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.