Today I ran across the Web site of a movement to amend the US constitution to explicitly declare that corporations are not persons. I like the idea. In fact, it inspired me to exercise my non-existent skills as a cartoonist.
Dec 262012
Dec 232012
A Facebook friend shared this image, a cartoon about conservative vs. liberal views on equality:
Looking at the image, I realize that deep in my soul, I am in fact a conservative. That’s because I see another variation of the same picture (and it’s not the crudeness of my art to which I am referring):
Then again, if I am a conservative, so was Kurt Vonnegut. Why else would he have written a story like Harrison Bergeron, in which a totalitarian state uses a form of mind control to create equality between intellectually gifted and less talented people?
Or perhaps I am neither a conservative nor a liberal (and the same goes for Kurt Vonnegut). Instead, I am trying to use rational thinking to decide what’s best in a given situation, without resorting to ideology or dogma.
Dec 192012
Generally, I am sympathetic towards the American concept of gun rights. The basic idea, as I understand it, is sound: a constitution that explicitly forbids government from claiming a monopoly on organized violence, in contrast with European countries where government has that monopoly. It is part of a well thought out system of checks and balances that characterizes America’s quarter millennia old stable democracy.
What I don’t really understand is how this, the notion of a “well regulated militia” that citizens can freely form and, if needed, rely on to fight government oppression, is related to the concept of granting every imbecile the “God-given” right to have a military grade assault rifle. I honestly don’t think that America’s founding fathers had concealed carry permits and assault rifles in mind when they formulated the Second Amendment.
But where the “gun nuts” really lost credibility in my view is when they began advocating that teachers be allowed, or even required, to carry a gun. Have you guys gone completely bonkers? Do you really think that the solution to tragedies like the Newtown massacre is to turn schools into battlegrounds? Do you actually listen to yourselves when you utter such a blatant idiocy?
I told a pro-gun friend of mine that if gun advocates continue on this course, it will only accomplish one thing in the end: we may yet see the Second Amendment repealed within our lifetime. And if that happens, the “gun nuts” will only have themselves to blame.
Dec 162012
Predictably and understandably, a lot of people are questioning America’s gun laws in the wake of the Newtown, CT massacre.
What I would like to know is this: exactly when did “a well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state” turn into the right for every clown and idiot to own assault weapons or to walk around in crowded places with a concealed handgun? Is this really what the Founding Fathers wanted?
To me, the meaning of the Second Amendment is clear: it is about not granting government a monopoly on violence. It is about the citizenry’s right to arm themselves and if necessary, protect themselves from oppression. But this meaning seems to have been forgotten. Last time I checked, American citizens long ago lost the right (if they ever had it in the first place) to operate private well-regulated militias that own, never mind aircraft carriers or ballistic missiles, how about tanks and fighter aircraft, the kinds of weapons necessary for protection against an oppressive state, as the civil war in Syria amply demonstrates.
So the original meaning of the Second Amendment is long lost; should the US Federal Government turn into an oppressive dictatorship, concealed handguns or semi-automatic assault rifles are not going to do much good against tanks, drones, or smart missiles.
But then, why is it necessary to let every idiot purchase a high-power handgun that serves only one purpose: to kill people, lots of people, at a high rate of efficiency?
Just wondering.
Dec 092012
Fareed Zakaria on CNN commented on a recent ranking by The Economist that they called “the lottery of life“. It measured the quality of life in some eighty countries. The United States, number 1 on similar lists in decades past, is now in a tie with Germany for position 16. (Canada is 9th.) Following Switzerland and Australia, the top of the list is dominated by the usual Scandinavian suspects: Norway, Sweden, Denmark are 3rd, 4th and 5th, respectively.
So, can’t we all be more like Scandinavians? This is more than just a rhetorical question. As a matter of fact, this is the title of a recent study by Acemoglu et al. (MIT Department of Economics Working Paper No. 12-22, 2012.) In it, the authors argue that more “cutthroat” versions of capitalism, such as that practiced in the United States, while leading to greater inequality, also lead to more innovation. Meanwhile, countries choosing a more “cuddly” form of capitalism are in fact enjoying a free ride, as they take advantage of the innovations produced by cutthroat capitalists.
The study was reportedly criticized for using patents as a proxy to measure innovation, but I don’t think that this criticism truly undermines their main conclusions. Conclusions that seem to be supported by solid mathematics (at least that’s the impression I got after quickly scanning through the pages of the actual paper). What I find interesting among the study’s conclusions is that the configuration of a technology leader practicing “cutthroat” capitalism and followers who practice “cuddly” capitalism is actually a stable, albeit asymmetric, equilibrium.
I cannot help but wonder though… where does China fit into this picture?
Nov 292012
OK, so there was hurricane Sandy, the “fiscal cliff”, the European debt crisis, Iranian nukes, the Gaza strip, Syria, and then of course the infamous Mayan calendar… and no, I was not the least bit worried that the world would come to an end in 2012.
But now I am reading that on Monday night, in New York City, there was no violent crime. No murders. No stabbings. No shootings. No slashings.
I feel scared.
Nov 252012
The other day, I read about an interesting experiment: The Guardian solicited readers’ ideas to resolve the nuclear crisis at Fukushima. Predictably, the majority of the submitted ideas were dangerous nonsense.
Today, I ran across something on Facebook: an attempt to promote the Robin Hood tax, a tax on financial (e.g., Wall Street) transactions. The suggestion is that a tax of a mere 0.5% on Wall Street transactions would not only generate billions in revenue but also slow down algorithmic trading that can cause so much runaway damage. Wikipedia tells me that EU citizens overwhelmingly support such a tax.
The trouble is that Wikipedia also tells me the reasons why such a tax may not be a great idea after all, as well as past lessons from attempts to implement such taxes, e.g., in Sweden. These are the consequences that are left out of the populist rhetoric, and are usually only discussed by experts.
Should this mean that we should leave political and economic decision-making to experts? It has been tried before. It is called totalitarianism. So once again, I am reminded of Churchill’s words: “democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time”.
Which is why the often quixotic fight of those who try to educate the public is both noble and essential.
Oct 162012
The news today is that hackers associated with the Anonymous group have found the identity of the pedophile who blackmailed BC teenager Amanda Todd into suicide. My immediate reaction was probably not unusual: Good, I thought, I hope the creep gets what he deserves.
But then… how do we know that Anonymous is right? What if they made a mistake? Isn’t this why we have a system of courts and judges instead of vigilante justice?
Indeed, it turns out that the same YouTube account that was used to post details on the alleged pedophile today posted another video yesterday in which they suggested that Amanda Todd isn’t even real. Their “proof”? A Facebook group dedicated to Amanda Todd that was created weeks before her death. One YouTube commenter used rather direct language to indicate his disapproval: “Are you a fucking idiot? The title of a Facebook page can be changed by the admin at ANY TIME. This means that a page made in June with an unrelated title like ‘Anonymous is fucking gay’ can be changed after Amanda Todd’s death to say ‘R.I.P Amanda’. ”
The wheels of the justice system grind frustratingly slowly at times, but if this YouTube video represents the quality of the investigation conducted by Anonymous, then I still prefer to wait for the courts rather than see a raging mob go after the wrong person.
Oct 022012
For the past several minutes, I have been staring at a Smithsonian Institution photograph, showing a younger version of Grace Hopper at a UNIVAC console, presumably working on an early version of the COBOL compiler.
No, it’s not Grace Hopper that I was staring at, nor the vintage equipment, not even the prominent ashtraysmagnetic tape protection rings. It was the three gentlemen surrounding Admiral Hopper (okay, she wasn’t an admiral yet back then): remarkably, one of them is African-American while another is apparently of Asian descent. Such a picture would not be particularly unusual today, but more than 50 years ago? It’s astonishing. Pity the photo credits do not tell us who these gentlemen were whose talent and perseverance allowed them to overcome racist prejudice. Just as Grace Hopper herself overcame sexist prejudice and went on to become the oldest commissioned officer in the US Navy at the time of her final retirement, a few months shy of her 80th birthday.
Sep 212012
Two years ago I attended a conference in Mexico City. We had many pleasant conversations with our hosts, who sadly told us that these days, Mexico City may be the safest part of the country… not because it is any safer than it was 20 years ago (when it qualified as the least safe) but because the rest of the country went downhill as a result of a perpetual drug war.
This is why I find these latest news so disturbing: it seems that the drug war may have reached a suburb of Mexico City. It appears that not even the capital is immune anymore.
Sep 082012
Here is a scary story: after a university professor referred jokingly to two absentee students as “spooks”, he became the subject of allegations of racism despite being well-known for his previous work on civil rights and racial equality. It so happened that the two missing students were African American, a fact of which the professor was unaware.
This Kafkaesque nightmare was the inspiration of a novel, “The Human Stain”, by author Philip Roth. Yet the novel itself became part of a Kafkaesque story on Wikipedia recently. That is because the Wikipedia entry falsely stated that the novel’s inspiration was a New York writer. When Roth asked for the article to be corrected, he was told by a Wikipedia administrator that “I understand your point that the author is the greatest authority on their own work, but we require secondary sources.”
Wikipedia’s goals to have facts backed by sources and to not contain original research are laudable. But sometimes, they go a tad too far (to say the least), a situation I ran into myself when contributing minor edits to entries about certain television series. Original research is one thing, but when prima facie evidence that is available for all to check contradicts a “secondary source”, shouldn’t it be obvious that the secondary source is simply wrong?
The story does have a happy ending, though. Now that Roth published an open letter in The New Yorker, the letter itself qualifies as a “secondary source”, and the Wikipedia entry is now updated. But if anything, this resolution just adds to the Kafkaesque surrealism of the story.
Sep 042012
Speaking of books… A couple of weeks ago, I received my copy of The Hunger Games on Blu-Ray. I knew more or less what to expect but I was still amazed. I am trying to imagine that conversation somewhere in a movie company boardroom where the producer made the pitch: “I am planning a movie in which two dozen children brutally murder each other…” It’s a near miracle I think that this movie was made, and a genuine miracle that the result was not sweetened up by Hollywood.
The brutality of The Hunger Games is not self-serving. Its dystopia teaches a young audience a lot more than what a first kiss is like or how to survive a life-and-death game with a bow and arrows. It teaches them about choosing and betraying (or be betrayed by) friends. It teaches them about choosing when all your choices are evil and immoral. It teaches them how not to trust any authority. How life can be lethally unfair. How the protected world in which children live is merely an illusion. And the sequels, if possible, are even better. Yes, I now read them all, and I cannot wait to see them come to life on screen.
Sep 042012
I just finished reading a chilling Swedish dystopia: The Unit, by Ninni Holmqvist. Its title caught my eye when Google Play on my new tablet offered it at a discount, for only $1.99. I read the first few chapters for free and I was hooked.
The Unit paints a frightening picture of a society in near-future Sweden, in which childless people past childbearing age are sent to state-of-the-art facilities, Reserve Bank Units, to live out the rest of their lives in perfect comfort… as dispensable subjects of medical experiments and organ donors, submissively awaiting the day of their “final donation”.
I just hope that the mentality depicted in this book is not in any way representative of the way people think in present-day Sweden.
Jul 302012
There is a little bit of a firestorm brewing on Twitter. A journalist, Guy Adams, wrote a critical comment on NBC and made the mistake of including the corporate e-mail of an NBC mandarin. NBC decided to be heavy handed about it and asked Twitter to suspend @GuyAdams. The result is predictable: a flood of messages with the hashtags #nbcfail and #twitterfail.
Now Twitter tends to have this handy little widget about Trends. And the two things I did not see in Trends was, you guessed it: #nbcfail and #twitterfail. One almost has to wonder if the Trends widget contains not what Twitter’s users find interesting but what Twitter’s corporate (or political?) masters allow…
But just before I began my journey down the rabbit hole into the surrealist realm of conspiracy theories, I thankfully refreshed the Twitter page. Guess what? Now #nbcfail is the fifth item in Trends. Phew!
Jul 172012
Imagine you come across a cult whose leaders, either through malice or ignorance, let their gullible followers consume raw sewage. You might not expect gratitude from the cult proper (fanatics are rarely rational) for revealing the truth, but you may expect society as a whole to applaud your actions.
Not when the cult is the Catholic Church and you are in India. Sanal Edamaruku, founder-president of Rationalist International, president of the Indian Rationalist Organization, was recently invited to investigate a weeping statue of Jesus. He found that the weeping was caused, in fact, by a nearby clogged drain and sewer water seeping through walls through capillary action.
You might think this gentleman should deserve some recognition for having saved possibly thousands of believers from the consequences of consuming sewage (they were licking and consuming Jesus’s “tears”).
No… the Catholic Church, in their infinite wisdom, chose to file a complaint instead under India’s penal code alleging that he hurt the religious sentiments of their community.
No wonder it took these superstitious clowns half a millennium to apologize for Galileo.
Hey, you pompous Pope person, perhaps it’s time to open your pie hole and say something on this matter, reining in your nutty followers? Surely you are not this nutty yourself?
And no, I don’t care one iota if anyone’s religious sentiments are hurt by my present tirade. You have a right (a right I am willing to stand up for) to believe whatever nutty fairy tales you want to believe in, but conversely, I have a right to ridicule your nutty beliefs. At least I have that right here in Canada.
Jul 172012
Paris, the city of light, is also known for its cuisine. Why someone would go to Paris and then choose to eat plastic hamburgers at McDonald’s, I have no idea.
But in case culinary reasons are not sufficient to deter you, consider this: next time you go to a McDonald’s in Paris, they may assault you because they don’t like your electronic eyewear. This is what happened to Steve Mann, a well known University of Toronto engineering professor who is a wearable computing pioneer.
I am guessing that McDonald’s chose not to respond to this gentleman’s complaints and reimburse him for the damages that occurred because they enjoy the free publicity.
Perhaps it’s best to avoid McDonald’s restaurants everywhere, just to be safe?
Jul 132012
Just heard this while listening to the evening jazz program Tonic on CBC Radio 2: a Texas man, whose Austin-Healey convertible was stolen in 1970, found it listed on eBay 42 years later! After a bit of a hassle (mainly because the vehicle’s VIN was misfiled in the FBI’s database) he was able to reclaim it, no doubt much to the distress of the California car dealer who may have bought it in good faith.
Jun 102012
US Congressional representative Mike Rogers, head of the House Homeland Security Transportation Subcommittee, recently suggested that the TSA should not pat down people like Beyonce, who is unlikely to blow a plane up. He said that “There are certain people that are just so well-known that you’ve just got to use your common sense.”
CNN this afternoon asked viewers what they thought of this. The replies they read on air were unanimous: celebrities should not get preferential treatment.
And that, of course, in addition to being just bat crap crazy, also demonstrates what is so wrong with Americans lately. First, this “a rule is a rule is a rule” mentality. It’s as if Americans have become the Germans of the 21st century! Then, completely missing the point about common sense, opting for petty vindictiveness instead. The TSA is not there to “treat” you or anyone else but to filter out potential terrorists. (Now as to whether or not they can actually carry out that task is a topic for another day.) Why on Earth should they be patting down someone who is very well known to them and extremely unlikely to be a threat?
All this once again leaves me wondering who these people south of the border are and what they’ve done with the real Americans I used to know and admire.
Jun 082012
Although my comment is about the Web site of Hungary’s new President, this post has nothing to do with party politics in Hungary. It is about political correctness run amok.
On the President’s new Web site, there is a helpful link for an accessible version of the site, which is of course commendable. What seems somewhat pointless, though, is the presence of a Braille version of the linking text… appearing on a computer screen.
Jun 032012
As part of the Queen’s diamond jubilee celebrations, the British did something that hasn’t been done in 350 years: a 1000-boat pageant on the river Thames.
Being the loyalist royalist, I was watching (parts of) it on television. As I did so, I couldn’t help noticing just how soaking wet the choir was on top of the boat carrying the London Philharmonic.
Their spirit was undaunted, though, and they sang beautifully and professionally. I hope none of them caught pneumonia.