.:. fuck decaf .:.

Space Elevator: Tensile Strength vs. Shear Strength

2010-02-16T08:26:00.000-05:00

Thanks xkcd.com

District 9

2009-09-14T13:53:00.003-04:00

The critics loved this one. I saw it called the "thinking man's science fiction movie", and everyone was impressed with the idea of aliens that were basically just people, even if they looked like soot-covered giant shrimp.

But there was a plot hole in this movie, a hole big enough to steer the Mothership through, and nobody but me seems to have noticed it. Since it's a plot-driver, it should have been fixed.

A big deal is made of how people can't use the superior alien weaponry since the weapons only work for someone with "prawn" DNA.

Okay, it's likely that within this century, humans too will have weapons that test the DNA of the holder and, for obvious security purposes, won't fire if the wrong person pulls the trigger. But how likely is it that we'll make such weapons with the default setting "work for anyone but only if they're human. No space aliens allowed, please."

How likely is it that we'd even think of such a preposterous setting? Or that the aliens would?

If the alien weapons (and mothership steering console) test DNA, it's so they won't be used by the wrong aliens. The idea of setting them up to check species (and *only* that) is just plain silly.

Getting your FAX straight

2009-01-10T15:29:00.001-05:00

from a friend:

This last week I called on the Privacy Commissioner of Ontario. I know that everyone is up in arms over credit card abuse and misuse and oddly enough credit card information is not legally protected in Ontario or federally here in Canada. What we do have are laws protecting health information.

So imagine my surprise when I received a fax from a medical testing centre containing the health identification, personal information and test results for a fellow resident here in Ontario. I immediately called the company who sent me the fax and pointed out the error. During the phone call I was asked to confirm information on the fax and to confirm the recipient phone number. I relayed the requested information to the Customer Service Rep and was asked to destroy the fax. Yep, somehow this a customer service issue. Why when I called I was not transferred to a Privacy officer, their representative or to at least a manager is beyond me. Heck, I’m not a customer, and I wasn’t looking to be serviced. I was just trying to help.

Based on the lackadaisical why they treated the company treated the situation I then contacted the Information Privacy Commissioner (IPC) of Ontario. This was another interesting exercise. On the www.ipc.on.ca site there are forms for people who lost information and people who think that their information has been lost. There was nothing I could find for people who ‘found’ information. So I sent an email hoping for the best

Hello,

I received at my office, by error, a FAX containing medical information for another person here in Ontario

What should I do?

Within the hour I received a phone call from an IPC representative. I relayed to them what happened and I was requested to provide them with a copy of the fax. I dropped off the evidence on Thursday.

Nothing causes one to think badly of someone quite like seeing the same screw-up happen twice. Yep you guessed it. I received the fax again. This time I skipped a step and called straight to the IPC. I left voice mail and sit here patiently awaiting instructions on my next step. I’m assuming that they will want this copy too.

Leaders Debate

2008-09-30T22:44:00.002-04:00

Various Canadian news outlets are talking about the fact the Canadian leader debate is scheduled at the same time as the US VP candidates debate, and how people are going to be sucked into the US debate because of people wanting to see if Sarah Palin can live up to the hype. For me, I want to see if any of the leaders of the Canadian political parties can live up to the hype. I'm still undecided about who I want to vote for, and this debate will hopefully go a long way in helping me make up my mind.

Dion has done nothing to impress me, but here's his chance to explain how the Green Shift will affect me in a positive way. Right now, I am buying into the Conservative ads that it will definitely increase my cost of living. I suspect the assessment is correct, at least for the first year or so, until the tax rebates/refunds kick in. I really need Dion to prove that preception wrong or distorted. I also need to see that Dion can provide anything resembling leadership, and that he can actually stand up to Harper on real issues with more than token disagreement. That would definitely lean me towards the red corner again.

Harper has to prove to me that the Conservative agenda isn't just about touting what a great guy he is, or what a horrible leader Dion is. For me, neither inspires confidence in a party. If you have a plan to sell, lay it out, highlight the good points, and let me decide. I also want to see that the Conservatives have more of a plan than "You can criticize us because the Liberals did this too". You were elected partly on a platform of being better than the Liberals in terms of accountability and leadership. Using the Liberals as a benchmark means that you aren't even aspiring to be better than the Liberals. Sell me on the notion that you have a plan for Canada, and that it is a plan that is good for me, and I am willing to vote blue.

Layton I can never bring myself to vote for, so when he's speaking, I will be chuckling at the great job the Air Farce will do in parodying him. I know, I know, I should cut him some slack, but the "We need someone better than Harper" ads don't lead me to the conclusion that the someone we needs is Jack Layton. And god forbid that Olivia Chow actually becomes Canada's first lady. I would have to stop eating dinner and watching the 6pm news at the same time.

That guy from Quebec isn't running any candidates in my riding, so when it's his turn, that would be a good time for me to go to the bathroom. The end result will likely be the same.

Finally, this is May's chance to prove that the Greens are ready for the big times. The focus of the debate will largely be on the economy, and it will be her chance to show me that the Green party isn't a one issue party. Like Harper, she needs to show me that she has a plan for Canada, and that it is a plan that is good for me. (The plan to increase the GST by 1% and give that money to cities (hopefully) to fund public transit and infrastructure is a good start). More importantly, she needs to show me that she can stand up to the other leaders, that she is able to receive the punches and give back just as much. (And please, no Republican-style Sarah Palin whining about sexism if you lose).

In the end, I suspect that the Liberal candidate in my riding will win by a huge margin, and my vote will count for naught in the grand scheme of Canadian politics, but then if we undecided always voted for who we thought was going to win, our vote is worth nothing.

On the lighter side, tonight was the season premier of The Mercer Report (or Rick Mercer Report), and this was the highlight of the show - the funniest and cutest political parody ad of all time:

Red Sheep, Blue Tribe

2008-09-12T16:26:00.000-04:00

I normally stay away from writing about politics. I’ll give you two reasons.

The noble reason: I like to think I’m above the fray, and I’m not interested enough to stay on top of every issue.

However, I don’t really consider this a political post. Because American politics is no longer political, it’s cultural.

For your consideration, here are a few snippets of so-called political discourse culled from Twitter in the last couple of days:

“Michelle “Shaniqua” Obama Bin Laden Proven To Be A Racist”

“Please keep coming back to Philadelphia, jackhole”(in reference to McCain)

“…if Obama was white, he would have been laughed out of the primary runoff.”

“Talking Barbie said ‘Math is Hard.’ Talking Caribou Barbie says ‘Foreign Policy is Hard.’”

“…tell me Sarah Palin isn’t a pigf***er.”.

What is wrong with you people? What is wrong with all of us?

Why do we act like soccer hooligans when it comes to politics? There is no civility any more, no critical thinking. Both sides see in black and white. Listen to the pundits on TV or read the bloggers. They cannot say a single good word about someone on the other side. The “strategists” have an excuse; spin is their job. But for the rest of us: has our diet of sound bites made us so intellectually lazy that we just swallow all that?

Everyone on the left is a hippie, a terrorist, or an anarchist. Everyone on the right is evil, stupid, a hypocrite, or just plain out of touch. Are we that different from each other?

Or are we just preaching to our own choirs in our own echo chambers, having forgotten how to have intelligent discourse with someone who doesn’t think just like us? We hide in our red-state or blue-state tribes, and we have lost the ability to relate to people outside of our little boxes. The ideals of those on the other side are lunacy to us, because we don’t know anyone who thinks like that.

We surround ourselves with people who think like us, talk like us, look like us. Thanks to the Internet, if we don’t live near anyone just like us, we can still be friends with them on Facebook. We don’t have to talk to the neighbors next door if we don’t like their bumper sticker. But on Twitter, or the blogs, we can be pretty certain that we’re among “friends” and everyone’s going to agree with everything we say. If not, well, it’s easy to call people names with a keyboard.

So much for the marketplace of ideas.

I promised you two reasons I don’t like to write about politics, didn’t I?

The honest reason: I’m afraid it would alienate me from 99 percent of the people in my tribe. I have a college degree. I write and I build Web sites. I use a Mac (and you can have it when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers). You tell me who I’m supposed to vote for.

The problem is, I have a few too many Red Tribe values that, as far as I can tell, aren’t shared by the leader of the Blue Tribe.

But you know what? Who cares?

In truth, I’d take either candidate at this point. All four people in the race are amazing human beings with admirable qualities: courage, dignity, wisdom, spunk. Or do you have so little faith in our political system that you think only one side of the machine turns out decent products? George Bush is the worst president ever. No wait, Bill Clinton was. No, I’m pretty sure it’s the next guy, whichever one it turns out to be.

Besides, this country is not a dictatorship (no, not even after the last eight years). One President does not make or break the country. People complain that it’s hard to get things done in Washington. It’s supposed to be hard. It’s why I hold my nose and cheer for the two-party system.

America needs people that stand up for the little guy and make sure everyone gets their fair shot at the dream. America also needs people that want the government to get out of the way so that individuals can achieve the dream.

I swear it’s a coincidence that I started writing this post on September 11, but God help us if it takes another one of those to put us all back on the same side of the fence.

You are my backup, my only backup

2008-08-05T07:19:00.001-04:00

(you know the tune)

You are my backup
My only backup
You make me happy
When files are saved
You'll never know tape
How much I trust you
Please don't take my files away

The other nite, dear
As I was typing
I accidentally removed 5 files
When I tried, dear
I could not recover
And I hung my head and cried

You are my backup
My only backup
You make me happy
When files are saved
You'll never know tape
How much I trust you
Please don't take my files away

I'll always trust you
And make my backup
If you fail me
By CRC corruption
Then I'll have no backup
I should test restore some days

You are my backup
My only backup
You make me happy
When files are saved
You'll never know tape
How much I trust you
Please don't take my files away

-rd- Aug 5, 2008

None of the Above?

2008-04-28T11:27:00.002-04:00

So, if Angus Reid were to call me today, and ask, "If a federal election were held today, which party would you vote for?", the interviewer would be faced with a long pause, followed by "None of the Above?"

"So, you are undecided?"

"No, I am decided, and I don't want to vote for any of the federal parties."

Having been a loyal federal Liberal all my voting life, I nevertheless find myself unable to vote for any party led by Stephane Dion. He was elected as an agent of change and principle by the Liberal youth vote, and his first change was to remove the spine from the federal Liberal party. His decisions to vote up or down a bill is not based on whether or not the bill would forward Liberal principles, but only on whether or not he thinks (at that very moment) the Liberal party can win the next election. By abstaining, the Liberals are allowing laws to pass that they don't feel are good laws. So much for being a man of principle. At this point, the federal Liberal platform is meaningless because they aren't willing to advance with any sort of seriousness for fear they might have to face the voters.

My next option is to vote Conservative. At the provincial level, I have voted PC for at least the last two elections, because Dalton has done nothing to convince me that he isn't a typical lying, evasive politician. John Tory at least seems willing to work with the governnment to pass legislation that he feels are good for Ontarians (such as the TTC back to work order). (I know, I know, they voted for their pay raise, but at least they voted on principle, even if it means pissing the voters off).

But Stephen Harper is a different type of conservative. He advocates accountability, but limits the press' ability to ask questions to his MPs and staff. He advocates transparency of government, but even the auditor general feels that his new laws in this area would hide things like Ad-Scam due to the numerous new loopholes it creates. And boy, does he love loopholes. Just look at the "In-and-out" scandal. The official position is, "We didn't do anything wrong because we interpreted election law differently". Wow.

I can't bring myself to vote for any political party, at any level, led by Jack Layton. I danced the Lotto 6/49 Happy Dance when Olivia Chow lost in Spadina Centre.

Greens? Maybe, but voting for a one issue party is bound to bring nasty surprises.

So, to summarize:
Liberals - not willing to stand up for their principles
Conservatives - lives too much by the "do what I say, not what I do" principle
NDP - ABJ (anyone but Jack)
Greens - a party where everyone wants to be the environment minister doesn't make a good government

Miller Time

2008-04-26T00:29:00.001-04:00

When the going gets tough -- the tough get going. And sometimes, when the going gets really tough -- the tough get really gone.

During the toughest negotiation Local 113 of the Amalgamated Transit Union has faced, Mayor David Miller got himself gone all the way to China. Then, returning just when a strike-averting agreement was being reached, Miller somehow managed becoming situated as if he’d saved the day.

Union president Bob Kinnear, for instance, had some suspicions the day got saved by Miller. Though uncertain how transit strike was averted entirely by Miller, Kinnear must have had profound suspicions when saying,

I think it's evident the mayor did get involved. If it wasn't the mayor, somebody from city hall sent a new directive.

But Mayor Miller is far too modest, smart or magnanimous to accept such false credit. Mayor Miller stomps false credit down flat. Insists it was TTC negotiators that did the bargaining. And not just this time around. All that credit Miller got for TTC strike-averting 3 years ago when speaking directly to Kinnear? Ayup. Miller stomped it all flatter’n shoe-paste. Said it amounted to a five-minute phone call in which he merely asked the union leader to go back to the table. Which phone call he could as easily have made from China. Maybe even called collect -- as a cost-cutting measure.

Goes to show how well we do without Mayor Miller when the going really gets tough in Greater Toronto. Heck. Some might say we’d do far better without. But here’s the thing. They’re having a rough go of it in China. Falling over themselves, tumbling all over the world stage. Yet they listen to Mayor Miller in China. In China, it might be singularly when Miller raises Tibet human rights issues that the rights message gets clearly heard.

That’s where our Mayor can do the most good. In China -- not in Greater Toronto. Seriously. He could tell Chinese partisans how, despite being for human rights in Tibet, the West is absolutely not against China. How fascinated by Chinese capitalism we are in the West -- having not ourselves experienced capitalism so unrestrained since the English industrial revolution. How, despite always rejecting communism, we have become far more socialist in the West than in China. What embarrassment demonizing the Dalai Lama is for China. What shame abducting Panchen Lama -- world’s youngest political prisoner -- brings to China. What humiliation staging anti-Western protests constitutes for China. As if nobody knew what happens to unauthorized protest rallies in China. Come on, Chinese partisans -- there's no staging anything that inept without laugh-tracks.

Most of all, Miller should venture Canadian help and expertise when it comes to Tibet. China would do well to seek Canadian advice instead of silence. Because China’s sovereignty issues can’t hold either water or candles relative to Canada’s. Chinese partisans would not be called upon to permit referenda -- as in Canada. Chinese partisans would never have to seriously negotiate land claims -- as in Canada. None of the above. All Tibetans seek is some cultural autonomy. Come on, Chinese partisans -- what's the big deal? Relative to Canada’s sovereignty issues, China’s can be walked through parks off-leash most sunny days.

They really listen to Mayor Miller in China. In China, Mayor Miller gets clearly heard. So never mind talking to Dalai Lama -- since no way would Chinese partisans listen to anything he’d have to say. Never mind releasing Panchen Lama –- who’s not likely talking or even breathing by now. It’s Mayor Miller Chinese partisans should be talking and listening to. Some quality Miller time might chill them right out. And if Greater Toronto gets lost without him -- we’re just a phone call away. Toronto would never hang up on Miller -- not even if he did call collect.

Miller overlooking Great Wall of China screenshot from here.

dis-Junction

2008-04-24T10:28:00.000-04:00

Back when I first moved to the Junction -- 20 years ago -- no one ever called it that. None had heard of any Junction. And even if they had, residents would never have called it that. Not for love nor for money.

Back then, reference had to be roundabout. Indirect. Oblique. This was Bloor-West -- North. Or High-Park -- West. In events of direst emergency, it became Annette Village. Dire emergencies as when clients confronted real-estate agents with: “You mean it’s (gasp) north of Annette?”

Like some geographic sore spot or socio-economic canker, it was way too unmentionable to rate its own designation. Blemishes seldom get personalized nameplates.

Then, suddenly, everything changed. Everything that mattered. First, the City finally repealed its prohibition against alcohol in the Junction. The economically devastating prohibition lingering in the Junction until 1997. Which meant that instead of lurching along Dundas West, guzzling from paper bags, I could actually sit myself down at excellent neighbourhood pubs. Like Axis, for instance -- where nobody knows my name but they’re damn friendly anyway.

Axis: among first and best post-prohibition Junction watering-holes.

Second thing that really changed in the Junction was when the City installed spectacular-looking, historically relevant light posts all along Dundas West. All the way from Keele to Runnymede. Reminding everyone how great the Junction used to be -- late in the 19th century.

One light to remember the Junction’s better days by.

Now, the Junction has become almost idyllic. People boast living here -- despite what traces of old economic sores remain. Despite how, in the Junction, all sides used to be wrong of the tracks.

Tough either quantifying or qualifying such transformation. Once, Dundas West was considered fraught and hazardous. Now, biking back from downtown during rush-hour, one feels nothing but relieved crossing Keele. Motor vehicles make some room. Instead of swerving around parked-car doors opening in one’s face, smiles are exchanged with motorists waiting until one’s safely passed by. And it’s been quite a while since I’ve heard the fear of walking Dundas West after sundown expressed. Day or night, people seem to flock this way.

That’s what really struck me a couple days back. How flocking to Dundas West might be getting a bit ridiculous. See, this building got knocked down between Keele and Pacific. Then, instead of new building, there was this sort-of stage erected on that lot.

Some sort of stage.

The other day, on this sort-of stage, there were people in top-hats and bonnets. Also, a crowd gathered round watching. A rather large crowd. So large that I roller-bladed the periphery of it spilling into the street.

Spilling in the streets.

Turned out to be guided-tourism. No doubt by the Junction Historical Society. Got me curious enough to rush home, dump roller-blades, grab camera, hop on bicycle and rush back. What I wanted to know was this: would tourism-guides point out sores and cankers remaining from the Junction’s bad old days? Or would focus get restricted to the Junction’s more ancient, spectacular history -- and the new, so much improved look?

There are plenty sore spots remaining. Architectural restoration and improvements along Dundas West of Keele shoulder tight against a century’s dilapidated neglect and dereliction. Certainly some business survives -- even prospers. Yet, despite famously cheap rents, there linger legacies of the ghost-town this used to be. Commercial activity still fails so predictably and repeatedly here -- storefronts get boarded up and papered over just about more often than not.

Listening in best I could -- nothing said about the bad old days. How residue from those days still lingers. Ancient history? Heaps. Everything new and improved? Loads. The days in between and reasons how bad those were? Nothing I could hear.

As if the ghost of McBride Cycles weren't looming right there.

Strenuously ignoring commercial ghost across from McBride's.

There's so much remaining to ignore in the Junction. Historic tourist-guiding must demand real careful stepping. Almost like around open graves in otherwise splendid grave-yards.

Spectres of a former Handyman's..

Of a former Upholsterer's..

Even the long-abandoned corpse of an overly Hasty Market.

That’s why I’m so not into history. Including the Junction’s. Because how often history seems to mean the mistakes we’re bound to repeat.

Failing Economics II

2008-04-18T06:44:00.000-04:00

Hey -- what’s with the partial nudity?

That’s just how Robert Nadeau regards economists. Because, according to his recent article in Scientific American, economists are scientifically ignorant. That’s why, on his view,

Unscientific assumptions in economic theory are undermining efforts to solve environmental problems.

Essentially, Nadeau’s argument isn’t that economic theories are inconsistent. Only absurdly incomplete. As if mainstream economists were describing nothing but straight narrow portions of spectacularly long winding roads. Thus, particularly when it comes to ecological impacting, economists mislead us. Their theories can’t lead us anywhere we need to go.

Economic theories are misleading rather than explanatory due to how absurdly incomplete they are. Nadeau is calling for economic upgrades:

Because neoclassical economics does not even acknowledge the costs of environmental problems and the limits to economic growth, it constitutes one of the greatest barriers to combating climate change and other threats to the planet. It is imperative that economists devise new theories that will take all the realities of our global system into account.

Some economists might not take Nadeau’s threat to tinker economics lying down, though. “Bender”, for instance, commented that,

In an article purportedly discussing economic analysis and environmental policy neither externality nor externalities ever appeared! I don’t know which is more depressing, that someone could be stupid and ignorant enough to produce this tripe or that the Scientific American has sunk so low as to publish it.

How pedantic. That's exactly what Nadeau's talking about -- how overwhelming economic externalities like ecology are getting. But Nadeau not utilising the specific terms “Bender” recognizes resulted in “Bender” utterly missing Nadeau’s point. Standard economic theories mislead us precisely because environmental crisis constitutes such overwhelming externality.

Nadeau’s right, of course. We are rushing full steam and toxic waste to being overwhelmed. Not just economically.

But should economists seek to internalize theoretically and factually overwhelming externalities like environmental crisis? No. By no means. Absolutely not. There is no economic solution to our problems. Rather, let’s better appreciate how limited and incomplete economic theories are -– and let’s start looking way past economics for what it means to be more natural. What it means to be at all natural.

Can we do that? Toronto living is just about the most economically affluent anywhere –- ever. We expect some economic turbulence ahead. Will we be willing to look past it –- for what it means to be more natural? Or do we remain forever fixated on economic maximizing -- regardless how affluent we get? Regardless the cost to everything natural so precariously remaining?

[Peter Fruchter teaches in the Division of Humanities at York University.]

Screenshot from here.

This Browser Officially Hijacked

2008-04-10T12:09:00.002-04:00

This is what you’ll see when your household exceeds the bandwidth quota allotted by Rogers.

You’ll be sure to see it. Rogers will hijack your browser and show it to you.

And your browser window will wind up looking like this:

But I refused to believe it this morning when it happened to me. What -- over 60 gigs? Just in March? No way. I monitor every last drop of bandwidth percolating through the router. No way.

That’s what I said when I finally got through that crazy voice recognition system of Rogers’. No way.

“Well,” replied their living and breathing tech support fellow, “what does your record show?”

“20 gigs -– give or take a few,” I growled. All indignant.

So we compared daily bandwidth records. And it turned out I was totally wrong. The 20 gigs I’d been looking at? Corresponded with the last 10 days’ use. Only.

“Alright, fine,” I relented. “But how confident are you guys in tracking everyone’s bandwidth? And what will you do when individuals dispute your readings? How will you resolve that?”

“Pretty confident,” he said. “We’ve been testing the hell out of it. Of course, computers do make mistakes. And in such cases, customers self-tracking their bandwidth will stand a good chance of getting credited.”

“Ok, but why do it at all?” I asked. “Didn’t your high-speed customers sign up for unlimited use?”

“We have no choice,” he replied. “We pay for bandwidth and now it’s getting to the point where some customers are using 200 gigs. More even. That’s what’s wrecked it for everyone else.”

Ok. Fair enough. But still. The link provided by Rogers to view one’s bandwidth usage -- rogers.com/keepingpace –- is not accessible. In fact, Rogers’ website has been down all day. How to trust Rogers’ bandwidth tracking everyone –- when Rogers can’t even keep their own website up?

I’ll keep right on self-tracking, thank you. And this whole browser hijacking thing? I’ll have to think about that some more. Because, going by first impressions –- it just seems like some sort of security nightmare. But first, I’m gon’na find out who’s been abusing the torrents @ my household last month. That’s one mystery won’t require much brilliance detecting.

[Peter Fruchter teaches in the Division of Humanities at York University.]

p.s.: Are there any decent providers left -- or is the whole virtual universe getting chocked by Bell "traffic shaping"? Anyone know -- Carolyn, Richard?

Beyond Ignorance and Understanding

2008-04-05T19:36:00.000-04:00

Not long ago, I wrote that we clash cultures while the world plunges to climate-change hell in burning hand-baskets.

Sure there might be some hoping for the future -- if only human beings bothered understanding cultural principles and ideologies better. Cultural principles and ideologies defining who people are -- and who the enemies of the people are. Because then, just maybe, we might start bridging gaps between ourselves and cultural others by discourse -- rather than plugging them with bullets.

But better understanding is not enough. If cultural ignorance of self and others escalates conflicts, let’s absolutely struggle against ignorance. What to do, though, when hatred precedes mis-understanding? When the hatred precedes and surpasses all ignorance? When we set out to genocide cultural others -- knowing full-well what we set out to do?

That’s what I was confronted with on Thursday while at York University. How hatred has a life and death wish all its own. Surpassing both ignorance and understanding.

First there was the Toronto Star article about China’s ambassador to Canada accusing Dalai Lama of “telling lies to the world” and masterminding violence in Tibet. Lu Shumin actually expects us to believe the Dalai Lama is some sort of lying, violent devil. That the Dalai Lama just pretends to be an angel. According to Lu Shumin,

Dalai Lama has presented himself to be a peaceful, like an angel kind of figure, for such a long time.. the Western public take this for granted…

Sorry, Mr. Ambassador. Every public in the world knows the lies are all yours. Because everybody knows the Dalai Lama is as close to angels as human beings get. Everyone knows where the Dalai Lama stands against violence. So best luck with your crass, transparent vilifying and demonizing campaigns, Mr. Ambassador. Such lies do nothing against the Dalai Lama -- they just trample the shreds of China’s dignity from the world stage.

And then, doing my usual rounds, I started hearing ululations. Following the sounds of which across campus led me to Vari Hall -- and this unbelievable mob scenery.

Not just the regular mob that occupies Vari Hall, though. Nope. Now there were two mobs. As if the regular had somehow, amoeba-like, split. Found themselves waving different flags. Just went collectively insane. Competing to drown each other out by megaphone-amplified histrionics. Barely separated by York security guards. With eight police cruisers parked right outside -- just waiting for York security to collapse.

There were a couple signs getting totally ignored up in the rafters -- requesting dialogue instead of mob-action on campus. And on spur of that moment, it seemed I could do better. After all, hadn’t I been writing articles against cultures clashing and dashing the future of everything natural to cinders?

That’s why I laid me down between mobs. Vaguely hoping the mobs would realize that by lying down between them I was standing up for the future.

Well, the mobs paid no slightest heed. Either didn’t notice or didn’t care. York security, though, reacted instantly.

“Sir! You are going to have to move. Right now!”

“Where to?” I asked.

“One side or the other, sir. Right now!”

Great. York security demanded I pick sides. So I settled for walking back and forth. Asked a few questions. Read some literature.

Nearest I could make out, the entire dispute was semantic. Whether the border fencing separating Israelis, Palestinians and Egyptians ought to get called an “apartheid wall” or not.

Well, wasn’t that obvious? Of course it shouldn’t. Apartheid is offensive -- not defensive. When walls are defensive life-savers, we tend to think of them as being great. Not just when they’re huge -- like the Great Wall of China. Also when they’re relatively smaller. Like that wall of Hadrian’s. Even when they’re relatively tiny fortifications. They’re all great when built as defensive life-savers.

The Berlin Wall was offensive. It was pretty huge -- but it sure wasn’t great. No way was the Berlin Wall defensive.

The real issue, of course, is how to quench burning cultural hatred such as surrounding Israel and Tibet. Before it’s too late. Can better cultural understanding suffice to span gaps and contradictions between human cultures by dialogue instead of bullets? Not likely.

But not because the issues are too complex to resolve. To the contrary. When it comes to Tibet, Communist Chinese partisans keep demanding Canadians remain silent. Otherwise, how would Canadians like it if China began agitating for Quebec sovereignty -- or the return of our home and native lands to the native peoples they were stolen from?

Such nonsense. China ought to seek Canadian advice instead of silence. Because China would not even be called upon to permit referenda or seriously negotiate land claims in Tibet. All Tibetans seek is some cultural autonomy. Relative to Canada’s sovereignty issues, China’s can be walked through parks on any sunny day.

Issues get a tad more complicated when it comes to Israel and Palestine -- but not too much. All distinct peoples and societies must possess territorial integrity to secure cultural autonomy. Otherwise, absent some territorial integrity and cultural autonomy, distinct peoples are at constant risk of genocide. That’s just how we are once cultures get clashing. What else is human history even about other than our clashing cultures?

Hence, Palestinians must have their own country. But not a shittier littler country to stew in eternal resentment, for crying out loud. Palestinians must have a country they can be proud of. A country they can proudly work to build -- rather than constantly looking to destroy someone else's.

That’s why everybody has got to chip in. Not just the Israelis with the West Bank and Gaza. Everybody. Internationally. Jordan can give up a little space, surely, on the river’s east bank. Egypt can provide a chunk of the Sinai. Why not? These would just be territorial crumbs. But crumbs which, together, would create a decent dignified future.

So simple. Palestine must be larger than Israel. Come on, Arab brothers. Contribute. Just some crumbs from your laden territorial tables. The days of the Palestinian people foddering your cannons against Israel are over. You threatened Palestinians to leave, to get out of your way when you came shooting to genocide Israel in 1948. Yet Israel still stands. You promised Palestinians they’d return to feasting on the corpse of Israel. And not only haven’t you delivered to this day and age -- you continue burying the Palestinian people, heaping perpetual shame on them as refugees. As if Israel still standing were their fault instead of yours. But it was your threats and broken promises, Arab brothers, which broke Palestinians from their homes. It is your duty, Arab brothers, to contribute making the Palestinian people whole again.

Contribute, Arab brothers. Don't shrug off every responsibility onto Israel -- there must be more honour. And give up levering the Palestinian people to genocide Israel already. You've been trying for 60 years. Give it up. If god were willing, you would long since have succeeded. Help make the future better, please. Not always worse. Come on. How hard can it be? Any future would be better.

No. The issues are not too complicated to resolve. Not if better futures were desired. But, of course, there’s no intention of making anything better once cultural hatred starts burning out of control. Sometimes cultures do clash due to plain ignorance or misunderstanding. The U.S. invasion of Iraq, for instance, ought to have been averted by better intelligence, better understanding and a little less ignorance. But too often, once hatred flames out of control, cultures can’t stop clashing. No matter what. Not until at least one is extinguished.

Because hatred can’t be extinguished once cultural others come to be regarded as antithetical to everything good and proper. When some cultural other merely continuing to exist becomes unbearably humiliating. In such cases, vilifying and demonizing cease reflecting strategic lies and tactical propaganda. The hatred expressed in such cases is genuine -- honestly reflecting sensations of utter humiliation entailed by the cultural other merely existing. The cultural other comes to embody everything which hinders attainment and the manifest destiny of one's people.

In this sense, Chinese leadership demonizing the Dalai Lama indicates profound humiliation that Tibetan culture continues existing. Chinese leadership expects to be believed despite what the whole world has been witnessing for decades -- how the Dalai Lama stands against hatred and every manner of inadvisable material attachment. Because Tibetan culture continuing existing, cankering China's becoming super-powerful and preparing to host Olympic Games, necessarily means the Dalai Lama must be some sort of lying, violent devil.

Just the same in the case of Islam and Israel. Islam can never stop shooting at Israel because nothing can more profoundly humiliate Islam than Israel continuing to exist. How can Israel’s existing 60 years despite all Islam’s best efforts even be conceived? Like, whose side is god on, anyhow? It can’t be conceived. Islamic maps deny even the geographic fact of Israel. That’s why it doesn’t matter what Israel does. From how much land occupied in defensive wars Israel retreats. How great the walls Israel builds to defend itself are. What truces Israel ratifies. How relatively well Muslim citizens fare in Israel. None of that matters. Islam can’t ever stop shooting at Israel. When Israel builds walls to stop violence, Islamic leaders vilify those walls as if offensive rather than defensive. Since Islamic leaders honestly don’t get how Israel could be entitled to self-defend. When Israel gets forced to shoot back at Islam in self-defence, Islamic leaders holler that Israel commits genocide. Despite how unabashed Islamic leaders have been calling for Israel’s genocide since 1948. Despite how some Islamic leadership is actually chartered on genociding Israel. Despite how Israeli culture was conceived in resisting genocide. Despite how desperate Israel is for peace with Islam -- i.e., to not itself get genocided. None of that matters. Israel continuing existing entails such humiliation for Islamic culture -- it means Israel must be the genocider rather than the genocidee. Thus, when vilifying and demonizing Israel, Islamic leadership isn’t intending to lie. They are just expressing their feelings of cultural humiliation -- and reminding us, once again, how to really hate.

We can’t always be forgiven for not knowing what we do. Sometimes we know perfectly well -- but our hatred surpasses all ignorance or understanding. Times like that, it doesn’t matter whether we boycott the Olympic Games. Since, whether we boycott them or not, these games will likely come to be known as the Cultural Genocide Olympics. Nor does it much matter what road-maps we draw to Middle-East peace. There’s no place for Israel on Islamic maps. Ultimately, the power of hatred to clash human cultures suggests Armageddon will long precede our climate-change hell. And, if only so, the world might become a far better, more natural place.

[Peter Fruchter teaches in the Division of Humanities at York University.]

Dalai Lama image screenshot from here -- CBC interview with the Dalai Lama. Very much worth reading.

Disputation Arenas: Harnessing Conflict and Competitiveness for Society's Benefit

2008-04-04T09:27:00.001-04:00

an article by David Brin, Ph.D.

This unusual article looks at how truth is determined in our four 'accountability arenas' -- science, democracy, courts and markets. It was lead article in the American Bar Association's Journal on Dispute Resolution (Ohio State University), v.15, N.3, pp 597-618, Aug. 2000.

Copyright © 2000 by David Brin. All rights reserved. No duplication or resale without permission.

Dr. Brin's the 3-part article:

I. The Need for a New Kind of Dispute Resolution

II. Toward a New Dispute-Resolution Process for the 21st Century

III: A Concept for Implementation

No Obligation to not Offend?

2008-03-29T23:01:00.000-04:00

With mainstream media attention recurring weekly, scrutiny of human rights commissions has been unprecedented in 2008. But not any more. Now it’s just about daily. Even on Saturdays and Sundays.

Nothing even suggests abatement. Instead of subsiding, mainstream criticism is escalating. Swelling. And today it might be just about to burst. Because, as the Post’s Joseph Brean announced,

.. Tuesday, at the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal in Ottawa, one of Canada's most prominent white supremacist propagandists.. will put the country's entire human rights bureaucracy on the witness stand… The curious thing.. is that Mr. Lemire, the last president of the now defunct neo-Nazi Heritage Front, enjoys the qualified support of a Liberal MP, PEN Canada, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association -- even a leader of B'nai Brith Canada.

Which so goes to showing and telling how questionable the antics of human rights bureaucracies seem to Canadians. By all means -- let’s find out. This day the interrogators get interrogated.

How has it come to this? Why do we regard human rights commissions with such suspicion? How have human rights bureaucracies heaped such undivided public disrepute upon themselves?

The Star’s Haroon Siddiqui would like us to believe shameless detractors have got nothing to object but justified limitations to free speech. That’s the only reason why detractors, as he alludes,

.. argue that human rights commissions have no business limiting free speech. [Despite how] by law it is the business of several of these tribunals to assess and curb hate speech…

What nonsense, Mr. Siddiqui. We get that speech must sometimes be constrained. As when shouting “Fire!” in crowded theatres. And we totally get how justified tribunals are to curb hate speech. What we do not and should not get is these tribunals hurdling from curbing hate speech to imposing false obligations to not offend on Canadians.

That’s what we do not and should not get. How, as Darren Lund warned, these tribunals test the limits of expression:

[Far as tribunals are concerned] ..the test is fairly straightforward: Freedom of expression must be limited when it calls for hatred and violence against vulnerable people.

Because, should Mr. Lund be right as we suspect -- that kind of testing isn’t just wrong. It’s evil. Nobody is invulnerable to hatred and violence. When it comes to human rights, expressing hatred and calling for violence must always be limited. Always. Not just when these tribunals deem whatsoever expression to be against the vulnerable -- i.e., by the invulnerable or not so vulnerable.

Tests for limiting expression must absolutely never fail to address real distinctions between hate speech -- and speech which is merely offensive. Regardless who speakers are deemed to be. All hate speech is offensive. But not every offensive expression qualifies as hate speech. For how invariably offensive are inconvenient and troubling truths? Just so. By failing to distinguish hate from offensive speech, by creating false obligations to not offend, what will tribunals most particularly silence? Most particularly: inconvenient and troubling truths.

Tribunals must cease curbing people from shouting “Fire!” in crowded theatres whenever there actually are fires in crowded theatres. Regard for truth must be understood to contradict allegations of hatred. Hatred entails some sufficiently reckless disregard for truth. Otherwise, if identity of speakers suffices for tribunals to conclude hatred absent any disregard for truth in speech, then tribunals assail the most basic fundamental values and principles of Canadian society.

Invulnerability of speakers? Vulnerability of listeners? For how long? If tribunals keep hinging hatred on identity, how long before Canadian society becomes stratified by systems of enforced deference? How long until regard for truth ceases to protect against allegations of hatred or defamation? How long until we cease daring expressing any truth to power?

Hinging hatred on identity is precisely contrary to human rights. Contrary to the basic fundamental rights of each, every and all Canadians. That’s why we must resist tribunals imposing obligations to not offend on Canadians. Guard against tribunals’ inquisitorial character. Because this is how the long and slippery slope to totalitarianism spirals. With initially isolated scapegoating and witch-hunting. But only to start with.

[Peter Fruchter teaches in the Division of Humanities at York University.]

Image above screenshot from here.

Failing Economics

2008-03-25T11:01:00.000-04:00

Now there's a story at the Globe & Mail about how "Canada begins tracking U.S. into slump". The implication being we need not worry -- it's only going to be a "slump".

Meanwhile, there's opinions published at the Globe about how "Global capitalism teeters on the brink". Meaning that economies everywhere aren't just slumping or flirting with recession or depression. Nope. Economies are teetering. On the brink of what? Destruction? Annihilation? Obliteration?

Fair enough. Nobody knows how bad the economic news will get. In Toronto everything seems fine. Across Canada inflation is down while consumer demand, housing starts and home prices are all up. But by this time next year? Who knows.

Other than soothing present anxiety, there's not much point even trying to predict economic futures. However. Is it possible to avoid economic disasters? Can we learn anything from this one? Who is to blame?

Back in August 2007, the Globe ran a piece suggesting we ought to blame our economic disasters on 77 year-old widows living on social security and refinancing their homes in order to pay for medical bills. Because, by unwittingly stepping into the arcane world of subprime lending, Ms. Barron was, in fact,

.. helping to set in motion a chain of events that has rocked financial markets around the world and left few investors untouched.

And it didn't sound like they were kidding. But why would Globe editors run any story insinuating "The face of the global credit crisis" belonged to Ms. Barron? As if any global crisis should ever get blamed on elderly widows? As if refinancing homes to pay for medical bills happened so frequently often as to demolish whole economies? Why, other than as a truly sad joke, would Globe editors run stories blaming Ms. Barron's demographic?

No clue. Ought to call and ask why. Except, going by what happened last time -- better not to call or ask them anything at the Globe.

Best guess? Globe editors prefer blaming anyone but those actually responsible. They’d blame medically distressed elderly widows living on social security if it meant turning blind eyes to the real source of North-American irresponsibility.

It wasn’t the medically distressed elderly poor. Nor was it just the rich getting too greedy. Let's stop pointing such false fingers. Regardless whether in illness or good health, for richer or relatively poorer -- it continues to be across every North-American demographic that we’ve become irresponsibly and obscenely greedy.

Whether using our home equities as ATM machines. Or lending no money down. Or securitizing bad lending practices. North-Americans across every socio-economic spectrum are fully to blame.

Not to say all speculating is wrong. To the contrary. But liquidating our own homes? Securitizing our debts? Hedge-funding our obligations? When we agree to do so across every demographic? How can consequences not assume biblical proportions when we so shamelessly rob and sacrifice the future to our all-consuming, devouring greed?

The irresponsibility of North-American greed. It is not just natural or regular greed. Economically, ecologically, personally and culturally -- it is obscene. And while I fear the pragmatic consequences like anyone else -- in principle, I am glad. Almost eager to observe the spillage from this tempest we’ve been brewing in each and all our cups. Just maybe we’ll learn something.

[Peter Fruchter teaches in the Division of Humanities at York University.]

Image above screenshot from here.

No Right to Not be Offended?

2008-03-21T13:06:00.000-04:00

We all know the joke.

“How does one identify Canadians in international crowds?”
“Easy. Step on everyone’s toes. Only Canadians apologise when their toes get stepped on.”

Funny how true that is. Applies most remarkably to distinguishing Canadians from other North-Americans. The more brash, outspoken or vulgar our southern neighbours get, the less offensive we get. As if it were our job to make up for their exuberance. Provide countervailing balance to North-American culture. Be prim as proper church-ladies at Jerry Springer choir auditions.

No Jerry beads for us -– but thanks for offering.

Our correctness isn’t just political. It is by long and distinguishing cultural tradition that Canadians remain inoffensive.

Nevertheless, Canadians are fully committed to freedom of expression. Regardless what absurdities human rights commissions might consider. Absurdities so aptly summarised by Darren Lund:

Freedom of expression must be limited when it calls for hatred and violence against vulnerable people.

Nonsense, Mr. Lund. Freedom of expression must always be limited whenever expressing hatred, calling for violence or defaming. Always. No person is invulnerable to hatred, violence or defamation. And it is precisely the apprehension of bias such as yours that has brought tremendous public disrepute to human rights commissions proceedings.

Nobody should ever be presumed invulnerable to hatred, violence or defamation. Not in any free, democratic or minimally just society. Because societies turn totalitarian when rejecting human rights as fundamentally and inalienably inhering to each and every member. When basic human rights become privileges to which only some get entitled. Regardless whether those entitled to basic human rights on any particular day be deemed as sufficiently vulnerable, sufficiently powerful, sufficiently virtuous or whatever else. Either human rights remain fundamentally inalienable -– for all -– or we subject and subjugate human rights to expedience, to circumstance and to group dynamics.

Either basic human rights -– or special privileges. Not both. Either everyone gets protected from express hatred, violence or defamation. Or some get granted special privileges to not be offended while we open seasons to targeting the rest. As if the rest were either invulnerable or -– if vulnerable -– not human. Not entitled to having their human rights protected.

Why would Mr. Lund even suggest human rights commissions become special privileges tribunals? No doubt due to some confusion rather than any plain evil. Distributive social justice requires recognizing and assisting materially vulnerable people. Most likely, Mr. Lund went leaping from the concept of assisting some to notions of denying the human rights of everyone else. The sort of leaping so reflexive among those devoted to ideologies of gender, race and class struggling. But the justice of socially assisting some must not and can not mean denying the basic human rights of others. The very possibility of justice hinges on human rights enduring for all Canadians.

Mr. Lund might conceivably be correct that human rights commissions become special privileges tribunals. Thus, precisely due to our apprehensions of the bias entailed, Canadians have repeated affirming there is no right to not be offended –- and no obligation to not offend. And our apprehensions of bias must be vast indeed. Wouldn’t have been as surprising coming from other North-Americans. Or from Danish cartoonists. Or from Israeli troops. But from Canadians?

No right to not be offended? No obligation to not offend? What more terrifies us as Canadians than giving offence? We don’t really mean it. We can’t. Not as any sort of cultural principle. Canadians just aren’t ready to start seriously offending each other.

We can’t mean it as any sort of cultural principle when saying there’s no right to not be offended. We might mean it as a common legal principle -- but so what? Legal principles become meaningless when too culturally dissonant. Archaic legal principles are meant to be ignored.

What do we mean by our unanimity against rights to not be offended, then? Simply this: that granting special privileges inconsistent with basic human rights would totally contradict Canadian cultural principles. It is necessarily corollary with our cultural principles that there be no right to not be offended. It means we stand against everything totalitarian –- and on guard for our free, democratic and multiculturally just society.

Protecting against express hatred, violence or defamation must never hinge on special dispensation, entitlement or privilege. Protection must not be restricted according to whom commissions, tribunals or Mr. Lund might deem deserving on any particular day. Let's always make certain to protect everyone. No one has the right to not be offended. Everyone has the right to be protected from hatred, violence and defamation.

[Peter Fruchter teaches in the Division of Humanities at York University.]

[The image above is a screenshot of the Ontario Human Rights Code website, whose preamble reminds us that "The Ontario Human Rights Code (the "Code") is for everyone."]

Culture & Multiculture 14: Why talk about Culture?

2008-03-15T16:00:00.000-04:00

Despite every denial, Antarctica melts ever faster in the south. Greenland and the arctic melt ever faster in the north. Devastation of genetic diversity and natural habitat accelerates past every point of not returning. Biotoxic mercurial and other poisons contaminate lakes, rivers, streams and oceans to the molecular bone. And while some fish species “can continue to be enjoyed by consumers as part of an occasional meal” -- for how much longer? How much longer before there are no more species left to consume? Before oceans not just rise but boil off all trace of living? When we finally tip the Earth over the irrevocable edge to becoming like either Mars of Venus. Lifeless.

Rays of hope are dimming fast. While we keep believing ourselves entitled to slashing and burning every single food chain we’ve so unnaturally lurched to the top of since hefting that damn club of Moon-Watcher’s. While we keep acting like the Earth and its creatures were god-given us for indiscriminate consumption. To play with like every living thing was meant to be our food. As if the Earth was meant to be crushed beneath our feet and we were meant as lords of anything but false creation stories.

Rays of hope are dimming fast. Better get them while supplies last. For how much longer can we shop before we drop?

International emission targeting accords like from Kyoto or Bali might scratch some veneer off our unnatural habits and habitating. But not so as to brighten much hoping. Not even if the far greater part of greenhouse gassing -- just for instance -- were emitted by large scale economic activity. Rather than by the hordes of us personally. For even if the greatest part of greenhouse gassing were subject to carbon taxing, emerging economies must have every opportunity to emerge precisely as the G7 or 8 or 20 did. Despite how much worse each and all things ecological now are. Regardless how much better we now know. Like, what doom thus emerging entails. Totally regardless. Leading economies have had every fair chance to despoil the Earth. Emerging economies must get their chance as well. Fair is only fair.

And. Even were none of it so. Our hopes for the future -- for any future -- would still keep dimming. Dimming inexorably. Because we can’t even look to the future. We can’t pay attention to how we destroy everything natural. We are far too utterly distracted fighting amongst and against ourselves.

Neither our shared responsibility since 10,000 years B.C. -- ever since we got serious about extincting other species -- nor any collective future doom can mean anything while we so universally keep fighting amongst and against ourselves.

Do the leading edges and cracks of doom not approach precipitous enough? Then why, accelerating to collective doom, do we continue escalating fighting amongst and against ourselves?

Hard question. The roots of human conflict, we insist, lie in material causes. Whether in social, academic or diplomatic circles -- we insist on material root causes. But that’s just nonsense. Causes are rarely material at the roots of human clashing. However constrained by physical causes, human choice and action gets determined and entailed by reasons. Human clashing is rooted in reasons. Entirely cultural reasons.

Cultural consequences, whether clashing or working together, are found in all our ways as people. Yet culture can not in itself originate from material causes -- such as similarities or differences in ethnicity, gender, class, caste, costuming, technology or what recipes we cook. Culture can only originate in our most basic and fundamentally shared principles. Since only cultural accords defined by sharing fundamental values and principles enable societies working together despite every material divergence in our prior experience. And only cultural discords defined by fundamentally conflicting principles compel human populations to clash despite every kind of experience shared in common.

And that’s the whole point. We must begin understanding the cultural reasons for conflict -- not just keep rooting after causes. Rooting as if human actions were physically and causally determined like rocks bouncing and billiard balls rolling downhills. What hoping remains for the future of all things great, small and naturally evolved, hinges specifically upon unprecedented conflict resolution possibilities arising between clashing cultures. On learning to span the categorical gaps and contradictions between cultures by narrative instead of force.

The question can no longer be whether cultures clash. We must start asking if and how, for the first historical time ever, human cultures might cease clashing. Because the issue has gone too far past mutually assured destruction. There are no options remaining but to stand together -- united against the great unravelling of nature we have loosed in every land, in the oceans and in the air.

Hence this “Culture and Multiculture” series. Dedicated to the meanings and consequences of cultural diversity (not only) in the world’s most multicultural city. Since, both culturally and ecologically -- if we can’t make it here then we can’t make it anywhere.

[Battle cat image by giddygoose and used via Creative Commons license.]

[Peter Fruchter teaches in the Division of Humanities at York University.]

Culture & Multiculture 13: Globe & Mail Comments Closed?

2008-03-06T10:18:00.000-05:00

Canadian media leapt right up in arms a few weeks back. Leapt all over the Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant Human Rights Commissions Affairs. I heard Christie Blatchford expressing her say on CFRB. Seen Rex Murphy performing his. Not much left to be said. Not by me. Particularly not after reading the thoroughly insightful Eye Weekly editorial concluding:

Human Rights Commissions.. need to be reined in. They should have no jurisdiction to restrict or stand in judgment of freedom of speech and of the press.

Indeed. There was no point me saying anything. No need. Not once the public and press got unanimously moving heaven and earth. Swelling the very ground demonstrating how our tolerant, free and democratic multicultural principles must not get stretched and torn beyond total absurdity. There’s no right to not be offended. There’s no duty to not offend.

That’s why the withdrawal of the complaint against Ezra Levant came as no surprise. It requires powerfully principled courage to persist despite mainstreaming media full-blowing gales of public opinion. Also why not much significant will emerge from the complaint against Mark Steyn. We were mostly born before yesterday. There’s no right to not be offended. There’s no duty to not offend.

But a thing of potentially greater significance occurred on February 13th, 2008. Something mainstream Canadian media will neither crane nor ostrich to note. Something mainstream media will not sufficiently acknowledge to wilfully ignore. Despite how plain the evidence of it having happened remains for all to see.

Evidence found at one popular -- unusually highly recommended by over 100 votes -- Globe article. About how Major Danish newspapers republish Mohammed cartoon. In order to express “unconditional solidarity” with democratic culture against threatened terror. Soon after Danish police arrest suspects in plot to kill cartoonist.

At second glance or third reading nothing much appears out of place. There is no option to comment on this Globe article -- but that’s not in itself unusual. As regular contributors to Globe commentaries well know and often bitterly bemoan, Globe editors have increasingly withheld options to comment articles addressing controversial subject matter. And what could possibly be more controversial than major newspapers anywhere -- at any time -- republishing so-called “Mohammed” cartoon(s)? However rightly or very wrongly, there is nothing particularly unusual in Globe editors having provided no option for readers commenting.

But hold on. One moment, please. What’s this here? Why.. it sure looks like a comments page titled “Major Danish newspapers republish Mohammed cartoon”. It really totally looks just like a dedicated comments page. Specifically dedicated to the Globe article in question -- the title of which it shares. The one at which there was no option to comment. Which must mean there had initially been available the option to comment -- and that commentary was only subsequently closed. Except.. that can’t be right either. For if there had been option to comment earlier then, presumably, there would continue existing standard links as from any article to its own commentary page. And there aren’t. No such linking exists. There is absolutely nothing forward-linking the originating article to what appears its own comments page.

Moreover, there is not one single comment at the comments page. There is nothing but the standard notice provided whenever commentary gets closed:

Thanks for your interest in commenting on this article, however we are no longer accepting submissions. If you would like, you may send a letter to the editor… Report an abusive comment to our editorial staff

Say, what? “No longer accepting submissions”? “Report an abusive comment”? What comment? There’s nothing there -- whether to report or merely to read. Where are all the comments posted prior submissions ceased getting accepted? What has happened here?

What happened was, to my alter-ego’s long Globe-commenting experience, a novel and complete first.

It happened the morning of February 13th. Some time between seven and eight A.M. As often if not usual on rising, I checked online news (not only) at the Globe. Wondering what our time-space sector had been getting into during my absence. That’s when I found the “Mohammed” cartoon re-publishing article and read all about it. Subsequent to which reading I sat slightly stunned. Like, seriously? Our time-space sector was getting into those so-called “Mohammed” cartoons? Again?

Meanwhile, however, my Globe-commenting alter-ego -- Lie Detector -- was gathering neither moss nor wool. Checked immediately to see whether commenting was permitted. Which it was. Permitted -- and booming. The article had been posted at 3:31 A.M. and, already, by between seven and eight that morning, the number of comments was poised near exceeding the first hundred.

Took reading maybe fifty comments or so for Lie Detector to start itching at my fingers. I could feel him taking over parts of my mind -- no doubt formulating contributory arguments. But I stopped him cold. Got up. Stepped into my boots. Threw my jacket on. Stumbled outside, grabbed a shovel and pushed record-breaking amounts of snow off the sidewalk. Came in and fed cats. Took maintenance cat-food outside and filled up the stray-animal dishes. Went out back and clambered bird-feeder from tree. Filled bird-feeder. Clambered it back up the tree. Returned inside, sat my selves down and prepared giving Lie Detector free reigning.

We wondered -- Lie Detector and I -- how many new comments had accumulated. That’s why we were so unprepared. Because, given how hot the subject, we were expecting significant further accumulation. Not what we discovered when refreshing the comments page. The way it blanked right out. Like, tabula utterly rasa. No comments there whatsoever.

There was still a (closed) comments page there -- just no comments. And we thought for a moment that we’d imagined or hallucinated all the comments we’d read. But no, we weren’t going nuts or anything. Absent all commentary, why would there even be any comments page? Clearly, comments had been closed and, unbelievably, all prior commentary had been purged. Purged of each, every and last comment. Just eradicated.

Thinking it could only be a glitch, we re-loaded the original article and moused around seeking any the three standard links leading from articles to commentary. But -- nope. All gone. Links to comments had been razed just as well. Equally as thoroughly. All that remained was this blank limbo-floating comments page. Inaccessible as ghosts or quarks from our time-space sector. Except for the captive URL later found archeologically deep in our browser’s cache.

Lie Detector vanished too. In a puff of terminal disgust. Purging by revisionist retroactive censorship struck him too totalitarian. Contributing commentary at the Globe had been his whole reason for being around. Once he figured what shameless mockery of public space had been foisted by the Globe on its public -- he had no reason left for being. So he stopped.

I’m not like that, though. I don’t go leaping that hasty to my conclusions. However unlikely -- what if it all turned out to have been a long series of coinciding glitches? Or what if, albeit not personally conceivable to me, someone at the Globe had a perfectly reasonable explanation for purging public commentary?

That’s why the following day, on Thursday, February 14th, I called the Globe & Mail. Canada’s national newspaper. To find out why.

“What happened to that comments page,” I asked. “How come it vanished so traceless?”

I was passed down, sideways and up the hierarchy. Eventually, I was told I needed to speak with Executive Editor Jim Sheppard. I was also told, namelessly and insistently off the record, that the comments page had been eradicated because commentary at it had “diverged into wild racism.” This was a good thing -- being told this off the record. First, because of how laughable it was by way of rationalization. Second, because it confirmed how conclusively commentary purging had been due to no glitch. Eradication had been totally intentional.

Remaining eager to hear what rationale there officially was on the record -- opposed to off the record rationalization -- I nervously recorded my question with Mr. Sheppard’s answering service. He was away from his desk at that moment. And then naïve silly me waited by the phone a couple hours. For the Globe & Mail’s Executive Editor to return my call and answer my question. Subsequent to which couple hours I recorded my question at Mr. Sheppard’s again -- since he was away from his desk at that precise moment as well. And then I hung around waiting the next day. Friday, February 15th. As if the Globe’s Executive Editor had nothing better to do.

Doesn’t matter. Commentary had been intentionally purged. And it’s just ignorant rationalizing such indiscriminate purging of public commentary for some blithely alleged racism. There’s no excuse alleging or even mentioning racism in the first place. Not when disputing is cultural. Because it isn't easy conceiving any better working definition for 'racism' than falsely believing all dispute, hatred, conflict or clashing as a function of race. Too much hatred? Fine -- eliminate those comments expressing hatred. But declaring any and all disputing -- even outright hatred -- as racist? When issues in dispute so obviously cross all our ideologically constructed false discriminations of race, gender and economic class? No. That has got to be a joke. Or ignorance. Potentially even racist.

Doesn’t matter. I really wanted to ask whether Globe editors had ever purged public commentary so brazenly before. But never mind. Whether or not they had. Whether on or off the Globe’s record. There’s huge problems with doing so. Ever.

Danish papers re-publishing any so-called “Mohammed” cartoon was major international news, right? Regardless who became offended. Regardless whether “mobs of youths torch[ing] cars.. in Danish cities” had anything to do with it or not. Of course it was big news -- as per the Globe’s carrying the story of it all the way over here in Canada.

Perhaps, when it comes to a so-called “Mohammed” cartoon, Danish papers went too far defending democratic culture. But globally censoring all comment whether Danish papers went too far defending democratic culture? That also goes too far. Goes even farther -- the opposite way. It utterly offends against democratic culture if or when Canada’s national newspaper gets censoring that spectacularly -- like, completely censoring the very public it invited to comment that “Mohammed” cartoon.

Rather than engaging yet farther and further in such spectacular censorship, the Globe would do far better not to provide any forum for free speaking and free public expressing whatsoever. This is not in any way to intimate that Globe message boards legally constitute anything other than private proprietary space. However. There can be no doubt the Globe derives great benefits, both economic and otherwise, from public participating. Further. As Canada’s national newspaper, the Globe itself relies upon principles consistently applied throughout our free and democratic society: freedom of speech, freedom of expression and freedom of the press. Therefore, the Globe must not engage in extravagant censorship. Doing so harms not only Toronto, Canadian public spheres -- but calls into doubt how any future of Canadian press can remain free. For what is more likely to restrict freedom of speech, expression and the press in Canada? Human Rights Commissions of questionable jurisdiction arriving at occasionally absurd decisions? Or Canada’s national newspaper repeatedly engaging in exaggerated censoring? Yeah. Obviously. That’s why Canada’s national newspaper had better cease and desist repeating disproportionate censorship.

And it absolutely was spectacular, extravagant, exaggerated and disproportionate censorship. Partially or fully moderating public commentary? Vital. Removing, as warranted, comments specifically reported as abusive? Necessary. Indiscriminately purging all commentary from comments pages -- while razing electronic linkage in order to eradicate the evidence of having done so? Unbelievable. So not Canadian. So.. gulag.

[Peter Fruchter teaches in the Division of Humanities at York University.]

[Globe comments image above is a screen capture from here.]

Culture & Multiculture 12: Indiscrimination

2008-02-17T14:41:00.000-05:00

I’ve never bought the Toronto Star. Not even since the Star’s website started crashing each and all my browsers like nothing else on the World Wide Web. Anywhere. Fortunately, there’s heaping Toronto Star stacks piling up daily at York University. Like leaves off trees. Or, lacking trees, grains of desert sands. Drifting, blowing, piling all over campus. Free as wind.

That’s how I wound up reading Joey Slinger’s column this past Thursday. Titled “School issue is not black and white”. Just about an hour after posting on that very subject right here.

Now, I’ve read Joey before. Seeing as the Star’s always free at York -– not just this past Thursday. And, having read Joey before, I knew how funny he tries to be. To which I can totally relate. Since I too am funny despite almost nobody realizing it. However hard I try.

Except Joey totally let me down this past Thursday. Not only wasn’t he funny –- to which failing I completely relate. He gave up even trying.

He’d intended trying being funny. Intended trying real hard, originally. “[B]een working on a column,” he boasted, “.. about the need for Me-centric schools.” Thought it would have been “.. quite humorous.”

Who knows? Might have turned out adequate for chuckling. Might have turned out his best performance. If only he hadn’t given up on it. If only Joey hadn’t thrown in his funny towel and tried getting all serious, instead.

Shouldn’t have. Big mistake. Terrible misunderstanding. Not to cridicule too much -– but there’s more to being serious than not being funny.

Joey seriously tried persuading his Toronto audience that we’re not against race-based schooling. Despite how categorically against faith-based schooling we are. Despite the way we reject anyone –- such as the once legitimate public figure of John Tory –- daring to suggest or insinuate what a great idea faith-based schooling is. Regardless. Doesn’t matter how against faith-based schooling we are. Far as Joey’s concerned, we’re not against race-based schooling.

How come? Too simple –- on Joey’s view. Because race-based schooling is nothing like faith-based schooling. Since diversity of faith is elective whereas diversity of race is physically indelible. As Joey put it,

.. you can be born to a Jewish mother and a Jewish father and choose to be, say, Anglican. You cannot be born to a black mother and a black father and choose not to be black.

Our overwhelming repudiating faith-based schooling can have no bearing on race-based schooling. Not where Joey’s concerned.

But there really is more to being serious than not being funny. Like not being absurd, for instance.

With the arguable exception of identical twins, we are all physically diverse. Whether individually or collectively -– our physical diversity is endless. Infinitely too vast to enumerate.

How, then, can we determine when physical diversity makes us different –- and when it does not? We can’t. We do not determine difference on basis of physical diversity itself. Clearly not. Rightly or wrongly, we determine our differences by sorting some fraction of our diversity from the rest. We discriminate our differences only by distinguishing some diversity as particularly significant. Doesn’t matter if diversity be physical or otherwise. What matters in discriminating difference is which aspects of our diversity seem particularly significant. What selective elements of diversity mean to us. Difference is in the cultural meaning we assign to diversity –- never in diversity itself.

That’s why Joey’s view is so absurd. Rather than asking how meaningful -– and why –- aspects of diversity are, Joey chose to ask -– and answer -– just how entirely physical diversity is. As if physical diversity were just finite. As if we could ever discriminate or resolve our differences just physically. As if humans, like billiard balls, were caused in all actions –- and our reasons for acting outward ought get utterly dismissed from both minds and hands. It is this very (ideological) view sourcing discrimination -– and eventual segregation -– in the first place. Even though we ought rather speak of false-discrimination. For while we must discriminate allies from opponents, friends from enemies and whom we agree from whom we do not -– we certainly must not discriminate too shallowly and superficially. Like, concluding who people are by their physical pigmentation.

Definitely there’s more to being serious than not being funny. Also not absurd, ludicrous or preposterous. For instances. Better seriously help Joey out some. Better ask how and why pigmentation diversity has become so particularly significant to us.

Except it hasn’t. Not to all of us. Absolutely not world-wide. One would not likely encounter false-discriminating by pigmentation on pilgrimage to Islam’s holy places. One would be far more likely, on the other hand, to encounter false-discrimination and even potentially forcible segregation when it comes to gender and faith differences. And while this example might seem outlandish, it goes so far only to show how differently diversity gets culturally constructed world-wide.

Strangely, it is North-America that’s outlandish. Where false-discriminating by pigmentation keeps going on and on to this day and age. I’ll never forget how boneless my jaw dropped when first arriving in Toronto from a couple other continents. When two seemingly sane and healthy young boys ceased whatever they’d been doing and turned on each other.

“You white bastard,” said one.

“You black bastard,” replied the other.

While I was left to decades wondering what sort of bizarre place this was -– where anything that superficial could conceivably matter.

It’s a tough question. How has skin pigmentation persisted meaning anything significant to this day and age in North America? Perhaps, at least in part, because we keep mistaking the material fact of pigmentative diversity for the cultural meanings from which we construct the significance of that diversity. Perhaps, like Joey, we’re all knee-jerks when it comes to skin pigmentation in North America.

One way or another, North-American culture has founded itself on and extended itself from certain principled ideals inherited from European Enlightenment. Not that North-American culture hasn’t inherited native and other ideals as well. But, should there be cultural foundation, if anywhere –- it’s in Enlightenment principles. American liberty, democracy and pursuit of happiness. The American dream. Canadian tolerance. Especially Toronto multiculture. And, unifying all: the expectation that arriving in North America is by the most heartfelt choice. Not only in coming to lands more promising. But also in escaping from the places where ideology yet fundamentally rules. Whether guised as god-given truths –- or as viable ideals regardless how false, absurd or damaging.

Culturally, that’s what makes us most North-American. Arriving here by such heartfelt choice. And that’s how the most intractable cultural differences emerge. Differences which can’t help being intractable due to the contradictions they entail to culture and discourse. Since not all arrived by choice. Some were already here by thousands of years’ priority. While others were brought in chains.

That’s what persists our least tractable cultural differences in North-America. And, if so, resolving North-American cultural contradictions must never be sought in separation or segregation. Not unless and until we get forced to conclude there’s no resolving our cultural contradictions. Only then, if and when we become societies too distinct for tolerance, can segregating make any sense. Since forcible separation does beat shooting. But, otherwise -– our focus has to remain on how superficial our differences in North-America are. And it remains entirely premature, especially in Toronto Canada, to conclude we can’t resolve the differences we’ve constructed culturally –- together.

[Peter Fruchter teaches in the Division of Humanities at York University.]

[Black swan " title="image">image by idmaer saxon and used via Creative Commons license.]

Culture & Multiculture 11: Teaching Segregation

2008-02-11T11:21:00.000-05:00

Premier Dalton McGuinty needs our help. Last week, according to the Star’s Robert Benzie, McGuinty asked that Torontonians pressure “school board trustees into over-turning a controversial decision to create a black-focused school.” McGuinty needs us to tell trustees how strongly “opposed to this proposal” we are.

How strongly opposed are we, though? Should we at all oppose school board trustees opening Africentric schools? Should we pressure the trustees to cease and desist -- or should we demand Dalton McGuinty back right off, cease interfering and desist tormenting trustees? That he better mind his own business and just let trustees perform their jobs? Fraught questions. Answering hinges pretty much entirely on whether or not trustees are instigating segregation in Toronto, Canada.

For sure trustees should help students stay in school. But any free, democratic, tolerant and multicultural society absolutely must resist segregation. Especially here in Toronto, Canada -- arguably the world’s best model city when it comes to tolerant multiculture.

One young man, speaking passionately at the trustees’ meeting, demanded that media stop lying. His argument: why does media keep broadcasting trustees are instigating segregation -- when any and all students will be welcomed to attend Africentric schools? He concluded, in strongest terms, by exhorting media to disclose how indiscriminately welcoming Africentric schools shall be to absolutely everyone.

Quite right. While there’s no telling the complete truth -- too many molecules in the universe -- not disclosing Africentric schools’ wide open doors policy is more like not mentioning all those proverbial babies in the bath-water. Selling extra sensational many papers can’t forgive such misleading reporting.

Wide open doors must be mentioned. However. Opening doors more widely hampers covert discrimination -- not overt broad-daylight segregation. Seating on buses never got de-segregated by widening passenger doors. Not once nor ever. However crucial to averting discrimination, indiscriminate accessibility provides no answer to questions of broad-daylight segregation.

Whereas discrimination hides its face in public, segregation carries banners and sings anthems in the streets. Segregation isn't shy. Segregation isn't bashful. It turns like rabid mobs against us throughout all public spaces. Better access? Not remotely called for. In event of segregation, best try getting away. Far away.

Yet, back at the trustees’ meeting, many repeatedly ridiculed segregation as any relevant legitimate concern whatsoever. An older fellow asked to know what the big deal was, anyhow. Since he’d had such great trouble finding white faces when traveling to parts of Toronto he himself considered less desireable. Toronto demographics have long-since become thoroughly racially segregated -- so why pick so particularly on race-based schooling? Must be some sort of racist witch-hunt -- such over-reacting to a little race-based schooling designed in students’ best interests. For students’ own good.

Many ridiculed segregation as any legitimate concern -- and they weren’t joking, either. Which, coming from even some trustees of our schools, is particularly frightening. We ought to know by now how communities seek to self-segregate for internal cultural homogeneity. Not against but certainly away from wider multiculture. Yet regardless how pervasive, the inclination to self-segregate must never mean public institutions ought blithely join in. Especially not the public schools of multicultural society like ours. To the absolute contrary. We entrust public schools to provide countervailing cultural integration measures. To champion for young minds against anything remotely resembling segregation. Whether we realize it or not -- whether we’ve even thought about it or not: we trust public schools to prevail against segregation and cultural dis-integration. And that’s a huge trust. Which is why we respond so definitively against what phrases like “faith-based schooling” and “race-based schooling” entail. Also why it’s so frightening when even some school trustees ridicule segregation as any relevant legitimate concern.

Let’s get honest. Far too much teaching is abysmal. Teaching so abysmal it doesn’t qualify as such. More like administrating than teaching. Keeping them kids off the streets. Warehousing them in schools.

Perhaps, more often than not, it’s the teachers failing to achieve. Not the students. And, if so, it will make no single difference how teachers segregate among students. Because students will increasingly consider achievement to mean escaping their teachers. Escaping the confinements of irrelevant schooling -- even if only to the freedom of the streets.

Can’t say just how much teaching is abysmal. But here’s how abysmal some teaching is. Way back as a University of Waterloo co-op student, I was once hired to teach remedial math at a very inner-city school. My job was to get some the stupidest kids passing -- since it was getting embarrassing to that school how many stupid kids were attending there. And, in event I got just some few more those stupid kids passing, I’d be considered some kind of hero. Because everyone had already tried with them -- but they were just too stupid. They were the stupidest.

Honestly. That was my job description. That’s how the job got described to me. But here’s the thing. I did not believe in stupidity. Since I was doing alright despite how stupid and useless I was -- and had been told I was most every day of my life. I’d understood at some point how effectively humans justify diminishing -- i.e. discriminating or even segregating -- other humans on basis of stupidity. Right? It’s only natural for stupidity and incompetence to disqualify achieving. In fact, disqualifying the stupid or incompetent from any authority and all responsibility requires no additional justification.

Well, I might not have believed in stupidity. But the teachers did. Worse -- my students did. How could they not -- having been segregated as stupidest of all? The brand of their stupidity had ceased being just external. It burned permanently and inextinguishably from within. And, given how stupid those kids thought they were -- no way could they or I expect them to learn stuff.

“Crap,” I told them. “You guys aren’t stupid. You just don’t give a shit about learning anything.”

They insisted on their own stupidity -- but admitted that if there were any way to care less about learning, they didn’t know what it was.

“People only say you’re stupid because you don’t learn,” I said. “But the reason you don’t learn is because you don’t give a shit.”

They conceded it might be so.

“Well,” I announced, “I don’t give a shit either.”

They stared like something had gone genetically wrong with me. Said it was my job to teach.

“Yeah,” I replied. “But I get paid anyway. Just so long as you guys don’t tell anyone. All you got’ta do is keep quiet and we can just sit around in here.”

And that’s what we did. For about a week. During which I kept regretfully telling them how much fun math could be -- if taught right. How much like games it was. The potential fun of it for them -- but not for me. Since I’d have to be the one teaching. Which -- teaching -- was too much like working. Hence my feeling so glad they didn’t demand it.

We just sat around that week. By the middle of which they began believing I had no intent forcing their learning anything. By the end of which they’d grown so bored, they began demanding I teach some math.

“Alright,” I relented. Tentatively. “Just so you know -- I resent you guys making me work. But tell you what. It’s hard going from totally not giving a shit to me working at teaching math 50 minutes straight. I don’t feel like working that hard. So how about we do math for 25 minutes -- and then just talk about how weird life gets the rest of the time?”

They thought it was a grand idea. And that’s how it started. Motivation. Before long playing at math 50 minutes straight was no longer enough for them. They started hunting me down at lunch and after school for the better figuring of it. Which I did not altogether appreciate. Not entirely. But far better than me chasing after them.

Turned out some of them really were kind’a stupid. About as many as were rather gifted. Overall, just as intellectually regular a group of damaged city kids as anyone could have asked for. And it didn’t matter so much. Provided their motivation -- almost all started passing their math tests. Some went from getting F grades to getting C grades. Others went from F grades to A grades. Only very few remained sullen beyond reaching. A girl hiding pregnancy at 13. A broken-boned boy -- courtesy bullies parental or otherwise. It had never been stupidity.

It did not go over well. Of course not. I was young back then. Utterly naïve. Thought teaching was some sort of sacred trust -- due to the difference one singular teacher had made in my life. That’s why I believed it when initially told I’d be considered some kind of hero if I could get any those stupidest kids passing.

When I told the head of the math department -- same fellow that initially hired me -- how stupid those kids were not -- that’s when things got grim. That’s when he told me how it really was.

I’d been using inappropriate language with students, he said. Which was true enough from an administrative perspective and absurdly false from a better teaching perspective. I’d been using the exact same language as students. They would never have believed I was not there to force stuff on them otherwise.

My inappropriate language use was not the issue, though. It only meant the head of the math department had me over a large disciplinary barrel. The issue was how no way was some snot-nosed adolescent like me going to come into their school and make responsible professional family men been teaching 20, 30, 40 years look bad. As if they didn’t know their jobs.

The real issue was how I hadn’t done my job, of course. Since I’d been hired to get maybe a couple extra those stupidest kids passing. Not to get almost all of them passing. Not to refute the stupidity they’d been segregated for.

Not all teaching gets that abysmal. But, too often, that’s how abysmal teaching gets. Sometimes it gets yet far worse. But not in Toronto, Canada. Not until and unless we start practicing segregation, anyhow.

It totally doesn't matter what sort of difference gets used to justify segregation. Doesn't matter if it's race, gender, religion -- or lacking intelligence. It never, under any circumstances, benefits either culture or identity. It impoverishes both discourse and personal expression. It permanently tears at social fabric -- and severs every siblinghood of humanity. Let's not segregare populations to better disguise how pedagogical underachieving pertains to teaching in Toronto. Let's not segregate any students for that. Let's not even blame them. Damn right we ought to support Dalton McGuinty's call to pressure school board trustees -- to restore the trust we had put in them.

[Up next: Amy Lavender Harris responds with the argument that afro-centric schools can serve as a model for genuinely integrative, culturally relevant education in all schools.]

[Peter Fruchter teaches in the Division of Humanities at York University.]

[Rosa Parks bus image by Randy Stern and used via Creative Commons license.]

Techne-City IV: Better Ways

2008-02-07T20:41:00.000-05:00

Guess it was alright for another laugh. Since my best friend hadn’t killed the cyclist he drove off the road thirty years ago.

We were joy riding that cube van it was his job to drive. Not much clue what we were laughing about in the first place. Most anything. You’re high off the ground in a cube van. Almost right up there with the truckers. Looking down on traffic. Feeling that the road is yours. Knowing what doesn’t belong had better get from your road. And fast.

“Watch this,” he said, swerving around the cyclist. Idiot cyclist riding like someone gave him charge of the right hand lane. Like the lane was his personal property or something. Then, slowing to approximate the cyclist’s velocity, my best friend swerved back in. All the way back in. I could feel the front right wheel kissing the curb.

And I could see, in rear-view, how flattened far up the curb the cyclist wound up. Still moving, though. Good for more laughing.

Hell. I’ve been driving almost thirty years myself. It’s only been five since I first saw cars for the evil they really are. Because that’s when it happened to me about ten times in a row for the first time.

Happened the winter I decided to bicycle courier. When I figured on saving the planet one delivery at a time -– and got all nine-to-five about it. That’s why I was biking to work that particularly early mid-January morning. After it had snowed all night and the plough went through -– once. It was tight. Barely room for me between cars. Thing of it was, those cars weren’t looking to sparing me room. Weren’t looking to sparing me whatever. Kept honking and driving me full tilt into snowbanks like it was national sport.

Maybe it should have reminded me how, decades back, my then best friend had driven the cyclist off the road. Maybe. But it reminded me nothing of the sort. First few times getting off the ground, I was cursing at drivers like there was no tomorrow, no yesterday –- cursing like there was no today. No way was I recalling decades past. Not while shouting stuff like, “You wan’na kill someone? Come on! I’m still here, you ****! Come and do it with your bare hands! It’s better that way, you ****ing coward!”

The weirdest thing was this, though. I stopped cursing drivers about the fifth or sixth time it happened. Fifth or sixth time I scrambled from under wheels and tottered to my feet -– drenched, bruised and twitching in my own adrenalin -– I was raging at the cars themselves. The distinction between cars and drivers had ceased to matter. I’d finally seen what abomination cars and drivers jointly were. That’s when I began to think in terms of war-hammers. For self-defence. So that, when cars would come at me in future, at least I’d have the chance to strike back one blow. To do some –- however slight -– damage in return.

Yeah. Sounds crazy. It’s true, though. There’s no separating drivers from cars. Identity alters utterly behind the wheel. Physically -– not just culturally and psychologically. Imagine getting behind the wheel, starting the engine -– and someone leaning on the car. One feels the outrage of it physically. Right? When we’re behind the wheel we transform, instantly, into our motor vehicular selves. Our bodies extend in space, taper in time and escalate in mass. Once in accelerating motion, our every reaction and basic reflex adjusts appropriate to motor vehicular space-time mass. No video game. No fantasy. It’s immediate and real as anything gets. Bodies bucketed, rocking and rocketing in that balance, we thread trajectories and flinch from obstacles as if our hairs became triggers. We know the reality of it down to the most instinctive reflex and reflexive instinct. And once velocity accelerates sufficiently, our choices become less debatable and more hard wired than blinking.

It is an outrage and physical violation of personal space if anyone leans on the car. How mistaken they are relating to the car as if it were some inanimate object. And how they leap to realizing their error when we gun engines. Why not gun engines? No harm. Natural as breathing greenhouse gasses.

Meaning, of course, that there’s nothing natural about it. Never mind loose talking about cyborgs and singularities. Talk that loose largely confuses issues. Thing is, ever since that damn club of Moon-Watcher’s, we can scarcely avoid McLuhan-type metaphors about our tools extending our natural bodies. Metaphors which make our tools seem no more than natural extensions. As if our tools were just natural. Fair enough. So long as our tools remain inert like Moon-Watcher’s club used to be –- before it turned into a space-station. So long as our tools don’t get powered independently of our bodies. So long as our tools remain firmly in hand. But when our tools cease being inert? When our tools get independently powered? When operating manuals replace any and all our best intentions? That’s our tools getting totally out of hand.

This is not to say our tools are about to declare independence. Or stack all our switches against us and flick us off. It’s not to say family cars are apt to going intercontinentally ballistic soon as we unhand steering wheels. So long as our tools depend on our hands and eyes to guide them, such issues remain futuristic. Our tools aren’t ready to take us in hand or wipe us out of hand quite yet. But we’d better watch out. We'd better take care. Futuristic days are coming. Our independently powered tools started getting out of hand the moment they got independently powered. And even while continuing abiding our telling them where to go –- they take exponentially increasing charge when it comes to getting there.

By underscoring the vital intimacy between our selves and our tools, those McLuhan-type metaphors cut both ways. Hand powered tools become naturalized –- as extensions of our natural bodies. But independently powered -– never mind networked –- tools attach us no less intimately. And, however intimately extending our bodies, independently powered tools don’t get naturalized. Precisely the contrary. Independently powered tools de-nature our bodies and our selves. They pervert and transform all things natural in and around us. Because while dragged in the manic wake of independently powered tools, accelerating to ever sorrier dread ends, we become irretrievably unnatural. Monstrosities.

Nobody suggests shutting down all our independently powered tools at once. Nobody sane, anyhow. But getting dragged into any future defined by traffic patterns entails collective and ecological catastrophe. It is vital that our choices relating to our tools become more thoughtful –- and far less reflexive. We simply must stop to think and to choose. Each time. Before getting behind the wheel. Before rushing to our car trafficking. Because, more than anything else yet, taking car trafficking reflexively for granted has turned us into the roadkill civilization.

If only we’d stop pretending there aren’t alternatives. Our alternatives aren’t just myriad -– many are absolutely brilliant. For instance. Unlike bike lanes –- which by impracticality only perpetuate and entrench the myth that only motor vehicular traffic is realistically viable grownup transportation –- one particularly brilliant alternative is named velo-city. In the vision of engineer Joseph Adler and architect Chris Hardwicke, elevated bike tunnels transform every aspect of Toronto’s transportation culture –- for the incomparably better. In terms of obvious viability –- is it ever. On any cost-benefit analysis. For mere fractions what the subway extension to York University alone will cost, Toronto could get spanned entirely as Hardwicke proposes. And unlike TTC faring, it would fast turn profits –- at relative pittance compared to current TTC fares.

Incomparably better ways – at fractions of the cost

But viability must evolve far beyond cost-benefit analyses. Fortunately, that’s no issue. Not in this case. Seeing past merely short term profits requires no more than glancing at velo-city’s site:

velo-city is a sustainable rapid mobility system for the City of Toronto.. a high-speed, all-season, pollution-free, ultra-quiet transit system that makes people healthier… The elevated bikeways are enclosed in tubes to provide protection for all season cycling.. separated by direction of travel to create.. a natural tail-wind… velo-city increases speeds, reduces spent energy and eliminates intersections to produce total travel times that rival any other form of high speed transit… Users of velo-city understand the value of distance and its relationship to the environment because they put their own energy into their mobility… People make cities. velo-city is people powered rapid transit.

Viable. Profitable. Sustainable. Healthy. Liberating. Personally, collectively and totally ecologically responsible. And tragically unlikely to get implemented -– precisely but not only because it entails rethinking how we relate to our tools and to what remains of the natural.

Why velo-city is so unlikely to get implemented -– and what we might do to fight for it -– next installment.

[Peter Fruchter teaches in the Division of Humanities at York University.]

[Photo illustration(s) by Marc Ngui, posted to the velo-city Website. Used via Creative Commons license.]

Better Than Free

2008-02-04T11:01:00.000-05:00

The internet is a copy machine. At its most foundational level, it copies every action, every character, every thought we make while we ride upon it. In order to send a message from one corner of the internet to another, the protocols of communication demand that the whole message be copied along the way several times. IT companies make a lot of money selling equipment that facilitates this ceaseless copying. Every bit of data ever produced on any computer is copied somewhere. The digital economy is thus run on a river of copies. Unlike the mass-produced reproductions of the machine age, these copies are not just cheap, they are free.

Our digital communication network has been engineered so that copies flow with as little friction as possible. Indeed, copies flow so freely we could think of the internet as a super-distribution system, where once a copy is introduced it will continue to flow through the network forever, much like electricity in a superconductive wire. We see evidence of this in real life. Once anything that can be copied is brought into contact with internet, it will be copied, and those copies never leave. Even a dog knows you can't erase something once its flowed on the internet.

This super-distribution system has become the foundation of our economy and wealth. The instant reduplication of data, ideas, and media underpins all the major economic sectors in our economy, particularly those involved with exports -- that is, those industries where the US has a competitive advantage. Our wealth sits upon a very large device that copies promiscuously and constantly.
Yet the previous round of wealth in this economy was built on selling precious copies, so the free flow of free copies tends to undermine the established order. If reproductions of our best efforts are free, how can we keep going? To put it simply, how does one make money selling free copies?

I have an answer. The simplest way I can put it is thus:

When copies are super abundant, they become worthless. When copies are super abundant, stuff which can't be copied becomes scarce and valuable.

When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied.

Well, what can't be copied?

There are a number of qualities that can't be copied. Consider "trust." Trust cannot be copied. You can't purchase it. Trust must be earned, over time. It cannot be downloaded. Or faked. Or counterfeited (at least for long). If everything else is equal, you'll always prefer to deal with someone you can trust. So trust is an intangible that has increasing value in a copy saturated world.
There are a number of other qualities similar to trust that are difficult to copy, and thus become valuable in this network economy. I think the best way to examine them is not from the eye of the producer, manufacturer, or creator, but from the eye of the user. We can start with a simple user question: why would we ever pay for anything that we could get for free? When anyone buys a version of something they could get for free, what are they purchasing?

From my study of the network economy I see roughly eight categories of intangible value that we buy when we pay for something that could be free.

In a real sense, these are eight things that are better than free. Eight uncopyable values. I call them "generatives." A generative value is a quality or attribute that must be generated, grown, cultivated, nurtured. A generative thing can not be copied, cloned, faked, replicated, counterfeited, or reproduced. It is generated uniquely, in place, over time. In the digital arena, generative qualities add value to free copies, and therefore are something that can be sold.

Eight Generatives Better Than Free

Immediacy -- Sooner or later you can find a free copy of whatever you want, but getting a copy delivered to your inbox the moment it is released -- or even better, produced -- by its creators is a generative asset. Many people go to movie theaters to see films on the opening night, where they will pay a hefty price to see a film that later will be available for free, or almost free, via rental or download. Hardcover books command a premium for their immediacy, disguised as a harder cover. First in line often commands an extra price for the same good. As a sellable quality, immediacy has many levels, including access to beta versions. Fans are brought into the generative process itself. Beta versions are often de-valued because they are incomplete, but they also possess generative qualities that can be sold. Immediacy is a relative term, which is why it is generative. It has to fit with the product and the audience. A blog has a different sense of time than a movie, or a car. But immediacy can be found in any media.

Personalization -- A generic version of a concert recording may be free, but if you want a copy that has been tweaked to sound perfect in your particular living room -- as if it were preformed in your room -- you may be willing to pay a lot. The free copy of a book can be custom edited by the publishers to reflect your own previous reading background. A free movie you buy may be cut to reflect the rating you desire (no violence, dirty language okay). Aspirin is free, but aspirin tailored to your DNA is very expensive. As many have noted, personalization requires an ongoing conversation between the creator and consumer, artist and fan, producer and user. It is deeply generative because it is iterative and time consuming. You can't copy the personalization that a relationship represents. Marketers call that "stickiness" because it means both sides of the relationship are stuck (invested) in this generative asset, and will be reluctant to switch and start over.

Interpretation -- As the old joke goes: software, free. The manual, $10,000. But it's no joke. A couple of high profile companies, like Red Hat, Apache, and others make their living doing exactly that. They provide paid support for free software. The copy of code, being mere bits, is free -- and becomes valuable to you only through the support and guidance. I suspect a lot of genetic information will go this route. Right now getting your copy of your DNA is very expensive, but soon it won't be. In fact, soon pharmaceutical companies will PAY you to get your genes sequence. So the copy of your sequence will be free, but the interpretation of what it means, what you can do about it, and how to use it -- the manual for your genes so to speak -- will be expensive.

Authenticity -- You might be able to grab a key software application for free, but even if you don't need a manual, you might like to be sure it is bug free, reliable, and warranted. You'll pay for authenticity. There are nearly an infinite number of variations of the Grateful Dead jams around; buying an authentic version from the band itself will ensure you get the one you wanted. Or that it was indeed actually performed by the Dead. Artists have dealt with this problem for a long time. Graphic reproductions such as photographs and lithographs often come with the artist's stamp of authenticity -- a signature -- to raise the price of the copy. Digital watermarks and other signature technology will not work as copy-protection schemes (copies are super-conducting liquids, remember?) but they can serve up the generative quality of authenticity for those who care.

Accessibility -- Ownership often sucks. You have to keep your things tidy, up-to-date, and in the case of digital material, backed up. And in this mobile world, you have to carry it along with you. Many people, me included, will be happy to have others tend our "possessions" by subscribing to them. We'll pay Acme Digital Warehouse to serve us any musical tune in the world, when and where we want it, as well as any movie, photo (ours or other photographers). Ditto for books and blogs. Acme backs everything up, pays the creators, and delivers us our desires. We can sip it from our phones, PDAs, laptops, big screens from where-ever. The fact that most of this material will be available free, if we want to tend it, back it up, keep adding to it, and organize it, will be less and less appealing as time goes on.

Embodiment -- At its core the digital copy is without a body. You can take a free copy of a work and throw it on a screen. But perhaps you'd like to see it in hi-res on a huge screen? Maybe in 3D? PDFs are fine, but sometimes it is delicious to have the same words printed on bright white cottony paper, bound in leather. Feels so good. What about dwelling in your favorite (free) game with 35 others in the same room? There is no end to greater embodiment. Sure, the hi-res of today -- which may draw ticket holders to a big theater -- may migrate to your home theater tomorrow, but there will always be new insanely great display technology that consumers won't have. Laser projection, holographic display, the holodeck itself! And nothing gets embodied as much as music in a live performance, with real bodies. The music is free; the bodily performance expensive. This formula is quickly becoming a common one for not only musicians, but even authors. The book is free; the bodily talk is expensive.

Patronage -- It is my belief that audiences WANT to pay creators. Fans like to reward artists, musicians, authors and the like with the tokens of their appreciation, because it allows them to connect. But they will only pay if it is very easy to do, a reasonable amount, and they feel certain the money will directly benefit the creators. Radiohead's recent high-profile experiment in letting fans pay them whatever they wished for a free copy is an excellent illustration of the power of patronage. The elusive, intangible connection that flows between appreciative fans and the artist is worth something. In Radiohead's case it was about $5 per download. There are many other examples of the audience paying simply because it feels good.

Findability -- Where as the previous generative qualities reside within creative digital works, findability is an asset that occurs at a higher level in the aggregate of many works. A zero price does not help direct attention to a work, and in fact may sometimes hinder it. But no matter what its price, a work has no value unless it is seen; unfound masterpieces are worthless. When there are millions of books, millions of songs, millions of films, millions of applications, millions of everything requesting our attention -- and most of it free -- being found is valuable.
The giant aggregators such as Amazon and Netflix make their living in part by helping the audience find works they love. They bring out the good news of the "long tail" phenomenon, which we all know, connects niche audiences with niche productions. But sadly, the long tail is only good news for the giant aggregators, and larger mid-level aggregators such as publishers, studios, and labels. The "long tail" is only lukewarm news to creators themselves. But since findability can really only happen at the systems level, creators need aggregators. This is why publishers, studios, and labels (PSL)will never disappear. They are not needed for distribution of the copies (the internet machine does that). Rather the PSL are needed for the distribution of the users' attention back to the works. From an ocean of possibilities the PSL find, nurture and refine the work of creators that they believe fans will connect with. Other intermediates such as critics and reviewers also channel attention. Fans rely on this multi-level apparatus of findability to discover the works of worth out of the zillions produced. There is money to be made (indirectly for the creatives) by finding talent. For many years the paper publication TV Guide made more money than all of the 3 major TV networks it "guided" combined. The magazine guided and pointed viewers to the good stuff on the tube that week. Stuff, it is worth noting, that was free to the viewers. There is little doubt that besides the mega-aggregators, in the world of the free many PDLs will make money selling findability -- in addition to the other generative qualities.

These eight qualities require a new skill set. Success in the free-copy world is not derived from the skills of distribution since the Great Copy Machine in the Sky takes care of that. Nor are legal skills surrounding Intellectual Property and Copyright very useful anymore. Nor are the skills of hoarding and scarcity. Rather, these new eight generatives demand an understanding of how abundance breeds a sharing mindset, how generosity is a business model, how vital it has become to cultivate and nurture qualities that can't be replicated with a click of the mouse.

In short, the money in this networked economy does not follow the path of the copies. Rather it follows the path of attention, and attention has its own circuits.

Careful readers will note one conspicuous absence so far. I have said nothing about advertising. Ads are widely regarded as the solution, almost the ONLY solution, to the paradox of the free. Most of the suggested solutions I've seen for overcoming the free involve some measure of advertising. I think ads are only one of the paths that attention takes, and in the long-run, they will only be part of the new ways money is made selling the free.

But that's another story.

Beneath the frothy layer of advertising, these eight generatives will supply the value to ubiquitous free copies, and make them worth advertising for. These generatives apply to all digital copies, but also to any kind of copy where the marginal cost of that copy approaches zero. (See my essay on Technology Wants to Be Free.) Even material industries are finding that the costs of duplication near zero, so they too will behave like digital copies. Maps just crossed that threshold. Genetics is about to. Gadgets and small appliances (like cell phones) are sliding that way. Pharmaceuticals are already there, but they don't want anyone to know. It costs nothing to make a pill. We pay for Authenticity and Immediacy in drugs. Someday we'll pay for Personalization.

Maintaining generatives is a lot harder than duplicating copies in a factory. There is still a lot to learn. A lot to figure out. Write to me if you do.

Global Warning

2007-12-28T07:36:00.000-05:00

Almost none believed Noah back in biblical times. Nor does everyone today believe we face the end of the natural world as we’ve known it. Globe and Mail reader Patrick Rioux, for instance, believes he knows better:

The sooner some western government stops kneeling to the environmentalist thugs, the better. With a backbone and a reason-based case, the whole green swindle would be exposed and derailed.

When challenged by Paul Thompson –- “I'll probably regret asking this Mr. Rioux, but please enlighten us as to the nature of this 'green swindle'” -– Rioux replied:

Paul: The nature of the green swindle is to attribute all and any natural events (selectively chosen) to human causes, and use that as justification to regulate any (selectively chosen) human activity. The thinning Arctic ice, for example is breathlessly reported, while the thickening Antarctic ice passes without mention. Thinning Arctic ice=rising temperatures=more CO2=human activity; therefore expand state powers and use legislative gun to corral evil humans towards environmentally correct behaviour, and stifle any who dare disagree.

What? Antarctic ice thickening? West Antarctic ice thickening? East Antarctica puts on weight? Snowballs ringing hell’s bell. What’ll it be next? How polar bears are thriving?

No doubt there’s plenty green swindling going on. But. However. Despite all the swindling, low character humans of every colouration –- including “green” –- we nevertheless do face the end of the natural world as we’ve known it. We really do.

What makes me so sure? How do I, personally, know this? Near indisputably, as a matter of fact. By rather painful physical evidence.

Used to go month-long canoe tripping some 30 years back. Always got seriously sunburned first few days out. And words fail describing how it felt when mosquitoes stuck their itty-bitty bitey faces in my sunburn. The unrelievably screaming itchy heat of it.

Went canoeing for three days two decades later. Maybe 10 years ago. Didn’t get the sunburn I’d expected and felt entitled to. Entitled to by virtue having been legitimately evolved here. Right here on Earth. Nope. What I got was these suppurating blisters. These oozing blisters which, on bursting, leaked an orange-juicy liquid mixture halfway between interstitial fluid and blood.

It was like having membership among the naturally evolved revoked. Like turning Morlock absent any time machine. Like getting cast among un-dead creatures cowering from natural sunlight in some cheap horror flick. Even the mosquitoes thought so. Rejected having anything to do with what was leaking from me. Avoided all spots I’d cracked open like the pustulent plague.

Those 20 years intervening to de-nature bare flesh do not, by any stretching conceivable, qualify as evolutionary time. So don’t go trying and telling me, Mr. Rioux, that human intervention hasn’t been causing the end of the natural world as we’ve known it. Don’t even try. You know better. Everyone been around 20 years knows better. How even sunlight isn't what it used to be.

That’s why, when an acquaintance urged me to sign onto an emergency petition trying to save the crucial climate change talks in Bali by telling the US, Canada and Japan to stop blocking the agreement, I replied:

I'll do better than that and write a quick article on it this morning. Including the link. Thanks for spamming me about (just) this :-)

Thought I’d better find out some little bits before getting down to writing this article, though. Which is why I didn’t manage writing -– as promised -– yesterday. Got confused to distraction by commentary at the Globe’s headlining how “Rich, poor countries at odds over Bali climate deal”.

Never mind “green swindling”. That herring’s green and red all over. It was other comments fully halting my tracks.

For one instance, Matt Mann wrote:

… The Government of Canada has it right! For the sake of our children we do not sign a road map that takes us 45 years down the road without 3 of the biggest polluters having agreed to any binding targets…

For another, Mike McFae wrote,

… [I]t makes no sense to piss on a forest fire by espousing that little countries like Canada ( forget that per capita scam ) sacrifice our workers and industry and let the real polluters off the hook. I've been in Chinese cities for weeks on end without being able to see the sun despite the fact there were no clouds in the sky. That's the real world and it has to be dealt with…

And David Gibson wrote:

… [W]e are peeing into the wind as long as we accept that the big dogs can do what they want without control. It is arguable, perhaps, that there should be DIFFERENT limits for developing countries for a while, but to have fixed limits for us and not for them, it won't happen and won't work. BTW, Chinese pollution clouds the size of BC are frequently detected and tested by scientists in North America. Canada's position is lose/lose: either agree to hobble ourselves competitively against our main trading partner and give the half-dozen biggest polluters a get-out-of-jail-free card, or be an international villain by holding out for those big dogs to agree to play ball. IMO, if the big dogs don't play, it won't matter WHAT we do. IMO, the domestic 'environmentalists' people who are calling for Canada to sign, are socialists first, environmentalists second. The planet can't tell Chinese smog from Rochester smog.

So. As with Noah and that ridiculous ark of his. The heat may be on. The sky may be falling. The oceans may come flooding. Regardless. Us humans will keep disputing “targets” and clashing cultures like there’s no tomorrow. Exactly like there’s no tomorrow.

Must repeat. Nothing remotely “green” gets inspired by our petty politics. There shall be no rescue by governments. No rescue by regulation, legislation or completely inadequate accords like from Kyoto or Bali. Regardless how warped, our governments can reflect nothing but our selves –- our terminally sightless convenient self-involvements. We’ll get nothing better from governance than we deserve. Nor can we expect corporate bailouts. Corporations can do nothing economic but cater our consumptions. Nothing but supply our demand for more stuffing. It is by our internal and eternal bickering that many of us starve while the whole earth is made waste. It is by our internal and eternal self-involved bickering we are each, every and single one of us implicated. By our hysterical, stuffing-induced collective seizure. That’s why there can be no hope for greener pastures which does not arise from personal and cultural grass-roots. From first and foremost principles.

It is not as if, but for greenhouse gases or nuclear catastrophe, everything would be all right. It’s not like that at all. We don’t need greenhouse gases. We don’t require nuclear catastrophe. We don’t depend on all our mercurial contaminants to utterly waste the natural. We’ve been overkilling and extincting in spectacular style ever since swinging that damned club of Moon-Watcher’s. Nuclear catastrophe? All we need is sticks and stones. Literally. Where are the Sabretooth Cats? The American lions? The Short-faced bears, standing near twice tall as Grizzlies? Where are the tremendous Longhorned bison and the Mastodon those fabulous carnivores hunted? Where the magnificent vegetation which this continent’s tremendous herbivores browsed?

Where indeed. Absolutely nowhere. Extinct. We require no nuclear catastrophes. We did just great genociding with sticks and stones ten thousand years back. What’s absurd is how now “nature lovers” discover Chernobyl. How, after the worst nuclear catastrophe, nature came back to blooming life. Not because the catastrophe failed devastating. Just because the catastrophe proved sufficiently devastating to frighten away most human intrusion. Just because absenting ordinary humanity everyday for a couple decades restored the natural like nothing else ever could. That’s how implicated each, every and single one of us are.

This is not, by any means, to say we ought internationally give up on targets and protocols. By no means. But far more important than committing to targets is for governments and corporations to commit to actions -- and to take the actions committed to. And most important by far is this: we absolutely must stop waiting on governments and corporations. We must each of us commit and begin to act right now. For only when we cease voting and demanding ever greater spoilage will governments and corporations commit accordingly.

We can’t rely on following leadership games any more. Time’s come for personal commitment. For us each, personally, to re-start negotiating with the natural. Everywhere the natural so eagerly greets us half-way. Especially in our cities. For only by doing so can we get some better sense not just how and what in the natural world we devastate –- but how and where in the natural world we may better stand. Only by doing so, by personally blazing the precedence, will our political and corporate worlds follow. We must prove ourselves and to the world that humans are people too. Each of us. Personally. Time’s come for personal commitment -– to do or die.

[Peter Fruchter teaches in the Division of Humanities at York University.]

[Polar bear image by Alex Quistberg and used via Creative Commons license.]

In Jesus' Name

2007-12-13T17:05:00.000-05:00

1. Naming in Vain

Our Jesus was begot of Ookpik and Sable. And though not their only begotten son, we believed him their most miraculous.

When Jesus vanished one whole year we thought him dead. Not so, according to the veterinary phoned us from afar. Not yet. Despite his spine getting mostly severed by the car that hit him. He might survive another week, said the vet. Maybe two.

Seven years later, Jesus suffered fatal Feline Leukemia. But it was when his pain got too much for me that I killed him. I killed and then wrote “a Wake” for him. Inspired by him. By the elemental, pure as flame truth of him.

We were laughing when we named you Jesus.
We were fierce and free,
and you were such grace made flesh that forever was moments in your gaze.

I remember the world bending
to your silent incantations
-- how could it be your fumbling feet --
and your vanishings..
in fairness, perhaps, to spheres undignified by you.

I remember how you burst back from corners of an eye,
on the breath between a blink,
saying, "Hold me now. I love you -- I am fierce."

How long before your undeniable heart was beating through us too,
drumming our abstracted silences a vapouring beneath the thunder?

How long until the clan of us
was shouting "Jeeeesus!" in the rain and chirping at bushes?

I remember your foregoings,
the conclusive entrances of your returns
-- sunshine bottled silence corked with night --
rain, snow, earth, the very seasons glittering your midnight arctic cloak, singing,
"I have grappled unknowns by the throat. Dry me. Feed me. I have returned."

And when you did not return..
the silent night of muffled questions in the dead of winter for a year..
your prisming light receding, candling on waves of time, drifting from our shore...

But you remembered us.
When we found you broken on that metal slab,
spine crushed,
beset by soot-sayers
-- "Walk? Well, he might live," --
you smiled, you smiled at us
dear heart and sang again,
"An unknown has grappled me too well. Take me away from all this now. We are returned."

And so we were.
And it was spring for seven years;
a leaping spring,
a spring of leapings,
and oh, but how you lived.
How you walked, prowled, roamed, just as you loved,
on every side of wild.

You taught us a feral love,
and every week another lyric for the singing of it.

But now we called you Kitten
because one resurrection was enough.

Seven years of spring...

When spring was ended
-- and summer too --
when another prophecy of doom ushered the winter of our hearts..
it was by my words, by my side, in my arms that you died.

How your last sigh makes me wonder where lost to eyes the spirit flies.

Did I hold you well enough
my love?
Will you wait for me,
my love?
Oh, wake my heart.
Oh, wake again.

No regrets having named him Jesus. Not one apology. It was meet, it was right and he’ll never be outside my heart. That recent fiasco over the Muhammad teddy bear made me wonder, though. Made me wonder something completely different from where lost to eyes the spirit flies. Like, how glaringly cultures keep clashing.

Our Jesus had itching feet. Went regularly missing days on end long before going missing one whole year. And we’d go out searching him. Regularly. Rain, snow, sleet, whatever. Worried out of our skulls. Shouting “Jeeeee-sus!” over top our lungs like revivalist circus freaks. Chirping, making come-hither sounds at each every bush and hedge. Which there were plenty up at University City.

What did passers-by think? How did neighbours react our roaming hollering for “Jeeeee-sus!” at all random hours? That we must have been fully certified as freaks, no doubt. But so what of it? We could hardly have cared less to save our souls. Each time after finding our Jesus, feeling all giddy and born again by our relief, we’d giggle about it something fierce.

We took having no care what everyone thought entirely and carelessly for granted. Reading about the Muhammad teddy bear -– how likely it might have led to public lashings, imprisonment and (or) even to death -– etchingly underscored the isolation of our carelessness in both time and space. We’d not have been calling for our Jesus that way in European middle ages. Nor in the Salem, Massachusetts of 1692. Nor would we have named him Muhammad –- never mind gone out hollering his name in vain at all random hours -– anywhere and everywhere fundamentalism rules to present days.

Intent has no bearing where fundamentalist ideology keeps ruling religiously. Fully admitted: I was laughing when I named him Jesus. Thank god for mercifully permitting my existing in 21st century Toronto, Canada. In times and spaces where taking naming in vain has finally become the laughing matter it ought always have been. Sure I was laughing. Doesn’t mean I was just joking. I meant it as an admirer of most everything the historical person Jesus stood and died for. Because our Jesus so clearly, obviously and undeniably not only was a person -– but, as a person, was the very best anyone could have aspired to become. I meant to un-ask whether animals are people -– and to begin asking whether humans might ever become people too. Not necessarily pure as flames and driven snow like our Jesus was. Nor wholly innocent of any original sinning. Just whether humans might start aspiring to even some personal decency. Some dignified personhood. Preferably prior totally consuming and (or) catastrophically annihilating what remains of (not only) our natural world.

Intent has no bearing where and when fundamentalist ideology rules religiously. Where and when naming in vain constitutes fundamental sinning. Where and when not totally submitting isn’t just criminal but damned and diabolical. Where and when questioning means not to ask but to challenge god’s truth as immutably given by whatever avatars or prophets.

We’ve been taking our way of life carelessly for granted. All of us. As if our cultural principle of tolerance were somehow normal. As if the foundation our principled tolerance provides for Canadian pluralism, democracy and Toronto multiculture were somehow universal. As if.

Better start appreciating not only the meaning, significance, source and origin of our principled tolerance but, perhaps more urgently, how religiously intolerance rules human cultures to this day and age. Otherwise we doom ourselves to repeating fatal errors while, as Al Gore reminds, time fleets ever faster from natural space. However much the rage a few millennia back, it’s just not such a great time for clashing cultures any more. Better stop taking -– even and especially our own –- cultural principles for granted.

2. Sticks and Stones

Ideological divisions merely over naming in vain expose gaps across cultures. Potentially deadly gaps plummeting precipitously down to our most fundamental cultural principles. Gaps perhaps too culturally incommensurable for understanding ever to bridge.

Here’s one recent –- glaring –- example. On November 23rd, the Toronto Star blared how, Prodded by Canada, nations punish Pakistan:

Canada joined other Commonwealth countries yesterday in deciding to suspend Pakistan’s membership to punish President Pervez Musharraf for invoking emergency rule and jailing thousands who opposed him.

Moreover. Also on November 23rd, the Law Society of Upper Canada sent me e-mail containing the following text:

In response to the situation in Pakistan, the Law Society of Upper Canada and the Ontario Bar Association invite you to attend a Gathering… Lawyers and legal associations around the world are united in expressing their support for their colleagues in Pakistan, and calling for the restoration of the rule of law in that country. The blatant violations of human rights and the attacks on the rule of law in a democratic society are unacceptable.

Yeah. Right. “Democratic society.” Has considering our NATO culpability in destabilizing Pakistan even occurred to anyone? I ask this despite greatest admiration for Benazir Bhutto and for the accomplishments of Canadian NATO troops. Despite lacking sympathy for “President” Musharraf. Despite all my sneering those cheering terrorism, those accusing our troops of murdering innocents and those claiming to “support our troops” by struggling to have the Canadian military disbanded. I have to ask this both despite and due to my life-long proponence of democracy. Has it even occurred to anyone how culpable we are in Pakistan?

We’ve been railing at the Bushes for the better part of a decade. Rightly so. For only the ridiculous ideological mingling of might making right with sole super-powering and the American Way could so ignorantly have emerged with the notion of imposing democracy at gunpoint. When democracy used to mean not imposing at gunpoint. Back when America used to be the bastion of democracy, anyhow. Thus has the cultural meaning of democracy been eroded beyond recognition and tarnished beyond repair. And in Middle Eastern cultures where democracy had never acquired non-laughable cultural meaning, the power vacuum of ignorant intervention has resulted in -– how many? –- millions of casualties.

We’ve been right to rail at the Bushes. Due to that administration’s unbelievable ignorance, Middle-Eastern fundamentalist ideology has been re-enforced and multiplied –- i.e., (not only) in neighbouring Iran. It’s high past time to realize how equally ignorant we’ve been in our naive efforts to “win hearts and minds”. Because, due to our ignorance, fundamentalist ideology has been re-enforced (not only) in neighbouring Pakistan.

There’s no more likelihood of altering cultural principles, ideals and ideologies by military force or economic aid than there is of forcing or purchasing understanding.

We’d have to prove our gods stronger. And we’d better pray it never comes to that. Since the last time any democratically elected administration successfully appealed to stronger gods it was by invoking the nuclear destroyer of worlds against the divinity of Japan’s emperor.

If interfere we must where fundamentalist ideologies rule -– let’s at least cease being so naïve about it. Let’s not be playing with nuclear fire. As in Pakistan albeit, allegedly, not yet in Iran. Let’s just stop believing anything we’d recognize as “democratic” can subsist where god’s truth is manifest to present days.

[Peter Fruchter teaches in the Division of Humanities at York University.]

Techne-City III: What it’s Like to be a Seagull

2007-12-11T18:27:00.000-05:00

The green rush is on. Latest instance: Monday’s Globe and Mail reported how Jack Layton rushes to greener political pastures.

Great idea. No doubt politically inspired. Since “Australia's 'climate-change' election inspires Layton to emulate green platform”. And since, as the article alerts,

Mr. Layton will argue that many of his own environmental ideas are now in the international mainstream… Mr. Layton's wave of international name-dropping is designed to win over Canadian voters who normally turn up their noses at the NDP.

Some Globe commentators, though, seemed dubious whether to appreciate Jack’s aspirations. However politically inspired. For instance, dallas mcquarrie wrote:

For some time it's been quite clear that the 'environmental' party in Canada is the Green Party. Layton and the NDP's belated embrace of environmentalism is more a product of the fact they are losing supporters to the Green Party than any 'conversion' experience. It's easy for the NDP to jump on the environmental bandwagon now that environmentalism is 'cool,' but Jack Layton is only following in Elizabeth May's footsteps. Unlike the NDP, the Green Party was environmentalist before it became popular. Now that the Green Party has caught up to the NDP in the polls, Jack Layton's hoisting of the environmental banner is a desperate political gambit from a leader reacting to events rather than shaping them.

Vickky Angstrom disagreed completely:

Dallas: The NDP has always had environmental protections as part of its platform. Jack Layton has put forward green policies from his early days in city politics. I am very uncomfortable with the greens, who are another right wing party apart from their environmental platform -- the last thing we need.

Increasingly, the debating ceased pretending anything green. Ceased pretending anything but political ideology. James Pearson wrote, “The NDP will be the Official Opposition after the next election (whenever that is).” Darmok and Jilad from Tanagra contradicted:

The NDP will lose the not-quite-so-left side to the Liberals, and the Kermit the Frog Party (Greens) will eat up some of the other side, leaving Taliban Jack holding his thong after the next election (sorry for the disturbing visual).

Too predictably, George Bishop had declared,

..Canadians for too long have been taken for granted in that people with Money seem to blame everything on others, its time for average Canadians to speak up and demand a greater piece of the 'pie'

And, just as predictably, p m scorned,

its time for average Canadians to speak up and demand a greater piece of the 'pie' ....another 'lefty' heard from.. hey buddy, the pie is made in the kitchen ...by hard work...it is not handed out the serving window by the government.....get real!! you want more pie, get in the kitchen and make it yourself...just like the rest of us!!

Ayup. Great metaphor. Flawless. How we keep bickering for ever more pie than we can scarf, binge or purge -– while devastating, annihilating, demolishing, decimating and wasting what little natural habitat remains. If any habitat even remains at all natural. As if greener pastures should be made whole by our spinning the political hay. Or by our slashing, burning and contaminating in business as usual.

Nothing remotely “green” gets inspired by our petty politics. There shall be no rescue by governments. No rescue by regulation, legislation or completely inadequate accords like Kyoto. Regardless how warped, our governments can reflect nothing but our selves -– our convenient and terminally ignorant self-involvement. We’ll get nothing better from governance than we deserve. Nor can we expect corporate bailouts. Corporations can do nothing economic but cater our consumptions. Nothing but supply our demand for more pie to stuff down our endless bickering pie-holes. It is by our internal and eternal bickering that many of us starve while the whole earth is made waste. It is by our internal and eternal self-involved bickering we are each, every and single one of us implicated. By our ever increasing pie-choked bickering. That’s why there can be no hope for greener pastures which does not arise from personal and cultural grass-roots. From first and foremost principles.

The media monger such fears of global warming that the majority of my first-year students report feeling numbed and paralysed. None even recall media’s prior fear-mongering frenzy –- “nuclear winter”. Never mind beginning to appreciate how myriad the ways we make waste of our environment have become. As if, but for greenhouse gases or nuclear catastrophe, everything would be all right.

As if. We don’t need greenhouse gases. We don’t require nuclear catastrophe. We don’t depend on all our mercurial contaminants to utterly waste the natural. We’ve been overkilling and extincting in spectacular style ever since swinging that damned club of Moon-Watcher’s. Nuclear catastrophe? All we need is sticks and stones. Literally. Where are the Sabretooth Cats? The American lions? The Short-faced bears, standing near twice tall as Grizzlies? Where are the tremendous Longhorned bison and Mastodon those fabulous carnivores hunted? Where the magnificent vegetation which this continent’s tremendous herbivores browsed?

Where indeed. Absolutely nowhere. Extinct. We require no nuclear catastrophes. We did just great genociding with sticks and stones 10,000 years back. What’s absurd is how now “nature lovers” discover Chernobyl. How, after the worst nuclear catastrophe, nature came back to life. Not because the catastrophe failed devastating. Just because the catastrophe proved sufficiently devastating to frighten away most human intrusion. Just because absenting ordinary humanity everyday for a couple decades restored the natural like nothing else ever could. That’s how implicated each, every and single one of us are.

It’s at about this point that students lose all interest in whatever else I might have planned addressing -– and demand knowing what we can do about it. And, having no political inspiration or aspiration, I tell them straight: got no clue. I can only convey some of what I try and do about it. Merely on generally green principles. Only hoping for some less self-involved awareness at grass roots.

Only hoping. Couple weeks back, for instance, while rummaging the garbage for food, I was gently accosted by two female students.

“We’ve been watching you,” declared one.

“Are you lost?” asked the other. “Are you in some kind of trouble? Can we help you?”

For a moment, I felt like deer do in headlights. Or, in human terms, like the least legitimate of red-headed stepchildren. Then, recalling myself somewhat, I replied, “Sure you can help -– want to help feed the animals?”

Blinking, they glanced at each other. Gamely struggling with consuming preconceptions. Preconceptions of proper consuming.

“Maybe?” ventured one -- while the other nodded just barely. Both hesitant like I'd offered them candy. From the garbage.

“See,” I elaborated, “those hotdog buns you’re about to toss? Why send what you can’t finish to landfill far away? Winter’s here -– and the way we humans demolish every natural habitat, it’s much too hard for many animals. So why not share? Why throw perfectly good food in the garbage when birds and animals right outside go without?”

“Yeah,” they agreed, just about in unison. Almost enthused.

And we had plenty to share. Them with unfinished lunches. Me with five pounds of rescued organics. Trouble was, we couldn’t find any animals to share with. None. Everywhere birds and animals had clustered was deserted.

The longer we searched, the more chirping, whistling and clacking come hither sounds I made, the more suspicious they got. I was glad when they left. Relieved. Grateful they’d mostly contained giggling at the garbage digging loser –- i.e., me.

That’s how it was for about a week. Getting bitter roaming around campus. Not just the cold. I kept thinking how Turing-readily we get fooled into believing ought which mimics us intelligent. How utterly and persistently we fail recognizing -– never mind approaching -– any intelligence not entirely oriented and prejudiced precisely as our own. How despite my best human efforts, I couldn’t manage communicating any what I hoped to share with birds and animals about campus. What to do when -– in winter -– they no longer sought me out? I was getting bitter for, no matter how I kept whistling, jumping and throwing apple cores up in air, no single high-drifting seagull deigned batting one wingtip my way.

I’d ceased roaming campus by late last week. Mostly accepted my human ignorance. Just stood there throwing crumbs at the ground. Waiting for any pigeon to alight between the roaring of buses. Dimly kept hearing seagulls. Thought it was imagination but got to thinking, eventually. What’s it like to be a seagull? Cold is cold. Lee side to the wind is better. So I crossed to the other side. The lee side. And there they were. At least that day. In the open yet partly protected spaces between Stedman Lecture Halls and Vanier. Squirrels digging. Seagulls winging low.

The best part? There were two. When seagulls replied my pidgin “Found something –- out’ta the way!” whistles. And yet more so when they came wheeling, skimming, feet touching no snow and beaks snagging the apple cores I spilled.

It’s winter. Hard times. No more turning beaks up at apple cores. And the way they snagged those apple cores? Balanced on transparent breaths of air, curving perfect asymptotes against the snow? I have seen no grace more pure.

[Peter Fruchter teaches in the Division of Humanities at York University. His related essay, "Acts of Salvage", was recently published in GreenTOpia (Coach House, 2007)]

[Seagull image by Bryan and used via Creative Commons.]