That'll teach me to make my Email address available on my blog...

So I got a very angry email from some anonymous asshat, who had excised a few key passages from a few entries in this blog (often severely out of context), had decided that I was a radical left-winger, based upon what I can only assume was a severely twisted view of what constitutes "radical left," and proclaimed proudly that I simply "[didn't] get that there are people out there who want to kill Americans."

I get a lot of email from asshats, usually in the form of spam, but this one deserved a response, I felt. Unfortunately, attempts to respond to said email were bounced back to me; so I can only hope that said asshat is reading this now.

In truth, the asshat in question isn't the first to claim that I "don't get that there are people out there who want to kill Americans," not by a long shot. I've had members of my own family tell me that I "don't get that there are people who want to kill Americans." As if I'm running around with my fingers in my ears singing "lalala, nobody wants to kill us." As if, were the amazing revelation that people out there want to kill Americans were to penetrate my thick skull, I'd suddenly love Bush, support the war in Iraq, and hate Muslims.

Why? Because apparently not supporting the war in Iraq means that I somehow don't get it. Somehow, because I think that attacking a country that presented no threat whatsoever to us is stupid, I'm missing out on this mysterious truth that "there are people who want to kill Americans."

Let's pretend that's true, for the sake of argument. Let's assume that if I don't support the war in Iraq, then I simply "don't get that there are people out there who want to kill Americans." One would have to therefore accept that because a certain group of a certain race and religion want to kill Americans, that the logical response is to go after a country that had absolutely nothing to do with any attack on American soil, ever; but happens to have people living in it who have a similar race, and sorta-similar religious beliefs.

I'm hoping that the aforementioned asshat realizes just how absurd that position is.

Now, I can hear said asshat's whiny voice now saying "well, what do you think we should do?" For the record, I can't say for sure whether the asshat has a whiny voice or not, but the voice my brain made up for him was sure whiny when I was reading the email. I have a bunch of answers for that question. We could've actually finished the job in Afghanistan, for starters. I fully supported the invasion of Afghanistan, for the record. I was all for going in there and making sure that it was no longer a breeding ground for terrorism. And we could've done it, too. If, after the Taliban had been overthrown, we'd dedicated resources to rebuilding that country, getting it back onto its feet, making it a reasonable contributor to the world stage, we may well have actually gained an ally in the middle east. At the very least, we'd have one less country populated by "people who want to kill Americans." We could've actually caught Bin Laden, rather than abandoning the search for him for no logical reason whatsoever. We could've spent money that we would instead waste in Iraq, trying to rebuild a country which still desperately needs rebuilding.

I could think of a dozen things, and it's mostly things that would cost a miniscule fraction in both dollars and lives than this unending, pointless, and very likely illegal war in Iraq cost us. It's not sexy. It's not a grand gesture like blowing the crap out of a country which does not present; and could not, in the foseeable future, have presented; any reasonable threat to the United States of America, but at least it would make some degree of sense.

While we're on that subject, let's talk about the fact that we're getting our asses kicked in Iraq. Who's kicking our asses? Yes, admittedly, they're "people who want to kill Americans." But really, can we hold that against them? They were, quite literally, minding their own business when we decided that we, for some reason, didn't like them and ploughed onto their soil to depose a dictator we put in power in the first place. Frankly, I'd be a little pissed at Americans myself if it were me. It's like having someone kick in the door of your house, rip up your furniture, light a fire in the middle of your living room, take a shit on your couch; then watch them complain indignantly when you try to kick them out. So, yes, there are people in Iraq who want to kill Americans, because we made them hate us. To presume that the people who are mopping the floor with us in Iraq had any thing to do with the guys who blew up the World Trade Center is absurd in the highest degree. We're not preventing another 9/11 in any way, form or fashion by fighting the insurgency there. In fact, I would go so far as to say that by annoying an entire new generation of terrorist recruits, we're guaranteeing another one. In his six years in office, Bush has done more to ensure that at some time, we will have another 9/11 than any other president before him. But I guess he figures that's okay. He'll probably be out of office by the time that rolls around anyway.

So yes, I disagree with the majority of this administration's policies. I disagree with the Patriot Act, I disagree with the Military commissions act. I disagreed with Congress when they suddenly decided that the thing that most needed doing was the creation of a constitutional amendment to ban flag-burning. I disagreed with congress when it decided that the greatest threat to American society was Gay Marriage. I disagreed with Bush when he decided that stem cell research was a dire enough threat to require him to exercise his first ever veto. Bush keeps claiming that those people who "want to kill Americans" hate us for our freedom; and he's doing his damnedest to ensure that pretty soon, that won't be a problem.

So, a couple of final notes to the anonymous asshat.

1. If you're so pretentious to put an "MA" after what I can only assume is a pseudonym, you should realize that "it's" is only spelled with an apostrophe when it's a contraction of "it is." "It's" is not the possessive of anything. On an unrelated note, "catastrophic" has no "f"s in it; if you're going to compare Bush to the mythical character Gilgamesh, you really should know a little more about it: it's not as much of a compliment as you seem to think it is.

2. You really shouldn't put an "MA" after what I can only assume is a pseudonym if all your ideas are stupid.

3. Yes, I do get that there are people out there who want to kill Americans. Do you?

The Evil Athiest Conspiracy (tm)

Science is more than just sitting in a laboratory randomly throwing things together to try to make pretty colors or a puff of smoke. Scientists by and large don't sit in an ivory tower trying to decide how we can further the Evil Athiest Conspiracy. Granted the argument could be made that science is atheistic, but only by virtue of the fact that the actions of any god or gods is an unscientific proposal. It's not that scientists don't believe in God (although some don't). It's that regardless of whether God, god, or gods were involved in the creation of the universe, there is no experiment we can perform which would give us any information as to the nature of said gods. I have met a number of athiest scientists; but I have met a far greater number of scientists of all faiths who have absolutely no difficulty reconciling their religious beliefs with their scientific pursuits. Christians (several flavors thereof), Muslims, Jews, Pegans... Some of whom hold their religious beliefs very strongly, yet are able to find a middle ground where their beliefs and their science can exist harmoniously. As one of my associates put it: "those whose faith is so weak that their God can only exist within the confines of science; and who force science to fit their definition of God; have done nothing to deserve faith."

The problem with bringing God into science is simple: science stops. What makes science such a wonderful pursuit is that it is never-ending. Every time you answer a question, it brings you in new directions, makes you ask new questions. It forces your mind to think in a way that you hadn't thought before. Once you bring God into the scientific process, you have nowhere else to go. How did the universe get here? God snapped Her fingers. How did we get such a complex array of life on this planet? God declared it so. God pretty much obliterates any questions you might ask. You can perform no experiment which would tell you how She'd do it. You simply stop asking questions, and if you stop asking questions, you stop learning. Why the hell would God want us to stop learning about the world?

Thomas Jefferson once said "Question with courage even the existence of God, for if there is one; he surely must prefer the homage of reason to that of blindfolded fear." Postulating the existence of God, it strikes me as completely non-sensical that She would be nice enough to provide us all with free will, then be enough of a prick that She doesn't want us to use it. It's completely non-sensical to me that She wants us to learn about the universe from a book that has been re-written, re-translated and revised dozens of times since the dawn of time; and to alienate those who dare consider the possibility that the Bible might not be the best scientific resource.

I have no issue with religion, actually, I don't even have an issue with including one religion in the public arena. For me the issue is the exclusion of all the others. We have had people insisting that a monument of the ten commandments had to remain outside a courthouse; but what if someone had insisted that we include the Wiccan Rede? People would respond with absolute outrage. What if we included prayer in public schools, but insisted that it had to take the form of a Hindu prayer, or a Taoist or Buddist meditaion? What if we said that students had to read the Tao or the Koran every day before class began?

Why are these suggestions any more absurd than including Christian prayer in class, or the ten commandments outside a courthouse?

My point is simple: worship or don't worship in whatever way you see fit. If it's as simple as meditating for a few minutes every day, fine. If you pray to God, or Allah, or Jesus, or his brother Bob; so be it. But if you pray to God, don't tell the guy sitting next to you who's praying to Bob that he's doing it wrong.

If that makes me an evil athiest, so be it. I'd rather be an evil athiest than a pious bigot.

Best. Week. Ever.

The democrats took back congress, which means that for the first time in his presidency, Bush might actually have to listen to the other side of the aisle rather than having them just rubber stamp the bills he sends his way. It also means that for the first time in six years, I'm actually cautiously optimistic about this country's political future.

Rummy's gone, and although his replacement is an ol' buddy of Bush's, he's also worked under several administrations that aren't Bush, and with a little luck, and a nod from the gods, I'm actually cautiously optimistic that we'll actually have an exit strategy some time in the near future.

A creationist whackjob in florida just got nailed for tax evasion, which just goes to show that although creationist whackjobs can manipulate school boards to force their particular flavor of christianity into the class room, they aren't completely above the law.

Stem cell initiatives have passed in one state, a ban on gay marriage was defeated in another, and a complete ban of abortion was defeated in a third, giving me reason to be cautiously optimistic that the US as a whole hasn't slid hopelessly far to the extreme right.

Oh, and I passed my PhD. thesis defense.

Okay, I am in as bad shape as I thought I was.

I'm in marginal pain at the moment.

So i'm back to three Kung Fu classes every week. I couldn't make friday nights for pretty much the last several months. The problem is that Friday nights are the hard classes. We do conditioning on Friday night. Basically, it's a two-hour torture-test where we find new and creative ways of abusing our bodies with the aim of building muscle, endurance, and physical strength.

I haven't been to a Friday night class in several months. I guess that comes from working on a fricking PhD. thesis. Side effect of sitting in front of a computer for 16 hours a day is that you get out of shape rather quickly.

So I went to class last night, and as most Fridays are, I brutally abused myself for three hours. But as the evening drew to a close, I figured that I wasn't in as bad shape as I thought I was. Oh, I was hurting, naturally. You don't push yourself for that hard, and that long without some body part voicing an objection or two; but it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be. I thought I'd be vomiting by the time the class was half-over.

So I thought I was in better physical condition than I feared I would be.

Then I woke up this morning.

Nope. Turns out that I'm in as bad shape as I thought I was. Pretty much everything hurts at the moment.

I'm gonna have to do something about that.

America needs Edward R. Murrow

On the 19th of October, a small minority of the American people may have seen something which has been absent from the newscasts for far too long. A man speaking with true passion to the masses.

In the '50s, a relatively minor newscaster stood up to announce that the country he loved dearly was destroying itself from within. He stood to speak with passion about the systematic persecution of people who had, at the time, committed no illegal action. He stood to speak in defense of those who were permitted none. He stood to speak on behalf of those who had no voice.

America needs that passion again. It needs people who are willing to say that something's wrong with the country. It needs people who can speak passionately about the country that they love, and what they love about it.

It needs dreamers. It needs idealists. It needs people who see the world through rose-colored glasses. It needs people who aren't willing to compromise on things like compassion, liberty and equality.

Recently, the US government passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006. In particular, the writ of Habeas Corpus is denied to non-US citizens.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the term Habeas Corpus is the right of every person to stand in court and get an answer to one very simple question: "Hey, why am I in prison?" While technically this is only denied to non-US citizens, there's a rather disturbing loophole: if the American Government decides you are not a US citizen, with Habeas Corpus no longer applying; you have no way to challenge the claim.

In short, democracy is dead in America. As Olbermann puts it in his special commentary, the president has been given a blank check. He has the power to arbitrarily place someone in jail, hold them without trial, and convict them with evidence they are not allowed to see.

Edward R. Murrow once said: "We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home." While I doubt he knew at the time how prophetic his words would be, we need to remember his words now; for they are as true now as they were during the red scare.

America needs that passion again. It needs people who still believe in the idealism of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. It needs dreamers who dare to believe in the great society that America once was; and who believe that it can be so again. We need idealists, not pragmatists. We need people who see what principles the country was founded upon, and seek them again.

We need Edward R. Murrow; but until then, Keith Olbermann will do.

I have included an embedded video of Olbermann's speech, if you have about ten minutes to watch it; it is truly worth seeing.

Collateral Damage

It's official: the American people elected a total asshat into the whitehouse in 2004.

Good ol' Dub-ya has, after six years of presidency, exercised his first-ever veto of a bill passed through congress.

And what, you may ask, was such a horrendous threat to the world that our illustrious president decided to block a bill that had already received congressional assent? What was so terrible that Dub-ya felt that for the first time in his entire presidency, he had to stop it from happening? What could possibly make Bush exercise the Presidential veto that the past three presidents never once used in their entire times in office?

Stem cell research.

Yes, our great and illustrious president decided that Stem Cell research was such a horrid threat that he'd veto a bill which would have allowed it.

Yep, Bush thinks that life is so sacred that he's blocking research performed on invisible clumps of cells; which he apparently thinks is the equivalent of walking up to someone and shooting them in the head.

'Course, when it's dropping bombs on Iraqi civilians, it's "collateral damage."

And, lest we forget, while Governor of Texas, Bush shattered all records across the country for most death row inmates executed while under his charge. But that's "justice."

As of this writing, there are approximately 400,000 embryos on ice in the United States of America. Until this bill was vetoed, those embryos could have been used to find cures for Parkinsons, Diabetes, paraplegia, MS, ALS, severe brain damage... Stem cells could mean an end to organ shortages. Now that this bill has been vetoed, those embryos can be either used for InVitro Fertilization, or destroyed. This bill would have allowed those slated for destruction to be used for research. Apparently, according to the Pro-Life brigade in the US, this would be the equivalent of mass murder.

Now, for some reason that is somewhat beyond my capacity to grasp, Bush decided to announce his vetoing of this bill while surrounded by "Snowflake Babies," their term, for the record, not mine. These babies were formed from embryos which were frozen; exactly the type of embryos that would have been used for this research. The irony is that none of these babies would exist if it weren't, literally, for decades worth of research performed on human embryonic cells; but Bush is going to studiously ignore that one, methinks.

Oh, and let's not forget, IVF requires implantation of several blastocysts in the hope that just one of them will grow into a full fledged human being.

All the others, I guess they're just "collateral damage."

Marshall McLuhan was wrong.

I should probably make clear at the outset that I'm against censorship of any kind.

I'm against censoring what we watch on TV, I'm against censoring the use of some specific words, I'm against censoring what is available to be viewed or heard.

I'm against censorship; especially in an era where if you don't like what you see or hear, you can change the channel or walk away.

But free expression means, practically by definition, sooner or later, someone is going to say something, or do something, or express themselves in some way that offends you. You can't have it both ways. You can either have free expression, or you can expect never to be offended. You cannot, in a free society, expect to have both. To do so is naive and, frankly, silly.

George Carlin did a famous comedy routine where he spoke about the seven words which were specifically prohibited on television. Seven, he said, out of approximately 400,000 words in the English language. "What a ratio that is," he said in his famous routine, "399,993 to seven. They must really be bad. They'd have to be outrageous to be separated from a group that large." He then went on to list the seven dirty words; shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker and tits; on national television.

But seriously, what is it about some words, one specific sequence of sounds that we find so utterly offensive? "Truck" is an utterly inoffensive word, but somehow, when we replace the "TR" with "F," that word suddenly becomes vile?

And what makes a word offensive anyway? How do we decide that one specific sequence of sounds is horrendous and vile? What makes that switch turn on in our brains that says "oh, no, that's a bad word?" It would be trivial for me to offend you or spew the most vile of sentiments using the "cleanest" of words. Conversely, I could express the most gentle and noble of sentiments using the most vulgar profanity.

The point is that if you're not offended by the message I'm sending, it seems to me that it's ridiculous that you'd be offended by the words I use to send it. Kinda like recieving the present you always wanted for Christmas, then complaining about the gift-wrap. It's as if they don't care if you speak with hate, as long as you use appropriate wording to do so. As if the words you use are what make the discourse hateful or distasteful.

Marshall McLuhan was wrong. The message is the message.

Have Food Dehydrator, Will Travel

So I bought myself a food dehydrator, which, interestingly enough, costs less than half the cost of the food April and I bought for the West Coast trail.

Suffice it to say that I think April and I are both sick of our insta-meals in the backcountry, and would like to have something that is a wee bit more edible. So I bought a dehydrator so that we can make something a little more gourmet, that doesn't require us to carry a huge amount of stuff, or require a lot of preparation on the trail.

I'll let you know how that turns out.

Flag Desecration

So, my other country came within a hair's bredth of a constitutional ban of flag burning.

The last time this was brought up was in 2004. Also, incidentally, an election year.

Coincidence? Um, no.

But let's talk about this ban for a second. The United States of America wanted to ban the burning of the flag.

Here's the catch tho: the Flag Code of the United States of America specifically requires a flag to be ceremonially burned if it becomes soiled or damaged or has otherwise outlived its useful life.

Apparently, that kind of burning is okay, but burning it in protest is not.

In other words, the current administration is not trying to regulate the behaviour of burning the flag, so much as the sentiment voiced by said burning.

Seems to me that there was something in that whole constitution thing about some "free expression" somethingorother, wasn't there?

Now, I understand that some people are offended by the idea of flag burning. Freedom of speech, by definition, means that you're going to be offended. It means that you're going to hear things that you don't like, and don't want to hear. It means that a Neonazi can stand in the center of the village square proclaiming his hatred of all non-aryan races without fear of reprisal from the government. Freedom means acknowledging someone who stands at center stage proclaiming at the top of his lungs what you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours.

In short, the first amendment of the constitution is meant to protect all speech, not just the speech you agree with.

"Liberal" Science

So, I've been unwilling to jump on the Anne Coulter Hate-a-thon, largely because I figure that's exactly what the woman wants. But I was bought a copy of her latest book "Godless." Believe me, I wouldn't buy one of her books if I had a choice in the matter; but since someone had been nice enough to buy it for me, I figure it would be just impolite not to read it.

Unlike just about everybody else, I'm going to say absolutely nothing about her comments on the 9/11 widows. She's perfectly entitled to defame or abuse the memory of anybody she sees fit. That's the definition of freedom of speech. Likewise, I'm perfectly in my rights to point out that she's full of crap.

I'd like to take a moment to talk about Coulter's stance on so-called "liberal science."

There are basically two different areas that Coulter uses as evidence that liberals hate science: stem-cell research, and the theory of evolution.

Let's start with the former. Ms. Coulter claims that because liberals support stem-cell research, they obviously hate science.

First and foremost, it should be noted that a number of political conservatives also support stem-cell research. Guvernator Aaaaah-Nuld, for one; Nancy Reagan, for another.

Coulter goes on to write that "[l]iberals just want to kill humans."

Um, what?

The potential for stem-cell research to save lives is, in a word, enormous. The number of diseases which could be cured, the number of injuries which could be repaired, and the number of lives which could be saved by this one branch of scientific research is potentially numbered in the billions.

And I'm not overestimating the potential benefits of this technology in the least. If anything, I'm vastly underestimating its potential.

And yet, apparently, liberals hate science and want to kill humans.

If you can explain the logic behind that one, you're smarter than I am.

Coulter's thesis statement on evolution seems pretty damning, if you happen to be completely and utterly ignorant of the facts: "[l]iberals' creation myth is Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, which is about one notch above Scientology in scientific rigor. It's a make-believe story, based on a theory that is a tautology, with no proof in the scientists laboratory or the fossil record - and that's after 150 years of very determined looking. We wouldn't still be talking about it but for the fact that liberals think evolution disproves God." Note her subtle implication that one must necessarily be a libral (and in the US, there can be no greater insult) to accept the theory of evolution.

It should first be noted that a number of political conservatives subscribe to the theory of evolution; ergo, it cannot, by any definition of the term, be described as a "liberal creation myth." It's not liberal, it's not about creation, and it's not a myth.

Now, as for her claim that Evolution is a "make-believe story," with "no proof," there's really only one possible way to describe that claim: a lie. Either that, or she's completely ignorant of the, literally, thousands of fossil finds which support the theory of evolution. She's also completely ignorant of the thousands of lab experiments which have been performed which clearly support evolution.

In other words: she's either lying or stupid. There are really no other options; and I don't think that she's stupid. She writes too skillfully to be a complete moron.

I'd also like to talk about her claim that "liberals think evolution disproves God." There's really only one way to describe this claim, too: a lie. The late Pope John Paul II spoke in favor of the theory of evolution, offering an official papal concession that the theory is more than a wild and wacky idea, but actually a fact. As much a fact as the earth orbiting the sun, or that masses generate a gravitational pull.

Call me crazy, but I think it's a reasonably safe bet that Pope John Paul II believed in God. If he didn't, I think he probably would have sought out a different carreer. I also think it's fair to say that it's a bit of a stretch to claim that Pope John Paul II was a liberal by any conventionally-accepted definition of the term.

On the Dover, Pennsylvania trial, she goes on to say: "They didn't win on science, persuasion, or the evidence. They won the way liberals always win: by finding a court to hand them everything they want on a silver platter."

I know I'm having to say this a lot, but there's really no other way to describe this claim than to say that it is a lie.

Let's start with her claims on the court itself: Judge John Jones III, the judge presiding over the case, is a Bush Appointee, chosen specifically for his very conservative credentials. In fact, at the outset, the former members of the school board thought they had a slam-dunk case specifically for that reason. He is demonstratably not a judge with proclivities towards judicial activism, and upon reading his 139-page judgement, it is equally self-evident that his judgement is not a case of judicial activism. In fact, for him to have ruled differently than he did would have required a level of judicial activism which would have made a mockery of the American judicial system.

Actually, if one actually takes the time to read Judge Jones' judgment, it is very clear that he went to enormous lengths to understand the science which supports the theory of evolution, and to understand the history of the so called "Intelligent Design" theory. It's extremely difficult for me to imagine a judgment which is more diametrically opposed to any rational human being's definition of "Judicial Activism." Then again, though, the judgement is 139 pages long. Maybe Coulter just couldn't be bothered to read the whole thing. Or any of it for that matter.

No, the "liberals" didn't win because they had a court to hand them everything they want on a silver platter, they won because they had science, persuasion, and evidence on their side. Of course, it certainly didn't hurt that the righteous members of the school board lied repeatedly during the trial (also stated in the 139-page judgment; had Ms. Coulter read it). Details that Ms. Coulter studiously ignores. Instead, she lies about it and hopes nobody noticed. It's not like she couldn't access the trial transcripts or the judgement. I've offered a link to the judgement, and the trial transcripts are public record. A 30-second google search of "Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School Board" produced them. And if I'm smart enough to find them, it stands to reason that Coulter is.

Now, Ms. Coulter has every right to make all of these claims; as ignorant, misinformed, dishonest and ridiculous as they are. Lying, to the best of my knowledge, is not in itself against the law, except in specific instances: libel, slander, perjury; to name a few, however writing and publishing a book which tells lies is not in itself illegal. Morally reprehensible, to be sure, but not illegal.

Ms. Coulter is certainly skilled in rhetoric, and I wouldn't like to face her in a debate, even if I had the facts on my side (which, in the instances described above, I would); and apart from being rather heavy on the dishonesty, her book is quite well-written. It is clearly written by an intelligent woman, which is why I am very specific about my claims that she is being deliberately dishonest. I don't believe she's actually dumb enough to be that ignorant.

But you never know, I could be wrong. It certainly wouldn't be the first time.

But in this particular instance, I don't think I am.

On Constitutional Amendments

I'm trying hard to decide whether these people are completely devoid of any capacity for logical thought, or simply stupid. Heck, the idea of actually having facts to back up their blind assertions is apparently completely foreign to them.

Take, for example, this couple described in this article. They spend their vacation money to go to DC to hold up signs that say: Stop Same Sex Marriage: It Endorses Masturbation.

I think I speak for the rest of America when I say: WHAT!? Frankly, I seriously doubt any Amercan who has ever masturbated (which, I imagine, is pretty much all of 'em who ever passed the age of 12), has ever said "damn, if only gay Marriage were legal, I could do this without feeling guilty."

If you follow what the far-right has been saying in the US, gay marriage is somehow responsible for everything from drug abuse to decline in air quality.

Now, granted, it's a little hard to study this, since exactly one state in the US has been forward-thinking enough to legalize Gay marriage we don't have much in the way of sample size, but let's see what's happening in that hellhole they call Massachusetts, why don't we? Massachusetts is a pathetic dead-last in illiteracy, a pitiful 48th in per-capita poverty, and an abysmal 49th in the number of divorces. Those poor sods in Massachusetts, how can they live in such horrid conditions?

The reason I bring this up is that our esteemed president has again tried, and failed miserably, to push a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage through congress. It fell massively short of the required 2/3 majority to create a constitutional amendment. No surprise there. Frankly, I wasn't the least bit worried that the bill might pass. But frankly, the idea that the Constitution of the United States; a document I happen to take very seriously, a document which has been perverted more by the Bush Administration than just about any other; is being used as a blatant political ploy frankly turned my stomach.

Bush desperately needs to learn that the constitution is not just a piece of paper. It's not a set of loose guidelines that you can simply ignore whenever you feel like it. And it's certainly not a document meant to be used to score political points. The constitution is the document that makes America America. It's the collection of the founding principles of the nation. It's not a symbol to be perverted whenever the current party in power is lagging in the polls.

The constitution, to those who have actually read it, is a piece of history which presents everything that the US of A is supposed to represent. Freedom from tyrrany of all kinds, freedom to express onesself in whatever manner they choose, regardless of how offensive some may find it.

Freedom to be onesself, provided that they do no harm to anyone else.

By adding an amendment to the constitution which specifically limits one freedom to one group of people, the American government not only would have perverted the very freedom that the constitution enshrines and symbolizes, but they would have sent the message to the American people that they can no longer be assured of the protection the constitution guarantees. If they can deny marriage to one group of people constitutionally, then logically they can deny freedom of speech, or religion, or belief, or any of the rights assured by the constitution. A second set of McCarthy trials could, in principle, be constitutionally assured. In short, the government would be telling the American people that they could no longer look to the one document designed to protect them from the government.

The American government is founded on a very simple principle: the Constitution doesn't trust them. The power doesn't lie in the government, it lies in the document on which that government is founded. And that document places the power in the people's hands. The people have the power to choose one government over another, to hold opinions which are in the minority, to stand at center stage proclaiming at the top of their lungs what others would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of theirs. The American government was founded on the principle that it is far, far better to have a man wrap himself in the constitution so that he can burn the flag, than one who wraps himself in the flag so that he can burn the constitution.

There is a word for all of this: freedom. And we cannot promote freedom abroad by demolishing it at home.

The innocent have nothing to hide.

A friend of mine, and long-time republican voter recently said in response to the recent wiretapping scandal in the US: "why are people really upset about this whole wiretapping thing? I mean, if they're innocent, they have nothing to hide."

The most terrifying thing about this is that he actually thought that this was a reasonable argument.

But let's address that for a second. If the innocent really have nothing to hide, then maybe it's time for the Bush administration to release their information on Dick Chaney's Energy task force, as well as the documents they've the pre-9/11 and Katrina preparedness.

And while we're on the subject, maybe it's time that they come clean on that whole Guantanimo torture scandal.

Maybe we should start talking candidly about the whole Jack Abramoff thing.

Or for that matter, maybe we should talk about the Downing Street Memo; or the no-bid contracts with Halliburton.

Perhaps they'll finally come clean about who's idea it was to release Valerie Plame's name to the media, and why it was done.

Or maybe they could release the documents from Bush Sr.'s time in office, which Bush II had sealed (without any explanation whatsoever) on his first day in office.

After all, if the innocent have nothing to hide....

No real surprises here.

Well, a little bit. I always thought of myself a little closer to the political center. Turns out I'm reasonably far to the left (which for some reason is the right on these diagrams). 'course this is pretty much by American standards, where the political spectrum has been shifted so far to the right it's ridiculous.

By Canadian standards, I suppose I'm closer to the middle.

In fairness, I did vote for Kerry in the last US federal election; but on the other hand, I voted McCain for senate. Back then, he was reasonably close to what I thought was the political center. He's been shifting rightward as the mid-term elections approach.

You are a Social Liberal (83% permissive) and an... Economic Liberal (31% permissive) You are best described as a: Strong Democrat Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid

The Gap between Science and Faith

I had a bit of an epiphany the other night. As those of you who read this page on a relatively-regular basis know, I have a rather deep interest in the recent debate between the theory of evolution and creationism (or its more politically-correct cousin: Intelligent Design), and for the most part, my position has been pretty consistent: teach science in science class. Intelligent design "theory" has no more place in a science class than evolution has in church.

All throughout this time, the one question I never asked, largely because I couldn't see any way of answering it was "why?" Why would people who are otherwise relatively intelligent either deny or ignore the very plain evidence for biological evolution? How can they claim that what they provide is science when just about every claim they make is directly contradicted by scientific data? To take the extreme position of Young-Earth Creationism; namely that the earth (not to mention, the universe as a whole) is actually thousands, rather than billions of years old, one has to completely ignore just about every scientific finding that has been made in just about every branch of the sciences in the last three hundred years. How can they claim to be acting on behalf of a benevolent God, then completely ignore that whole "not bearing false witness" thing She laid out in the book of Exodus?

And more importantly, what on earth makes people dumb enough to listen to them?

Anyhow the realization I came to was remarkable only in its simplicity. People like absolutes. They like for the world to be divided into black and white; up and down; good and evil; us and them. They paint the world in black and white, ignoring in the process that the entire world is a gray area.

So coming back to the intelligent design debate. Basically, what you have is a group of religious fundamentalists whose faith is so weak that they simply cannot accept that a given passage of the bible is not literally true. From their perspective, the Bible is either absolutely 100% correct, or it's 100% wrong. Apart from being a demonstration of unfathomably weak faith, in my opinion; this is also the type of very dangerous thinking that leads to things like crusades, Holocausts and 9/11s.

Once they have people on the hook, though, they start applying the same logic to science. Evolution, they posit, is either 100% right, or 100% wrong. They nitpick little flaws in the theory (real or perceived); with the (oft unverbalized) assumption that unless a scientific theory is 100% right on every single point, then it's completely wrong.

It should be mentioned, critically, that these people claim to be scientists; or at the absolute least, they claim that their approach is scientific; and yet this approach belies a complete lack of understanding of how science works.

The difference between faith and science is that any scientific theory carries with it the implicit assumption that it is wrong. In fact, as soon as a theory is concocted, the first thing you do is start looking for ways in which it is wrong. You design new experiments, you put together new systems, you try new models. In short, the first thing you do once you have a theory worked out is try to prove yourself wrong.

No scientist, to the best of my knowledge, has ever made the claim that the theory of evolution; or any scientific theory, for that matter; is absolutely correct (Although I suppose one might (and I emphasize: might) be able to argue that by calling his theories "laws," Newton was claiming that he was working with immutable truth, but he was a bit of a pretentious asshole; he was a brilliant scientist, make no mistake, but that doesn't make him immune from being a prick). Even as Einstein crafted his theory of relativity, he knew there were parts of the theory which wouldn't be absolutely correct. Even as Darwin put together his theory of evolution, he knew there were some points for which he didn't have evidence. When Hodgkin and Huxley developed the ionic theory of membrane excitability, they knew that the science they were founding would be very different than it was now; and when Frank and Starling came up with the so-called "law of the heart," they knew that it would be added to and changed as time passed. In short, science, by its very nature, changes. It is a living, changing approach to the universe where the assumption is always made that anything we know today may be seen as absurd tomorrow. To try to approach science with the assumption that it deals in a black-and-white world is ludicrous.

And the beautiful irony of the whole situation is this: let's suppose that tomorrow, the theory of evolution is completely disproven. This would pretty much be the ID proponents' greatest fantasy: to see the evil theory of evolution proven incorrect. The irony of the ID position is that if evolution is disproven, that doesn't make intelligent design right. It just makes evolution wrong.

A friend of mine said that trying to mix faith and science was like mixing vanilla ice cream with a spoonful of manure. It won't hurt the manure much; but it'll ruin the ice cream. It's worth noting that he didn't specify which of the two represented which. And he was right. When you mix science and faith; neither one gets the one thing that they both want: answers.

It's official

I just want to point out that when the most exciting moment of your day occurs when you go online to order a textbook entitled Ion Channels of Excitable Membranes, you officially have no life.

The heroism of DubYa.

You know, you hear it from a lot of people; hell, I said it myself: "Bush really did do a great job right after 9/11;" and I think it's probably fair to say that I probably have as great a loathing of dub-YA as just about anyone out there. You hear it in the media, you hear it from people of both political extremes about Bush's supposed heroism just after the terrorist attacks. And, like I said, I've heard it from me.

But let's really think about this. I mean, let's go back to a few months before the 9/11 attacks and really, seriously ask ourselves what made Bush so heroic after that fateful day.

January, 2001: Clinton is just leaving office, and the outgoing national security team warns Bush's incoming National Security advisor, Dr. Condoleezza Rice, that she will probably spend most of her time dealing with terrorism in general, and Osama bin Laden in specific. To the best of anyone's knowledge, she did nothing to act upon this advice.

March, 2001. The bipartisan Hart-Rudman study was issued. I'm not going to go over the specifics of the study, but suffice to say that the study argued that the US was likely to face a large-scale terrorist attack in the not-too-distant future, and recommended steps to protect against such an attack. While we obviously cannot say for sure, it is certainly possible that some of the recommended measures stood at least a chance of preventing or at least mitigating the 9/11 attacks.

The report was largely ignored, and Bush had Chaney convene an antiterror task force to come up with its own set of recommendations.

As of 9/11, the task force had never met. That's six months after the issuing of the study, and they hadn't met once. It's worth mentioning that his energy task force met several times in the same six months. Apparently, energy was a more pressing issue than terrorism.

Somehow, even the August 6th security briefing with the rather ominous title: "Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside the United States" failed to raise any red flags with the administration.

Now, I want to stop here and say that people smarter than me don't even know if 9/11 could have been prevented or not, so I'm not for a minute saying that it could've. But how it can be argued with a straight face that Bush did everything he could, or even everything that a reasonably intelligent 10-year-old would have done, is completely beyond me.

9/11. Now, in fairness, for about 48 hours, nobody had the faintest clue what the hell was going on; and it fell to the Mayor of New York City to hold the country together. And while I generally don't think too highly of Rudy, I have to admit, I put credit where it's due: he handled the crisis well.

So, now we're well into September of 2001; and in the week following 9/11, Bush had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to cultivate international goodwill. We had countries which, a year ago, would just as soon have pissed on the american flag pledging their support. Iran offered their support, France, England, just about all of Europe and Asia, most of Africa. For the first time in history, we had a whole world offering their contolences and asking what help we needed.

Now, maybe I'm old fashioned, but it seems like it's just good manners to respond: "Thank you. We appreciate your offers. If we need anything, we will let you know." Instead, Bush snarled "you're either with us, or you're against us." Dirty Harry is not a guide to international diplomacy. Basically, he threatened half the world into do exactly what they'd promised to do anyway. Effectively, he squandered the tragic events' one silver lining: an opportunity to cultivate international goodwill, something which would have proven useful in a time when the major enemies are international terrorist organizations.

So Bush invades Afghanistan. And he had a lot of help doing it. Everyone in the US, and several other countries supported that invasion. Incidentally, contrary to any conservative nut that tells you otherwise, Gore was a full supporter of the invasion of Afghanistan. How can one legitimately call Bush a hero for doing exactly what absolutely anyone else would have done in his position?

And in a time of national unity unparallelled since the second world war, Bush squandered the one opportunity he had to ask us for sacrifice, and make significant changes to domestic policy. Presidents during wartime have a long history of asking for, and getting, shared sacrifice from citizens willing to give it, proudly united in the service of a common cause.

He could have called for energy conservation. He could have called for us to get off Middle East oil entirely, or called for an Apollo-caliber project for total energy independence. He could have used the tragedy of 9/11 to change the course of history for the better. I truly believe that the nation would have risen to it.

Instead, he suspends whatever liberties he wanted to, and subsequently let bin Laden escape from Tora Bora. He then went on to further abuse the memory of the thousands who died on September 11th to justify an invasion of Iraq, and furhter trashed international relations and national security.

In short, a real hero would have pretty much done exactly the opposite of what Bush did at every step of the way.

On Abortion.

I suppose when you come down to it, my position is pro-choice.

But that's largely by default.

It's not like I'm in favor of lining up women by the thousands and performing abortions en masse. For that matter, were I in possession of a uterus, I honestly don't know if I could undergo an abortion myself. I just don't believe that it's any of the government's damned business. Until a court somewhere rules that life begins when sperm meets ova, the government has no more place telling women that they cannot have an abortion than it does telling them that they can't have a face-lift.

So, the pro-life brigade was out in force on campus yesterday. I walked right past them without acknowledging their existence, which, I imagine probably pissed them off more than anything else I said in the subsequent few minutes when one of their lackeys ran up to me.

Have I ever mentioned how much it annoys me when someone I have made very clear I don't want to acknowledge forces me to pay attention to them?

Anyhow, he ran up to me, pointing at the billboards they had set up in the quad, and began to preach about how Canada had performed umpteen billion "murders" (and yes, that was the term he used), in the last year. I wasn't really paying attention to what he was actually saying, so I can't remember what the actual number was that he used. Frankly, I don't care.

He was taller than me, and broader across the shoulders; I figured he could probably beat me up, so I decided to humor him for a little while.

"Okay," I said, "let's assume that I accept your very flimsy definition of 'murder,' what do you suggest we do about it?"

"We would like Prime Minister Harper to introduce a bill immediately to render all abortion illegal within Canada," he announced, sounding all self-righteous.

I think I've mentioned before that there are very few things that piss me off more than self-righteousness. But I kept cool. "You think the bill has a chance of passing? I mean, even if every single Conservative votes in favor of it; there's no way they'll get any of the other three parties on board."

"Well, that's no reason not to try," He insisted.

"True," I conceded, "but what makes you think that outlawing abortion will actually reduce the number of occurrences?"

"Well, if it's illegal..."

"...Then that just means that women desperate enough to terminate their pregnancy will just go to Mexico to have their abortions," I finished. "Heck, that's what happened during prohibition, and all they wanted then was a drink."

"At least it won't be happening here," he said. I could almost hear a loud snap as his spine stiffened.

"Oh, so abortion is okay, as long as it's not happening in your backyard? Nice to know that your morality has a geographic limitation," I told him.

"Are you saying we should just give up?"

"No, I'm saying that you should focus your energy on a strategy that might actually have a snowball's chance in hell of actually reducing the number of Abortions. Make the Morning-after pill available in front of the counter; make the wait time to acquire birth control pills shorter; make condoms available right next to the toothpaste; educate children from the time they turn twelve on how to protect themselves. You want to reduce the number of abortions? Fine. Try something that'll actually work," I replied. "I'm not telling you to give up your ambitions, I'm telling you to try something a little less ham-handed."

"But if we make birth control available to teens, they'll start having impure thoughts." And for the record, he actually used the term impure thoughts. I hadn't heard the term impure thoughts since I was a student in Catholic school.

"You show your average teenager a socket wrench, and they'll have impure thoughts," I countered. "What are you more afraid of; abortion, or the idea that teenagers are getting laid more often than you are? Choose your battles. This can be about abortion, or this can be about sex. Pick one."

"Abstinence-only programs..."

"...Don't work," I finished. "At best, they make teenagers wait an average of two years longer before they first have sex; and then they are three times more likely not to use any kind of protection when they do."

"But..."

"Look," I said, "I'm not unsympathetic here, but you really need to do something that's going to actually work. Outlawing abortion is ham-handed, it's a solution which won't work, and until a court rules that life begins at conception, it's very likely illegal. Education will take longer to show an effect, it may offend your sensibilities, but it will reduce the number of abortions, and it will be a sustained reduction."

I walked away. He didn't follow.

I don't know if his views changed significantly in those five minutes; but I'd like to think that maybe I gave him something to think about.

Why do Creationists hate God so much?

Creationists seem to have a very low opinion of God.

From their point of view, God's an egotistical prick who requires you to believe in Her as a Conditio Sine Qua Non for salvation. She's basically a boogiewoman with a few magic tricks up Her sleeves.

Now, depending on how you define the term, I absolutely believe in God. I believe that there's a unifying governing mechanic to the universe; a binding logic, if you will; without which the universe is incomprehensible, and which may, itself, be impossible to obeserve (although I'm not ruling out that this could be measured someday). On occasion, I call that "God." I don't, however, believe in God in the Burning Bush sense of the word; and I certainly don't believe that She's the vindictive asshole that many fundamentalists seem to believe She is: vindictive and merciless enough to condemn the majority of the planet who aren't some specific religion to eternal damnation. Frankly, I fail to see how such a God deserves worship.

But for the sake of argument, let's assume that God is an intelligence of some kind. Let us postulate that there is some intellect capable of creating the universe and all life therein by a sheer force of Her will. What exactly makes the Creationists out there believe that such a being can be summarized with a select few verses of a book?

If God created everything, then Her fingerprints are upon every tree and rock. She's in every sunset and sunrise, everything living and nonliving. Her brushstrokes are in every piece of trash, every building, and every cloud. If God created everything, then the place to find Her isn't in a book; it's in the world you see when you lift your nose out of it. If God created nature, then the place to look for Her is in nature itself. That's where you're going to find God's thoughts, not in a book written by people who have been dead for two thousand years.

Postulating the existence of God, reading the Bible won't tell you what She's thinking; but looking at what She's done so far might give you some insight.

Creationists don't reveal the message God sent, they ignore it. They ignore the one textbook they can possibly know that God wrote (postulating Her existence): the universe itself; in favor of a book which has been translated, re-translated, and re-interpreted time and time again. Postulating the existence of God, they choose to ignore what She actually did, in favor of the world's longest-running game of "telephone" which may describe what She's done. They assume that God's message can be written in a few select lines of text, and won't even consider the possibility that maybe the truth is bigger than the words used to describe it. They make humanity into some kind of special creature and they make God into a two-bit deity with a couple of funky magic tricks up Her sleeves.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that scientists are much closer to having an understanding of God (postulating, of course, that She exists) than any creationist is. At the very least, those who believe in Her certainly have a far higher opinion of God than most creationists seem to. Einstein once said: "I want to know God's thoughts; the rest are details." The observant among you will realize that he never once claimed that he already knew Her thoughs. Merely that he wanted to know them. And therein lies the fundamental difference between Creationism and science. Science is humble enough to acknowledge that they don't have the answers; creationism is arrogant enough to assume that they do, based solely upon a book which She might have had a hand in writing.

Now, if we only look at the evidence for evolution, then what do we have? Postulating the existence of God, She's telling us that we're not special or more important than any other living creatures; more than that, She's telling us that we're connected to every living thing on Earth. We're connected to every tree, every plant, every microbe and virus. We're connected to every animal and insect. We're a part of each and every one of them, and they are a part of us.

Extend that a little further; bring cosmology into the mix. Now, not only are we connected to every living creature, but everything nonliving as well. We're connected to every star, every planet, every rock. We're connected to the air we breathe, the water in the streams. We're connected to every single galaxy; every nebula; every piece of trash on the ground; every blade of grass; down to the most insignificant lonely atom in deep space.

If we ignore the book for a second and look at nature, then the one conclusion that we can draw is that God (postulating Her existence) is telling us something far greater than is written in any Bible; indeed, something far greater than its authors could possibly have imagined. She's telling us that we are connected, albeit distantly, with absolutely everything.

Postulating the existence of God; what more profound and moving message could possibly be sent?

Evolution is responsible for all the world's evils

I've heard some people claim, in response to the Dover Pennsylvania "Panda Trial" that the theory of evolution is somehow the root of all evil on earth. They seem convinced that it was somehow responsible for the Holocaust, racism, sexism, homosexuality, and just about any other evil that they can put through their minds.

So, just for the sake of argument, let's assume that they're right. Let's assume that the theory of evolution is responsible for death, sin, murder, genocide, global warming, Communism, Fascism, Socialism, solipsism, masturbation, mental instability, measles, mumps, rubella, the decline of religion, premature ageing, baldness, short sight, hindsight, drunk driving, myopia, hypermetropia, overpriced CD singles, the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, the San Francisco Earthquake of 1989, the Anchorage Earthquake of 1967, Pompeii, Mt. St. Helens, Pierce Brosnan no longer starring as James Bond, Daniel Craig starring as James Bond, AIDS, terrible daytime TV, movie pirating, music pirating, Mills and Boon, the hole in the ozone layer, the 8th season of Friends, the seventh season of Highlander, the second season of Sequest DSV, fraudulent Stock Exchange transactions, Florence Foster Jenkins, the assassinations of John Lennon, Abraham Lincoln and JFK, gay marriage, gays, lesbians, Brokeback Mountain not getting "Best Picture," Brokeback Mountain getting nominated for best picture, feminism, lesbianism, lesbian feminism, cancer, migraines, ulcers, antibiotic resistance in bacteria (well, okay, the theory of Evolution actually is kinda responsible for that one), George W. Bush, Dick Chaney's shooting of Harry Whittington, 9/11, The invasion of Iraq, the Big Bang, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Alzheimers, the hangover I had the other day, American beer, softwood lumber, sex and violence in movies, the collapse of Enron, the London tube strike, professional wrestling, rap music, missing socks, traffic congestion, the Tunguska blast, the ACLU, the Thomas More Law Center, Britney Spears, Hillary Duff, Teletubbies, televangelists, urban blight, poor grammar, lonely spinsters, the Battle of Stalingrad, neurosis, necrosis, halitosis, math class, blood doping in the Olympics, steroid use, every single meth lab in existence, fallen arches, fallen women, falling rocks, boy bands, boy toys, Fox News, bad news, the recent re-make of The Bad News Bears, junk mail, spam, internet porn, pedophilia, soggy cereal, warning labels, arsenic, Pat Robertson (who I suppose falls under "televangelists," but he bears repeating), Osama Bin Laden, the decline in quality of education in the United States, cell phones, people who talk during movies, people who bug me when I'm talking in movies, PETA, overpriced concert tickets and every instance of bad hair that has ever been known.

I think that probably covers all the bases.

Now, why does that mean that Evolution can't account for the diversity of life on earth?

Requiem for a Stick

So my stick died on Sunday night. Either I have a s*itload of power or the structure had been severely compromised. It was probably a little bit of both.

My staff (studiously dubbed Trembling Ram) snapped just past the halfway point; leaving two pieces where once there was one.

Oh well, I got a lot of decent life out of that staff. We had an understanding going. It didn't bean me over the head (much); I didn't break it into tiny pieces and use it for firewood. You could call it a truce, I suppose.

I'd worked so heavily with that staff that I knew its center of balance to a millimeter. I knew how it felt in my hands, how it moved, how it felt hitting another person's staff in the fighting forms... I knew that staff.

So now I guess I'm going to have to spend time "re-educating" another one.

So I'm in the market for a new stick. If I'd been thinking straight, I would've bought one while I was in Vancouver. There's a really good store there that sells White Wax Wood staffs at good prices, and I wouldn't have had to pay shipping. Fortunately, my Martial Arts school gets a discount on equipment they buy; be it weapons, uniforms, or sparring equipment; so I'll probably get a decent price for it. Maybe cheaper shipping, or something.

I might actually get two staffs. One out of waxwood for my solo forms (because chinese white waxwood looks so cool when you burn it and use it in solo forms. A second out of iron wood for fighting forms because it's heavier and tougher.

Now I have to go and come up with two new names.

Dammit.

Don't trust your eyes.

Riddle me this....

So I made the rather surprising discovery during a sparring session last night that I apparently spar better blindfolded than I do when I can see.

This, I have to admit, is something I'm at a complete loss to explain.

Actually, I can't even fully explain what possessed me to try it in the first place. I was sparring with an opponent of roughly-equal skill and getting my ass rather thoroughly pounded. So I decided that I'd see what happened when I closed my eyes. I mean, I figured it was pretty much impossible for me to get my ass kicked any worse, right?

Well, surprisingly enough, when sparring against a sighted opponent, I performed vastly better when I'd blinded myself. As my partner put it: it was as if I'd left the room and had been replaced by an identical twin who actually knew what he was doing.

Yeah, I'm at a complete loss to explain this one.

--Drew

The Stash

From about the age of fourteen until four years ago, I was a cutter. I didn't know at the time that it was actually a documented coping mechanism until a couple of years ago. I thought I was just weird.

At least twice, sometimes as many as five times a week (during exam time), usually after a particularly stressful day, I'd lock myself in the bathroom where I'd spend the next ten minutes drawing a double-edged razor blade across the backs of my forearms, and the subsequent ten minutes disinfecting and dressing the fresh cuts. You'd be surprised how well thought-out and ritualized it was. I'd make long, parrallel, evenly-spaced cuts on the back of one forearm, then I'd quickly disinfect and dress them. I'd taken a course in advanced first aid so that I knew how to effectively dress the cuts; I studied my biology textbook so that I'd know exactly where to cut so that blood loss would be minimal; I knew exactly how deep I could cut without leaving a scar; I kept a bottle of isopropyl alcohol in the bottom drawer of my desk so that the blade could be sterilized before I used it; and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide to disinfect the cuts afterwards; I cornered the market in ibuprophen to keep inflammation around the cuts under control; I'd alternate between arms to give one arm time to heal while I'd cut on the other. Never let it be said that I didn't think this through down to the last detail. I got good at hiding it, too. One of the advantages of living in the Great White North is that nobody really considers it weird if you're wearing long sleeves in the middle of the summer. This was my ritual from about halfway through grade eight until the end of High School, then I stopped for three while I was in college; and started again during my last year. I managed to kick the habit just before I graduated; and in the middle of March, I'll hit four laceration-free years; which will make the longest time I've gone without hurting myself since I started.

You wouldn't think it, frankly, I'm not sure I understand it completely, but cutting is an incredibly addictive behaviour. It's a coping mechanism. I'd have a bad day, my life would seem to be spinning out of control, and I'd be reaching for my trusty razor blade the same way some people reach for a pack of cigarettes; I had my favorite brand of double-edged razor blade, the same way some people have their favorite brand of cigarette. Being me, I couldn't pick a "normal" unhealthy coping mechnism like getting stoned. I'm probably one of maybe six students who graduated from Bishop's University never having smoked pot (second-hand pot smoke notwithstanding; you walk through the pub at Bishop's on Halloween, and you're stoned), believe it or not. Actually, the idea of taking drugs scared the bajesus out of me. Yep, I was terrified of smoking pot or shooting up, but taking a razor blade to myself seemed perfectly sensible (if you can figure that one out, you're a lot smarter than I am). For maybe twenty minutes, I felt as if I had some control over my life. Physical pain is the easy kind, I guess. The pain gave me something to focus on; the cuts gave me something to do; something that I had to deal with. Cutting was something that I was in control of (or it was in control of me; to this day, I'm not sure which). Plus razors were cheaper than pot.

I think I knew I was addicted; I often half-jokingly referred to the pharmacy as my "dealer." I'm one of those people who needs to shave often, so nobody considered it weird when that I always had a large supply of double-edged razor blades; and nobody really noticed that I didn't actually own a razor that used double-edged razor blades. As far as I know, even the young woman I dated during my time at Bishop's never suspected anything; or if she did, she never said anything about it (this isn't any fault of hers; I managed to keep the habit under control for most of the time we were dating until about the last four months we were together; and for those last four months, she was never in a position to notice). She did, however, notice that I avoided going to the doctor like the plague. I don't think she knew why, though. Nobody at all seemed to notice that I suddenly stopped wearing short sleeves altogether; even when it was warm out.

So why, after four lacerationless years, am I writing about it now? Well, I was going through some of the boxes I have in the basement of my old Bishop's Memorabilia. There, near the bottom of the box, as if they'd been waiting for me all along, was a half-empty package of Merkur double-edged razor blades, and an almost-empty bottle of isopropyl alcohol. Digging a little deeper, I found two unopened gauze bandages, a couple of 4"x4" sterile gauze pads, and about half a roll of surgical tape. I guess I'd thrown out the bottle of hydrogen peroxide, because I never found it.

My stash.

I don't know why I kept it when I left Bishop's. Maybe I thought I'd need them again someday, maybe I wanted them around as a security blanket or something.

Maybe I didn't think that I could really quit. I don't know, really.

The garbage man picked it up with the rest of the trash on Thursday.

Something bothers me about this....

There's a reason why this bothers me, I'm sure.

For some reason, it really bugs me that almost 1/4 of the money Bush has promised for HIV/AIDS prevention both in the US and abroad is going to faith-based programs who seem to truly believe that HIV is God's wrath upon the promiscuous.

There's a reason, I'm sure, why I'm concerned about the fact that much of this money is going to so-called "Abstinence Only" programs which have been proven to be, in a word, ineffective. On average, while some of their pupils may wait longer before they first have sex (an average of two years), they're far less likely to use protection when they do so.

I'm sure that there's some reason that I'm bothered by the fact that this money will support misinformation about sex, safer sex, and sexual responsibility. I'm positive that there's a reason why it bugs me that the Catholic Relief services who have, as one of their stated objectives providing "complete and correct information about condoms" but will not promote, purchase or distribute them, according to Carl Stecker. Which means that they will not make the very truthful statement: "Condoms help prevent disease," since that would technically be promotion.

There's a reason why, I'm sure, it worries me that that money is going to faith-based organizations rather than to doctors.

I know that there's some reason why I'm concerned that this money is going to religious organizations to prevent the spread of HIV, rather than an organization which actually has a chance of preventing the spread of HIV.

Now... If I could just remember what that reason was....

Oh, now I remember.

Because it's fucking stupid.

Define "Glutton for Punishment"

So.... Chinese New Year.

You know, I can't even claim I didn't know what I was getting into this year; 'cause I did it last year and I remember how pretty much every single muscle in my body was aching for the subsequent month.

At least last year, our lion dancing for Chinese New Year was spread over two days.

Not so this year. We did it all in one day. Eleven hours straight of Lion Dancing. Now that may not sound like much, but I was pretty much exhausted by the time we called it a night at 8:00 pm.

But the good news is that I survived. I'm alive and breathing.

Tired, yes.

Sore, hell yes.

Every muscle in my body feels as if it's been beaten with a rubber baseball bat.

Next year, I really can't claim that I didn't know what I was getting into.

Welcome to the Year of the Fire Dog.

I worship whoever invented the RAID array.

So one of my hard drives failed on Wednesday. This was, largely, a non-event for me because I was bright in my assembly of my current computer. The hard drive of this computer is actually two individual physical drives. The two drives have the same data written to them, so effectively, one drive is an identical copy of the other.

So the short version is that a complete drive failure on my computer was a non-issue; the drive was even under warranty, so there was no cost for replacement; and now I have the drive replaced and synchronized with the source disk. Two hours later, and it's as if the failure never happened.

The Aristocrats

So I rented the movie The Aristocrats last night.

The fact that this movie managed to get an NC-17 rating, in spite of having no violence, no sex, and no nudity should tell you something.

Basically, this movie is a documentary of a joke. A joke known as "The Aristocrats" (surprise, surprise). It's a joke which is never told in front of an audience, but has nevertheless been deeply rooted in the consciousness of stand-up comedy.

The joke begins in pretty much the same way: a family walks into a talent agent's office plugging a new act. The punchline is: "wow, that's a hell of an act," the talent agent says, "what do you call it?" The Father replies: "The Aristocrats."

Now, on the face of it, this might not seem very funny, but in between the opening lines and the punch line, they can, and do, put just about anything their warped minds can dream up. We're talking everything from simply crude, to vile, to downright disgusting. As Paul Reiser put it in the film, "I believe in some countries you can be put to death for what goes on in the most tame versions of this joke."

Basically, you shift from laughing so hard you can't breathe, to looking at the screen in complete shock that the comedian they happen to be showing actually just said what you think they said.

And as one who watched Full House in his youth, I will never look at Bob Saget the same way again.

The cast is, in a word, phenomenal. They got over a hundred very famous comedians; George Carlin, Drew Carey (who has the coolest name of all the comedians they got), Hank Azaria, Tim Conway, Carrie Fisher (I will never look at Star Wars the same way either), Matt Stone and Trey Parker, Whoopie Goldberg, Eric Idle, The staff of The Onion, Kevin Nealon, Gilbert Godfreid (who, hands down, gave the single funniest rendition of the joke), Paul Reiser, Chris Rock, The Smothers Brothers, Penn and Teller (The former was actually one of the producers of the film), Jason Alexander... The list literally goes on and on, but I can't remember most of the others. Like I said, they got over a hundred comedians for this thing.

I have here a link to the South Park version of the joke. Be advised, this file is probably not something you should watch at work, and should not be viewed by anyone with delicate tastes. You have been warned.

Definitely worth seeing.

Sex

Okay, now that I have your attention....

Actually, I want to delve a little more in detail on a subject that I touched on a few posts ago. Namely, why is sex such a big issue among right-wingers?

I mentioned that several members of the Family Research Council had proclaimed that making the HPV vaccine mandatory was "sending teens the wrong message."

We're talking about a pro-life, pro-family organization which has it's knickers in a twist over a vaccine which could potentially protect the lives and fertility of thousands of women in the US alone every single year; for the simple reason that HPV is (in 92% of cases) sexually transmitted (those who object to the vaccine tend to studiously ignore the other 8%). They're particularly fond of parading HPV horror stories in front of Teenagers to terrorize them into the "Abstinence is the only option" message because unlike HIV or VD, Condoms are less effective in preventing it (to use baseball parlance; you don't need a home run; first base will do).

Give a Christian Conservative the choice between sex and death, and they'll choose death every single time. No sex for unmarried people, no HPV vaccines, no condoms for gays ('cause it's obviously better for them to get AIDS than to use a condom; God obviously never liked them anyway), no emergency contraception, no birth control pills, no abortions for anyone. When a 13-year-old girl in Florida (identified in the newspapers only as L.G.) was pregnant and wanted to terminate the pregnancy (at her doctor's suggestion), Christian soldiers rose to, quite literally, drag the girl kicking and screaming into the delivery room, tie her to the table and force her to undergo what I understand is an extremely painful process; and yes, I realize that there wouldn't have been much actual dragging, kicking or screaming involved, but I don't think I'm exaggerating by much here. Even when it was proven and accepted by the court that carrying the child to term had a threefold greater chance of killing both her and the child than the abortion would, they still insisted that the child had to be born. Pro-life my ass. Fortunately, a federal judge disagreed and allowed the abortion to proceed. The judge, specifically chosen for his conservative views, was labeled as an activist.

I think we can pretty much give up on the idea that the Pro-life, Pro-family end of the political spectrum has anything to do with the "life of the unborn" (setting aside, for the moment, whether the unborn actually is life). This is about sex; and more specifically, keeping sex firmly coupled to reproduction, at least as far as women are concerned. If they were truly protecting "the life of the unborn," they'd be handing out condoms at street corners, they'd be dishing out birth control pills and morning after pills en masse. They'd actually listen when more "liberal" (if you use the term loosely) elements of society suggest that the way to reduce the number of abortions is to educate people on making sex safer. Instead of making emergency contraception available right next to the toothpaste (which, I can pretty much guarantee, would reduce the occurrence of abortion), they applaud pharmacists who refuse to fill out prescriptions, and doctors who don't tell rape victims about emergency contraceptives. And yet interestingly enough, while they may offer lip service to the "low" (actually over 95%, if used properly) effectiveness of condoms; for some reason they're not interested in reducing their availability in order to keep the boys chaste.

This isn't about abortion. This isn't even about reducing the number of abortions, this is about the possibility that (horror of horrors) sex could be fun. That's why they object to abortion, to any form of contraception other than abstinence, to same sex marriage, and to just about anything that could make sex less risky. If word got out that there are reasons for having sex that have nothing whatsoever to do with producing spawn, women could no longer be forced to assume the role that Christian conservatives seem to believe that they should: a brood mare for the state.

Now, I admit that I don't have much in the way of solid data to back this up. At best, this is a hypothesis; but you have to admit that there is a certain internal consistency in the suggestion that maybe this has less to do with abortion than it does forcing women to produce babies.

Am I gettin' old or something?

So I made it back to Calgary, and in a move of incredible idiocy, I decided to start Kung Fu-ing right away.

Turns out that my body isn't gonna let me get away with that. It turns out that taking three weeks and not doing any physical activity means that I can't just jump straight back into it.

So I'm very, very sore right now.

The thing that bugs me about this is that when I was 18, I probably could've got away with it. I'm not saying that I wouldn't have hurt, but at least I wouldn't be unable to move.

And, no, I'm not exaggerating. It literally took me twenty minutes just to get myself out of bed this morning, and another five to make my way across my room to the computer so that I could type this.

On the plus side, my fingers don't seem to be hurting that much, so typing isn't that high on the torture scale. I do have a few muscles that aren't kiling me. Unfortunately, they aren't located in my back, shoulders, legs, arms, feet, neck or face. Dammit.

Okay. Need to go eat something, then lie down. I hurt.