliens may not seem very important to the world at large, but to the people who first picked up those comics at the age of ten or twelve, they could be as powerful as the Song of Roland. Those 22-page books taught kids, for the purpose of separating them from the cost of a comic, that the defenceless should be protected, that the good should sacrifice themselves for a just cause, that might does not make right. The fact that they have stepped in to help the Darfur volunteers showed they have internalized that lesson to an extent.
So have we all. Every one of us had an experience like the Green Lantern Corps. We have all read noble, cheap fiction. Maybe clumsily worded, but filled with high ideals.
Warren Ellis is a writer who has made something of a career of stripping comic book archetypes down to their essences. He wrote a brief story in his Planetary series that summed up the Green Lantern ideals: "Be the kind of policeman who works, not for laws or authority structures, but for finer worlds."
We can all do this. If we have ever read a hero's story, we have heroes inside of us. When we play the hero's role, it doesn't matter to the world at large if we are insecure, full of doubt and hidden torment. Think of the stories, pretend to be the hero, and let the fiction become reality.
In the online Snow Crash-inspired world of Second Life, a volunteer group of guards has appeared.
They have spontaneously joined together to protect a charity organization: a group that has been using an island in the game to create a simulated refugee camp in Darfur. The group is trying to raise awareness and funding for the refugees. Unfortunately, people on the Internet, seemingly rational adults, sometimes behave like assholes. Someone has "griefed" the site repeatedly, trying to crash the island's simulation, throwing the volunteers around with "push guns."
The guards are now patrolling the area, asking anyone suspiciously hanging around what they are doing there, and trying to prevent future acts of griefing.
The guards? They're the Green Lantern Corps. A bunch of Second Life residents who have been role-playing as members of an alien police organization from DC Comics. They wear green spandex outfits and glowing rings, and they have created little bits of computer code to give themselves special effects related to their comic book alter egos. Now they are playing hero in a tangiable, albeit still virtual, way.
The power of stories is something often commented on, but little understood in the practical sense any longer.
It is not hard to see why not. The sweeping narrative poems of the ancient world are only studied in schools. Shakespeare is admired and revered more often than felt and loved. The didactic stories, the Boys Own tales of the Victorian era, are regarded, by those who know them, as the cheap struts that held up a hypocritical empire.
(Socialists even have a rigid taboo against storytelling. There is a refusal there to imagine future socialist worlds of any kind which I find appalling, but that is a post for another day.)
What is the power of stories? It is ultimately the power of making people find in themselves what they wish to find. If you hold a story inside, you learn from it. Fiction is ultimately a shaping force on the human mind. How many knights rode into battle with the Song of Roland's words ringing in their ears? How many Greeks entered the phalanx thinking of Homer's Achilles? How many American soldiers went to war thinking of Davy Crockett at the Alamo?
Stories, as the above examples indicate, can lie to us, send us cavalierly into combat, make us sell our lives for lying politicians. But they have also inspired some of the noblest actions of human history. Yet when I look around at modern literature (that's capital L literature, books that Matter) there aren't a lot of stories that stir the soul to greatness.
There are a lot of things to be said for modern literary fiction, and the boundaries between that genre (yes, it's a genre) and the fantastic and adventurous ones is thinner than those on either side imagine. But the division is usually seen, by the partisans of each side, as one between fascistic, juvenille power fantasy (SF and superheroes) and carefully studied middle class misery posing as realism (Literature). The raw, inspirational stuff has been left to the genres considered less serious.
The Second Life Green Lantern Corps is not going to save the world. They may get bored with their guarding job next week and wander off. They might never stop another griefing attack. And all in all, it's a pretty insignificant conflict, as we are reminded by the presence of the real Darfur.
But the very fact that it was the Green Lantern role players who stepped in makes me hopeful for the power of story. There are a lot of role playing groups in Second Life, everything from air pirates to furries to vampires. It doesn't surprise me at all that none of them stepped in before the super heroes did. The tales of a bunch of green-clad aliens may not seem very important to the world at large, but to the people who first picked up those comics at the age of ten or twelve, they could be as powerful as the Song of Roland. Those 22-page books taught kids, for the purpose of separating them from the cost of a comic, that the defenceless should be protected, that the good should sacrifice themselves for a just cause, that might does not make right. The fact that they have stepped in to help the Darfur volunteers showed they have internalized that lesson to an extent.
So have we all. Every one of us had an experience like the Green Lantern Corps. We have all read noble, cheap fiction. Maybe clumsily worded, but filled with high ideals.
Warren Ellis is a writer who has made something of a career of stripping comic book archetypes down to their essences. He wrote a brief story in his Planetary series that summed up the Green Lantern ideals: "Be the kind of policeman who works, not for laws or authority structures, but for finer worlds."
We can all do this. If we have ever read a hero's story, we have heroes inside of us. When we play the hero's role, it doesn't matter to the world at large if we are insecure, full of doubt and hidden torment. Think of the stories, pretend to be the hero, and let the fiction become reality.
Monday, May 01, 2006
Quote of the Day
"Actually, if you just went and hired and assembled every bureaucrat who fled in disgust from the Bush Administration, they might make a pretty good government."
- Bruce Sterling, from his blog.
- Bruce Sterling, from his blog.
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Mercer: Man's got a mean streak
Rick Mercer posted his first blog-rant in quite a while, and it's a doozy. "Priority Six: We are a bunch of pricks" takes aim at the Tories for not lowering the flag to half mast on the Peace Tower to mark the death of four Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan.
I'd love to throw in some profanity about this latest Tory blunder, but repeated typing of f-u-c-k-y-o-u-H-a-r-p-e-r is going to give me repetitive stress injury if I keep it up much longer. So I'll just say that it's the height of hypocrisy for the Tories to get on their high horse about a debate on Afghanistan and then do this.
They've claimed that any Parliamentary discussion or vote on the Canadian military mission in Afghanistan would hurt soldiers' morale. But apparently, ignoring their deaths and doing nothing to commemorate the return of their bodies to Canada is perfectly acceptable to soldiers. Their fatuous toad Lewis McKenzie has been shilling for them on CBC already, saying it's better this way, it's back to the way it was, that lowering the flag for the other slain soldiers before was an aberation.
Maybe so, but I say we should be reminded that our so-called leaders are sending others to die for them, and for that flag. Every time a soldier dies, let it come down.
I'd love to throw in some profanity about this latest Tory blunder, but repeated typing of f-u-c-k-y-o-u-H-a-r-p-e-r is going to give me repetitive stress injury if I keep it up much longer. So I'll just say that it's the height of hypocrisy for the Tories to get on their high horse about a debate on Afghanistan and then do this.
They've claimed that any Parliamentary discussion or vote on the Canadian military mission in Afghanistan would hurt soldiers' morale. But apparently, ignoring their deaths and doing nothing to commemorate the return of their bodies to Canada is perfectly acceptable to soldiers. Their fatuous toad Lewis McKenzie has been shilling for them on CBC already, saying it's better this way, it's back to the way it was, that lowering the flag for the other slain soldiers before was an aberation.
Maybe so, but I say we should be reminded that our so-called leaders are sending others to die for them, and for that flag. Every time a soldier dies, let it come down.
Jane Jacobs, RIP
I remember reading The Coming Dark Age after reading a positive review of it in the local paper, and with no previous knowledge of who Jane Jacobs was. It struck me how much thought had gone into such a slim volume - almost a lifetime's worth, it turned out.
Ms. Jacobs passed away yesterday at the age of 89.
She talked about creating livable cities before it became a buzzword, was a self-made expert who rejected academic titles, and was generally my favourite kind of powerful person: one who simply spreads powerful ideas.
Ms. Jacobs passed away yesterday at the age of 89.
She talked about creating livable cities before it became a buzzword, was a self-made expert who rejected academic titles, and was generally my favourite kind of powerful person: one who simply spreads powerful ideas.
Friday, April 21, 2006
Second Life Radicals!
I just signed up for Second Life, even though I can't play it from home, as I don't have a high speed connection.
But I couldn't resist. I was checking out the sign up site, and I noticed the last names currently up for grabs include Marx and Proudhon. Someone at Linden Labs must have a sense of humour or a radical background.
Other names currently available include Mill (as in John Stuart, I hope) and Ricardo.
Mat Proudhon, signing off.
But I couldn't resist. I was checking out the sign up site, and I noticed the last names currently up for grabs include Marx and Proudhon. Someone at Linden Labs must have a sense of humour or a radical background.
Other names currently available include Mill (as in John Stuart, I hope) and Ricardo.
Mat Proudhon, signing off.
Harper's Top 5 Blunders!
Nobody really knew what to expect from Stephen Harper as PM. Not only has Canada been under 13 years of Liberal Party rule, but Harper's Conservative Party is a new political entity. Merged from the purified and slicked-up remnants of the prairie-populist Reform Party and the dregs of the wallowing Progressive Conservatives, it has never held office before.
What most of us weren't expecting was a series of massive blunders in the first four months of government. The latest (number four on the list) has prompted this little exercise. Grab your popcorn, kids, it's time for the highlight reel.
#5: Internal media controls.
Harper has famously sent out directives that none of his cabinet ministers or top bureaucrats can speak to the media without his permission. No straying from the government position, either. This will be a good strategy in the short term, bad in the long term. With a minority government, there might not be a long term, however.
#4: Getting Schooled by Lyin' Brian.
From the Ottawa Citizen (hat tip to Battlepanda):
Holy mother of Jebus!
You know, growing up in the household of a life-long, Tommy Douglas worshipping NDPer, some words are pronounced differently. Social Credit Party is "goddamned Socreds." Progressive Conservative Party becomes "fucking Tories." And I doubt Brian Mulroney's name was ever pronounced without one descriptive adjective or another tacked on either, back when I was a wee Iguanodon.
When the most hated man in Canadian politics is taking you out behind the woodshed, and teaming up with greens to do it, you should start to worry.
#3: Censoring bureaucrats outside office hours.
This one is really going to hurt him. From CP:
Hey, Stephen: fuck you. You do not get to tell people who work for you what they can or cannot do in their private lives. If you think anyone should have that power over anyone else, you are in for a shock when my "Force Harper to wear a French maid uniform" petition reaches Ottawa.
Of course, the government tried to cover its ass and say they only censored Tushingham because he didn't follow "due process," and that because he was identified as an Environment Canada scientist in his press release, he should only speak to the government position.
Nope, still sounds like stupid, autocratic bullshit to me. (The fact that he's going after an SF author really pisses me off. That's MY tribe, you bastard!)
Way to smooth relations with the bureaucracy, the scientific and academic communities and the environmentalists, there.
#2 US relations.
This one came pre-screwed. Harper has no good way to deal with the US. He came in on a promise to fix relations, and obviously he and his supporters believed the nasty Liberals had just fucked everything up, and the Bushies would welcome him with open arms. He is just now realizing - as we get nothing on passports, softwood, anything - that the Bushies have no intention of dealing fairly with anyone. They don't have to. They have nukes.
Harper now has two options: he can copy the Liberals and bad-mouth the US publicly while doing nothing that is really radical, and keep negotiating and using courts to deal with trade problems. Or he can meet the Americans more than halfway, and look like another lapdog.
#1 L'Affaire Emerson.
This one seems to have gone away. It didn't show up much in the polls outside of areas that already hate Harper. But like a dead fish in the furnace vents, the smell is just going to get worse over time. Now, with reports (strongly denied) that Emerson is unhappy with his Glorious Leader, it is coming back again. And it'll keep coming back, every few weeks or months, until the next election.
What most of us weren't expecting was a series of massive blunders in the first four months of government. The latest (number four on the list) has prompted this little exercise. Grab your popcorn, kids, it's time for the highlight reel.
#5: Internal media controls.
Harper has famously sent out directives that none of his cabinet ministers or top bureaucrats can speak to the media without his permission. No straying from the government position, either. This will be a good strategy in the short term, bad in the long term. With a minority government, there might not be a long term, however.
#4: Getting Schooled by Lyin' Brian.
From the Ottawa Citizen (hat tip to Battlepanda):
Mr. Mulroney plans to hold Prime Minister Stephen Harper's feet to the fire, urging him not only to put environmental issues on his government's list of five priorities, but to put them at the top of that list. His message: leadership trumps process when it comes to saving the planet.
Although Mr. Harper's commitment to the Kyoto Accord has, thus far, been vague, Mr. Mulroney intends to sound the alarm on the subject of global warming and the issues -- including the threats to Arctic sovereignty -- from the melting of the polar ice cap.
If that's not enough to make Mr. Harper squirm, the main course is sustainably harvested Arctic char, and the environmental groups behind the gala have printed their top five environmental priorities on the evening's menu.
Holy mother of Jebus!
You know, growing up in the household of a life-long, Tommy Douglas worshipping NDPer, some words are pronounced differently. Social Credit Party is "goddamned Socreds." Progressive Conservative Party becomes "fucking Tories." And I doubt Brian Mulroney's name was ever pronounced without one descriptive adjective or another tacked on either, back when I was a wee Iguanodon.
When the most hated man in Canadian politics is taking you out behind the woodshed, and teaming up with greens to do it, you should start to worry.
#3: Censoring bureaucrats outside office hours.
This one is really going to hurt him. From CP:
A scientist with Environment Canada was ordered not to launch his global warming-themed novel Thursday at the same time the Conservative government was quietly axing a number of Kyoto programs.
The bizarre sequence of events on the eve of the Easter long weekend provided an ironic end-note to the week in which Prime Minister Stephen Harper introduced his first piece of legislation - aimed at improving accountability and transparency in government.
The day began with what was supposed to be the low-key launch of an aptly titled novel, Hotter than Hell.
Publisher Elizabeth Margaris said that Mark Tushingham, whose day job is as an Environment Canada scientist, was ordered not to appear at the National Press Club to give a speech discussing his science fiction story about global warming in the not-too-distant future.
"He got a directive from the department, cautioning him not to come to this meeting today," said Margaris of DreamCatcher Publishers.
"So I guess we're being stifled. This is incredible, I've never heard of such a thing," she said.
Hey, Stephen: fuck you. You do not get to tell people who work for you what they can or cannot do in their private lives. If you think anyone should have that power over anyone else, you are in for a shock when my "Force Harper to wear a French maid uniform" petition reaches Ottawa.
Of course, the government tried to cover its ass and say they only censored Tushingham because he didn't follow "due process," and that because he was identified as an Environment Canada scientist in his press release, he should only speak to the government position.
Nope, still sounds like stupid, autocratic bullshit to me. (The fact that he's going after an SF author really pisses me off. That's MY tribe, you bastard!)
Way to smooth relations with the bureaucracy, the scientific and academic communities and the environmentalists, there.
#2 US relations.
This one came pre-screwed. Harper has no good way to deal with the US. He came in on a promise to fix relations, and obviously he and his supporters believed the nasty Liberals had just fucked everything up, and the Bushies would welcome him with open arms. He is just now realizing - as we get nothing on passports, softwood, anything - that the Bushies have no intention of dealing fairly with anyone. They don't have to. They have nukes.
Harper now has two options: he can copy the Liberals and bad-mouth the US publicly while doing nothing that is really radical, and keep negotiating and using courts to deal with trade problems. Or he can meet the Americans more than halfway, and look like another lapdog.
#1 L'Affaire Emerson.
This one seems to have gone away. It didn't show up much in the polls outside of areas that already hate Harper. But like a dead fish in the furnace vents, the smell is just going to get worse over time. Now, with reports (strongly denied) that Emerson is unhappy with his Glorious Leader, it is coming back again. And it'll keep coming back, every few weeks or months, until the next election.
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
Poor, poor T. rex...
The big guy gets more competition every year now. This time it's Mapusaurus roseae, a close relative of Gigantotosaurus, which knocked T. rex of its pedestal back in 1995.
This now puts T. rex fairly far down the list of "biggest meat eaters of all time." The current champion, as of a few weeks ago, is Spinosaurus, an early Cretaceous critter from North Africa, featured in Jurassic Park III. Then we've got Mapusaurus and Giganotosaurus, both of which hailed from Argentina in the late Cretaceous. The two giant meat eaters probably used pack tactics to hunt down the mighty sauropods that roamed the plains of Patagonia. Which of the two was bigger? Not sure, but they're both bigger than T. rex.
And both of Giganotosaurus and Mapusaurus were members of the Carcharodontosaur (shark toothed) family of meat eaters. Their African relative, Carcharodontosaurus, may have been as big, if not bigger, than T. rex as well.
So the best case scenario right now is that T. rex is the fourth or fifth biggest meat eating dino ever discovered. Still, he had a 90-year reign at the top. From discovery in 1905 to being dethroned in 1995 is a pretty good run.
This now puts T. rex fairly far down the list of "biggest meat eaters of all time." The current champion, as of a few weeks ago, is Spinosaurus, an early Cretaceous critter from North Africa, featured in Jurassic Park III. Then we've got Mapusaurus and Giganotosaurus, both of which hailed from Argentina in the late Cretaceous. The two giant meat eaters probably used pack tactics to hunt down the mighty sauropods that roamed the plains of Patagonia. Which of the two was bigger? Not sure, but they're both bigger than T. rex.
And both of Giganotosaurus and Mapusaurus were members of the Carcharodontosaur (shark toothed) family of meat eaters. Their African relative, Carcharodontosaurus, may have been as big, if not bigger, than T. rex as well.
So the best case scenario right now is that T. rex is the fourth or fifth biggest meat eating dino ever discovered. Still, he had a 90-year reign at the top. From discovery in 1905 to being dethroned in 1995 is a pretty good run.
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Yes, Please Do Bomb Iran
Because oil has spiked towards $70 a barrel already, based on the fact that Iran's halfwit fundamentalist leader (resemblance to US fundamentalist halfwit leader purely coincidental) is mucking about with a bit of barely-enriched uranium.
So yes, please go ahead and bomb the shit out the place. Bomb them with tactical nuclear weapons, because the spectacle hasn't yet achieved the heights of irony I expect from BushCheneyCo. Kill tens of thousands of them, because after all, there might have possibly, according to the best (super secret) intelligence and fuzzy satellite photos, have been a chance that once upon a time the leaders of Iran were photographed shaking hands with Bad People. And from there, we can play Six Degrees of Osama bin Laden, with complete built in post-invasion deniability.
Who knows what could happen if thousands weren't massacred? There might be another terrorist attack! And in the international calculus of grief, the death of one white North American is worth approximately two hundred and seventy four dirty ragheads. So let the bombs fall! We're still thousands short in the Never Forget 9/11 Revenge Super Spectacular, on your favourite channel just before Dancing with the Stars!
And then we can all sit back and drink our beer and watch the carnage on CNN, and we'll maybe feel a little twinge as the international aid workers pull charred things that used to be children out of the smoldering, radioactive wreckage. But before long we'll just switch over to Desperate Housewives again.
It's okay about all those horribly mangled kids, of course. They're not like us, they don't feel pain the way we do.
So yes, please go ahead and bomb the shit out the place. Bomb them with tactical nuclear weapons, because the spectacle hasn't yet achieved the heights of irony I expect from BushCheneyCo. Kill tens of thousands of them, because after all, there might have possibly, according to the best (super secret) intelligence and fuzzy satellite photos, have been a chance that once upon a time the leaders of Iran were photographed shaking hands with Bad People. And from there, we can play Six Degrees of Osama bin Laden, with complete built in post-invasion deniability.
Who knows what could happen if thousands weren't massacred? There might be another terrorist attack! And in the international calculus of grief, the death of one white North American is worth approximately two hundred and seventy four dirty ragheads. So let the bombs fall! We're still thousands short in the Never Forget 9/11 Revenge Super Spectacular, on your favourite channel just before Dancing with the Stars!
And then we can all sit back and drink our beer and watch the carnage on CNN, and we'll maybe feel a little twinge as the international aid workers pull charred things that used to be children out of the smoldering, radioactive wreckage. But before long we'll just switch over to Desperate Housewives again.
It's okay about all those horribly mangled kids, of course. They're not like us, they don't feel pain the way we do.
Thursday, April 06, 2006
Killer turkeys and sauropod snouts
Two big dino discoveries this week, one of them much commented on, the other less so. I'm fascinated by both.
The first is the discovery of a seven-foot oviraptosaur in Utah. This critter is both bigger and was found farther south in North America than any other known member of its lineage. So far only a hand and foot (both articulated!) have turned up, but they clinch the identification. It would have been nice to have a skull, too. Oviraptosaurs are notably bizarre in their skull and beak shapes.
The second bit of info is a new study on sauropod skulls and nostril shapes. Paleoblog, as usual, has the info.
Most people don't know that there has been an ongoing, low level debate about whether or not sauropods actually had small trunks. Yeah, like elephants or tapirs. The argument was that the shape of their nostril openings, combined with their browsing habits, would have made trunks both possible and useful.
The new study's short answer: nope, probably not.
This second discovery is actually more interesting to me, in my guise as an SF writer. I've written one (unpublished) story involving time travel and dinosaurs, and I'm likely to write more. It's nice to know that I'm on safer scientific ground if my sauropods don't have trunks.
Still, the field is changing so fast that it's impossible not to get stuff wrong, at this point. Anything you write may be perfectly accurate the day the manuscript goes in the mail, and thoroughly disproved by the time it reaches print.
Jurassic Park is actually the worst victim of this constant revisionism. When Crichton wrote the (execrable yet compulsively readable) novel, there had been a swing in the battle over dinosaur nomenclature. The dinosaur named Deinonychus had been lumped in with it's smaller cousin, Velociraptor. By the time the movie had come out, the Deinonychus had won it's proper name back. So those "velociraptors" in all three movies are actually supposed to be Deinonychuses. Which doesn't really roll off the tongue like "raptor."
Then, just as the first movie came out, the Utahraptor - a bigass sickle-clawed killer - was discovered. So they could have retconned the velociraptors into Utahraptors, but they didn't bother. And we're about 99 per cent sure now that raptors, all of them, had feathers. When Gregory S. Paul and a few others were drawing feathered predatory dinos in the late 1980s, at the same time Crichton wrote his book, they were considered gonzo mavericks. Now, we know that they're giant killer turkeys. Much like the critter dug up in Utah.
At least Jurassic Park III got the Spinosaurus right. In the past month, it has been firmly established as the biggest predatory dinosaur ever discovered, and Paleoblog has pictures of the original specimen up on his site. The story of the original speciment is a sad one - it was destroyed in Allied air raids on Germany. It's discoverer, Ernst Stromer, had argued that they should be removed to safer locations. But for reasons of Nazi war propoganda (the Allies will never succeed in bombing us!) they were left in a Munich museum, which was reduced to rubble.
The first is the discovery of a seven-foot oviraptosaur in Utah. This critter is both bigger and was found farther south in North America than any other known member of its lineage. So far only a hand and foot (both articulated!) have turned up, but they clinch the identification. It would have been nice to have a skull, too. Oviraptosaurs are notably bizarre in their skull and beak shapes.
The second bit of info is a new study on sauropod skulls and nostril shapes. Paleoblog, as usual, has the info.
Most people don't know that there has been an ongoing, low level debate about whether or not sauropods actually had small trunks. Yeah, like elephants or tapirs. The argument was that the shape of their nostril openings, combined with their browsing habits, would have made trunks both possible and useful.
The new study's short answer: nope, probably not.
This second discovery is actually more interesting to me, in my guise as an SF writer. I've written one (unpublished) story involving time travel and dinosaurs, and I'm likely to write more. It's nice to know that I'm on safer scientific ground if my sauropods don't have trunks.
Still, the field is changing so fast that it's impossible not to get stuff wrong, at this point. Anything you write may be perfectly accurate the day the manuscript goes in the mail, and thoroughly disproved by the time it reaches print.
Jurassic Park is actually the worst victim of this constant revisionism. When Crichton wrote the (execrable yet compulsively readable) novel, there had been a swing in the battle over dinosaur nomenclature. The dinosaur named Deinonychus had been lumped in with it's smaller cousin, Velociraptor. By the time the movie had come out, the Deinonychus had won it's proper name back. So those "velociraptors" in all three movies are actually supposed to be Deinonychuses. Which doesn't really roll off the tongue like "raptor."
Then, just as the first movie came out, the Utahraptor - a bigass sickle-clawed killer - was discovered. So they could have retconned the velociraptors into Utahraptors, but they didn't bother. And we're about 99 per cent sure now that raptors, all of them, had feathers. When Gregory S. Paul and a few others were drawing feathered predatory dinos in the late 1980s, at the same time Crichton wrote his book, they were considered gonzo mavericks. Now, we know that they're giant killer turkeys. Much like the critter dug up in Utah.
At least Jurassic Park III got the Spinosaurus right. In the past month, it has been firmly established as the biggest predatory dinosaur ever discovered, and Paleoblog has pictures of the original specimen up on his site. The story of the original speciment is a sad one - it was destroyed in Allied air raids on Germany. It's discoverer, Ernst Stromer, had argued that they should be removed to safer locations. But for reasons of Nazi war propoganda (the Allies will never succeed in bombing us!) they were left in a Munich museum, which was reduced to rubble.
Friday, March 31, 2006
Alternate Economics: Bizarro World is Here
You know, I'm going to kick in the teeth of the next person who tells me global markets are getting more competitive. This hypothetical person is either A) deluded or B) a lying shithead. Which I know, because unlike said shithead, I have actually read a little bit about economics, including books 1-3 of The Wealth of Nations.
Now, what would Adam Smith say about this?
Now, I may not remember too clearly, but in a competitive labour market, aren't profits supposed to fall? In fact, shouldn't they fall until the owners of capital have to manage it directly, as a full-time job? I'm sure there's some bullshit excuse people can come up with to explain the ever-increasing wealth disparity in the west between the workers and the owners, but I'm not buying it.
Could there be an explanation for soaring profits while real wages remain stagnant or fall? Could it be that big businessmen are colluding with one another and with their buddies in the government to create a favourable business climate (read: oligarchy of rich bastards).
On a related note, I just finished reading Barbara Ehrenreich's book Nickel and Dimed, about working crappy low-wage jobs and trying to make ends meet. And this morning on CTV, I saw Jan Wong interviewed about how she tried a similar project, getting a job as a maid in Toronto and trying to live on $20 a day, for all expenses after rent, with her kids. They started getting faint from lack of protein, in case you were wondering. Her series of columns on the experience starts running tomorrow in The Globe and Mail.
Which, ironically, is part of a big media conglomerate with CTV, and which no doubt pays its own janitors such crap wages that their kids feel faint from hunger. Not that anyone will appreciate the irony.
We are all such fucking idiots to let this go on.
Now, what would Adam Smith say about this?
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- U.S. corporate profits have increased 21.3% in the past year and now account for the largest share of national income in 40 years, the Commerce Department said Thursday.
Strong productivity gains and subdued wage growth boosted before-tax profits to 11.6% of national income in the fourth quarter of 2005, the biggest share since the summer of 1966. See full story.
For all of 2005, before-tax profits totaled $1.35 trillion, up from $1.16 trillion in 2004 and just $767 billion in 2001.
Meanwhile, the share of national income going to wage and salary workers has fallen to 56.9%. Except for a brief period in 1997, that's the lowest share for labor income since 1966.
"It's a big puzzle," said Josh Bivens, an economist for the Economic Policy Institute. "If this is a knowledge economy, how come the brains aren't being compensated? Instead, the owners of physical capital are getting the rewards."
Despite the flood of cash coming in the door, corporations are investing comparatively little in expanding their operations. Capital spending has been below average, especially considering the strength of the economy, the level of profits and the special tax breaks given to boost investment.
Now, I may not remember too clearly, but in a competitive labour market, aren't profits supposed to fall? In fact, shouldn't they fall until the owners of capital have to manage it directly, as a full-time job? I'm sure there's some bullshit excuse people can come up with to explain the ever-increasing wealth disparity in the west between the workers and the owners, but I'm not buying it.
Could there be an explanation for soaring profits while real wages remain stagnant or fall? Could it be that big businessmen are colluding with one another and with their buddies in the government to create a favourable business climate (read: oligarchy of rich bastards).
On a related note, I just finished reading Barbara Ehrenreich's book Nickel and Dimed, about working crappy low-wage jobs and trying to make ends meet. And this morning on CTV, I saw Jan Wong interviewed about how she tried a similar project, getting a job as a maid in Toronto and trying to live on $20 a day, for all expenses after rent, with her kids. They started getting faint from lack of protein, in case you were wondering. Her series of columns on the experience starts running tomorrow in The Globe and Mail.
Which, ironically, is part of a big media conglomerate with CTV, and which no doubt pays its own janitors such crap wages that their kids feel faint from hunger. Not that anyone will appreciate the irony.
We are all such fucking idiots to let this go on.
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
Book Review: StormWatch: Change or Die
A superhuman flys over New York City, alighting in front of the United Nations building. Tearing the flags of every member nation down, he burns them while television cameras roll.
"Consider this symbolic of our greater intention," he says. "Do please film this."
It's the defining scene in what is one of the best anarchist storylines in mainstream comics history. Yet because the words "anarchy" and "anarchism" are never spoken, it has passed without the notice given to it's more famous counterpart, V for Vendetta. I should warn readers that numerous spoilers will now follow.
The storyline, Change or Die, was written in the late 1990s by Warren Ellis for the conventional superhero comic series, StormWatch. It capped off the first segment of Ellis's run on the series, and was a key precursor to his much more famous series, The Authority.
The story is essentially a tragedy. Two groups of heroes face off against one another, while cynical manipulators from among their own ranks sabotage a chance for peace, and possibly utopia.
StormWatch was a comic created during the mid-1990s, and was one of many Wildstorm company titles which, frankly, were pretty derivative of each other and of Marvel's many mutant X-team books. StormWatch was slightly different, in that its heroes were employees of the United Nations. As superhuman blue helmets, they hailed from many nations and fought superhuman terrorists, alien invasions and so forth. When Warren Ellis, a thoroughly insane British comic scribe took over the title, he revamped it thoroughly. Many of the superfluous team members were axed, and Ellis began creating his own strange characters. The oddest was Jenny Sparks, a London-based superhero with the ability to transform into and control electricity. Born at midnight on January 1, 1900, Sparks is the "Spirit of the 20th Century." There was also Jack Hawksmoor, a man who could communicate with cities, and Rose Tattoo, a beautiful, mute female assassin.
At the storyline's beginning, a masked vigilante tries to assassinate Jenny Sparks. She survives and demands a meeting with StormWatch's leader, Henry Bendix, the "Weatherman." Bendix is busy with his own crisis, however. The High, a former superhero who has been sitting motionless on a mountaintop for a decade, has vanished. Bendix believes The High plans some kind of attack.
The High has in fact joined a group of like-minded superheros for a major project. They want to end poverty and government at a stroke. Tired of fighting the same problems over and over, they want to strike at the root of what is wrong with society.
Comic book enthusiasts might not have recognized the underlying ideology of the story, but they recognized The High and his compatriots immediately. The High has all the powers, and a similar origin to Superman. His allies include the vigilante Blind (Batman), Rite, a female warrior (Wonder Woman), The Engineer, a nano-tech specialist who can make anything (Green Lantern) The Doctor, a shaman (Dr. Fate) and others. All are recognizeable comics archetypes, and together, they mimic the Justice League of America.
Ellis uses the comparison to both satirize the JLA (whose members have never questioned the authority of the world's governments) and to contrast the outsized idealism of Golden Age superheroes with the realpolitik of the StormWatch team.
The High and his league announce they will give away their power and knowledge - handing over the ability to make anything with nanotech, teaching magic and sharing new ways of living. Bendix, an idealist long since turned authoritarian, sends his team after The High's on a killing mission. Things go badly despite the efforts of some of the StormWatch team to defy their orders and ally themselves with The High. Rogue members of both teams have committed atrocities to reach their goals. In a violent confrontation, heroes are killed and the knowledge and promise The High offered is lost.
There are a few plot holes and artistic gaffes that mark the book. Ellis seemed to lose track of what some of the characters thought about Blind, in particular, and whether or not The High expected him to use torture. It's still worth reading. StormWatch: Change or Die is collected in the trade paperback collection of the same name.
I have no idea whether Ellis considers himself an anarchist or not, but he definitely has an anti-authoritarian streak that resurfaces again and again. Check out his Transmetropolitan stories too, they're the best thing he's ever written.
Update A quote attributed to Ellis, about Transmetropolitan (from Wikiquote): I have attempted to reflect this in TRANSMET: the understanding that the world can be neither perfect nor doomed. But that it can be better. And the people who get to decide if it's going to be better or not are the people who show up and raise their voices.
"Consider this symbolic of our greater intention," he says. "Do please film this."
It's the defining scene in what is one of the best anarchist storylines in mainstream comics history. Yet because the words "anarchy" and "anarchism" are never spoken, it has passed without the notice given to it's more famous counterpart, V for Vendetta. I should warn readers that numerous spoilers will now follow.
The storyline, Change or Die, was written in the late 1990s by Warren Ellis for the conventional superhero comic series, StormWatch. It capped off the first segment of Ellis's run on the series, and was a key precursor to his much more famous series, The Authority.
The story is essentially a tragedy. Two groups of heroes face off against one another, while cynical manipulators from among their own ranks sabotage a chance for peace, and possibly utopia.
StormWatch was a comic created during the mid-1990s, and was one of many Wildstorm company titles which, frankly, were pretty derivative of each other and of Marvel's many mutant X-team books. StormWatch was slightly different, in that its heroes were employees of the United Nations. As superhuman blue helmets, they hailed from many nations and fought superhuman terrorists, alien invasions and so forth. When Warren Ellis, a thoroughly insane British comic scribe took over the title, he revamped it thoroughly. Many of the superfluous team members were axed, and Ellis began creating his own strange characters. The oddest was Jenny Sparks, a London-based superhero with the ability to transform into and control electricity. Born at midnight on January 1, 1900, Sparks is the "Spirit of the 20th Century." There was also Jack Hawksmoor, a man who could communicate with cities, and Rose Tattoo, a beautiful, mute female assassin.
At the storyline's beginning, a masked vigilante tries to assassinate Jenny Sparks. She survives and demands a meeting with StormWatch's leader, Henry Bendix, the "Weatherman." Bendix is busy with his own crisis, however. The High, a former superhero who has been sitting motionless on a mountaintop for a decade, has vanished. Bendix believes The High plans some kind of attack.
The High has in fact joined a group of like-minded superheros for a major project. They want to end poverty and government at a stroke. Tired of fighting the same problems over and over, they want to strike at the root of what is wrong with society.
His message is simple, and not only needs to be heard, but needs to be incised into the Earth -
"Think for yourself and question authority."
And if you can think for yourself, what do you need authority for?
Comic book enthusiasts might not have recognized the underlying ideology of the story, but they recognized The High and his compatriots immediately. The High has all the powers, and a similar origin to Superman. His allies include the vigilante Blind (Batman), Rite, a female warrior (Wonder Woman), The Engineer, a nano-tech specialist who can make anything (Green Lantern) The Doctor, a shaman (Dr. Fate) and others. All are recognizeable comics archetypes, and together, they mimic the Justice League of America.
Ellis uses the comparison to both satirize the JLA (whose members have never questioned the authority of the world's governments) and to contrast the outsized idealism of Golden Age superheroes with the realpolitik of the StormWatch team.
The High and his league announce they will give away their power and knowledge - handing over the ability to make anything with nanotech, teaching magic and sharing new ways of living. Bendix, an idealist long since turned authoritarian, sends his team after The High's on a killing mission. Things go badly despite the efforts of some of the StormWatch team to defy their orders and ally themselves with The High. Rogue members of both teams have committed atrocities to reach their goals. In a violent confrontation, heroes are killed and the knowledge and promise The High offered is lost.
There are a few plot holes and artistic gaffes that mark the book. Ellis seemed to lose track of what some of the characters thought about Blind, in particular, and whether or not The High expected him to use torture. It's still worth reading. StormWatch: Change or Die is collected in the trade paperback collection of the same name.
I have no idea whether Ellis considers himself an anarchist or not, but he definitely has an anti-authoritarian streak that resurfaces again and again. Check out his Transmetropolitan stories too, they're the best thing he's ever written.
Update A quote attributed to Ellis, about Transmetropolitan (from Wikiquote): I have attempted to reflect this in TRANSMET: the understanding that the world can be neither perfect nor doomed. But that it can be better. And the people who get to decide if it's going to be better or not are the people who show up and raise their voices.
Monday, March 27, 2006
In which the godless commie throws in his lot with the capitalist running dogs
I've just added my name to an open letter to the people of France over at Brad Spangler's blog.
Spangler is supporting the students who have been demonstrating for the past few weeks, over a new proposed law that will allow employers to fire workers with little or no reason given during their first two years of employment. In France, job security is government-mandated, but getting a job in the first place is bloody hard. The idea of the new law is to encourage more hiring, because firing will be easier if a situation changes for a business.
Obviously, a lot of employers are going to abuse this law, by hiring and firing people within the two-year limit, then hiring again. It will save them having to keep the employees long term and give them little things like proper benefits and pensions. Hiring lots of new employees is also a tactic widely used everywhere to stave off unionization drives.
A few things of note: I consider myself a socialist, Spangler is an anarcho-capitalist. The letter encourages genuine free-market reforms and revolution in France. So why is Spangler supporting the students and workers on strike? Why sign on?
Here's a bit of the text of the letter:
Spangler insists he is a capitalist, but he's of the agorist school of anarcho-capitalism, the one that has managed to work its way almost back into individualist anarchism. Along with many of the signatories, Spangler is a self-proclaimed member of the Movement of the Libertarian Left, which has been reaching out with an olive branch to the Old and New Left for several decades now. So, in the spirit of solidarity, I have signed his letter.
Which leads to the perfect opportunity to write something I've been thinking about for a while: my socialism includes capitalism.
In a free world, there will be people who choose to compete for their daily bread, and those who choose to cooperate. I am one of the latter, but I categorically refuse to aim a gun at anyone's head and insist that he or she join me. I would prefer to rely on non-market means of acquiring my food, shelter and health care, not because I think markets are inherently evil, but because I don't particularly trust them. If others wants to put their well being at the mercy of the invisible hand, that is entirely their business, and I wish them luck.
I'm hoping to expand on this in a future post. But next up will be a review of what I consider the other great anarchist comic book series.
Spangler is supporting the students who have been demonstrating for the past few weeks, over a new proposed law that will allow employers to fire workers with little or no reason given during their first two years of employment. In France, job security is government-mandated, but getting a job in the first place is bloody hard. The idea of the new law is to encourage more hiring, because firing will be easier if a situation changes for a business.
Obviously, a lot of employers are going to abuse this law, by hiring and firing people within the two-year limit, then hiring again. It will save them having to keep the employees long term and give them little things like proper benefits and pensions. Hiring lots of new employees is also a tactic widely used everywhere to stave off unionization drives.
A few things of note: I consider myself a socialist, Spangler is an anarcho-capitalist. The letter encourages genuine free-market reforms and revolution in France. So why is Spangler supporting the students and workers on strike? Why sign on?
Here's a bit of the text of the letter:
Students and Workers of France,
Professor Roderick Long once wrote:
“When Marx called the French government ‘a joint-stock company for the exploitation of France’s national wealth’ on behalf of the bourgeois elite and at the expense of production and commerce (’Class Struggles in France’), he was only echoing what libertarians had been saying for decades.”
France and all other nation-states remain so today. You and we live in a world where freedom and economic opportunity exist only at the sufferance of a political class that allows us only some small amount of them for sake of their own convenience and take the rest from us by force and coercion for sake of their own parasitism.
Under such circumstances, state-sponsored market liberalization is a cruel joke. The legislation you protest and rebel against seeks only to increase the latitude given your overseers, while maintaining the overall restrictions on your own liberty that, if abolished, would empower you to seek your own prosperity. We believe you and we would be very good at that, mixing both cooperation and peaceful competition, if we were not slaves.
Spangler insists he is a capitalist, but he's of the agorist school of anarcho-capitalism, the one that has managed to work its way almost back into individualist anarchism. Along with many of the signatories, Spangler is a self-proclaimed member of the Movement of the Libertarian Left, which has been reaching out with an olive branch to the Old and New Left for several decades now. So, in the spirit of solidarity, I have signed his letter.
Which leads to the perfect opportunity to write something I've been thinking about for a while: my socialism includes capitalism.
In a free world, there will be people who choose to compete for their daily bread, and those who choose to cooperate. I am one of the latter, but I categorically refuse to aim a gun at anyone's head and insist that he or she join me. I would prefer to rely on non-market means of acquiring my food, shelter and health care, not because I think markets are inherently evil, but because I don't particularly trust them. If others wants to put their well being at the mercy of the invisible hand, that is entirely their business, and I wish them luck.
I'm hoping to expand on this in a future post. But next up will be a review of what I consider the other great anarchist comic book series.
Saturday, March 25, 2006
A Wedding Toast
Today I raise my glass to my friends John and Kirstin, as they prepare to walk down the aisle. I know they will find happiness with each other, and I hope their happiness is accompanied by good fortune, good friends and long life.
To Kirstin and John!
To Kirstin and John!
Friday, March 24, 2006
Saint Ralph, and the story of the little oil-based economy that could
Yay! Thanks to the Alberta Advantage(TM) and the totally coincidental fact that there are 180 million barrels of proven oil reserves beneath it's territory, Alberta is well on its way to another massive budget surprlus this year. The Globe and Mail has the details.
Awesome! Wow, I guess if every province adopted Alberta's economic formula, they would enjoy equal success! What's that, you say? Manitoba has no oil? PEI is made of sand, clay and compressed layers of Anne of Green Gables figurines which contain little to no petroleum reserves? The Canadian Shield is three billion years old rock, and notably deficient in tar sands?
Quitters! Did Albertans quit when the price of oil shot up past $60 a barrel, imperilling the finance minister's life with a tidal wave of cash? No. Did they quit when Hurricane Katrina drove prices even higher, and exports from Canada to the United States were permanently increased as a result? No. Did they quit when Stockwell Day was their finance minister? No!
Even the National Energy Program couldn't make Albertans quit. It just turned them into constant whiners, who apparently believe they live in the only part of Canada that was ever fucked over financially by the federal government. That's right, Albertans launched their own Quiet Revolution, but unlike those small-thinking types in Quebec, they dispensed with the culture, the gay-friendly society and the excellent music scene. Who needs that when you have a western alienation-based party to start!
And now that party is in power. What can we expect from the federal government, now? More Alberta Advantage(TM)! So our best information about the future of the country will be found in the Alberta budget. What'll it be, Globe and Mail?
Well, there you have it. You'll be $10 richer, and your boss will have a shiny new car. Maybe he'll let you wash it someday, and you can surreptitiously smell the fine leather interior through the sunroof. That's the Alberta Advantage(TM).
Already it is projecting a record surplus — $4.1-billion, but government officials admit that figure will likely climb as oil and gas royalties flood into provincial coffers. Last year's budget finished out with a surplus surpassing $10-billion.
Awesome! Wow, I guess if every province adopted Alberta's economic formula, they would enjoy equal success! What's that, you say? Manitoba has no oil? PEI is made of sand, clay and compressed layers of Anne of Green Gables figurines which contain little to no petroleum reserves? The Canadian Shield is three billion years old rock, and notably deficient in tar sands?
Quitters! Did Albertans quit when the price of oil shot up past $60 a barrel, imperilling the finance minister's life with a tidal wave of cash? No. Did they quit when Hurricane Katrina drove prices even higher, and exports from Canada to the United States were permanently increased as a result? No. Did they quit when Stockwell Day was their finance minister? No!
Even the National Energy Program couldn't make Albertans quit. It just turned them into constant whiners, who apparently believe they live in the only part of Canada that was ever fucked over financially by the federal government. That's right, Albertans launched their own Quiet Revolution, but unlike those small-thinking types in Quebec, they dispensed with the culture, the gay-friendly society and the excellent music scene. Who needs that when you have a western alienation-based party to start!
And now that party is in power. What can we expect from the federal government, now? More Alberta Advantage(TM)! So our best information about the future of the country will be found in the Alberta budget. What'll it be, Globe and Mail?
The bulk of the tax cuts in the budget are for business, with the province cutting the general corporate rate to 10 per cent, costing the provincial treasury $265-million this year and $300-million after that. Alberta currently has the lowest corporate tax rate in the country.
Personal tax cuts are minimal — $10 a person from an increase to basic personal deductions — although Alberta is raising the income threshold for health-care premiums, a break for low income earners.
Well, there you have it. You'll be $10 richer, and your boss will have a shiny new car. Maybe he'll let you wash it someday, and you can surreptitiously smell the fine leather interior through the sunroof. That's the Alberta Advantage(TM).
Congratulations and thanks
First, to Harmeet Singh Sooden, James Loney and Norman Kember, rescued this week in Iraq after spending months as the hostages of a group of militants and/or gangsters. I'm not only pleased that they were rescued, but that it resulted in no loss of life to anyone.
Second, to the people of Hartley Bay. The fishermen of the tiny native community pulled the victims of the Queen of the North sinking from the water, brought them into their homes and literally gave them the clothes off their backs in some cases. The disaster has also left an oily slick on the water that may damage the seafood stocks that are their livelihood. I can only hope the government, owner of the ferry, will do the right thing and compensate them for any losses.
Second, to the people of Hartley Bay. The fishermen of the tiny native community pulled the victims of the Queen of the North sinking from the water, brought them into their homes and literally gave them the clothes off their backs in some cases. The disaster has also left an oily slick on the water that may damage the seafood stocks that are their livelihood. I can only hope the government, owner of the ferry, will do the right thing and compensate them for any losses.
Monday, March 20, 2006
What I Did On My Spring Vacation
Well, I read a lot. I obviously didn't post anything for a week. I spent a lot of time with my girlfriend, She Who Is Both Wise and Beautiful. I saw the Brian Jungen exhibit at the Vancouver Art Gallery, which was fascinating, and suffered through the explanatory tour of the exhibit, which was not.
The exhibit was great. It gathered together all of Jungen's Prototype for a New Understanding pieces. These are the famous masks he made out of Nike Air Jordan sneakers, starting in the late 1990s. Jungen created items that, from a distance, look like authentic North West Coast aboriginal masks. The black, white and red Air Jordan colours and the round and oblong shapes of the sneakers lend themselves to coastal-style artwork.
Along with the masks, there were three whale skeletons made from plastic lawn chairs, a birdhouse made from IKEA magazine holders (with finches in residence) a teepee made entirely from 10 "skinned and dismembered" leather couches, and some cargo pallets handcrafted from cedar planks.
All of Jungen's work seems - to me - to be kind of funny. Making masks out of sneakers? Great joke! Teepee from sofas? Hilarious! I think the best one of all is the cargo pallets, lovingly varnished and joined together without visible nails.
Is any of this humour acknowledged by the VAG? Nope. Not a damn bit of it. I know there's a very serious subtext to everything Jungen is doing here. He's deliberately conflating Native stereotypes with consumer junk, or rebuilding cheap Canadian Tire furniture into works of fine art. But as far as I can tell, it's actually supposed to be funny. (Most of it, anyway.)
Look at the lawn furniture-whales. They are actually the least funny part of the exhibit. First of all, they are amazingly crafted sculptures in their own right. It takes a real craftsman (I prefer craft to art 90 per cent of the time) to take a pile of lawn chairs and envision them carved up and rebuilt into a skeleton. Instead, they are at first elegant. When you realize what they are constructed from, they are both funny and all the more impressive. Jungen has drawn beauty out of a pile of plastic junk. It's really worth seeing.
The museum spiel is all about consumerism and the natural world. And yes, I agree that you certainly can see it that way. But it's also possible to look at the whales as an object of great beauty, and to marvel at the materials used for its construction. Hell, maybe Jungen is trying to make us see what can be created from the detritus around us if we can see with fresh eyes. I'd like to ask him some day.
(At this point, there will be a brief digression for ranting. In a nook near the whale skeletons was a "kids corner" that contained a glaring scientific error. It was a series of ideas for discussion with children about the exhibit, which said that whales die, fossilize, and then their fossils turn into oil, which can then be turned into plastic, for example, lawn chairs. No, NO, NO! First of all, most animals don't fossilize at all. Second, the process of fossilization is one of mineralization. The matter composing bones [or skin, feathers, leaves, bark, fur, etc] is removed and replaced by minerals. Fossils of this type are made of stone. They do not, at any point, magically turn into oil! Most oil comes from microscopic animals and plants that decay and are compressed under seafloor sediment. Coal is composed mostly of trees. To the VAG: learn some fucking science, you goddamn arrogant liberal arts majors!)
The essence of many jokes is the sudden and unexpected juxtaposition of two unrelated, concepts. If one of them is scary or "unclean," even better. That fits what Jungen is doing perfectly. My first reaction when I see his stuff is to laugh. And then to think. But it's the laugh that draws me in. Without the humour, it's just another pretentious museum exhibit.
The exhibit was great. It gathered together all of Jungen's Prototype for a New Understanding pieces. These are the famous masks he made out of Nike Air Jordan sneakers, starting in the late 1990s. Jungen created items that, from a distance, look like authentic North West Coast aboriginal masks. The black, white and red Air Jordan colours and the round and oblong shapes of the sneakers lend themselves to coastal-style artwork.
Along with the masks, there were three whale skeletons made from plastic lawn chairs, a birdhouse made from IKEA magazine holders (with finches in residence) a teepee made entirely from 10 "skinned and dismembered" leather couches, and some cargo pallets handcrafted from cedar planks.
All of Jungen's work seems - to me - to be kind of funny. Making masks out of sneakers? Great joke! Teepee from sofas? Hilarious! I think the best one of all is the cargo pallets, lovingly varnished and joined together without visible nails.
Is any of this humour acknowledged by the VAG? Nope. Not a damn bit of it. I know there's a very serious subtext to everything Jungen is doing here. He's deliberately conflating Native stereotypes with consumer junk, or rebuilding cheap Canadian Tire furniture into works of fine art. But as far as I can tell, it's actually supposed to be funny. (Most of it, anyway.)
Look at the lawn furniture-whales. They are actually the least funny part of the exhibit. First of all, they are amazingly crafted sculptures in their own right. It takes a real craftsman (I prefer craft to art 90 per cent of the time) to take a pile of lawn chairs and envision them carved up and rebuilt into a skeleton. Instead, they are at first elegant. When you realize what they are constructed from, they are both funny and all the more impressive. Jungen has drawn beauty out of a pile of plastic junk. It's really worth seeing.
The museum spiel is all about consumerism and the natural world. And yes, I agree that you certainly can see it that way. But it's also possible to look at the whales as an object of great beauty, and to marvel at the materials used for its construction. Hell, maybe Jungen is trying to make us see what can be created from the detritus around us if we can see with fresh eyes. I'd like to ask him some day.
(At this point, there will be a brief digression for ranting. In a nook near the whale skeletons was a "kids corner" that contained a glaring scientific error. It was a series of ideas for discussion with children about the exhibit, which said that whales die, fossilize, and then their fossils turn into oil, which can then be turned into plastic, for example, lawn chairs. No, NO, NO! First of all, most animals don't fossilize at all. Second, the process of fossilization is one of mineralization. The matter composing bones [or skin, feathers, leaves, bark, fur, etc] is removed and replaced by minerals. Fossils of this type are made of stone. They do not, at any point, magically turn into oil! Most oil comes from microscopic animals and plants that decay and are compressed under seafloor sediment. Coal is composed mostly of trees. To the VAG: learn some fucking science, you goddamn arrogant liberal arts majors!)
The essence of many jokes is the sudden and unexpected juxtaposition of two unrelated, concepts. If one of them is scary or "unclean," even better. That fits what Jungen is doing perfectly. My first reaction when I see his stuff is to laugh. And then to think. But it's the laugh that draws me in. Without the humour, it's just another pretentious museum exhibit.
The Power of the Mind!
Clearly, this is the most amazing thing going right now. Forget all the advances in materials science, in nanotech, alternate energy, computer networks, all of it.
This is awesome.
For those of you too lazy to click the link, it's an article in New Scientist about the latest mind-controlled computer. These things have been around for about a decade now, in increasingly sophisticated versions. This one is just the latest in the phylogenetic tree of mind-machine interfaces, but it looks like the one that could break out into wide use. It allegedly takes 20 minutes to acclimate to a user - watching what areas of the brain are trying to control a cursor - and then is fully operational. The system could allow people to type, operate games or click through the net without touching a thing.
The major use for the tech at first will be for individuals with severe paralysis - spinal cord injuries at the neck, motor neuron diseas sufferers and so forth.
But how much would you like to bet that everyone from fighter pilots to game console geeks owns one of these helmets within 20 years ?
This is awesome.
For those of you too lazy to click the link, it's an article in New Scientist about the latest mind-controlled computer. These things have been around for about a decade now, in increasingly sophisticated versions. This one is just the latest in the phylogenetic tree of mind-machine interfaces, but it looks like the one that could break out into wide use. It allegedly takes 20 minutes to acclimate to a user - watching what areas of the brain are trying to control a cursor - and then is fully operational. The system could allow people to type, operate games or click through the net without touching a thing.
The major use for the tech at first will be for individuals with severe paralysis - spinal cord injuries at the neck, motor neuron diseas sufferers and so forth.
But how much would you like to bet that everyone from fighter pilots to game console geeks owns one of these helmets within 20 years ?
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
Some Clarifications, for Peter MacKay
From CTV.ca:
It seems Mr. MacKay has some misconceptions about when a debate would or would not be appropriate on a military deployment. Let's clear this up right now. When is it the right time to debate a life and death military mission?
Always.
It is always appropriate. To debate the nature of a military mission, to examine whether circumstances have changed, to talk about what the role of Canadian troops is or should be, about what resources they have or need, about the effect they are having on the daily lives of Afghans, about what long-term psychological impacts the mission is having on the troops themselves. We can't solve a damn thing without first talking about it. We can't even know if there are problems if we don't talk about it.
To hide behind "supporing the troops" is cowardly. Calling for the troops to come home could be supporting them. Calling for more money, more troops, new training, better gear, a change in mission; all these things can be legitimately supportive of the troops. Leaving a bunch of guys in the desert half a world away, with no public political discussion of why they are there is not supportive.
But wait, there's morale! What if talking about the mission, maybe even raising serious doubts about their ability to impose peace on a fractious landscape (one with the British Empire twice failed to subdue, followed by the Russians, followed by the Americans) weakens their resolve?
What is morale, anyway? It is the common spirit of a team, and its members willingness to do their tasks. So yes, I can see how actually talking about their chances of success might damage that crucial element of readiness.
If we were talking about a T-ball team, that is.
These are soldiers! They aren't six fucking years old, people. They're grown adults who chose a profession that involves being shot at. They've been attacked with roadside bombs, mortars, grenades, by the friendly fire of their allies, and most recently, with an axe. We expect them to take daily danger, harsh living conditions and seperation from friends and family with equanimity, but a little bit of talk about why they're there will have tears pouring from their eyes? Give me a goddamn break.
You know what would be good for their morale? Giving them some input in the debate. Bring soldiers who've served in Afghanistan and let them speak to Parliament, directly to the MPs. Let them talk about what they really need, what they think the mission is, what they believe in. Let's listen to the privates and corporals and the front line officers. Let's hear from their mothers and fathers, and their husbands and wives, too. Let's hear from Afghans, not just the ones they've helped, but the ones who want them the hell out of their country.
And then, let's have that debate.
We can let Peter MacKay sit this one out. He wouldn't want to be seen wavering, after all. I'm sure total, blind-eyed ignorance is the best way to stand behind the troops.
Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay says the government stands behind Canada's troops in Afghanistan and won't do anything to cast doubt on that support.
"The last thing that we want to show is any wavering or any backing away from the commitment of our Canadian troops," MacKay said on CTV's Question Period on Sunday.
"We have to be 100 per cent behind them. We have to demonstrate in every way that we support the important work that they're doing. And to that extent, this government is 100 per cent behind our troops and appreciative, incredibly appreciative of the effort that they're making."
MacKay was responding to critics who suggest Canada's commitment to Afghanistan should be taken to a parliamentary vote.
It seems Mr. MacKay has some misconceptions about when a debate would or would not be appropriate on a military deployment. Let's clear this up right now. When is it the right time to debate a life and death military mission?
Always.
It is always appropriate. To debate the nature of a military mission, to examine whether circumstances have changed, to talk about what the role of Canadian troops is or should be, about what resources they have or need, about the effect they are having on the daily lives of Afghans, about what long-term psychological impacts the mission is having on the troops themselves. We can't solve a damn thing without first talking about it. We can't even know if there are problems if we don't talk about it.
To hide behind "supporing the troops" is cowardly. Calling for the troops to come home could be supporting them. Calling for more money, more troops, new training, better gear, a change in mission; all these things can be legitimately supportive of the troops. Leaving a bunch of guys in the desert half a world away, with no public political discussion of why they are there is not supportive.
But wait, there's morale! What if talking about the mission, maybe even raising serious doubts about their ability to impose peace on a fractious landscape (one with the British Empire twice failed to subdue, followed by the Russians, followed by the Americans) weakens their resolve?
What is morale, anyway? It is the common spirit of a team, and its members willingness to do their tasks. So yes, I can see how actually talking about their chances of success might damage that crucial element of readiness.
If we were talking about a T-ball team, that is.
These are soldiers! They aren't six fucking years old, people. They're grown adults who chose a profession that involves being shot at. They've been attacked with roadside bombs, mortars, grenades, by the friendly fire of their allies, and most recently, with an axe. We expect them to take daily danger, harsh living conditions and seperation from friends and family with equanimity, but a little bit of talk about why they're there will have tears pouring from their eyes? Give me a goddamn break.
You know what would be good for their morale? Giving them some input in the debate. Bring soldiers who've served in Afghanistan and let them speak to Parliament, directly to the MPs. Let them talk about what they really need, what they think the mission is, what they believe in. Let's listen to the privates and corporals and the front line officers. Let's hear from their mothers and fathers, and their husbands and wives, too. Let's hear from Afghans, not just the ones they've helped, but the ones who want them the hell out of their country.
And then, let's have that debate.
We can let Peter MacKay sit this one out. He wouldn't want to be seen wavering, after all. I'm sure total, blind-eyed ignorance is the best way to stand behind the troops.
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