Simply Put

An anniversary, an ending, and a new beginning

2006-04-01T07:33:00.000-05:00

I searched "anniversary" on google images, and this one leaped right out at me:

Happy anniversary to me! I'm a sucker for a woman in high-cut knickers and a halo.

One year ago today, I started blogging by posting some thoughts on the Terri Schiavo controversy.

Twelve months have now passed … and it's time to drive a stake through the heart of Simply Put. We'll leave it out there in cyberspace, orbitting forever like debris cast off from a space station.

When I started Ragged Glory, I tried to compartmentalize myself, segregating my thoughts into a secular blog and a Christian blog. I wasn't able to manage it very successfully, so I am decommissioning both my blogs. (Ragged Glory readers won't want to miss my final post over there.)

And now introducing … (drum roll, please) …

Toward Jerusalem!
As the header indicates, I'm going to focus primarily on theological posts. But the greater goal is to reintegrate the constitutent parts of my psyche.

In other words, I will continue to offer social and political commentary. And occasionally I'll throw around opinions on subjects I know nothing about, to prove that nothing has actually changed.

There you have it: an anniversary, an ending, and a new beginning.

In case some of you don't follow me to the new URL … thanks for sharing your opinions with me over the past year. I'm sure you were far more patient with my B.S. than I deserved.

The purpose of Simply Put was to encourage respectful dialogue on some rather complex and controversial topics, and you delivered magnificently. Give yourselves a pat on the back!

But hands off the haloed woman — she's all mine.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
copyright © 2006, Stephen Peltz

Tomorrow

2006-03-31T16:29:00.000-05:00

An anniversary, an ending, and a new beginning.

Time to pull the plug?

2006-03-28T18:45:00.000-05:00

April 1st will be my one-year anniversary as a blogger. I didn't get a tracker until late June. Here's the history of unique visitors to Simply Put since July 1.

And the word of the day is? … moribund.

Remaining CPT hostages rescued

2006-03-24T18:27:00.000-05:00

You've probably heard the news by now: James Loney, Harmeet Sooden, and Norman Kember were rescued yesterday after being held hostage in Iraq for 118 days.

The rescue began when US forces detained two Iraqis and learned where the hostages were being held. The house, located in west Baghdad, was raided within hours. The hostages were bound but apparently healthy. Their captors were not present.

It goes without saying that Loney, Sooden, and Kember are lucky — or blessed — to be alive. A fellow hostage, American Tom Fox, was killed earlier this month.

On Friday, an early evening mass will be held in Sault. Ste. Marie, Ontario (where Mr. Loney's parents live), to mark the safe release of the other three hostages.

Two of the former hostages are Canadians. According to the Ottawa Citizen, Canadian soldiers played a role in the rescue:

[Canada's] Department of National Defence yesterday would not disclose any role in the successful mission, saying they don't comment on the secret affairs of [Joint Task Force 2], which is based in Ottawa.

But British and American military sources yesterday, however, made a point of crediting Canada's key role in the mission. Pentagon and British military officials said that Canadian and special forces took the reins of the ground operation.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said that a high-level squad of diplomats, soldiers and intelligence officials from the three countries had been working closely together for "weeks and weeks," along with civilians and Iraqis in order to secure the hostages' release.

Britain runs a special intelligence network, the Black Task Force, aimed at tracking hostages in Iraq. The unit was created after the deaths of kidnap victims Ken Bigley and Margaret Hassan last year.

Kudos all around, then: to the USA for gathering the intelligence that made this rescue possible; to Britain for the work of the Black Task Force; and to Canada's JTF2 unit for taking a lead role in the ground operation.

In the comment section of an earlier post, a few of us speculated about what story the captives might tell after their release. They are about to become pawns in the great public relations battle precipitated by the Iraq war.

When they joined the Christian Peacemaker Teams mission, they believed that Iraqis are the good guys and Americans are the bad guys. Do they see things differently after they were held hostage by Iraqis and rescued by the Americans (among others)?

They are going to experience some pressure to say the "right" thing whenever they talk to Western media. But of course, the "right" thing depends a great deal on your vantage point.

Thanks for saving us; now f*ck off

2006-03-22T21:01:00.000-05:00

The Iraq war has been in the headlines again this week, because we have just arrived at a milestone: the war's third anniversary.

Many of the Iraqi people are of two minds about the U.S. invasion. Their attitude is summed up in the title of this post: "Thanks for saving us from Saddam; now f*ck off out of our country."

That is my conclusion, based on data published by the Globe and Mail this past weekend. (Worldpublicopinion.org is the original source of the data.)

I've put together three bar graphs for you. First, 77% of Iraqis think all the hardships they have suffered have been worth it to be rid of Saddam Hussein. (Click on the graph for a larger version.)

Second, 87% of Iraqis believe that the US-led forces are still needed in Iraq. (The Globe expresses the data the other way around; 13% think the forces are no longer needed.)

But here's a kick in the head for you: 47% of Iraqis approve of attacks on the US-led forces!

To be blunt about it, some Iraqis are quite irrational. There's only one way to account for the data. In many cases, the men and women who are glad to be rid of Saddam and who, moreover, recognize that the US military presence in Iraq is necessary, are the very same people who are glad to see American soldiers killed.

Thanks; we really couldn't do it without you; but I still love to see you get your head blown off!

Many of the Kurds and the Shiites fall into this camp, even though they have benefitted from the "regime change" (whereas the Sunnis lost power).

The US military isn't exactly triumphing, either. Here's a look at the trend with respect to civilian deaths:

So far, each year has been worse than the one before it. (The fourth bar represents total US casualties — not a reduction in civilian deaths.)

According to the Globe, attacks by "insurgents" increased by 29% from 2004 to 2005. In the latest shocking turn of events, Iraqi gunmen stormed a prison and released 30-odd prisoners.

If there's a bright spot to the story, it's this: US casualties in Iraq (2,314) are much lower than they were in the first three years of the war in Vietnam (19,159).

I'd like to believe that this is a winnable war. I'd like to believe that the USA is making real progress in Iraq; that it's only a matter of time before the country becomes stable and democracy takes root.

But we're nowhere near that point — not yet.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
copyright © 2006, Stephen Peltz

Whither multiculturalism?

2006-03-19T21:00:00.000-05:00

There was an excellent column in the Globe and Mail this weekend by Margaret Wente, one of the Globe's regular columnists. It is subscription-protected, but you may be able to access it by googling the title, "End of the multicultural myth".

Welcome to the new millenium, in which radical Muslims are driving the global socio-political agenda. The West is stuck in a defensive posture, reacting rather than taking initiatives. Some of our most beloved notions are wearing thin: including, as Wente points out, the multicultural ideal.

The Netherlands are leading the way — forward or backward, I'm not sure which.

Until very recently, the Netherlands was the most "progressive, liberal, tolerant nation on the planet," according to Wente: but not anymore.

Starting this week, would-be immigrants (but not from the European Union or North America) are required to watch a video about life in the Netherlands. It includes shots of bicycles and windmills, and also of a topless woman and two men kissing. "People don't make a fuss about nudity," says the narrator, who also informs us that men can marry other men, and that women have equal rights.

"These are little facts we just want to give," said one government spokesperson. But critics call the new immigration policy culturally biased and anti-Muslim. "This isn't education, it's provocation," said Abdou Menebhi, who chairs a Moroccan interest group in Amsterdam. "The new law has one goal: to stop the flow of immigrants, especially by Muslims from countries like Morocco and Turkey."

Dutch politicians deny it. But the critics are largely right. The Netherlands wants to slam the door on Muslims. The multicultural ideal has been a failure.

What has happened to bring about this reversal of values? A series of awful shocks, beginning with two murders:

of the gay politician Pim Fortuyn, who had warned about the threat of unassimilated Muslims, and then of the filmmaker Theo van Gogh. Muslim kids began harassing gay men and women on the streets. Instead of finding Dutch-born wives, second- and third-generation immigrants made arranged marriages with uneducated women from back home. Despite strenuous efforts at integration, Amsterdam's school system became completely segregated.

We've all heard about the violence many times, but there is a second cause for alarm: the demographic trends.

Today, this little nation of 16 million people has a Muslim population of 920,000. Six hundred thousand immigrants don't speak Dutch, and as many as 60 per cent are unemployed. Many of the foreign imams who are their main source of authority tell them they have no obligation to obey the rules of secular society. Theo van Gogh's killer, a Dutch-born Moroccan, was so popular in some neighbourhoods that kids put pictures of him on their schoolbags. …

Islamic radicals are convinced that time and demographics are on their side. This week, Mullah Krekar, a leading Muslim supremacist living in Norway (which faces similar problems), said the triumph of Islam in Europe is inevitable. "The number of Muslims is expanding like mosquitoes," he said. "By 2050, 30 per cent of the population in Europe will be Muslim."

In the circumstances, Holland's tough new immigration laws look less like discrimination than a desperate grab at cultural survival. "We demand a new social contract," Jan Wolter Wabeke, a high court judge in The Hague, told Newsweek. "We no longer accept that people don't learn our language, we require that we send their daughters to school, and we demand they stop bringing in young brides from the desert and locking them up in third-floor apartments."

The new laws include tough restrictions on the practice of importing women for arranged marriages. The city of Rotterdam has passed a new "code of conduct" requiring that Dutch be spoken in public. Nationally, the burka has been banned.

Violence and demographics — these two trends are causing all European nations to reconsider the multicultural ideal:

Even before the Danish cartoon wars, attitudes had begun to harden in much of Europe. French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy says France should take a cue from the Netherlands. Some German states are now requiring would-be immigrants to take 600 hours of German-language courses. One German state has a citizenship test that asks about a person's views on forced marriage, homosexuality and women's rights. Another has introduced a test that asks whether the applicant believes in Israel's right to exist.

North Americans are a little more insulated, but we cannot escape the issue that Wente has illustrated so effectively.

My oldest child begins university in September. I worry about what kind of a world my generation will pass on to him and his children.

I find climate change alarming. I worry that the human race will precipitate a global ecological crisis and try to slam on the brakes when it is too late to avoid a calamity.

And I worry about the decline of the West, as our lofty (but naive?) values are swamped by violence and demographics.

What do you think of the Netherlands' attempts to discourage Muslim immigrants? Of its banning of burkas? Of Rotterdam's law that people must speak Dutch in public?

What do you think of France's schools forbidding children from wearing anything that would identify their religious affiliation? Of the citizenship test in one German state that asks about a person's views on forced marriage, homosexuality and women's rights?

I entitled this post, Whither multiculturalism. But perhaps I should have spelled it wither.

CPT hostage killed

2006-03-13T16:22:00.000-05:00

You may have heard by now that Tom Fox has been killed. Fox was the only American among the four Christian Peacemaker Teams hostages. (My original post on the subject is here.)

According to Saturday's Globe and Mail:

Tom Fox, 54, of the Christian Peacemaker Teams had been held hostage with two Canadians and one Briton by a group calling themselves the Swords of Righteousness Brigade.

The group has demanded the release of all Iraqis from American and Iraqi prisons, but has not set a deadline.

Mr. Fox was conspicuously absent from a video dated Feb. 28 that showed the other three activists …

[CPT co-director Carol] Rose extended her condolences to Mr. Fox's family and said the killing left her and her co-workers "trembling with grief."

However, she said Mr. Fox's killing has not caused the organization to reconsider its decision to stay in Iraq. CPT still has five members in the country, excluding the hostages.

Fox was a Quaker and a pacifist. The Christian Peacemaker Teams organization evidently regards Iraqis as victims of unjustified American aggression. Fox had worked with Christian Peacemakers on several Middle East projects,

including efforts to oppose the U.S. invasion of Iraq. He also tried to put detained Iraqis in touch with their families. Ultimately, however, his captors singled him out and made him suffer a grisly fate. …

His bullet-riddled body was found at a garbage dump near a railway line three days [after the video was broadcast on the Al-Jazeera network]. Iraqi police told The Associated Press that Mr. Fox had been beaten or tortured.

People are still hoping for the release of the other three CPT captives. The February 28 video from which Mr. Fox was absent was the first contact by the kidnappers in more than a month. It suggests that the other three men are being cared for relatively well.

"All of the men appear to have access to shaving and bathing facilities, and their clothes looked reasonably clean," said Paul Buchanan, a professor of international politics at Auckland University in New Zealand and a former CIA consultant.

"This would indicate again that the kidnappers really have no intention of killing them and are making the point that their treatment of the hostages is fairly humane."

Frankly, I think the CPT organization is misguided to demonize the USA and indiscriminately regard the Iraqis as innocent victims.

Nonetheless, I respect Tom Fox's decision. Presumably he understood that he was putting his life at risk, but that did not stop him from acting on his convictions. In other words, he was a deeply committed follower of Jesus Christ.

Grace and peace to you, Tom.

Deadly prejudice

2006-03-11T15:29:00.000-05:00

An aboriginal woman in Brisbane is lucky to be alive today. Delmae Barton apparently suffered a stroke while waiting for a bus:

After collapsing on one of the bus stop seats, she was unable to move other than to turn over to stop herself choking on her own vomit.

No one picked up her handbag which lay where she had dropped it as she fell. Its contents lay scattered on the pavement.

Apparently she lay there for more than five hours, though a bus company spokesman denies she was there that long. Passers-by assumed she was just another aboriginal drunk. Eventually, a group of Japanese students summoned security and an ambulance was called.

Ms Barton is a highly respected indigenous elder and opera singer, whose son William is an internationally-renowned didgeridoo player.

Her friend and director of the Gumurri Centre at the university, Boni Robertson … said it was a disgrace Ms Barton's plight was ignored by hundreds of commuters as buses came and went.

"She said to me that she thought it was because she was Aboriginal," Ms Robertson told ABC radio.

"And she said 'I was neatly dressed, I wasn't dirty'.

"She said 'I hadn't been drinking' and she said 'is this all I'm worth Boni, is this all I'm worth'." …

More than 450 Brisbane City Council buses pass through the Mt Gravatt campus bus stop each day, collecting and dropping off hundreds of students and commuters.

It's tempting to leap to the conclusion that the people of Brisbane are more heartless than other human beings, but of course that just isn't so.

Indigenous people have been marginalized wherever they have survived into the modern era. Here in Canada, some First Nation and Inuit groups fare relatively well, but the overall picture is still one of socio-economic struggle.

Many individuals with limited prospects in their own communities migrate to the cities, where things may go from bad to worse. It's easy for the non-Aboriginal population to develop a prejudice based on the Aboriginals who fall through the cracks and end up in jail or living on the street.

And then the stage is set for a Delmae Barton scenario to play itself out.

Years ago, a streetcar driver in the city of Toronto impressed me by not making any assumptions. He saw a man lying on the sidewalk, apparently unconscious. He got out of the streetcar, established that the man was drunk but otherwise OK, and then returned to driving his route.

All these years later, I still remember that expression of concern for a fellow human being. When I read about Delmae Barton, I immediately thought of that streetcar driver.

Prejudice can be deadly. Ms. Barton is alive today only by the grace of God — or blind luck.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
copyright © 2006, Stephen Peltz

Dana Reeve

2006-03-09T18:49:00.000-05:00

There is no justice in this world. Here's the sad announcement in yesterday's Globe and Mail:

Writing a tragic coda for a life story already overstuffed with adversity, Dana Reeve, the 44-year-old widow of Superman actor Christopher Reeve, passed away Monday night at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan after a brief battle with lung cancer.

Ms. Reeve leaves the couple's 13-year-old son, Will, and her two grown stepchildren, Matthew and Alexandra.

The cancer was yet another of her life's many antagonists she had done nothing to invite, for Ms. Reeve was not a smoker. But she was not alone. When she announced her illness last August, cancer experts noted that one in five women diagnosed with lung cancer have never smoked. …

Dana Morosini was a promising actress and singer when she met Christopher Reeve while performing in a late-night cabaret at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in 1987. The two married in April, 1992, and she delivered their son Will two months later.

Ms. Reeve performed off-Broadway and on television, and served on the boards of the Williamstown Theatre Festival and the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey.

Talk about not getting your just deserts. Dana Reeve gave up her acting career to care for her husband after he was rendered quadriplegic by a riding accident in 1995.

She also campaigned alongside him. Together, they promoted paralysis research and called attention to quality-of-life issues for the disabled, particularly those with spinal cord injuries. The Christopher Reeve Foundation raises about $14 million per year in charitable donations.

I admire the selfless choices Ms. Reeve made after a tragedy that interrupted the course of her life.

Yes, most women stay with their husbands to support them when a catastrophic illness or injury occurs. And I suppose it was made easier in her case because of the money available to her.

On the other hand, you could argue that she was living a Hollywood dream-come-true that was rudely interrupted. If Ms. Reeve was a shallow human being — as some celebrities appear to be — she might have looked to escape from her marriage.

Instead, she honoured the marriage commitment, "in sickness and in health". That is a thankless position to be in when the "sickness" is quadriplegia.

Christopher Reeve died nearly a decade after his accident, in October, 2004. At that point, Ms. Reeve might have begun to build a new life for herself. Instead, less than a year later, she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of lung cancer.

Senator Diane Feinstein sums it up: "I thought that after everything that she had gone through with Chris that she would have time to smell the flowers and be in the sun. But apparently that was not meant to be."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
copyright © 2006, Stephen Peltz

Why Canadians should support the mission in Afghanistan

2006-03-05T23:22:00.000-05:00

There was another misleading poll published in the Canadian media this weekend. The culprit this time was the Ottawa Citizen. (In my previous post, on Canada's contribution to the war in Afghanistan, I objected to a misleading question in a Globe and Mail poll.)

The headline in the print edition of the Saturday Citizen reads, "Support for Afghan mission falls as casualties rise". The article explains,

The Ipsos-Reid poll … found that 52 per cent of Canadians feel that the 2,200 Canadian Forces troops deployed to Kandahar are on a vital mission and should stay the course, while 48 per cent said the troops should be brought home as soon as possible.

The poll results are meaningless because the two options are not mutually exclusive. Of course the Canadian troops should be brought home "as soon as possible"! What's the alternative? — to leave them in Afghanistan when there's no longer any reason for them to be there?!

I agree that that the Canadian troops should be brought home as soon as possible. The goal is for the people of Afghanistan to take control of their own affairs. The sooner that happens, the better. But I also agree with the other statement: the mission in Kandahar is vital and our soldiers should be there.

The headline is also misleading because of the reference to rising casualties. So far, only eleven Canadians have been killed in Afghanistan. The CBC lists the first ten deaths here. Reuters reports that another soldier died earlier today.

Another ten soldiers were injured last week, after Canada assumed command of the Kandahar mission. But these are professional soldiers, who enlisted in the Canadian Forces voluntarily, and who understand the risks of entering a war zone. Corporal Paul Davis, who was killed last week, willingly embraced the risks, as reported in the Toronto Star:

Jim Davis said his son's deep sense of duty prompted him to turn down a promotion that would have kept him out of Afghanistan.

"When he decided to go to Afghanistan, that really impressed me because he loved his family and his two children but he had the sense of duty, and comradeship with the other people he had been training with," he said yesterday.

I don't know that I would have made the same choice as Corporal Davis. But it was his choice to make, and Canadians have to respect him for it.

I think it's true that support for the Afghan mission is soft. And I think it's irresponsible of media outlets to use sensational headlines to sell papers at the risk of undermining support for a worthy endeavor.

The first job of any government is to establish law and order. We forget that because by and large we take our security for granted. But nothing else can be achieved without it: the construction of roads and buildings, the provision of electricity and running water, economic development, the promotion of human rights — progress on such things is impossible as long as anarchy reigns.

According to Rick Hillier, Canada's Chief of Defence Staff, that's why our troops are in Afghanistan:

Decades of civil war and occupation have laid waste to Afghanistan, where warlords and ethnic groups have frequently fought among themselves in the periods when Soviet, U.S. or Arab fighters have not staked any claims to the country. …

With Western help, a democratically elected Afghan central government is forming, but remains fragile as it lacks strong security forces needed to fight insurgents.

Canada can help create conditions that will curb Afghanistan's high infant-mortality rate, Gen. Hillier said, and help increase the average annual income of $300 to the point where farmers are less tempted to cultivate opium. But any development is contingent on security, the general said, and that's why the Canadian military's most crucial job is to help Afghans police themselves.

"We're doing an entire spectrum of operations, from straightforward negotiation and dealing with folks, to training police, training the army, to helping work with the international community. … Right through to firefights with the Taliban, to ensure they are not going to be able to stop the progress."

Our soldiers understand the risks they're taking when they ship out to Afghanistan. But they also understand that this is a worthy cause: that the mission serves the best interests of the residents of Afghanistan.

We Canadians should do our part by supporting our soldiers as they carry out a dangerous assignment.

If you would like to know more about the mission in Afghanistan, the Globe and Mail has a Web page dedicated to it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
copyright © 2006, Stephen Peltz

Something for everyone

2006-03-01T21:58:00.000-05:00

Some of my readers prefer politics to any other subject I address; others of you prefer my theological posts. Tonight there's something for everyone.

Below is a post on the Canadian Brigadier-General who is now responsible to suppress the insurgency in southern Afghanistan.

Over at Ragged Glory, I am continuing to explore hell. That is, I continue to argue against the traditional view of hell as a place of eternal torment. I lay out the case for annihilationism instead.

Canada's contribution to the war against terrorism

2006-03-01T21:54:00.000-05:00

Canada is taking on a big challenge in Afghanistan: we have assumed command of the international coalition in southern Afghanistan, where insurgents continue to inflict heavy casualties.

This is Canada's contribution to the so-called war on terror. The Government of Canada decided against sending troops into Iraq, a decision that most Canadians feel has been vindicated by subsequent events. However, we have participated in the war in Afghanistan, presumably freeing some US troops to fight in Iraq.

Taking charge of the region around Kandahar is a responsibility of a much greater magnitude, however.

According to today's Globe and Mail, Brigadier-General David Fraser has been on the ground in Kandahar for several weeks, but he did not formally assume command of the international coalition (from U.S. Colonel Kevin Owens) until yesterday.

In recent days, senior Canadian defence officials, most notably Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor, have been at pains to say that the 2,200 Canadian troops deployed in the Kandahar region are there primarily to support the Afghan government and its institutions.

The reality on the ground, however, is that the Afghan institutions most under threat now are the Afghan National Police and Afghan National Army, both of which have sustained casualties in a concerted insurgent campaign of roadside bombings and suicide attacks.

As a result, Canadian soldiers, while pursuing their humanitarian mission, will also be taking the fight to the insurgents, just as the U.S. troops they are replacing have done over the past year.

"In fact, what we're doing is we're going into their yard," Brig.-Gen. Fraser told CTV's Lisa LaFlamme yesterday. "We're going to start kicking them."

That will mean sending combat patrols into outlying areas where Taliban remnants and other insurgents retain control.

At the same time, Canadian troops can expect more of the urban suicide bombings and improvised explosive devices that have recently plagued coalition and Afghan troops in and around Kandahar city, U.S. military officers said.

Opposition leader Bill Graham, the former defence minister, expressed strong support for the Afghan mission yesterday.

"This is no longer the original mission that was started back when the Taliban were behind al-Qaeda. This is a mission now where the international community has committed itself to have Afghanistan create a stable society. They now have an elected, democratic government there. They want our troops there."

On Saturday, the Globe and Mail published the results of a poll commissioned jointly with the CTV television network. The poll found that 62 per cent of Canadians oppose sending troops to Afghanistan, while only 27 per cent support it.

(Note: the pollster's question was somewhat misleading: it implies that there are no Canadian troops in Afghanistan at present, which is not true.)

"I'm very, very surprised at the degree of opposition to something that is not well known by the population," said Allan Gregg, chairman of the Strategic Counsel, which conducted the poll.

"I think you've got a knee-jerk against doing anything with the Americans, especially on the military front, but also part of this distinctiveness and difference with the United States is our unwarlike nature." …

76 per cent of Quebeckers were against the idea, while 56 per cent of respondents in Western Canada — who are seen to be closer in values to the United States — also do not like the idea. …

On a related question, the poll found that among those who support sending troops, 31 per cent would change their minds if the operation leads to significant casualties.

It's true, Canadians like to think of themselves as peacemakers, not aggressors, and we like to distinguish ourselves from the USA on that basis. But I'm not sure the poll results should be taken at face value.

The Liberal government did little to build support for an aggressive campaign against terrorism. The new Conservative government may be able to increase public support for Canada's role in Afghanistan just by getting the facts out there. But that remains to be seen.

Canada's Winter Olympics champion

2006-02-27T16:49:00.000-05:00

The Canadian team won 24 medals at the 2006 Winter Olympic games. This positioned them in third place (as decided by the most total medals, not by the most gold medals) behind Germany (29) and the USA (25).

Coming in only one medal behind the USA is pretty impressive, since the USA has ten times our population. Of course, we have ten times as much winter!

Cindy Klassen was the big story for Canada.

She brought home five speed skating medals: one gold (1,500 metre long-track speed skating); two silver (1,000 metres and women's team pursuit); and two bronze (3,000 metres and 5,000 metres).

Five races, five medals. Klassen is the first woman ever to win five long-track medals at one Olympic games. It is also the most medals ever won by a Canadian at a single Olympic games.

Klassen had a bronze in the games at Salt Lake city, so her lifetime total is six medals.

It was fitting that one of our female athletes should dominate. Canada sent fewer women than men to the games, but the women won 16 medals to the men's 8.

Many countries provide less funding for their female athletes than for their male athletes. Canada doesn't take sex into account in determining levels of funding, and it seems to have paid off in Turin.

24 is the most medals Canada has ever won at an Olympic games, far more than our previous record of 17 at Salt Lake City.

How do you spell p-r-o-d-i-g-y?

2006-02-25T11:06:00.000-05:00

There's a great story in today's Globe and Mail about an 11-year-old spelling champion. 2½ years ago, she spoke no English — only Chinese and French. But now she will represent her school in the regional spelling championship, which may catapult her into a national competition.

How is this possible? Who learns not only to speak English, but to spell it in only 2½ years?! It is truly extraordinary, according to Jack Chambers, a sociolinguist at the University of Toronto:

[Mr. Chambers] points out that learning a language and becoming a good speller are different things.

"Everybody knows children have a God-given ability for mastering language that gets lost somewhere around puberty," he says. "But spelling is not something that's a gift; it's an acquisition. It's something we have to learn, and it's a lot more like learning how to play chess than learning how to speak."

Wenyi Yin's first language is Mandarin. She was born in Changchun, a city in northeastern China, in 1994.

When she was 5, her parents moved the family to Belgium, where her father, a chemical engineer, earned his doctorate, and where French is spoken at school.

"We couldn't speak French," says her father, Zhihui Yin. "Suddenly, in eight or nine months, she spoke fluent French." In 2003, Mr. Yin finished his studies. He and his wife, Yajie, decided to move to Canada, where Mr. Yin found a research position at the University of Toronto.

When they left Belgium, her father says, Wenyi's English vocabulary consisted of two words: "Okay and bye-bye, and that's it."

The family had only two months to adjust before the school year would begin. They exposed Wenyi to as much English as they could. But

the morning announcements, in English, were lost on the nine-year-old as she settled into her seat at Huron Street Public School in Toronto.

"When they said, 'Please stand up for O Canada,' I didn't know what to do," she says now. …

Wenyi was in good company at Huron; about one-third of the 430 students have a first language other than English. She was matched with another Mandarin-speaking student, who served as a mentor.

While she initially appeared shy and quiet, Wenyi was soaking up words like a sponge. When her parents would bring home a fresh batch of books from the library, thinking they would keep her busy for a week, she'd take them back after a few hours and ask for more.

"I remember I learned English, the everyday words, in three months I guess," she says. "I just listened to other people say it, and it just registered in my head. It just started building up, bit by bit."

This is already amazing by me. I've studied French and New Testament Greek, but frankly I'm terrible at learning a second language. I am awestruck by the rest of Wenyi's story:

One morning last fall, her ears pricked up during morning announcements. "Do you like to S-P-E-L-L?" Samantha Berman, a Grade 5 teacher, asked over the PA system. "Is spell check a superfluous tool for you? Do you like competition?"

Yes, Wenyi thought. She liked words — all of them, she says — so she made her way to Room 13 for the inaugural meeting of the school's CanSpell Club on Oct. 3.

The club's 11 members, from Grades 4, 5 and 6, met once a week. Using the CanSpell study list, they would fill their 45-minute lunch break with word games, crossword puzzles and forays into the dictionary to find the words' origins and definitions — words like 'Lilliputian' and 'oxytocia' and 'hydrangea.'

At their first bee on Jan. 26, in front of their classmates, the competitors dropped off, one by one, as they worked through a list of about 50 words. When her last opponent flubbed 'attuned,' Wenyi got it right, then coasted to victory on a gimme. "It was so easy," she says. "It was 'helmet'."

This month, she advanced another step by winning a written bee, overseen by Ms. Berman. That win assured Wenyi's role as Huron's representative at the regionals on March 5. She will face spellers from 73 other Toronto schools in a showdown at the St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts, one of 14 regional bees to be held across the country.

The winner and runner-up from each regional contest will advance to the CanWest CanSpell National Spelling Bee in Ottawa on April 5.

OK, Wenyi has a way to go before we can declare her a national champion. But obviously she has an extraordinary aptitude for language. I am so impressed!

Eternal torment: the NT texts considered

2006-02-23T23:16:00.000-05:00

Over at Ragged Glory, I explore a topic that is sure to win over many friends for me: hell.

The traditional position of the Church understands hell as a place where God will torment the wicked eternally. In the post, I lay out a case for annihilationism: an alternative view which holds that the wicked will be punished only for a period of time proportional to the nature and frequency of their sins.

Candy coated coffee beans

2006-02-21T18:19:00.000-05:00

My favourite coffee shop occasionally gives out free samples of candy coated coffee beans. I like the concept, but I've always been a little wary of them. I'm sensitive to caffeine, and Mary P. has this disturbing story she likes to tell.

It's a true story, about a woman who ended up in the emergency ward at her local hospital with a dangerously high heart rate. She was eating candy coated coffee beans like they were — well, like they were candy. She didn't realize just how much caffeine they actually contain.

So I have been looking at these appealing treats a little suspiciously and wondering: just how much caffeine do they contain? The sales staff in the coffee shop weren't able to tell me.

The answer is this: a small serving (28 grams = 1 oz.) contains nearly twice as much caffeine as a regular cup of coffee.

type	serving	caffeine
drip	250ml = 8oz	115-175mg
espresso	30ml = 1oz	100mg
candy coated beans	28g	226mg

Some comments are in order. First, the amount of caffeine in a cup of java varies depending on how strong the brew is. That's why the amount of caffeine in drip coffee is presented as a range, 115-175mg.

Second, you may be surprised to see that a serving of espresso has less caffeine than a serving of drip coffee. Why? Espresso is served in much smaller amounts, as you can see from the table. It is also brewed more quickly (30 seconds instead of ~6 minutes), so less caffeine is extracted — see below.

Third, as I've already stated, a serving of candy coated coffee beans contains nearly twice as much caffeine as a regular cup of coffee. Bear that in mind, and save yourself a trip to emergency.

I know there are a lot of coffee lovers out there. Here, for your amusement, is a little bonus information.

Espresso myths exposed!

Myth: Espresso carries more of a caffeine jolt than regular brewed coffee.

False: Espresso is brewed from Arabica beans, which have a richer taste and a lower caffeine content than the less prized (and less expensive) Robusta beans. Because a cup of espresso takes no more than 30 seconds to brew, less caffeine is extracted than in drip coffee — which takes anywhere from 5 to 7 minutes.

Myth: Bigger is better.

False: Large cups don't do espresso justice. The proper portion of espresso is one ounce, and the cup should be very small so that it holds the heat. Thick china cups are preferred. Large cups dissipate the heat and the crema (foam) which carries the aroma in a fine cup of espresso.

[An aside: Speaking as a vertically-challenged man, I feel compelled to point out that this "bigger is better" business is always a myth — in whatever context it arises. So to speak.]

Myth: Put your coffee for espresso in the freezer for freshness.

False: Freezing the coffee coagulates the natural oils contained in the bean. In an espresso, those oils emulsify producing the wonderful body of this special cup of coffee.

I apologize if that last sentence sounds like a bit of a sales pitch. In fact, it is: the Web site is hosted by Illy coffee.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
copyright © 2006, Stephen Peltz

Tolerance is not enough

2006-02-20T05:10:00.000-05:00

Tony Blair's government recently failed to pass a controversial piece of legislation, the Racial and Religious Hatred bill. A watered down version of the bill is likely to be introduced in its stead:

The new offence is designed to stop hatred being whipped up against people because of their religion — not just their race. …

Sikhs and Jews already have full protection from incitement because the courts regard them as distinct races. But Christians, Muslims and others have not been given the same protection because they do not constitute a single ethnic block.

Presumably the government expected Christians to support the bill, but it was opposed by groups including the Seventh Day Adventists and an unlikely alliance of humanists, secularists, evangelical Christians, and even some Muslims. The latter group of strange bedfellows, in a letter to the Daily Telegraph, worried that the bill would undermine free speech:

"A free society must have the scope to debate, criticise, proselytise, insult and even to ridicule belief and religious practices in order to ensure that there is full scope — short of violence or inciting violence or other criminal offences — to tackle these issues." …

The signatories to the letter include two Muslims, Dr Ghyasuddin Siddiqui, leader of the Muslim Parliament, and Manzoor Moghal, of the Muslim Forum.

Their views contrast with the stance of the Muslim Council of Britain, widely seen as the country's most representative Muslim body, which is supportive of the new legislation.

The Church of England supported the legislation, but Dr. N.T. Wright, the Bishop of Durham, opposed it. Wright is a clergyman and a New Testament scholar who makes a lot of waves. (If you do a blog search on Tom Wright you'll get more than 17,000 hits.)

On February 9, Wright addressed the House of Lords on the theme, "Moral Climate Change and Freedom of Speech". Here are some excerpts (the full text is available here):

What we face, my Lords, is "moral climate change", comparable to other forms of climate change and equally dangerous. The 1960s and 1970s swept away the old moral certainties, and anyone who tries to reassert them risks being mocked as an ignoramus or scorned as a hypocrite.

But since then we’ve learned that you can’t run the world as a hippy commune. Getting rid of the old moralities hasn’t made us happier or safer. We have discovered that we do indeed need some guidelines if chaos is not to come again. …

This uncertainty, my Lords, has produced our current nightmare, the invention of new quasi-moralities out of bits and pieces of moral rhetoric. … But it isn’t just the invention of new moralities that should concern us, my Lords. It is the attempt to enforce them — to enforce, that is, newly invented standards which are in some cases the exact opposite of the old ones.

How else can we explain the ejection of a heckler from a party conference for questioning the government’s stance on Iraq, or the attempted silencing of protests on the same subject in Parliament Square? How else can we explain the anxiety not only of religious leaders but also of comedians when faced with that dangerously vague and insidious Religious Hatred legislation? How else can we explain the police investigation of religious leaders such as my Right Reverend colleague the Bishop of Chester, or the Chair of the Muslim Council of Great Britain, for making moderate and considered statements about homosexual practice?

And since the crimes in question have to do, not with actions but with ideas and beliefs, what we are seeing is thought crime. People in my diocese have told me that they are now afraid to speak their minds in the pub on some major contemporary issues for fear of being reported, investigated, and perhaps charged.

My Lords, I did not think I would see such a thing in this country in my lifetime. All that such a situation can achieve is to add another new fear to those which minorities already experience. The word for such a state of affairs is "tyranny": sudden moral climate change, enforced by thought police. …

Part of the problem of "freedom of speech" is that it tends to be the media who are most in favour of it — though they themselves often cheerfully censor information that cuts against editorial policy. Freedom of speech, my Lords, is useless if it is only selectively enjoyed, and if it is not combined with appropriate responsibility.

If "freedom of speech" is to be rehabilitiated as a useful concept, it needs to be set within a larger context of social and cultural wisdom. …

"Tolerance" is not the point. My Lords, I can "tolerate" someone standing on the other side of the street. I don’t need to engage with them.

"Tolerance" … is a parody of something deeper, richer and more costly, for which we must work: a genuine and reciprocal freedom, a freedom properly contextualised within a wise responsibility, freedom not to be gratuitously rude or offensive, especially to those who are already in danger on the margins of society.

It is a freedom to speak the truth as we see it while simultaneously listening to the truth as others see it, and to work forwards from there. …

My Lords, it is precisely that sort of wise, responsible freedom which is at risk if you’re afraid that honestly held beliefs, clearly and respectfully expressed, are likely to get you into trouble with the law.

Wright makes a lot of provocative points here. I singled out just one in the title of this post: tolerance is not enough.

Wright suggests that tolerance is a cheap virtue. We need to do more than tolerate those who are different from us: we need to engage them in dialogue.

Hence the importance of free speech. When people are free to express their ideas, conventional views get held up to critical scrutiny. We learn from one another, and we make intellectual and moral progress.

That's why Wright opposed the Racial and Religious Hatred bill. It is impossible to engage others in dialogue if you're afraid that you'll be arrested if you speak your mind.

On the other hand, free speech is a means to an end, not an end in itself. Thus Wright is critical of the way free speech is currently exercised in our society. He says that free speech must be exercised responsibly; it is useless if it is only selectively enjoyed; it must be set within a larger context of social and cultural wisdom; it is a freedom not to be gratuitously rude or offensive.

Wright doesn't say so, but I suspect those cartoons that denigrated Muhammad and Islam are in the background here. Did the cartoons promote dialogue between Muslims and non-Muslims? Did they cause us to think twice about our conventional understanding of Islam, or did they merely reinforce the sterotypical view? Did they contribute to the human race's intellectual and moral progress?

We are grappling with complex and incendiary issues here. Governments and news media act irresponsibly when they make simplistic, expedient gestures.

In the current geopolitical climate, moving forward is like hiking on uneven terrain: with each and every step, we must be extremely careful about where we set our feet.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
copyright © 2006, Stephen Peltz

... to reconcile to himself all things

2006-02-18T21:11:00.000-05:00

Over at Ragged Glory, I ask about universalism.

Traditional Christian teaching says that many (presumably the majority) of human beings will ultimately be damned. But some Christians resist that conclusion: they argue in favour of universalism, the belief that every human being ultimately will be saved.

The biblical case for universalism is stronger than most Christians realize. We're used to hearing that unbelievers will spend eternity in hell — so used to it that we bleep right over a series of New Testament passages that appear to say just the opposite.

Olympic-calibre sportsmanship

2006-02-16T21:03:00.000-05:00

From Wednesday's Ottawa Citizen:

In an act of pure sportsmanship, the head of the top cross-country ski team in the world sacrificed an Olympic medal for his own country by handing Canadian skier Sara Renner a pole after hers broke during a race yesterday.

The move by Bjornar Hakensmoen, the chief of the Norwegian cross-country ski federation, meant that Ms. Renner and Beckie Scott were able to keep up in the women's team sprint and capture the silver, while the Norwegians came in fourth.

The Canadian team was in second place when Ms. Renner's pole broke. The race was a relay where one skier does a 1.1-kilometre loop, then tags their partner, who races the same loop. They repeat the process three times.

Ms. Renner was skiing her third lap. When the pole broke, two other skiers quickly passed her:

"I don't even know what happened," a grinning Renner of Canmore, Alta., said after earning Canada's third medal of the Games.

"I just knew that all of a sudden I was kind of paddling with one arm.

"I didn't panic. I think a Norwegian gave me a new pole. It was a man's pole and it was really long. I was able to make it without losing too much time. It's not the best thing to happen, but at the same time, you can't give up."

Returning to the first article:

Over the remaining 400 metres of the lap, Ms. Renner managed to almost catch up to her Swedish, Finnish and Norwegian peers. By the time she tagged Ms. Scott, 31, of Vermilion, Alta., the Canadians were only two seconds behind third-place Norway with two exchanges remaining.

Without receiving the pole from Mr. Hakensmoen, Ms. Renner would have laboured into the exchange area, and Ms. Scott would have had a Herculean task to catch the top three skiers.

Mr. Hakensmoen made light of his decision:

"This is a small, small thing," he said, humbly. "Hopefully, she's happy."

… "It's for the good of the sport. We need to help each other.

"We have a policy in the Norwegian cross-country ski program that, if a skier from another country needs equipment, we have to help. … It doesn't matter (that Norway finished fourth). We need to compete on a fair course. The skiers need two skis and two poles and that must be the right way."

Good for him, being modest about it. But it was an olympic-calibre act of sportsmanship.

The most Jewish of the Gospels

2006-02-14T18:59:00.000-05:00

Over at Ragged Glory, I have been exploring the question, Are Christians required to obey the law of Moses? I have argued that Paul's answer to the question is, No — Christians are not under the law.

In my current post, I shift our attention to the Gospel According to Matthew.

Matthew is the most Jewish of the Gospels. A close examination suggests that Matthew and his readers continued to obey the law of Moses: specifically, the laws distinguishing clean from unclean foods and the Sabbath laws. Matthew and his community also continued standard Jewish practices such as almsgiving, fasting, and worship in the Temple.

I believe this issue illustrates the extent to which Christians may legitimately diverge from one another in doctrine and in practice. Logically, there is a limit to how far we can stray from the "norm" and still call ourselves Christians. But I think our tendency is to draw that line too soon. Even within the pages of the New Testament, diverse doctrines and practices are represented.

The Muhammad cartoons:How Jews and Muslims in Canada have responded

2006-02-13T18:41:00.000-05:00

First, the statement of the Canadian Jewish Congress:

TORONTO – Canadian Jewish Congress National President Ed Morgan made the following statement regarding the controversial publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed in newspapers in a number of countries including Canada:

"We are saddened by a situation that has gotten entirely out of hand. The decision by all those who chose to publish the cartoons is inexcusably provocative, insensitive and disrespectful of Muslim believers. At the same time, we strongly denounce the verbally and physically violent reaction to their publication by so many of those same believers.

"We commend Canada’s Muslim community for the civility with which it has protested and those media who have decided not to republish the cartoons. We regret that there are some in the media and elsewhere who have taken the misguided step of using these cartoons as a means to defend freedom of expression.

"We join those Muslims and non-Muslims who have been appalled by the response to the publication of the cartoons and condemn those groups and regimes that have fanned the flames for their own political ends. We stand in solidarity with the Danish people whose institutions are being attacked and whose products are being boycotted, and with whom we have a special historic connection. We remember with gratitude the exceptional role Denmark played in rescuing its Jewish citizens from the Holocaust.

"Freedom of expression and the protection of vulnerable minorities from group vilification are fundamental values of a secular, pluralistic democracy. These two values must be delicately balanced against one another. We hope that that calm re-establishes itself so that this issue can be discussed in an atmosphere of mutual respect, without intimidation."

Meanwhile, according to the Globe and Mail, a magazine which publishes out of Calgary, Alberta, will publish the cartoons today. For emphasis, allow me to repeat the relevant part of the CJC's statement: "We regret that there are some in the media and elsewhere who have taken the misguided step of using these cartoons as a means to defend freedom of expression."

Second, let's have a look at the response of the Canadian Islamic Congress. The quote comes from another Globe and Mail article, entitled "Why the global rage hasn't engulfed Canada":

Mohamed Elmasry, president of the Canadian Islamic Congress, said violent demonstrations simply aren't a fit with the Canadian Muslim community — which, because of Canada's immigration requirements, he said, is the most highly educated Muslim community in the world.

"They would find legal and peaceful means of protest far more productive," said the imam and professor at the University of Waterloo. "With demonstrations, you cannot have full control over who does what."

His organization, the largest Muslim umbrella group in Canada, has actively discouraged demonstrations over the cartoons and has spoken publicly against the violent protests.

The Globe and Mail also quotes Tarek Fatah, a leader of the Muslim Canadian Congress. Mr. Fatah makes a point that, in my view, penetrates to the heart of the matter: that moderate Muslims must take "ownership of the word Muslim."

Mr. Fatah believes that has happened in Canada: that moderate Muslims have mobilized to ensure that their voice gets heard, not the voice of the extremist minority.

How to enrage your enemies and alienate your allies

2006-02-12T16:02:00.000-05:00

The USA has a lock on the gold medal for meddling. I suppose it's a natural consequence of being the most powerful nation on earth; every nation that has ever found itself in that position has succumbed to the temptation of coercing other nations into doing their bidding.

From the print edition of Saturday's Globe and Mail (emphasis added):

The 45-year-old U.S. embargo on trade, travel and investment dealings with Cuba is an anachronistic leftover of the Cold War that should have been lifted years ago. Instead, the Bush administration has turned more aggressive in enforcing the ban, to the point that it is demanding once more that the foreign subsidiaries of American companies obey U.S. regulations, even when they contravene the laws of the countries in which they are operating.

Such was the case last Friday when the Hotel Maria Isabel Sheraton in Mexico City tossed 16 Cuban officials out of ther luxury rooms and seized their deposit. …

The Cuban trade delegation had been invited to a conference with U.S. energy executives in Mexico City. The sponsor was the U.S-Cuba Trade Association, a Washington-based lobby that seeks to foster business opportunities between Cuba and the United States, which do exist despite the embargo.

When the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Asset Control, which enforces the Cuban rules, got wind of the public meeting, a phone call was placed to … Sheraton's corporate parent. Not wishing to run afoul of U.S. authorities, the company ordered the eviction. But in doing so, the hotel embarrassed the Mexican government and likely violated Mexican law. …

Nothing was happening in Mexico City that could have hurt U.S. national interests. Indeed, the trade association said it was scrupulously obeying U.S. rules.

The Bush administration has relied on two pieces of legislation, the 1996 Helms-Burton Act … and the Trading with the Enemy Act, which dates back to the First World War, to intimidate U.S. and foreign companies trying to do business with Cuba.

Canadian companies have also been faulted for "trading with the enemy". The U.S. government has threatened to seize the assets of Canadian companies doing business with Cuba.

To be blunt about it, the Bush administration should f*ck *ff. Message to George Dubya: you are not the President of Canada. And frankly, you're running your own country into the ground, so we'd prefer to chart our own course.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
copyright © 2006, Stephen Peltz

Off to Vancouver

2006-02-08T00:14:00.000-05:00

I'm leaving early tomorrow morning to spend three days in Vancouver.

Tonight, I managed to publish a new post on Ragged Glory: "Rightly dividing the law of Moses", the follow-up to my earlier discussion of whether Christians are bound by the Ten Commandments.

See you Saturday!

Eight steps to perfection

2006-02-07T07:36:00.000-05:00

Chosha has tagged me to post on the meme, "8 points that my perfect partner would have."

Generally, I don't do meme posts; in fact, this will be the first one I've ever done. But it's a worthy theme, especially since Mary P. lifted it out of the theoretical realm and enabled me to experience it in my daily life.

My perfect partner:

1. Would have a mind of her own.

I need my partner to be an intellectual peer to me, not an adoring audience. (Not that any woman has ever had the bad judgment to throw herself down at my feet in adoration.)

Early in our relationship, I said to Mary P., "I like the fact that you have strong convictions of your own." To my surprise, she froze like a deer in the headlights. She was afraid, based on previous experience, that the comment was a criticism — prelude to a conflict.

But I sincerely meant it as a compliment. I don't want Mary P. (or commenters on my blog, for that matter) just to parrot my opinions. I want a partner: someone who challenges me, corrects me, and supplies what I lack.

2. Would be a skilled conversationalist.

As I once explained in a post, For the love of dialogue:

Early in our relationship, Mary P. and I came up with a simile. "When we talk," one of us said, "it's like we're building with bricks: I lay a brick, you lay a brick, I lay one, you lay one …. The finished structure is something neither one of us could have built on our own."

That constructive approach to dialogue is the cornerstone of our relationship. (That, and the extraordinary physical magnetism between us.)

3. Would value intimacy as much as I do.

As I explained in one of my posts on introversion, I believe introverts have a paradoxical need for intimacy. Introverts may seem self-contained, but that is an illusion:

Introverts need fewer relationships than extroverts, but they desire a profound degree of intimacy in the relationships they do form.

The primary person to whom I look to satisfy my need for intimacy is Mary P. — to the point where she sometimes feels slightly suffocated. But we both have a high need for intimacy, so most of the time we're in sync here.

4. Would approach conflict the same way I do.

I hate unresolved conflict. I need intimacy, and unresolved conflict creates tension and erects barriers between people.

Mary P. and I both feel compelled to work through a conflict until it is thoroughly resolved, so no residual resentment remains. Once in a while this gets silly: we take a conflict that wasn't that significant in the first place and we agonize over it. In those instances, we just need retreat to our separate activities for a while. The insignificance of the issue will be obvious when we gain some perspective on it.

But I'd rather err in being overzealous about resolving conflict, if the alternative is to routinely let conflicts linger, unaddressed.

I should add that "working through a conflict" doesn't mean yelling at or insulting each other, or dredging up every disappointment we've caused each other since our first meeting. Mary P. likes to say that conflict can be constructive. That's a paradoxical statement, but it's true.

5. Would understand the principle of reciprocity.

"What goes around, comes around", people say. Oh really? — not in this world! In my experience, most relationships are lopsided. One person gives more; the other person takes more.

When I call Mary P. my partner, I mean that it's a relationship of equals. Sometimes I'm emotionally needy, and she plays the supportive role. Sometimes she's emotionally needy, and I play the supportive role.

This principle should apply in every area of a relationship. Domestic tasks, for example. And sex.

(With the guys, I have to be a little bit blunt here — female readers should skip down to the next paragraph. Guys: it isn't time to roll over and go to sleep until both of you have experienced the fireworks. And — how can I say this delicately? — the act that gets you there probably won't be enough to get her there. Experiment, be open to direction, figure out how to achieve results.)

6. Would possess prominent maternal characteristics.

See how this little child is snuggling up to Mary P.? (Actually, I had to edit the child's face out of the photo for reasons of confidentiality. But take my word for it, the little hand you see is attached to a little girl.)

Dads always want Mary P. to care for their child, because her maternal qualifications are self-evident. And let's face it: even grown men like to be babied sometimes.

7. Would enjoy the company of children.

This is a variation on point 6, the one about maternal qualities. (You thought I meant something else, you sick, sick people.) I have children from a previous marriage. Back when Mary P. and I first linked up, when my children were young, I can't imagine that any woman who didn't enjoy the company of children would have had anything to do with me.

And of course, my children are still part of my life. We've got a bunch of years ahead of us before they reach adulthood.

8. Would be independently wealthy.

My perfect partner would have enough money to make me a kept man. I could quit my job and write full time, until I could make a decent living at it.

(Oh well, 7 out of 8 isn't bad.)

Bonus alternative: Would play the piano.

In lieu of number 8, I'll accept an ability to play the piano. I love to putz around the house while Mary P. provides live music in the background. It is positively delightful!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There are other things I could add to the list. My perfect partner:

would continually seek to enrich herself intellectually, and to develop in terms of character;
would be a believer, or at least take some pleasure in my obsessive interest in theology;
would provide me with a steady supply of chocolate.

But enough already! I've already got a partner who is perfect for me!

Be my Valentine, Mary P.!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
copyright © 2006, Stephen Peltz

Inciting Muslims to violence

2006-02-05T08:04:00.000-05:00

The only way to make any kind of progress in this war against terrorists who blow up trains and buses and knock down buildings is to have the rest of the Muslim world onside. … We need their help.

(Peter Zimonjic, Saturday's Ottawa Citizen)
Anger among Muslims, precipitated by twelve Muhammad cartoons, is increasing daily. The cartoons were first printed in Jyllands-Posten, a Danish newspaper. Guardian Unlimited explains how this crisis was set in motion:

Jyllands-Posten took up the case of a Danish author who could find no one to illustrate a book about the prophet Muhammad. The paper, presenting this as a case of self-censorship, asked 12 illustrators for depictions of the prophet, and the one that has caused immense offence shows the prophet wearing a turban that conceals a fizzing bomb.

This is the cartoon that has caused the most offence, except I am not showing Muhammad's face. Displaying any likeness of Muhammad or one of the other prophets — even a respectful likeness — is offensive to Muslims.

Jyllands-Posten argued that the cartoons were published in defense of freedom of expression. In solidarity with Jyllands-Posten, newspapers in Germany, Italy, France, Spain, Belgium and the Netherlands subsequently published at least one of the images. In England, the BBC showed the images in one of its broadcasts.

Yesterday was designated a "day of anger" in the Muslim world. Today, the Globe and Mail reports that protesters have set fire to the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Syria. So far, no one has been killed in response to the cartoons.

I say, a pox on both their houses. I'm scanning the horizon, looking for good guys, but there are none in sight.

It's fair to say that the Muslim response is ironic. My interpretation of the turban cartoon is this. Muhammad represents all of Islam. The turban with the lit fuse represents violence, including terrorism. The message is, Islam is a violent religion. And the Muslim response is? — violence, or at least the threat of violence.

In England, according to the Ottawa Citizen, protesters repeatedly shouted, "U.K. you must pay; 7/7 is on its way" — a threat to carry out more bombings, like those on London's public transit system on July 7, 2005. The response appears to confirm the message of the cartoon, that Islam is a violent religion.

There's also a double standard at play here. Jack provided a link to this cartoon. (Click on it to see the whole series of similar cartoons, taken from Arab media.) Tom Gross explains, the cartoon depicts Ariel Sharon "watching on the sidelines as an Israeli plane crashes into New York’s World Trade Center. … This cartoon restates the widely held myth in the Arab world that Israel and the Jews were responsible for the 9/11 attacks."

A reasonable person might ask: If it's OK for Arab media to publish antisemitic cartoons, why isn't it OK for Jyllands-Posten to print derogatory cartoons of Muhammad?

Jack points out that Jews are fed a constant diet of this sort of abuse, and they do not respond by setting fire to Arab embassies.

But I also object to the editorial decision of Jyllands-Posten and the other European media who subsequently published the cartoons. The media must have foreseen the risk. By publishing the cartoons they knowingly incited Muslims to violence.

For surely the cartoons are gratuitously offensive. The issue was, no one would illustrate a book on Muhammad. What sort of illustrations did the author have in mind? Was he looking for cartoon caricatures, defaming Muhammad and Islam? Presumably not.

Jyllands-Posten wanted to make the point, We believe it's OK to draw a picture of Muhammad to illustrate a book on Islam. Is that the point they actually made? Obviously they went much further than that.

Finally, I want to return to the quote at the top of this post. I have argued, on previous occasions, that a war is being waged for the soul of Islam. The behaviour of many Muslims suggests that Islam is a peaceful religion. The behaviour of many other Muslims suggests that Islam is a violent religion.

Which is the true Islam? That will be determined by which group of Muslims prevails in the struggle to define it.

We in the West must do everything in our power to help the peaceable Muslims prevail. The stakes are enormously high; it is no exaggeration to say that world peace hangs in the balance. Everybody in the West needs to keep that agenda in mind and act in concert to promote the cause of peace.

Jyllands-Posten and the other European media have made a serious error of judgment. They have increased support for the violent strain of Islam: and that is contrary to the interests of Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
copyright © 2006, Stephen Peltz

Christian Peacemaker Team hostages still alive

2006-02-03T17:52:00.000-05:00

Here's an update on a story I brought to your attention on December 9. It appears that the four Christian Peacemaker Team hostages were still alive as of January 21. The Globe and Mail reports, a video aired on the al-Jazeera network

showed the four CPT volunteers — Canadians James Loney, 41, and Harmeet Sooden, 32, together with Briton Norman Kember, 74, and American Tom Fox, 54 — standing against a white wall in a dark room, wearing ordinary clothing rather than the orange jumpsuits captives sometimes wear on such videotapes. They looked thin but otherwise healthy. …

Accompanying the video, dated Jan. 21, was the reiterated demand that, unless all Iraqi prisoners are set free, the four will be killed, al-Jazeera said.

The same demand was made a few weeks ago, when Dec. 10 was set as the deadline. Saturday's broadcast marked the first time since then that word has surfaced of the four men, who were abducted Nov. 26.

"The group … said it was giving a last chance for its demands to be met," al-Jazeera reported.

The four men are representative of many other men and women who are being held hostage in Iraq. Hostages sometimes vanish after an initial burst of publicity, so that it is impossible to know for certain whether they are alive or dead. But whenever I have information to share with you, I'll post it.

Using church bulletins to turn a profit for Disney

2006-02-01T21:24:00.000-05:00

Christianity Today has published an article about the commercialization of the Chronicles of Narnia:

With the film release of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, The Chronicles of Narnia has become a blockbuster franchise with numerous products and corporate tie-ins (McDonald's, General Mills, Virgin Atlantic, Oral-B, and Kodak, to name a few).

There's even a public relations site, NarniaResources.com, "intended to mobilize the church to consume and market the movie (à la The Passion of the Christ)." Here's a quote from the Free Downloads page:

Download the official The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe promotional materials via Adobe Acrobat [PDF] to your computer, and print/use as needed. Materials include: movie posters, postcards, bulletin inserts, flyers, etc.

Note the reference to bulletin inserts. Disney is inviting your church to promote their movie when people arrive to worship. And Disney fully expects churches to leap at the opportunity.

I think you can argue this issue either way. On the one hand, the movie presents an opportunity to talk to people about Jesus Christ. (I make some of the biblical content of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe explicit here.) Churches are always seeking a bridge to the unchurched community. The Narnia movie, like The Passion of the Christ before it, can serve as just such a bridge.

But Professor E.J. Park, the author of the Christianity Today article, thinks churches should hesitate before embracing Disney's agenda:

In an age in which any notable spiritual movement immediately begets a plethora of associated products (calendars, Bible covers, journals, T-shirts), the logic and form of commercialism demand our critical attention, not merely our easy acceptance. … When is it a problem to turn certain ideas or realities into merchandise? …

The typical responses to these questions focus on the explicit messages of the products. As long as the content is deemed acceptable, merchandising is viewed as a win-win situation. …

Will our sense of Aslan change if Narnia is offered as a Happy Meal at McDonald's? Will a White Witch vanilla milkshake appropriately capture the spirit of the original work? Has hearing Aslan speak through the voice of Liam Neeson stripped the lion of his mystery?

Unsurprisingly, the primary concern for Christians has been keeping intact the notion of Aslan as a Christ-figure. Any regard for the consequences of transforming Narnia into forms of merchandise is deflected by the assurance that the message of Aslan will not be compromised.

I should make my bias clear up front. I have serious reservations about capitalism. Yes, it works better than any other economic system if your goal is to increase productivity and generate wealth. (That is the goal of an economic system, right?) But it does so by appealing to base aspects of human nature.

Materialism, acquisitiveness, greed, status symbols, conspicuous consumption, the use of means both fair and foul to advance beyond your competitors — principles such as these drive capitalism and make it a "better" economic system than socialism or communism. But surely those principles conflict with Christian values:

"Be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions." (Jesus, Luke 12:15)

There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need. (Acts 4:34-35)

Despite my reservations about capitalism, I'm of two minds about this issue. I don't know that the commercialization of Narnia and Aslan is necessarily a bad thing. After all, in the final analysis, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe is just a story. And if it's a story that makes people think about spiritual things, why wouldn't Christians promote the movie?

But, like Professor Park, I am uncomfortable with the ease with which Christians slip into the commercial paradigm, like it's a comfy sweater.

Is it OK to use church bulletins to make money for Disney? Let's not duck our heads in the sand here, that's what we're being asked to do. When Professor Park speaks of a "win-win" scenario, this is what he means: the Church "wins" by exploiting this bridge into the unchurched community, while Disney wins by turning a big fat profit on the movie and all its associated merchandise.

Surely the Church should have some qualms about this — no?

At first I intended to publish this post on Ragged Glory; but, on second thought, I wanted to invite Christians and non-Christians to engage with each other on this issue. Perhaps I'm guilty of airing the Church's dirty laundry in public, but I am greatly interested in the potential for a cross-cultural dialogue here.

(hat tip, Primal Subversion)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
copyright © 2006, Stephen Peltz

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. I sometimes take the liberty of inserting paragraph breaks where I deem them appropriate.

Are you my mother?A true story

2006-01-31T21:08:00.000-05:00

Have you ever read the P.D. Eastman story, Are You My Mother? It's the classic tale of a baby bird that falls out of its nest, and wanders off in search of its mother.

Every time it encounters an animal, it thinks, "Maybe this is my mother!" Might be a dog, might be a cow, might even be a Snort: the baby bird isn't choosy, it just wants a Mama.

Here's the true story of a baby hippo that did something similar. (The story has been verified by Snopes.com.)

The story concerns a baby hippo. It was washed into the Indian Ocean in 2004, when the tsunami hit the coast of Kenya. Although the hippo survived the ordeal, it became separated from its mother.

Like the baby bird in the P.D. Eastman tale, the hippo went off in search of a surrogate mother. And it was lucky enough to find a willing (if unlikely) candidate:

That's one big tortoise! More photos and a fuller account of the story can be found at AmbivaBlog.

Yosemite Sparky

2006-01-30T21:25:00.000-05:00

One of the residents of our home is Sparky, a long-haired guinea pig. He bears a striking resemblance to a certain Looney Tunes character.

Separated at birth? You be the judge!

copyright © 2006, Stephen Peltz

The one thing it is impossible for God to do

2006-01-29T21:46:00.000-05:00

Over at Ragged Glory, I have posted three theological riddles:

1. What is the one thing it is impossible for God to do?
2. What is the one thing God forgets?
3. What is the one man-made thing in heaven?

I kid you not, all three riddles have a biblical answer.

Cure of the soul, part 2

2006-01-27T21:12:00.000-05:00

Part 1 was posted long ago! — I'm definitely tardy in following up.

A recap is certainly in order. I introduced the topic, the cure of the soul, by quoting an Orthodox priest:

According to Orthodox tradition, after Adam's fall man became ill; his nous [mind/heart] was darkened and lost communion with God. Death entered into the person's being and caused many anthropological, social, even ecological problems.

Orthodox tradition claims that humanity suffers greatly from a sickness of the soul. If so, we need to obtain a healing for that malaise: i.e., a cure of the soul.

I posed three questions for your consideration:

Do human beings suffer from a spiritual or psychical malaise?
If so, what precisely is wrong? (What is your diagnosis of the malaise?)
How can the malaise be remedied? (What treatment would you prescribe?)

In my opinion, the answer to question #1 is Yes, human beings suffer from a spiritual malaise. I provided evidence to support my position in the original post. Here I want to press on to answer questions 2 and 3.

Diagnosis

It may seem simplistic to reduce "what ails all human beings everywhere" to a single problem, and yet I believe it can be done. In fact, I believe it can be reduced to a single word: what ails us is that we are self-centered.

"Self-centered" does not necessarily imply "conceited". People can have a very low opinion of themselves but, if they are constantly thinking about what worms they are, they are still pathologically self-centered.

I believe our self-centeredness is responsible for many of the problems mentioned in my earlier post: an inequitable distribution of wealth (selfish acquisitiveness); racism, hate speech, and attempted genocide (failure to understand and accept others not like ourselves); environmental degradation (failure to live in a way that is sustainable for the sake of succeeding generations).

Moreover, to be self-centered is to be estranged from God and from fellow human beings. This estrangement or isolation is the source of much of our chronic discontent. As I pointed out in the previous post, depression is widespread in modern, Western societies. It persists even in the midst of material affluence and good health relative to previous generations.

At this point I want to discuss a mythological account of human origins. The account is found in the Hebrew scriptures, in Genesis 3, where the serpent tempts Eve. The author of that text offers his or her account of the sickness of the human soul.

Until the first sin, Adam and Eve led an other-centered life: God was the focal point of their existence. In Genesis 3:5, the serpent says to Eve, "when you eat of [the fruit] … you will be like God". Thus the first sin may be described as Eve's attempt to exalt self in the place of God.

At that point, human beings ceased to be other-centered: self became the focal point of human existence.

It doesn't matter to me how you regard the text. You may believe that Genesis is the word of God and records historical events. Or you may believe that Genesis came from a human author, who used myth to communicate his or her opinion. Either way, the text lays out a theory about the human condition: an account of the sickness of the soul (self elevated to the place of God) that afflicts all human beings everywhere.

Treatment

Now we move to question #3: How can the malaise be remedied? (What treatment would you prescribe?)

Regular readers are aware that I am a Christian, but I don't want to get evangelistic on you. Instead of presenting Christian doctrine in isolation, I want to compare it to two other worldviews.

a) Buddhist worldview

First, a Buddhist worldview. Over the years I have engaged in a little study of Buddhism. By no means am I an expert on it, but I find Buddhism particularly instructive because it differs so profoundly from the Judeo-Christian worldview.

The diagnosis outlined above offers a point of contact between Buddhism and Christianity. Consider this statement by Dr. Walpola Rahula:

According to the teaching of the Buddha, the idea of self is an imaginary, false belief which has no corresponding reality, and it produces harmful thoughts of "me" and "mine", selfish desire, craving, attachment, hatred, ill-will, conceit, pride, egoism, and other defilements, impurities and problems. It is the source of all the troubles in the world from personal conflicts to wars between nations. In short, to this false view can be traced all the evil in the world.¹

Dr. Rahula here echoes the argument I made above. He claims that self-centeredness is the root cause of "all the evil in the world".

But the sharp-eyed reader will notice there is also a conflict between Buddhism and Christianity on this topic. Christians believe that the self is real, but the Buddha denied it. Our subjective experience is that we have a self; but Buddhists claim this is "an imaginary, false belief which has no corresponding reality."²

Treatment, from the Buddhist perspective, is a matter of enlightenment. We must arrive at a deep realization that our subjective experience of self is merely a false consciousness. Again, I want to stress that I am no expert on Buddhism. But my understanding is that enlightenment is achieved partly through education (taking hold of the Buddha's teaching) and partly through meditation (breaking through to a different sort of consciousness).

For the Christian, treatment is necessarily different, because Christians accept that the self is real. Again, I want to avoid preaching an evangelistic message here. But I will observe that Christianity tells us we need to be resurrected or reborn or regenerated. These are different metaphors for a single idea: that the individual needs God to intervene to effect a fundamental change inside of him or her.

(I believe this perspective is shared, at least to some extent, by Judaism. Certainly the perspective is rooted in the Hebrew scriptures: e.g. Ezekiel 36:26. Admittedly, however, Judaism places more emphasis on human obedience to God's law.)

Here, too, Buddhism stakes out a starkly different position. The Buddha taught that each person must

develop himself and work out his own emancipation, for man has the power to liberate himself from all bondage through his own personal effort and intelligence. … If the Buddha is to be called "a savior" at all, it is only in the sense that he discovered and showed the Path to Liberation, Nirvana. But we must tread the Path ourselves.

Perhaps I may be permitted to register an objection to this Buddhist teaching. Dr. Rahula tells us that the self is illusory; but then he tells us that "we must tread the Path ourselves". Thus the individual is thrown back on self as the vehicle of liberation. If the objective is to escape self, it is paradoxical to rely on self as the means of escape.³

b) Secular worldview

Finally, I must briefly address the secular worldview. I assume that secular readers will be drawn to the Christian assertion that the self is real. On the other hand, they will be drawn to the Buddhist doctrine that "man has the power to liberate himself from all bondage through his own personal effort and intelligence."

Thus a secular worldview cannot adopt the Christian way of escape (regeneration via God's intervention), nor can it adopt the Buddhist way of escape (a shift of consciousness which recognizes that self is an illusion).

More than this: it seems to me that the secular worldview is inescapably self-centered. Modern Westerners deny God's existence, so God cannot serve as the focal point for an other-centered orientation. Moreover, there is no such thing as objective, absolute truth, which might provide common ground to lift us beyond our narrow individualism.

Arguably the noblest achievement of modern Westerners is our human rights codes. But note that such codes enshrine individual rights and freedoms. There is no corresponding legal doctrine of social responsibilities or obligations. Again, I am led to suspect that a secular worldview offers no way to cure the sickness of the human soul, the root of all our problems: our intractable self-centeredness.

Of course, I am biased because I am deeply committed to a Christian worldview. I invite my readers to set the record straight if I have misrepresented the secular position.

What are your answers to questions 2 and 3?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
copyright © 2006, Stephen Peltz

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

¹Walpola Rahula, What the Buddha Taught, 2nd ed., 1974.

²I am aware that this is a somewhat simplistic account of what Buddhists actually teach. In a sense, there is such a thing as "self". But it does not correspond to what Christians mean by the term, since self is neither the pure essence of the individual, nor constant. Instead, the self is understood as an aggregate which changes from one moment to the next:

According to the Buddha's teaching, it is as wrong to hold the opinion "I have no self" as to hold the opinion "I have self", because both are fetters, both arising out of the false idea, "I AM". … What we call "I", or "being", is only a combination of physical and mental aggregates, which are working together interdependently in a flux of momentary change within the law of cause and effect. … There is nothing permanent, everlasting, unchanging and eternal in the whole of existence.

³It may appear that Buddhist thought is hopelessly contradictory at this point, but the fault perhaps lies with my simplistic presentation of the subject. I will clarify the Buddhist teaching by again quoting Dr. Rahula:

There are two kinds of truths: conventional truth and ultimate truth. When we use such expressions in our daily life as "I", "you", "being", "individual", etc., we do not lie because there is no self or being as such, but we speak a truth conforming to the convention of the world. But the ultimate truth is that there is no "I" or "being" in reality.

Paul Martin's greatest achievementas Canada's Prime Minister

2006-01-25T18:02:00.000-05:00

For those of you who are interested in Canadian politics — Hello, is anybody still reading? — I should note that we had a federal election here two days ago. Canadians voted to replace the Liberal minority government with a Conservative minority government.

(Minority governments happen in Canada because we have more than two political parties. If you have only two parties, one or the other is bound to have the upper hand when the ballots are counted. In Canada, where we have more than two parties, a party can win the most "seats" in Parliament but still have fewer seats than the combined strength of all the opposition parties.

Actual results in this election: Conservatives, 124 seats; all other parties combined, 184 seats. The Conservatives got more seats than any other party (the Liberals were second with 103 seats), so they get to form a Government. But, if the opposition Members vote in concert, they can vote down the Government's initiatives.)

Over on Bill's blog, Art of the Rant, I have published my post-election analysis. One or two of you may be interested — who knows?

God's existence, and ours

2006-01-23T21:00:00.000-05:00

From time to time, I am drawn into a discussion on whether God exists. Most recently, Snaars commented:

Q, you say that you believe God to be eternal and you do not believe that God caused himself. Most theistic philosophers would agree with you. They do not believe that God "caused" himself - rather, they believe that God possesses certain qualities that necessitate his existence in every possible universe. In other words, they believe that God exists because he can't not exist.

I should point out that this is a very generous comment on Snaars' part, since he himself is an atheist.

I responded:

I like that way of putting it. I suppose I would add that, if God ceased to exist (were such a thing possible) everything else would likewise cease to exist. Because God is the "ground of our being", whatever precisely that phrase means.

Coincidentally, I came across a discussion of the same topic in an essay by Thomas Merton. We're in rather philosophical territory here, but you may find it instructive.

Merton begins with self as the first thing known to us. This is how our minds work: we begin from our own existence and work outwards from there. But Merton insists that is the wrong starting point. God's existence, not ours, is primary:

In our evaluation of the modern consciousness, we have to take into account the still overwhelming importance of the Cartesian cogito. (Cogito means "I think"; Merton is referring to Descarte's famous aphorism, "I think, therefore I am.")

Modern man is a subject for whom his own self-awareness as a thinking, observing, measuring and estimating "self" is absolutely primary. It is for him the one indubitable "reality," and all truth starts here. …

It is this kind of consciousness, exacerbated to an extreme, which has made inevitable the so called "death of God." Cartesian thought began with an attempt to reach God as object by starting from the thinking self. But when God becomes object, he sooner or later "dies," because God as object is ultimately unthinkable. …

The mystical consciousness of St. Theresa implies [an alternative] attitude toward the self. The thinking and feeling and willing self is not the starting point of all verifiable reality and of all experience. The primal truth, the ground of all being and truth, is in God the Creator of all that is. …

The "existence of God" is not something seen as deducible from our conscious awareness of our own existence. On the contrary, the experience of the classic Christian mystics is rooted in a metaphysic of being, in which God is intuited as "He Who Is," as the supreme reality, pure Being. …

Once there has been an inner illumination of pure reality, as awareness of the Divine, the empirical self is seen by comparison to be "nothing," that is to say contingent, evanescent, relatively unreal, real only in relation to its source and end in God.¹

Merton's way of approaching the issue may be unpalatable to all of my readers, Christians and atheists alike. (Though I have one Buddhist reader who may find it amenable.)

I'd make a poor mystic, myself. But I completely agree with Merton's description of God as the supreme reality, pure Being; and of our existence as contingent on God's existence and therefore relatively unreal, real only in relation to its source and end in God.

That is precisely my conviction. Indeed, I suspect this is the first characteristic we should identify in defining what we mean by the word "God".

Anything else we might say about God — that God is a personal being, that God is love, that God is omnipotent — anything else we might affirm about God is secondary to this one fact, that God exists.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
copyright © 2006, Stephen Peltz

¹Thomas Merton, "The New Consciousness" in Zen and the Birds of Appetite.

The Great Canadian preoccupation

2006-01-22T17:21:00.000-05:00

The great Canadian preoccupation is, of course, the weather. Overnight Friday / Saturday, we got dumped on: about seven inches of snow, by the looks of it. This is the third or fourth major storm here so far this winter.

Photos can't really capture the effect of a landscape, of course. But if you click on this one twice, to blow it up to its full size, you can get just an inkling of the scene's visual impact.

I know there's a lot to be said for year-round sun and warmth. But you have to admit, snow-laden trees make for gorgeous landscapes.

This isn't a good photo, but it shows something interesting. The snow was wet and "packy". As a result, this tree is supporting a startling amount of snow — the snow is much wider than the branches.

This last one's for Jack. Jack, I challenge you to a one-on-one game of basketball — under Canadian conditions.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
copyright © 2006, Stephen Peltz

Knock if you dare

2006-01-20T19:39:00.000-05:00

Two new posts over at Ragged Glory: "Knock if you dare" and "Who says scholars don't have a sense of humour?" (Both posts are humorous.)

And note there's a new post below this one, too.

A day job ... and talent!

2006-01-20T18:24:00.000-05:00

At the end of the last post, I commented that some bloggers can really write. And it reminded me that I've been meaning to publish a post on my colleague, Tom Lips.

A few months ago, Tom invited me to attend a benefit concert in which he was the headliner. I was curious, and it was for a good cause, so Mary P. and I attended together. But my expectations were not very high.

After all, Tom has a "day job". He can't have any real talent or he'd make his living as a musician, right?

Wrong! I should have known better. Talent by itself doesn't guarantee that you'll make it to the top of the charts, or even that you'll be able to earn your living as a musician. (Or painter, or writer — whatever your talent may be.)

Think of the Beatles, for example. If anyone ever deserved to make it to the top based on sheer talent, it was Lennon and McCartney. But they still needed a heaping helping of luck.

If it hadn't been for Brian Epstein, the Beatles might never have made it out of northern England. But surely Brian Epstein was an unlikely character to be running a record shop in Liverpool.

Their second stroke of luck was in catching the ear of George Martin, the only person worthy of the title, the Fifth Beatle. (Did you know that Martin always worked for his modest EMI salary? — at no time did he earn millions off the Beatles.)

The point is, even extraordinarily talented people need a lot of luck to achieve stardom. Just because someone doesn't "make it big" doesn't mean s/he lacks talent.

Tom has a good voice and he plays the guitar well. But where he really shines, in my opinion, is as a songwriter. His CDs feature a variety of styles: folk, calypso, pop, country — even a tongue-in-cheek polka tune.

On Practical Man, there are several songs with beautiful melodies. You can download an excerpt of one of them, "May Morning Love Song", here. Other songs are humorous: for example, "Big Rocks are Falling" (excerpt here).

Tom is also a fine lyricist. Here's a lyric that manages to be simultaneously poignant and humorous — no easy trick!

this love is a weed

this love is a weed
it's not a fragile flower
it didn't bloom in a day
it won't fade in an hour
you can trample it down
you might think it was gone
but when you look around
it's taking over the lawn

this love is a weed
that you can't root out
and it's stronger than fear
and it's deeper than doubt
it's a humble claim
and a green, green, fire
it's the flower and flame
of a soul's desire

Chorus:
this love is a weed,
it's a stubborn seed
when the nights get cold
and it puts out shoots
and it sends down roots
and it just takes hold
it can raise a blade
from the deepest shade
it's a rugged breed
it can wait for rain,
it can deal with pain
this love is a weed

this love is a weed
but weed is just a word
for what's hardest to kill
that's what I've always heard
if you've been looking for roses
they might not be what you need:
roses bloom and they fade
but this love is a weed
There's real wisdom in the message of that last verse. This post isn't meant to be an advertisement, but you should buy the CD on the strength of that one song alone.

A lot of bloggers, including me, are aspiring writers. I want to offer you this bit of encouragement: you may have a "day job", but that doesn't prove you lack talent.

Keep on honing your craft. Whether or not you ever "make it big", the craft is its own reward. And who knows, one day a lucky break (following a lot of hard work) may bring you to the attention of a Brian Epstein.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
copyright © 2006, Stephen Peltz

An introspective moment

2006-01-18T18:41:00.000-05:00

When I was a kid, I used to crawl into a dark space in one part of our home, and sometimes stay there for an hour or more. It was rather peculiar behaviour, looking back on it from an adult perspective.

How peculiar? Let me describe the dark space I'm talking about.

My father owns an upholstery business. He has approximately a dozen employees. A pretty respectable operation, I think.

When I was a kid, the sewing department was in two rooms that took up one side of the ground floor of our house. The rest of the "shop" was in a separate building, located on the same property, on the other side of the driveway.

In the sewing department, there were shelves full of rolls of fabric. And I would wriggle into a gap between the rolls. It was dusty, musty, dark, and decidedly claustrophic. A strange place to retreat to, away from sunlight, fresh air, open spaces, and people. And I liked it in there.

(Have I ever mentioned that I am an introvert? Why yes, I have.)

All my life I have felt isolated; the odd man out of any and every group I've ever been associated with. (Thank God for Mary P., a true soulmate.)

Sometimes that sense of isolation is a painful cross to bear. But, in my opinion, it's also a good way to be. I don't want to follow the crowd; it is my nature to be the one fish that swims, stubbornly, against the current, while the rest of the school floats downstream.

Maybe these three things aren't even connected to one another: crawling into a dark space as a kid, my introversion, that sense of being different from other people. Maybe they aren't related, but when I think of my peculiar behaviour as a kid, the other two thoughts follow in train.

As for that sense of difference and isolation: I wouldn't have it any other way, even though it isn't the easy path to take through life.

What has inspired this introspective moment? An exceptionally poignant post over at Hildebrand Road, Cheryl's blog. Some bloggers can really write; the rest of us are amateurs by comparison.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
copyright © 2006, Stephen Peltz

If Christ is the end of the law, what about the Ten Commandments?

2006-01-16T21:42:00.000-05:00

There's a new post over at Ragged Glory. In an earlier post on the symbolism of the stone table in the Chronicles of Narnia, I talked about Christ as the end of the law. The follow-up post was written in response to a provocative comment:

I don't know what it would mean to say that the law was abolished. Which law was it that was abolished, and why? You implied that it might symbolize the Ten Commandments being abolished. But let's be real—which of the Ten Commandments are no longer in force?

I've spent the better part of two days grappling with an adequate response to that question!

Even the birds are cold

2006-01-15T10:30:00.000-05:00

It's clear and cold out this morning: -18°C / 0°F. There are three sparrows huddled on a leafless bush outside my window, with their feathers puffed up in a vain attempt to generate warmth. (Click on the photo to enlarge it.)

Stupid birds. If I had wings, I would fly south for two months, January and February.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
copyright © 2006, Stephen Peltz

The symbolism of the stone table... and more

2006-01-13T18:27:00.000-05:00

I haven't posted much this week — at least, not here at Simply Put. In part, it's because I was preparing for a job competition. Meanwhile, we're nearing the end of an election campaign here in Canada, and I've published a couple of posts on Bill's blog, the Art of the Rant. It looks like there's going to be a change of government, with Stephen Harper's Conservatives replacing Paul Martin's Liberals in office.

Over at Ragged Glory, I've published a follow-up post on the Chronicles of Narnia. I keep musing on the symbolism of the stone table, where the White Witch killed Aslan. More precisely, I wonder about the shattering of the stone table: what did that symbolize? It symbolizes the end of something; but of what?

Finally, I have a brief update on the Christian Peacemaker Teams hostages in Iraq. (Original post here.) Unfortunately, it isn't much of an update: there's still no news. Here's an excerpt from today's Globe and Mail:

More than one month after the deadline set by kidnappers of four Christian activists in Iraq, their families and colleagues are still waiting for word about their fate. …

Matt Loney, brother of Canadian James Loney, said the Christmas holidays were "very difficult." Family members exchanged gifts, but "it just felt much more empty."

But despite the agony of waiting, Mr. Loney said his family remains hopeful that the situation will end safely.

"If James and the others come back healthy and unharmed, then we would be prepared to wait as long as it takes for that."

It's hard to be optimistic, but let's hope Mr. Loney's hopes come to fruition.

Munich: Spielberg goes wishy-washy

2006-01-10T08:02:00.000-05:00

The 1972 Olympic games were held in Munich, in what was then West Germany. One night, eight Palestinian terrorists gained entry into the Olympic Village. They killed two members of the Israeli team, held nine other Israelis hostage, and subsequently killed them when the German government carried out a failed rescue attempt.

The new Steven Spielberg movie takes its title from those shocking events. Spielberg reenacts the events, very effectively, in the film's opening scenes. But this is just a prelude to the story Spielberg really wants to tell.

The movie is actually about Munich's aftermath: the decision of the Israeli government to locate and assassinate the leaders of the massacre, the Osama bin Laden and Ayman Al Zawahiri of that era. According to palestinefacts.org:

Following the Munich massacre, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir gave instructions for Israeli agents to hunt down and kill those behind it. She told the Knesset on September 12, 1972:

We have no choice but to strike at the terrorist organizations wherever we can reach them. That is our obligation to ourselves and to peace. We shall fullfil that obligation undauntedly.

To carry out the Prime Minister's directive, the Israeli Mossad [secret service agency] initiated one of the most ambitious covert counterterrorist campaigns in history. …

One [assassination team] operated through normal Mossad channels while a second unit recruited staff officers and highly trained specialists anonymously and external to the government, supported financially through covert mechanisms.

The movie purports to tell the story of the second, irregular team. That team assassinated five of the leaders who were responsible for the Munich massacre and participated in killing three more. They also eliminated four other terrorists not involved in Munich, but associated with other crimes against Israel.

Rating the movie merely as entertainment, I would give it only 3 stars out of 5. Spielberg is a great storyteller, and he has the raw material of a great story here. But the movie is flawed: for example, there are two contrived conversations between Avner, the leader of the Israeli team, and his Palestinian counterparts.

More seriously, there is a scene toward the end of the movie that intermingles sex and violence in a way that is simply bizarre. (The violence in the movie is graphic by my standards, but then I have a low tolerance for blood and gore.) I might say the scene is exploitative except it isn't the least bit sexy. Presumably it's supposed to contribute something to character or plot development, but I have no idea what the scene's message is.

But those are my comments on the movie as a movie. Munich has another, philosophical level to it — and it is flawed at that level, too.

Spielberg doesn't want just to entertain you; he wants to change the world. In an interview with Time magazine, he described Munich as a "prayer for peace".

Munich sets out to convince you that killing people is immoral, and that one violent act leads to another. There are two problems with that objective. First, I expect you already know that one killing leads to another in a vicious circle. Second, Spielberg couldn't risk offending anybody, so he fails to take a moral stand of his own.

Spielberg hoped that both the Palestinians and the Jews would enthusiastically embrace this movie. Instead, he has offended both groups. That is always the result when you try to please everyone: instead, you get dismissed as "wishy-washy".

But perhaps "wishy-washy" isn't strong enough language. Spielberg has been accused of glossing over the evils of terrorism: of trying to establish moral equivalence between the Jews and the Palestinians.

The movie is based on a book, Vengeance, written twenty years ago by George Jonas. In Macleans, a Canadian periodical, Jonas comments:

Spielberg's Munich follows the letter of my book closely enough. The spirit is almost the opposite. Vengeance holds there is a difference between terrorism and counter-terrorism; Munich suggests there isn't. The book has no trouble telling an act of war from a war crime; the film finds it difficult. Spielberg's movie worries about the moral trap of resisting terror; my book worries about the moral trap of not resisting it.

I think this issue — this striving to establish moral equivalence — is very important. It's the main reason I decided to write this post. The perspective is commonplace not only in Hollywood, but also among Western journalists.

I tend to agree with Jonas. There is a valid moral distinction to be made here. The Palestinian terrorists set out to kill civilians, guilty of nothing (unless it is a crime to be Jewish). The Israeli assassins, on the other hand, set out to kill enemy combattants: men with innocent blood on their hands.

Philosophically, that's where the movie goes awry: Spielberg fails to make that valid moral distinction.

That said, Spielberg does take a stand of a different sort. Munich tries to persuade us that Israel's strategy of targetted assassinations is futile. In fact, Spielberg is appealing to both sides, the Palestinians and the Jews. His message is, you can't end violent acts by committing other violent acts. Violence is futile; opt for peace instead.

I agree with Spielberg, and I bet you do, too. Peace is better than war, love is better than hate, we're all human regardless of ethnicity and culture: why can't we all just learn to get along?

Let's hope the terrorists and assassins turn out to this movie in droves, and world peace breaks out.

Call me cynical, but I doubt it will happen. I'm going to give the last word to Jonas:

With due respect to pop culture and its undisputed master [i.e., Spielberg], one doesn't reach the moral high ground by being neutral between good and evil. Spielberg is a fabulous entertainer, a magician of a director, a very astute businessman — maybe, just maybe, it's too much to ask that he should be a significant moral philosopher as well.

He brings to the screen an adolescent's fresh eye: that's his strength. He also brings an adolescent's naïve confusion: that's his weakness.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
copyright © 2006, Stephen Peltz

Chronicles of Narnia quiz

2006-01-06T20:33:00.000-05:00

Over at Ragged Glory: my review of the movie, plus a quiz which ought to appeal at least to my Christian readers.

How December 25 became Christmas(no, it wasn't because of the winter solstice)

2006-01-05T18:41:00.000-05:00

Lots of new material this week. There are two new posts below. (And I don't think some of you have seen the third post, "Cure of the soul" yet, either.)

Meanwhile, over at Ragged Glory, I have a post explaining why Christmas falls on December 25. The popular explanation, which associates Christmas with the winter solstice, is probably wrong.

The timing of the post is intended as my nod to an alternative date for Christmas, January 6. That is still the date on which Jesus' birth is celebrated by the Armenian Church.

Change in the Middle East

2006-01-05T10:33:00.000-05:00

Ariel Sharon, the Prime Minister of Israel, has suffered a very serious stroke and a brain hemorrhage; he is in grave condition.

Jack points out that Mr. Sharon was one of the few leaders still alive who was active in 1948 when the modern state of Israel was established. Even some Arab leaders are now expressing appreciation for Mr. Sharon's leadership, due to his bold (and controversial) decision to pull Jewish residents out of Gaza.

This development plunges the Middle East into political uncertainty. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem / Israel (Psalm 122:6).

All ye bloggers, beware!

2006-01-05T09:44:00.000-05:00

If you've visited Simply Put in the last 24 hours or so, you know that something was drastically wrong. Instead of a blog, I had a couple of generic headings, like "$BlogTitle$", but nothing more.

It was a template problem. Now that I've fixed it, I have to post a warning to all of you: save a back-up copy of your template!

On Tuesday evening, I added a few new links to my blogroll. Then I went to my updated blog and tried out the new links. The updated blog was in perfect working order, so I don't see how the problem could have been my fault.

Thankfully, I had copied my template in Notepad a couple of months ago. When I compared the two versions, about a third of my template was now missing.

Thus I was able to salvage my blog, although you're looking at a somewhat outdated template. (I apologize to you if you're a regular commenter and you aren't currently in my blogroll — I'll make it current it at my first opportunity.)

I owe a large debt of gratitude to Mirty at Codescripter, because I saved my template to Notepad after reading this post. If you don't know how to back up your template, the Codescripter post will explain how.

Thanks also to Jack at Random Thoughts, because that's where I heard about Codescripter.

(Jack, I owe you my first born, or something equivalent. But I warn you, he's a big eater.)

Cure of the soul, part 1

2006-01-01T21:53:00.000-05:00

Before Freud, Jung, and Adler — before psychoanalysis, psychotherapy and the rest — people spoke instead of the "cure of the soul".

The concept sounds like a relic from a bygone era, but it is still dusted off and trotted out from time to time. For example, here is an excerpt from a recent treatise by an Orthodox priest:

Contemporary man, tired and discouraged by the various problems which torment him, is looking for rest and refreshment. Basically he is seeking a cure for his soul. …

According to Orthodox tradition, after Adam's fall man became ill; his nous [mind/heart] was darkened and lost communion with God. Death entered into the person's being and caused many anthropological, social, even ecological problems. …

Many psychological illnesses are caused by the anxiety of death, the lack of meaning in life, a guilty conscience and the loss of communion with God on man's part. Surely the theology of the Church can help by either preventing or by healing people suffering from such existential dilemmas.

I'd like to open up a dialogue on this subject. At least three questions are relevant to the dialogue:

Do human beings suffer from a spiritual or psychical malaise?
If so, what precisely is wrong? (What is your diagnosis of the malaise?)
How can the malaise be remedied? (What treatment would you prescribe?)

In this post, I'd like to focus on the first question. I intend to address questions 2 and 3 together in a follow-up post.

In my opinion, the answer to question #1 is a definite Yes.

Consider the astonishing technological advances made in the West in the past few hundred years; but consider also how little progress we have made in terms of human nature itself. Among the innovations that spring to mind: democracy; human rights codes; the emancipation of women; the Industrial Revolution; the virtual eradication of many diseases; the mapping of the human genome; the ability to travel to the opposite side of the globe in a matter of hours; the exploration of space; and the invention of computers and associated information technology.

In short, we are profoundly privileged to live in this part of the world at this point in history. Why then is depression so commonplace among us? Why haven't we achieved anything like an equitable distribution of wealth? Why is the incidence of murder so high in our cities? Why do racism and hate speech continue to sprout up like bad weeds? Why is it still unsafe for women to walk alone at night? Why are totalitarianism and attempted genocide still recurrent themes of geo-political history?

Or perhaps I should narrow the focus to just one straightforward illustration. Many of us North Americans drive cars and live in homes that are far bigger than we need. Sometimes it's a matter of "conspicuous consumption": i.e., consuming more resources than one needs just to impress one's neighbours. Other times, it's just a matter of thoughtlessness: e.g. when people who ought to know better put things that could be recycled into the trash.

Whether or not you believe in global warming, everyone knows that the West's bloated way of life is unsustainable. It is not possible for everyone in the world to live as we do without rapidly despoiling the environment, resulting in a global ecological disaster.

In sum, human beings are both spectacularly advanced and spectacularly backwards.

The analysis is hardly original to me. Christian theologians have always maintained that human beings have both a semi-divine nature and a beastial nature, in approximately equal measure. I believe it was St. Augustine who likened humanity to the ruins of a once-great civilization. We are created in the image of God, which is evident in our sublime achievements; but that the image of God in us is corrupted and defaced is also manifest. Here we return to the argument of the Orthodox priest, that the human race has fallen from a great height and every individual suffers the consequences.

In my view, this is still the best explanation of the evidence. But I'd like to how my non-Christian readers would answer question #1. Do human beings suffer from a spiritual or psychical malaise, in your opinion?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
copyright © 2006, Stephen Peltz

Happy Merry New Christmas Year

2005-12-31T11:24:00.000-05:00

I'm so confused! As I mentioned in my previous post, this is Christmas Part B for my household. (Getting divorced and establishing a blended family will do this to the holiday season.) Today is New Year's Eve, but my children opened their Christmas presents this morning.

We're driving to Peterborough tomorrow to celebrate — ummmm … I think it's still Christmas for a few days yet.

What I did on my Christmas vacation

2005-12-29T22:01:00.000-05:00

Readership is still light, but I feel like I'm overdue to post something. So, in keeping with the relaxed mood of the week between Christmas and New Year's Day, I offer you … What I did on my Christmas vacation.

I should start by admitting that I didn't do what I had planned to do, which was to read a 900-page theology tome by one of my favourite scholars. I know, that isn't your idea of a vacation activity, but I often read theology to relax. (Even late at night when I'm very tired, which may explain why I have some strange convictions.)

I got distracted by something of lesser significance. For some while, I've wanted to learn how to take music recorded in an analog format (on an audio cassette or vinyl LP) and convert it into digital information. Since my primary Christmas present was an iPod Mini (thank you very much, Mary P.!), I decided it was time to figure this process out.

Remember, I'm from a generation that didn't grow up with computers. In my high school, kids one year behind me had courses in how to use a computer. I missed it by one year … but actually, I didn't miss much. Some of you will find it absolutely incredible, but those kids learned to punch holes in pieces of cardboard: that was how they fed program information into the computers!

(Go ahead, laugh at the inferior technology. As late as the 1980s, Russian cosmonauts were using that kind of computer, or something only marginally superior to it, to run their space program. They managed to build a space station with that technology. That and lots of duct tape, of course.)

I own Roxio software, and I use it to burn CDs. I was vaguely aware that it could also convert a signal from analog to digital, but I hadn't the foggiest notion how to achieve it. And the stumbling block was something ridiculously simple.

I understood that, somehow, I needed to feed the analog sound into the computer, but I didn't know how to do it. I had read that you must feed the signal directly into the computer's sound card. But I had this vague, unexamined notion that it required a special attachment.

During Christmas vacation, I turned to the fount of all computer wisdom: Mary P.'s sixteen-year-old son, who is extraordinarily knowledgable even by the standards of his generation. He immediately pointed to a little hole in the back of the computer: "You plug the cable in there," he informed me.

Oh.

The harder part was figuring out how to use the "Sound Editor" function in Roxio, because the instructions were utterly useless. I had to resort to a process of trial and error. But hey! — that's how men prefer to use technology anyway! Instruction manuals are for scrawny little girls, not for powerful grown men. Figuring it out was good for my ego, after the humiliation of not knowing about the "line in" hole in the back of our computer.

Three hours later, Mary P. asked me how the project was coming along. I triumphantly informed her that I had converted three entire songs from analog to digital — one per hour! This was a major turn on for her, let me assure you. Women find geeks sexy, however much they protest to the contrary.

I spent most of Monday and Tuesday converting even more songs to digital. For example, I had Sting's Nothing Like the Sun on audio cassette. I had Paul Simon's Graceland on audio cassette, too. (Graceland still holds up as an outstanding achievement, by the way; I recommend it very highly.)

Even more fun awaited me: the Canadian Dedication Suite, performed live by Hugh Fraser and the Vancouver Ensemble of Jazz Improvisation. This is a live recording of a concert I attended this past summer at the Ottawa International Jazz Festival. The Suite was specially commissioned to celebrate the Jazz Festival's 25th anniversary. It was rebroadcast on a local FM station about a week later, and I recorded it. And now — ladies, try to restrain your ardor — I have converted it to a digital file and transferred it to my iPod.

In the best bootleg tradition, I had considered offering you a sample track, but the file is too big to upload to Flickr.com. If you're curious, I can e-mail it to you. (The Canadian Dedication Suite isn't available on disc.)

It consists of two parts. The first 2:30 consists of the histrionics of the female vocalist. Shades of Yoko Ono / didgeridoo / Janis Joplin. (What?! You've never heard a vocalist mimic a didgeridoo before? Well, then, you haven't really lived, have you?!)

In the second part, the vocalist (I regret that I do not know her name) demonstrates that she can also sing, when VEJI launches into a great blues composition, "The Mother of Us All".

Alas, all good vacations must come to an end. Wednesday I was back at work, although "work" is an exaggeration; not much is happening in the office.

And actually, only the first part of my vacation is over. My kids are off school for another week, and I'll be taking them to visit my parents and two of my two sisters. Christmas Part B, as it were.

But it will be more hectic than the quiet days I enjoyed earlier this week, converting analog data into digital. Ooh, I feel so potent!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
copyright © 2006, Stephen Peltz

Chanukah

2005-12-26T22:23:00.000-05:00

Over at Ragged Glory, I explain the history of Chanukah in more detail than you may have seen before.

To my Jewish readers, Happy Chanukah!

A Cradle in Bethlehem

2005-12-25T00:00:00.000-05:00

UPDATE, 1:40 p.m.

49erdweet did an online search and found a downloadable version of the song (or at least an excerpt from it) by Sylvia, available here. (The actual Web site is here.)

Thanks, 49er; much appreciated!

The version I have — the only version I knew of until now — was recorded by Nat King Cole in 1960.

A Cradle In Bethlehem

Sing sweet and low your lullaby
'til angels say, "Amen"
A mother tonight
Is rocking a cradle in Bethlehem.

While wise men follow through the dark
A star that beckons them
A mother tonight
Is rocking a cradle in Bethlehem.

"A little child shall lead them,"
The prophet said of old
In storm and tempest, heed him
Until the bell is tolled.

Sing sweet and low your lullaby
'til angels say, "Amen"
A mother tonight
Is rocking a cradle in Bethlehem.

Refreshingly honest tech support

2005-12-23T10:31:00.000-05:00

This amused me. I tried to access gmail, and got this message instead:

Gmail is temporarily unavailable. Cross your fingers and try again in a few minutes.

That kind of honesty is refreshing. No gobbledygook technical jargon, and no offer to send a message to gmail to alert them to the problem.

All that stuff is just smoke & mirrors, in my opinion. It's like the "door close" button in an elevator — there aren't any wires attached to it; it's there only for the placebo effect.

"Cross your fingers." There's an instruction I understand.

And it worked! I can access my inbox! How 'bout that.

The foster child:an inspirational Christmas story

2005-12-22T06:34:00.000-05:00

Two posts today. Below, see the post on homosexual civil partnerships in the UK. And, over at Ragged Glory, you'll find a short inspirational story written by yours truly.

Merry Christmas, everyone!
Q

Elton and David get married (sort of)

2005-12-22T04:28:00.000-05:00

British law has been changed to allow gay couples to wed — sort of. The UK now recognizes homosexual civil partnerships. Guardian Unlimited explains:

Registering as a civil partnership gives same-sex couples new rights, meaning they will be entitled to the same tax, employment and some pension benefits as married heterosexual couples.

Elton John was the most prominent celebrity to get hitched yesterday. He "married" David Furnish, his (Canadian) partner for the past twelve years. A guest is quoted as saying, "There were tears. They kissed at the end. It was very, very happy. It was like any other couple getting married."

Some of Elton's fans were perhaps a little disappointed that he didn't dress more flamboyantly for the occasion.

I've been an Elton John fan for many years, but the story of a non-celebrity couple moved me more. Here is an excerpt from Jerome Farrell's first-person account:

My expectations of the register office at our local town hall were not high. Early in 2005, I sent an email to ask for some information. No reply. A month later, I sent another … and then another the following month.

By May, I was beginning to think I was being deliberately ignored, so I went there prepared to argue with what I feared might be homophobic staff. We had, after all, heard of some councils at best dragging their feet in the implementation of the new law.

But the council officer I spoke to was very apologetic — her senior colleague had been on long-term sick leave, and no one had been able to access her email for months. They had not yet been told what the procedures would be, but I could book a provisional date and contact them again in November. …

We have lived together for four years, and have been committed partners for six. We both had previous partners: Ray lived with Jeffrey for 21 years until he died in April 1995, aged 45. I met Steve in 1986 and he died in December 1995, shortly after his 40th birthday.

The loss of a partner is indescribable, but Ray and I are fortunate to have found, in each other, the source of another loving relationship. We hope to be able to share what may, if we are lucky, be the second half of our lives together.

December 21, when the first partnership ceremonies take place, is the day of the winter solstice — a symbolic turning point, with increasing light each day in the season to follow.

By sheer coincidence, it also happens to be the date on which Steve's funeral took place ten years ago. When I realised that this was the first date Ray and I could register our partnership, I went to think. We talked about it and concluded it would actually be entirely appropriate for us to book the register office for that day. …

The venue for our partnership ceremony reminds me of the petty inequalities the new law will eliminate. The day after Steve died, I went to the town hall to register his death. I explained to the registrar that I was Steve's partner and lived with him, but she informed me that only relatives could register a death.

A loophole was found — I was with Steve when he died in our home, and could register in that capacity with the words "present at the death" appearing after my name on the certificate to explain how I qualified as the person registering the information. Had I not been present when Steve died, his mother or sister (both of whom lived 150 miles away) would have had to register the death.

For Jerome and Ray, and Elton and David, the legal recognition of civil partnerships is a major step forward. But does the new law give true equality to homosexual couples? In Canada, we have eliminated even the semantic distinction: gay couples can marry.

Guardian Unlimited sometimes placed the word in quotation marks, as here:

Sir Elton John and his partner, David Furnish, were "married" as the first same-sex civil partnership ceremonies took place in England and Wales today.

I hate to end this post on a negative note. But until those quotation marks can be struck out, the UK is still denying homosexuals full equality.

Snow removal

2005-12-19T20:01:00.000-05:00

After a major snowfall like we had last week, snow plugs up the streets and seriously interferes with the day-to-day activities of the city. The municipality springs dramatically into action to remove the snow as quickly as possible.

First, the city notifies people not to park at the side of the road. Bleccch!, snow at the side of a busy road gets filthy in a hurry!

You may never have seen one of these before: it's a sidewalk plow. People are expected to clear the snow from in front of their houses, but the municipality helps out for the sake of public safety.

Another view of the sidewalk plow. Isn't it cute?! I've always thought it would be a great job, to be the driver of such a machine.

This is a snow plow of a different magnitude. Nothing cute about this monster!

Eventually the two plows create a line of snow a foot or two away from the curb.

Now that the snow is in a nice, neat line, the snow-throwing machine comes along. (I have no idea what the machine is really called.) Note the gaping maw, which contains two screw-like thingies that turn in opposite directions to pull in the snow. (I hope I'm not overwhelming you with too much technical jargon.)

Here's a better look at the snow thrower in action, filling a truck to overflowing.

It takes a whole convoy of trucks to cart the snow away. When I took this photo, there was one truck beside the snow-throwing machine, and six more lined up behind it. They will transport the snow to a kind of dump.

The city of Toronto became the butt of a lot of jokes in 1999, when they had to call in the Canadian army to clear away their snow. Toronto is the city Canadians love to hate; this was too juicy an opportunity for people to pass it up.

But all the mockery was a bit of a cheap shot. This writer reports, "In 158 years of record-keeping, there's only been 41 times when Toronto was hit with more than 25 cm of snow in a 24-hour period."

On the east coast, they get a snowfall like that about twice a month, as near as I can figure. So Halifax is always prepared for it (sort of); and Toronto isn't.

Since Toronto is Canada's most important economic center, that much snow can have a real impact on the economy.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
copyright © 2006, Stephen Peltz

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

2005-12-17T16:01:00.000-05:00

This is one night's snow fall. They don't call it the Great White North for nothin'!

Here comes Suzy Snowflake;
Soon you will hear her say,
"Come out ev'ryone and play with me;
I haven't long to stay.
I haven't long to stay?! The songwriter obviously didn't live in Ottawa.

Over on Ragged Glory, I've published a new post, "Mary's Song".

Good news? For whom?

2005-12-15T20:46:00.000-05:00

Is the Gospel good news? Yes: but perhaps not for everybody.

In my view, there is one group for whom the Gospel is not good news. See my explanation at Ragged Glory.

Full disclosure: The post has a bit of an evangelistic thrust to it. I utilize a positive, Christmassy approach to the subject, but some of you may prefer to give this post a miss.

Community living vs. institutionalization

2005-12-13T18:52:00.000-05:00

Canadians are still fumbling around, trying to decide how best to care for individuals who are mentally handicapped. A story in yesterday's Globe and Mail brought the issue to mind, but let me begin with a personal anecdote.

For four years in the late 1980s, I was the pastor of a small church in a rural setting. One day I received a phone call from the local undertaker to ask if I could perform a funeral service. The deceased was not a member of any local church; but that was the least significant detail of a terribly sad story.

Let's give him a name. He was, after all, a human being. Let's call him Greg.

Greg was mentally handicapped. His family decided that they couldn't care for him but, in those days, there was no institution dedicated to people with needs like his. So Greg was placed in the local "old age home".

And that is where he spent his entire life. No member of his family ever visited him. When he died, he did not have a single friend.

There were three people present at Greg's funeral: the director of the funeral home, one of the staff from the seniors' residence, and me. The funeral director contacted Greg's cousin, the next of kin, but he declined the invitation to the service.

There were three people present at Greg's funeral, and we were all there in a professional capacity.

What a heartbreaking story. Jesus once spoke (compassionately) of "the least of these, my brethren". In my mind, Greg is the poster boy for that text.

Society still wrestles with this issue: where shall we put individuals who are mentally handicapped, if their families cannot care for them?

The Globe and Mail story is the latest update on a conflict that has been playing itself out for years. The Government of Ontario plans to close three facilities that house about 1,000 severely developmentally disabled Ontarians. The government intends to move the residents into group homes and other community facilities, and shut down all three centres by 2009.

At least some family members vehemently oppose the plan. The individuals themselves presumably are not competent to express an opinion, even though the decision directly concerns them.

Let's begin by recognizing that these institutions are better than the situation Greg was stuck with. They were a progressive idea at the time. People like Greg at least get to live with their peers there. And that's where the rest of us make friends — from among our peers.

I'm familiar with one of the three institutions. It is a massive place, with its own bowling alley and indoor swimming pool, for example. The residents rarely need to leave the grounds, even for medical care. Doctors, dentists, and other medical professionals come to the facility as part of an interdisciplinary caregiving team.

But wait a minute. The residents rarely need to leave the grounds: is this a good thing or a bad thing?

After I left pastoral ministry I spent six years working in group homes for mentally handicapped people. Long-time readers will remember a previous post in which I described a resident of one of those group homes, Bruce. Here's an anecdote from that post:

We purchased a wheelchair for Bruce for longer outings. On gorgeous summer days, when I just had to get outside, I would take him for a long walk through the neighborhood. Sometimes he would object by pulling off his shoe and wailing, but usually he quite enjoyed it. He would rest his head in one hand and growl contentedly, watching people wash their cars, or children playing.

Sometimes I would walk beside the wheelchair, pulling it along from the side to make eye contact with him. I would talk to him as we walked. He would grin with delight, maybe slap himself [for joy], and reach out one hand toward me in a gesture of affection.

Two boys came over to meet him on one memorable occasion. They asked me a few questions and looked at him with unabashed curiosity. Suddenly their eyes lit up and their jaws dropped open. "How does he do that?", one of them asked.

"Do what?", I said. They were plainly amazed, but I had no idea why.

"How does he turn his tongue completely upside down?!" These boys weren't put off by Bruce at all; on the contrary, they were deeply impressed by his novel talent.

The point is, it was good for Bruce to live in the community. It was good for him, and it was good for the neighbours, like these two boys.

But maybe community living isn't always the best arrangement. It is rarely a good idea to make one rule and apply it to everyone indiscriminately. Some people, who have severe physical handicaps, live in constant pain. Others, who have psychiatric disorders, may be a danger to themselves and others.

Remember, this process of emptying the institutions has been underway for years now. The Globe and Mail reports:

About 5,000 developmentally disabled Ontario residents have been moved from regional centres into community facilities and services over the past 25 years.

The 1,000 remaining at the three centres are among the oldest: some are in their 60s, 70s and 80s. Others are profoundly low functioning, or without family members, or with serious behavioural problems. Many have lived in the facilities for 50 years or more.

Shouldn't the government evaluate these individuals as individuals? Who says that one solution is the best choice for everyone?

When I think about Greg, and Bruce, there's no question where my bias lies: let's provide the necessary resources and get as many of these folks out into the community as we possibly can. For example, the first group home I worked at employed several staff with a nursing background, and they were competent to provide basic medical care in the home. In most cases, it is possible to provide care in the community.

But let's not assume it's true in every case. Let's not act out of a misguided sense of political correctness — as if to atone for past failures (which were legion).

Let's make community living our default option. But maybe the institutions also have a legitimate place in the continuum of care, in those exceptional instances when the default option isn't the best choice.

Still no word on the fate of the CPT captives

2005-12-13T08:43:00.000-05:00

The latest information, from today's Globe and Mail, may be summarized as follows:

the Swords of Righteousness Brigade has not communicated with anyone since the deadline passed;
they probably never expected that the USA would comply with their excessive demands;
there is some evidence that the Canadians are being treated differently than the other captives (an American and a Briton).

Here's an excerpt from the article:

Three days past the deadline — and still no word from the Swords of Righteousness Brigade, the Islamic militant group in Iraq that kidnapped two Canadian peace activists, as well as an American and a Briton.

That's no surprise, security experts say. Iraqi hostage-takers operate under different rules than those in Mexico, Colombia or Guyana, for example.

In Latin America, kidnappers' primary goal is to make money. They negotiate for a ransom, and in the best-case scenario, the hostages are released.

In Iraq, most hostage-takers issue such unreasonable demands that there is no expectation they will actually be fulfilled. Instead, they are after notoriety — and the long-term goal of driving out the U.S.-led coalition forces and the private contractors who are rebuilding the country. It's a whole new kidnapping paradigm.

"Kidnapping, globally, is a big business. But not in Iraq. Don't expect to hear from the kidnappers because this isn't about negotiating," said Alan Bell, president of Globe Risk Holdings, who just returned from Baghdad where he is helping foreign governments and private companies develop security strategies. "The kidnap game in Iraq is hard to predict. They have no morals or scruples and death is meaningless."

The Swords of Righteousness Brigade said it would kill [the hostages] unless all 16,000 Iraqi prisoners held in British and American military prisons are released. The first deadline was last Thursday — 12 days after the four were abducted at gunpoint from the streets of Baghdad. The deadline was then extended until Saturday. The captors then broke off all communication — another standard tactic, which puts families through agony and places the governments of the captives' countries in a precarious position.

Many of those held hostage in Iraq are never heard from again. Rifat Mohammed Rifat, an Iraqi-born Canadian, was kidnapped in April of 2004 and is still missing. …

However, the fact that Mr. Loney and Mr. Sooden are Canadian may help them — if the videos released by their captors are any indication.

… In a later video, Mr. Loney, who grew up in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., and worked with Toronto's homeless, and Mr. Sooden, formerly of Montreal and now studying in New Zealand, appear with their hands and feet untied and are at a food-laden table. In contrast, Mr. Kember, a retired physics professor, and Mr. Fox, a Quaker from Virginia, appear blindfolded, with their hands chained together, dressed in orange jumpsuits — which, in the past, has been a prelude to death.

It's possible that the Canadians are being treated better because Canada did not participate in the invasion of Iraq, but that's just speculation. It certainly does not guarantee that the Canadians' lives will be spared.

Update on Christian Peacemaker Teams captives

2005-12-10T19:47:00.000-05:00

(original story here)
It is now Sunday morning in Iraq. As of 3:13 p.m., the Globe and Mail reports that there is no new information on the fate of the four captive Christian Peacemaker Teams workers.

Top left: American Tom Fox, 54
Top right: British national Norman Kember, 74
Bottom left: Canadian James Loney, 41
Bottom right: Canadian Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32

But we can't go to church today - it's Christmas!

2005-12-09T23:06:00.000-05:00

Some of the largest churches in the USA will be closed on a Sunday later this month. Why? Because that Sunday is December 25.

Full story at Ragged Glory.

No one ever said terrorism was rational

2005-12-09T07:21:00.000-05:00

There are so many bad news stories out of Iraq that I tune most of them out. But this week I am paying attention. A previously unknown group calling itself the "Swords of Righteousness Brigade" is holding four men captive and threatening to execute them unless the USA frees Iraqi detainees.

Two of the men are Canadians. All four are associated with "Christian Peacemakers Teams", a Chicago- and Toronto-based organization backed by the Brethren, Quaker and Mennonite churches.

The irony — though irony is not an adequate word for this situation — is this. I would characterize Christian Peacemakers Teams as having an anti-American bias. According to the organization's own Web site:

CPT initiated a long-term presence in Iraq in October 2002, six months before the beginning of the U.S. led invasion in March of 2003. The primary focus of the team for eighteen months following the invasion was documenting and focusing attention on the issue of detainee abuses and basic legal and human rights being denied them.

Issues related to detainees remain but the current focus of the team has expanded to include efforts to end occupation and militarization of the country and to foster nonviolent and just alternatives for a free and independent Iraq.

In other words, the four captives are hostile to the American presence in Iraq. They made personal sacrifices to carry out "mission" work that ostensibly serves Iraqi interests. Despite that fact, they have been taken hostage by Islamic terrorists in a vain attempt to squeeze concessions out of the US government.

I saw a family member interviewed on CBC television Tuesday night. The family is clinging to the hope that the Swords of Righteousness Brigade will suddenly wake up to the fact that they're threatening to execute the wrong guys. And it's possible: there are a couple of hopeful signs.

The first cause for hope is that Muslim leaders are among those speaking out in support of the captives. For example, according to the Globe and Mail:

In Britain, meanwhile, a Jordanian cleric jailed for links to al-Qaeda also called for the release of the hostages, saying they should not be held accountable for the policies of their governments.

"I, your brother Abu Qatada, ... beseech my brothers in the Swords of Truth in Iraq, who are imprisoning the four Christian peace activists, to release them in accordance with the fundamental principle of mercy of our faith," he said in an appeal aired on Arab television networks on Wednesday, according to a Reuters News Agency report.

(Prominent left-wing activists, including Norm Chomsky, have also called for the release of the four men. I'm sure the Swords of Righteousness Brigade is greatly impressed.)

The second cause for hope is that the execution has been delayed. The captors had scheduled the execution for Thursday, but postponed it for 48 hours.

Still, I fear the worst. It is a miscalculation to suppose that terrorists are rational people, who respect the fine distinction between "Westerners who support our people" and "Westerners who support the Americans".

The truth is — we have seen it demonstrated over and over again — that Islamic terrorists kill indiscriminately. They do not even avoid killing fellow Muslims, in brazen disregard of Islam's moral code.

Islamic terrorists do not regard people as human beings; they regard them as symbols. Executing four Westerners is a political statement. These four happen to be anti-American, but that's irrelevant.

The four men are:

James Loney, 41, from Sault. Ste. Marie, Ontario;
Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32, from Montreal, Quebec;
Tom Fox, 54, American; and
Norman Kember, 74, British.

December 8, 1980

2005-12-07T19:40:00.000-05:00

John Lennon's bloodstained glasses, photographed by Yoko Ono

update: a great Lennon quote from Rolling Stone:

"The hardest thing is facing yourself. It's easier to shout 'Revolution' and 'Power to the people' than it is to look at yourself and try to find out what's real inside of you and what isn't."

— from Lennon's final interview with Rolling Stone, after he had spent the past five years out of the music business, at home, parenting his son Sean.

Wikipedia warning

2005-12-06T18:17:00.000-05:00

Wikipedia is an internet phenomenon, and deservedly so. In the past, encyclopedias took decades to write, they were limited in the number of subjects they could cover, and any given entry could go out of date immediately after the encyclopedia was published.

Wikipedia's unique approach is to allow anyone to publish or edit an entry. Thus Wikipedia has covered a vast range of topics in a hurry. Many of the articles are written by experts in the field, and the articles needn't go out of date since they can be revised as necessary.

Bloggers cite Wikipedia information all the time. But how trustworthy is it?

Let's just say that the Wikipedia approach can create problems. From today's Globe and Mail:

Wikipedia, the on-line encyclopedia that allows anyone to contribute articles, is tightening its rules for submitting entries following the disclosure that it ran a piece falsely implicating a man in the Kennedy assassinations.

Wikipedia will now require users to register before they can create articles, Jimmy Wales, founder of the St. Petersburg, Fla.-based website, said Monday.

Wikipedia contains a biography of John Seigenthaler Sr., who was the administrative assistant of Attorney General Robert Kennedy in the early 1960s. The biography falsely claimed, "for a brief time, [Seigenthaler] was thought to have been directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations of both [President John F.], and his brother, Bobby." That information was available on the Web site for 132 days.

As mentioned above, Wikipedia will now require users to register before they can create articles. The founder hopes this will limit the number of entries being created:

"What we're hopeful to see is that by slowing that down to 1,500 a day from several thousand, the people who are monitoring this will have more ability to improve the quality," Wales said Monday. "In many cases the types of things we see going on are impulse vandalism."

Wikipedia visitors will still be able to edit content already posted without registering. It takes 15 to 20 seconds to create an account on the website, and an e-mail address is not required.

Seigenthaler, a former newspaper editor at the Tennessean in Nashville, Tenn., and founder of the Freedom Forum First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University, said that following his op-ed piece in USA Today the biography of him was changed to remove the false accusations.

But Seigenthaler said the current entry on Monday still got some facts wrong, apparently because volunteers are confusing him with his son, John Seigenthaler Jr., a journalist with NBC News.

Also disturbing is a section of his biography that tracks changes made to the article, Seigenthaler, Sr. said. Entries in that history section label him a "Nazi" and say other "really vicious, venomous, salacious homophobic things about me," he said.

Wales said those comments would be removed.

It's good to bear this example in mind. We ought to be aware by now that it's a mistake to assume something is true just because it's in print.

That said, I still think Wikipedia is an excellent resource: more trustworthy than many other internet sources.

The separation of church and state

2005-12-04T21:50:00.000-05:00

Over at Ragged Glory, I have posted the following question: What do Americans mean when they refer to the separation of church and state? I can think of two ways that the phrase might be interpreted:

US Presidents should make no reference whatsoever to God while speaking in their official capacity.
It is OK for US Presidents to refer to God, but only in generic terms. They should not express a preference for any specific religion or understanding of God.

I am not an American, and I haven't studied the subject, so I am inviting you (even if you are not an American) to educate me.

What do you understand the phrase to mean?

Introvert / Extrovert: the difference is in your brain

2005-12-03T06:04:00.000-05:00

Some time ago, I posted my thoughts on the misunderstood introvert. It seems to be a topic of widespread interest, since that post frequently shows up in my tracker stats.

This week I got a belated comment on the post from Nicole, who is studying clinical psychology at the graduate level in the midwestern USA. She added this insight to our earlier dialogue:

There is a theory that introversion/extroversion can be detected even before birth. Introverts tend to have a higher baseline state of arousal, therefore, it takes less to stimulate them.

Extroverts, conversely, have a lower baseline rate of arousal. Therefore, it takes more interaction to receive the same chemical/emotional feedback.

So, babies that are more active in the womb are correlated to extroversion.

And then Nicole returned with an update. Coincidentally, she had just discovered a newspaper article on this very topic. ("We all control the news, evidently", she commented.)

The article was originally published in USA Today. Here's an excerpt:

The attitude that there's something wrong with introverted people is widely shared in society, where fast talk and snap decisions are often valued over listening, deliberation and careful planning. Extroverts seem to rule the world or, at least, the USA, which hasn't elected an introverted president for three decades, since Jimmy Carter.

"The signals we get from the world agree that extroversion is valued," says Sanford Cohn, an associate professor in curriculum and instruction at Arizona State University.

I note, in passing, that I took the same position in my post: Western society rewards extroverts over introverts virtually every time. People respond to extroversion as a great virtue even if they haven't explicitly thought of it in those terms.

But let's move on and explore the new insight. It turns out that the distinction between introversion and extroversion is all in your head — but I mean this quite literally!

Introverted children enjoy the internal world of thoughts, feelings and fantasies, and there's a physiological reason for this. Researchers using brain scans have found introverts have more brain activity in general, and specifically in the frontal lobes. When these areas are activated, introverts are energized by retrieving long-term memories, problem solving, introspection, complex thinking and planning.

Extroverts enjoy the external world of things, people and activities. They have more activity in brain areas involved in processing the sensory information we're bombarded with daily. Because extroverts have less internally generated brain activity, they search for more external stimuli to energize them. [emphasis added]

How counterintuitive: the flamboyant extrovert has lower levels of electrical activity in the brain; the quiet introvert has more!

The information explains why it is so difficult simply to will yourself to behave more like an extrovert (or more like an introvert), contrary to your innate tendency. It also confirms Nicole's observation: if the distinction is rooted in electrical activity in the brain, you are an introvert (or an extrovert) even while you are still in utero.

Fascinating!

Solution to the 4 INCH TONGUE Quiz

2005-12-01T22:12:00.000-05:00

[Dec. 2 update]

Bill is right!

The message is on a church sign!

There is a secondary answer to the question, too. The sign is located in Australia.

I think that's significant. I assume that not even a clergyman can have missed the obvious sexual inuendo. And only in Australia could a church try to attract attention by posting such a raunchy message.

Never in Canada, that's for sure. Never, never, never!

Click on the photo, and it will take you to Chosha's blog. She posts four other church signs; the first one also utilizes a sexual inuendo. The signs are tacked on to the bottom of a meme post.

(the original post, minus the photo)

I lifted this photo from another blog, but I've edited it so that you can't see the name on the top half of the sign.

Where do you suppose the sign was located? Go ahead, guess. Tomorrow I'll provide a link to the blog where I got the photo.

Co-opting Christmas

2005-11-30T18:57:00.000-05:00

Over at Ragged Glory, I have posted my follow-up to the post on controversial Christmas trees. The post is in three parts:

a discussion of how Christianity co-opted paganism in the Roman empire;
a discussion of how secular humanism is co-opting Christmas in modern Western society, and why I think this is inappropriate; and
a proposal for where we should go from here.

(Hat tip to Jack, whose post first drew me out on this subject; and to Jack and Stacey for their dialogue with me, which helped me to sort out my own thoughts on the subject.)

Controversial Christmas trees

2005-11-29T18:11:00.000-05:00

I'm sick of Christmas being a source of controversy. Christmas is a big flippin' deal in North America. But it isn't all peace and joy, let me tell you.

Controversial Christmas tree #1

From the Globe and Mail, a story about a municipality who narrowly voted to put up an artifical tree:

While most cities have been oiling snowplows and constructing ice rinks in anticipation of winter, the politicians in one small Ontario town have dedicated themselves to resolving a historical debate that continues to polarize Canadians this time of year.

Artificial Christmas tree or real tree?

For more than a week, the councillors of Quinte West, a municipality east of Toronto, have wrestled with the question.

At Monday's council meeting they were split, 6-6, until Mayor Bob Campney stepped in with the deciding vote for a fake tree.

The issue erupted last year when some councillors cut down a seven-metre pine and hauled it into town on a flat-bed truck.

Unfortunately, there was a municipal employee who was allergic to the tree. He tried to cope through the holidays with a swollen face, but was forced to buy medication and work outside the building. The municipality had to compensate him almost $2,000.

In the end, the mayor felt his compromise was sound.

"My feeling was, we can put up an artificial tree, a good tree, inside, and put a big real tree outside, and everyone going by can enjoy it."

Councillor Fred Kuypers, who is in his eighth year as a councillor, says when the town decorates the tree outside, he's boycotting the event.

"For me, the fun is gone."

Controversial Christmas Tree #2

From CBC Nova Scotia, a story about Donnie Hatt, who regrets donating a 50-foot spruce tree to the City of Boston:

A spruce tree grower in Nova Scotia isn't happy his Christmas tree has become a "holiday" tree.

Every fall, the province sends a tree to Boston as a thank-you gift to that city for helping Halifax after the devastating explosion in 1917.

But Donnie Hatt, of Beech Hill, says he wouldn't have sent his 36-year-old, 16-metre white spruce this year if he knew it would be called a "holiday" tree. In fact, he'd rather see it run through the wood chipper in his backyard. …

Officials with Boston's parks department decided it would be less offensive to some people and generally more inclusive if the word "Christmas" was dropped.

"I think it's a bunch of bullcrap," Hatt is quoted as saying.

Is Christmas fun anymore? More thoughts to follow in a subsequent post.

Purgatory?! I thought I reserved a direct flight!!

2005-11-28T19:24:00.000-05:00

The Dante's Inferno Test has sent you to Purgatory!

I don't often do these online tests, but I was drawn to this one because of the religious theme. When I looked at the questions, I thought they were interesting, too. Here are a few of the questions that leaped out at me for one reason or another.

Please select your gender.
(Only two options, male or female.) This one leaped out at me because I wonder how it's relevant. Am I more likely to go straight to Paradise if, for example, I'm female? Or maybe the assumption is that God (like the Church) favours men!

Do you intentionally cause harm to yourself?
I wonder what prompted them to include this question. There's a separate question on whether you've ever attempted suicide.

Have you ever taken pleasure in someone else's misery?
Ooh, that's a good one! Ever indulge in a little schadenfreude, folks? I like to think I'm a nice guy, but I had to answer Yes, given the word "ever".

Have you ever engaged in oral or anal sex?
I don't really see the point of the question. If I like oral sex, does that make me more lustful? I thought oral sex was virtually universal in our generation. How many people can honestly answer No, I wonder?

Would you sooner go without sex than go without good-tasting food?
Ooh, another good one! I scored "moderate" on the gluttonous scale, but "high" on the lustful scale. If I answered that question the other way, would those two scores reverse?

Have you ever intentionally given bad advice?
I guess I'm just not a devious person — I can't imagine under what circumstances I would intentionally give bad advice to someone who trusted me.

Without further ado, here are my results:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	High
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Moderate
Level 2 (Lustful)	High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	Moderate
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Very Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Low
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Very Low
Level 7 (Violent)	Low
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Low
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Low

Take the Dante's Inferno Test

If any of the results are inaccurate, it would be the heretics scale. Very low? I don't think they examined my unorthodox beliefs closely enough.

I think the results demonstrate that, on the whole, I'm a nice guy. But not good enough, apparently! How perfect does one have to be to make it to heaven without the stopover en route?

I'm sure it was that "lustful" rating that brought me up short of my destination. Suddenly I'm reminded of Father Guido Sarducci's masturbation skit.

When cherished values come into conflict

2005-11-26T21:45:00.000-05:00

Here's a recent decision of the Supreme Court of Canada which I find interesting. It illustrates a point that arises occasionally in the context of public policy debates. The point is, cherished values come into conflict with each other from time to time.

People often get hold of a single truth (or value or principle) and attempt to elevate it above all others. Freedom of expression is a recurrent example, as in this case. According to the Globe and Mail:

The Supreme Court of Canada has rejected a Montreal strip club's claim that it had a constitutional right to broadcast its music soundtracks onto the street outside to attract customers.

The Chateau du Sexe contended the city had violated the club's freedom of expression by invoking a municipal bylaw intended to prevent public nuisances.

In a 6-1 decision, the court agreed the bylaw infringes on freedom of expression.

But it said the infringement is justified by the greater public good of fighting noise pollution.

Justice Ian Binnie, the only dissenter, contended that the bylaw is so broad it could be used to ban people from playing Mozart in their gardens.

He said the city should find a better way to control nuisance sounds and noise pollution.

In this case, two cherished values have come into conflict with each other: (1) freedom of expression and (2) the prevention of unjustifiable noise pollution.

The same thing happens in the realm of religion sometimes. Here's an example from the Hebrew scriptures. The Torah says, "Do no work on the seventh day of the week" (paraphrasing Exodus 20:10). The Torah also says, "a male child is to be circumcised on the eighth day" (paraphrasing Leviticus 12:2-3).

But what happens when the eighth day of a boy's life coincides with the Sabbath (the seventh day of the week)? To uphold one of the commands is to violate the other.

In such cases, the rabbis ruled that the law of circumcision took priority: "R. Jose says, 'Great is circumcision since it overrides the stringent Sabbath'" (Mishnah Nedarim 3:11).

I don't have a specific application in mind just now. But when I saw the report of the court decision, I thought I would blog on it for future reference. It is a straightforward example of an important concept.

Fun with JACK AND ENID

2005-11-25T15:31:00.000-05:00

Here's an activity to consider next time you're bored. Plug a few words into the Internet Anagram Server: aka, "I, REARRANGEMENT SERVANT".

(Hat tip, Web Junkie.)

Now we can all be as clever as a certain blogger whose blog name (TONER MISHAP) is an anagram of his user ID (Misanthrope).

Here are some of the anagrams I got when I entered "Simply Put":

ITS MY PULP
LIPPY SMUT
LUMPY PITS
LUMPY SPIT
MY PULPITS (an interesting coincidence for a former preacher)
PITY PLUMS
PITY SLUMP (when it has been a while since anyone took pity on you)
PLUS MY TIP
PUL MY SPIT
PULPY MIST
SILTY PUMP
SLIPPY TUM (remember to warm the massage oil first)
SLIT MY PUP
TIPPY SLUM
TIPSY PLUM

and my personal favourite,

LUSTY PIMP

I don't know that I'd want to use any of the above for my user ID — certainly not "LUMPY PITS", for example — but "SLY IMP" is pretty good. (It's an anagram of "Simply".)

Try it out! I bet none of you can top "LUSTY PIMP"!

(btw: "JACK AND ENID" is an anagram of "Dick and Jane".)

John's baptism and ritual washings in Judaism

2005-11-23T20:58:00.000-05:00

Over at Ragged Glory, I have published another post on Matthew 3:7-12. It explores the question, What was the significance of John's baptism?

I begin with the New Testament data, then consider relevant extra-biblical data, beginning with a passage from Josephus (a first century Jewish historian).

I attempt to demonstrate that John was a theological innovator. His baptism was different from the ritual washings commonly practised by his contemporaries.

Politics and image

2005-11-22T20:59:00.000-05:00

It's a truism: in the television era, politics is all about image.

Here's a historic image from Canadian political history. The year was 1974, and Robert Stanfield was campaigning to become our Prime Minister.

CBC News remembers, "In the 1974 election, a photographer snapped a picture of Stanfield fumbling a football on an airport tarmac. It served to depict him as clumsy and inept, despite the fact he had been firing perfect spirals to a reporter for several minutes before the errant toss came his way.

"He once said if he walked on water, the next day's headline would be, 'Stanfield can't swim.'"

Fairly or unfairly, this photograph was partly responsible for Stanfield's defeat.

Pierre Trudeau, on the other hand, was supremely photogenic. This was particularly so when it came to television — moving images.

I was surprised, looking over a couple dozen still photos, to see that few of the images were striking. But Trudeau was transcendent when it came to television. He was always in motion: often graceful, often dramatic, sometimes a clown, sometimes dandified; always compellingly watchable.

Canadians voted for Trudeau for complex reasons, but being telegenic certainly helped.

This is Bloc Québécois leader, Gilles Duceppe. CTV News explains, "During a tour of a cheese factory during the 1997 campaign, he donned a hairnet that looked laughably like a shower cap. The image was splashed over all the papers and made easy fodder for political cartoons.

"'It took Gilles Duceppe a long time to shake off that shower cap thing,' recalls political analyst L. Ian MacDonald. 'I mean, it was just the right thing to do but it projected entirely the wrong image.'"

Visual images are so powerful, they have the potential to overwhelm a politician's message; or, more accurately, to become the politician's message. Stanfield was inept; Trudeau was charming, capable, intellectual; Duceppe had just fallen off a hay wagon.

Are judgements of this sort — judgements based on photographic images — ever fair?

Meet Stephen Harper, the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, currently the official opposition. This photograph was on the front page of the Globe and Mail last week, and I found it very striking.

Harper has been criticized for always appearing angry. He's trying to overcome that image: see him smile? He's really trying to smile, anyway; notice how far he has pulled up the corners of his mouth.

The smile is forced. Maybe you won't see it this way, but my response is to cover the bottom half of his face to focus on the upper half. Are those eyes smiling?

I don't think so. I think Harper's eyes look wary and judgemental, even as the bottom half of his face is making an attempt to be warm and likeable.

It's only a photographic image, but perhaps it conveys relevant information.

Maybe you can be hostile and still make a good Prime Minister. I don't know. But I'll tell you this: Canadians can't work up any enthusiasm for this particular politician. And I think the photograph illustrates why that's so.

Mary P. writes book

2005-11-21T20:12:00.000-05:00

You may already know that Mary P. is participating in National Novel Writing Month: aka NaNoWriMo. The goal of the organization is to raise money to promote literacy. The goal of participants like Mary P. is to write a 50,000 word novel in one month.

How crazy is that?! Who can write at that pace?!

Mary P. can, that's who. Pshaw!, it isn't enough of a challenge for her! She reached 50,000 words today, only 21 days into the month!

Mary P. got this button at a local gathering of NaNoWriMo participants. She says it should read, "I write book" — singular: hence the title of my post.

I'm biased, of course, but I think the book is really good. Below I offer an excerpt to give you a taste of what she has achieved, at lightning speed.

It's only a first draft, obviously … she couldn't afford to spend any time polishing it. But that only makes the achievement more impressive. I bet you wouldn't guess from the excerpt that this is a first draft, if I hadn't already told you.

I am so impressed!

"You like the blues, don't you?" Josee asked. Her voice permeates my sun-induced languor. She's come over this gorgeous summer afternoon with a bag of hand-me-downs for my kids, but once the clothes have been sorted and set aside, the back yard with its sun and stunning view of the neighbour's solid red brick wall beckons. My kids will be returning from their dad's in the next hour or so, and Josee and I are spending some productive time soaking up the heat. I'm leaning back against the wall of the shed, my face tipped to the sun. She lays on her back beside me. A pitcher of ice water and two glasses sit on a tray between us.

"Love them. Why? Something you'd like to see?" One of the perks of single motherhood that I'd never considered was the weekends off. As a married parent, I'd never had a weekend off. Except when I worked my 8-2 shift at the drop-in tutoring centre on weekends, I was on board with the children. Often, it wasn't their father who cared for them on these days, but a friend - very often Josee. Now, I had weekend afternoons and evenings entirely to myself, something I'd not had since the first child was born ten years ago. Not that I had actually done anything with a weekend evening yet.

"No, not me. But my friend Marc, you know him, the police officer? The one who was on that task force last year looking into runaway kids?"

"I've never met him, but you've mentioned him before. This is Marc whose wife runs that craft shop in the Glebe?"

"Marc whose wife left him three months ago, yeah, that's the one."

"Ah, geez, Josee. I've only been separated a couple of months. You're not suggesting I want to be dating already? And some guy who's on the rebound? Hell, I'm on the rebound! Nobody should be wanting to date me."

"Are you, or are you not enjoying being single?"

"I am loving it! And I'm loving it, already, without dating."

"So don't think of it as a date. Just go down to Tucson's on Saturday night to hear a group with someone else who likes your kind of music."

"'So don't think of it as a date.' How cliche is that? Next you'll be telling me that as long as I pay my own way, it's not a date."

"Well, it's not!"

"And if I pay my own way, I don't have to sleep with him?"

"Get out of here. You don't have to sleep with him even if he does pay."

"That's a relief. I thought you'd suddenly become an afficionado of that 'Rules' book."

"No. Not that it says that, anyway, does it? All I'm saying is that you should just go because it would be a fun thing to do. That's it, that's all, end of story, no big agenda."

"Is that how he'd be looking at it?"

"Yes."

"And you know this because..."

"Because I talked to him. Said I might know someone. Didn't tell him who, and asked if he'd mind."

"God, Josee, I feel like we're in seventh grade here. Look, why don't you give me his phone number." She pulls a business card from her purse.

"He gave you his card??"

"Just in case. But he doesn't know your name, I promise."

I take the card without looking at it, slip it into the pocket of my shorts. "If I feel like it, I'll call him; if I don't, I'll go by myself. I can have fun by myself, you know."

"Yeah, I know, but sooner or later you'll run out of batteries." She grins wickedly as I snort.

"When that happens, maybe I'll give Marc a call. Until then, things are working just fine for me.

…………

Despite my show of reluctance, I did think about Josee's suggestion. I'd been on my own for two months, and in that time I'd not gone out once. Not a single grown-up evening out. It probably was time I looked beyond the four walls of my home, comfortable though it was now. It probably was time I went out and did something frivolous, something fun, just for myself.

After dinner that evening, I finally remembered to take the slightly crumpled card out of my pocket, and glanced at the numbers on it. Business number, cell phone number, even a fax, if I decided to put myself out in writing. A man who wants to be accessible, at any rate. I set the card on the ledge beside the kitchen window, over the sink, in the stash of other business cards I'd accrued: The Faucet Man, Secondhand Appliance Source, Cheap and Skilful Drywaller, the Plumber who covers his butt, the Lady Chimneysweep, the Electrician who doesn't hit on you....

Marc's card nestled in with the other cards, a potential frivolity amongst necessities. Would I call him? Should I call him? Did I want to?

"Mummy! We've brushed our teeths!" Daniel's voice echoes down the stairs. "We're ready for our bedtime story!"

Saved by the bellow. "Okay, guys! I'm coming right up!"

I love our bedtime routines. Emma, having had her bath, story and snuggle an hour ago, sleeps peacefully. Her blond curls tumble across her pillow as I lean to kiss her chubby baby cheek.

Zoe and Daniel wait in Daniel's room, snuggled side-by-side in his bed. After story time, Zoe will cross the landing to the bedroom she shares with Emma, but stories for the big kids take place in Daniel's room, where we can talk softly and leave the light on without disturbing the baby.

They wriggle apart to make room for me. Daniel carefully pats the pillow into its place against the wall behind us, a cushioned backrest for the snuggling that accompanies all good stories. A child nuzzled under each arm, the book held in front, I open to tonight's chapter, resume the lively story of the brave warrior mice and their struggles against the evil stoats.

My children are nestled warm against me, their breathing rhythmic and gentle, their hair soft against my cheek. I get so much satisfaction from their physical presence, the trust in me their closeness expresses. I am the centre of their worlds right now, as they are the centre of my larger world.

My larger world which includes Josee, the tutoring I do on weekends, the other children I care for during the week, and... What else does my world include? Phone calls to my sister, 500 miles away, each of us too involved with our small children - and, let's face it, too financially strapped - to make the journey to visit very often. Shopping for groceries and necessities for the children. And that's about it.

When is the last time I went out for a drink, or to a movie, just myself? My big indulgence for just me has been my weekly trips to the library — not the trips I make with the children, but the visit I make each Saturday in which I go nowhere near the children's section — and the hours I read each evening. I am not about to apologize for being a bookworm. I love my evening spent curled in a quilt on the couch, safe and secure, reading, reading, reading.

Nor do I have a need for dozens of friends. One or two reliable, caring, accessible friends is all I have ever needed. Oh, and I can't forget my two invisible friends - my Inner Cynic and my Inner Paragon. But still - three friends, two of them imaginary, and a pile of books is not much of a social life, is it? Josee is right: it's time I made a move to expand my world a bit. I don't know that I want or need to include Marc - or any other man - in it just now, but it's high time, yes it is, it's high time my world got a little bigger than my home, the library, and the damned grocery store!

"Mummy? Mummy, you've stopped reading!" Zoe's voice interrupts my reverie. She and Daniel lean out a bit, look up at me in mild exasperation. "It's not the end of the chapter yet."

"Oops. Sorry, love. I got distracted. All right...ah...okay. Here we are."

*******

Friday morning. End of another week in daycare land. I wake before my alarm, and as I do every morning, indulge in the sensual luxury of a corner-to-corner, across-the-mattress stretch. No oppressive, unhappy man shares my bed, and my children now sleep contentedly in their own beds. All that lovely space, all for me! Will this ever become less than a delightful morning gift to myself, this wide, empty bed?

Freedom is made of such small things. A bed shared by no one who isn't welcome. Well, shared by no one at all these days, truth be known, but this is my choice. The right to roll over and stretch to your heart's content. Being able to turn on the light when you wake, rather than stumble in the dark. Getting to take the first shower. Having a morning cup of tea on my own. Solitude is not loneliness; it breathes life into me.

The letter carrier who went postaland The Israeli soldier who hesitated

2005-11-17T20:38:00.000-05:00

In the past 36 hours, I've come across an exceptional number of interesting things in cyberspace. I'd like to call five items to your attention.

1. The letter carrier who went postal

This amusing tale is worth reading in its entirety. It comes from today's Globe and Mail:

For reasons that are still not fully understood, a mail carrier in Montreal decided that instead of delivering the mail, he would hoard it at home. By the time Canada Post caught on, the carrier had stolen a whopping 75,000 pieces of mail over five years. …

On some days, the carrier would deliver the mail to one side of the street, but not the other. Other days, he wouldn't deliver to homes on the second floor. Of the mail he stole, he opened only about 100 envelopes, mostly greeting cards containing cash or cheques. …

Most of the mail belonged to residents of the immigrant-heavy district of Park Extension. Yesterday, residents of the district's De L'Épée Avenue opened the doors to their modest duplexes and grabbed hold of brick-sized bundles of mail, eyes wide.

— i.e., bundles of mail that the letter carrier had been hoarding for months or years, which are now being delivered to the startled householders.

2. The turtle who paints masterpieces

I like abstract art; Mary P. and I proudly display several pieces in our home. But I admit, some pieces could be the creation of a turtle.

According to Turtlekiss.com, Koopa the turtle is developing quite a reputation. Paintings like Virtuoso (pictured) now hang in 46 of the US states.

The sale of Koopa's art has raised over $9,000 for turtle rescue organizations. (hat tip Web junkie)

3. Surprise! European Muslims actively resist integration

I've just discovered Andrew Sullivan's blog. Sullivan writes very perceptively on how the USA is prosecuting the "war on terror", among other subjects.

Today, he shares this quote from the Christian Science Monitor:

Millions of "French Muslims" don't consider themselves French. A government report leaked last March depicted an increasingly two-track educational system: More and more Muslim students refuse to sing, dance, participate in sports, sketch a face, or play an instrument. They won't draw a right angle (it looks like part of the Christian cross). They won't read Voltaire and Rousseau (too antireligion), Cyrano de Bergerac (too racy), Madame Bovary (too pro-women), or Chrétien de Troyes (too chrétien). [Chrétien means Christian.] One school has separate toilets for "Muslims" and "Frenchmen"; another obeyed a Muslim leader's call for separate locker rooms because "the circumcised should not have to undress alongside the impure."

Sullivan comments:

This is not a case simply of an ethnic minority denied integration; it's a case of a religious minority refusing integration, indeed attacking and denying the very values of secularism and liberalism upon which the West rests.

Who can disagree?

4. Burning Man photos

Burning Man is an annual event wherein 25,000+ people travel to the Black Rock Desert to form an experi- mental community for one week. Participants are free to express themselves in ways that are outside the norms that apply elsewhere.

Carolyn was there this year and she has posted a couple dozen photos on her blog. Note: I can't link to the photos directly because each photo is a separate post. Click on the purple head photo, above, which will take you to the first set, then scroll down past the first few posts. Click here to view a second set of photos.

The event is intriguing, Carolyn's photos capture its spirit, and it's a lot of work to post this many photos! Go, enjoy!

5. An Israeli soldier hesitates … and makes the right decision

Ben Witherington is a Christian scholar who occasionally travels in Israel. On one of his visits, he hired a taxi for a week. Etan, the taxi driver, formerly was an Israeli soldier. Witherington comments, "He was not bitter, but there was a sadness about him, and he had had to grow up much too fast."

On one occasion, Etan nearly made a deadly mistake that might have haunted him for the rest of his life:

Etan had fought at Jenin. Quietly, and with no vainglory at all, he told of the day that he was attacking a particular Palestinian house thought to harbor Hamas radicals. He had pulled out a grenade, and had pulled the pin almost entirely out when he remembered he had a duty to yell that there was an incoming explosive, in case there were innocents within who deserved a chance to get out of the way. He told me "but we had been fighting hard, and yet something made me put that pin back in the grenade and look inside the house first."

Inside the house he found nothing but women and children who had been locked into the house by their own people so that they could claim the Israeli's had commited a horrible atrocity at Jenin. It made him physically sick, and yet he was so thankful that something had stopped him from throwing that grenade. I had no doubt that "something" was God. Then he asked — what kind of people would do this to their own families in order to shame us before the world? It was a very good question and shows that the whole Israeli-Palestinian conflict has always been complex with evil and good on both sides.

Later when Etan had gathered himself, he said to me — "I love my country and this is why I fight, but honestly, if someone would tell me there was a place for us Jews in the middle of a desert where everyone would leave us alone and no one else would claim the territory and we wouldn't have to hurt anyone by mistake, I would move there today. It is not about living on this piece of dirt for me. It is about shalom."

I was deeply moved by his testimony. He had grown up fast and hard as a teen in the Israeli army, and he had seen the worst that humanity can do, and yet there was still a little hopefulness left in him. The human spirit, created in God's image is resilient, and I am thankful that Etan listened to that still small voice on that crucial day in Jenin. He said "If I had not stopped and looked on that day, I would never have slept again."

It's a hard thing to be a soldier with an actual conscience because all war is hell, and yet this story shows what a difference it can make in a case by case basis.

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem, and pray for my new friend Etan.

For the record: I believe, as Witherington believes, that it was the Spirit of God who prompted Etan to put that pin back into the grenade.

Two effective nude protests

2005-11-16T18:33:00.000-05:00

Getting naked for a worthy cause is all the rage these days. Or is it the other way around — a worthy cause is a convenient excuse to get naked?

Frankly, I think it's a bit of both. To participate in the World Naked Bike Ride, you've got to yield to your inner exhibitionist. If you don't have an inner exhibitionist, you won't be among the participants.

On the weekend of June 11-12, 2005, according to treehugger.com, naked cyclists took to the streets in more than 50 cities worldwide. The purpose was to register a protest against Western dependence on oil.

(image originally uploaded by justinphilpott).

Note that no one in the UK was arrested or registered as a sex offender: "Although indecent exposure is a criminal offence in the UK, the Metropolitan Police viewed the ride as a political protest, and no arrests were made." Good for the Bobbies, I say!

I think this protest works better than the "Breasts Not Bombs" events (see my previous post).

It's the bicycles that make the difference. Getting naked in public has nothing to do with decreasing Western dependence on oil. But riding a bike does!

These protesters didn't stand around holding banners and chanting, "Stop indecent exposure to automobile emissions!" They hopped onto their bicycles, thus encouraging people to consider alternative means of transportation.

In my opinion, that's the missing element in the "Breasts Not Bombs" events. They need to devise a "bicycle" — a symbol they can use to divert attention away from the nudity toward the cause they espouse.

The World Naked Bike Ride advocates using an alternative means of transportation. What exactly does "Breasts Not Bombs" ask people to do? Does it have something to do with breasts?

I must admit that I enjoyed researching this subject. Some time when you're bored, I encourage you to google "topless protests" and see what turns up.

You have to know that PETA — People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals — is going to come up repeatedly.

PETA is known for the memorable slogan, "I'd rather go naked than wear fur." This is the same issue, once again — trying to segue from the medium (nudity) to the message (end cruelty to animals).

PETA is also known for their outrageous stunts. No surprise, then, that they came up with the funniest of the protests in my google search.

The cause: "the persistent and invidious male failure to lick pussy." "Animals get eaten more than we do," is their complaint. (Click on the photo for the story.)

I think this is a successful protest:

Nudity makes sense in this context;
So does tiger makeup: tiger = pussy, see?
And the cage? … well, that's a little harder to explain.

How about this?: going too long between orgasms can make you feel like a caged animal.

Awwww, the poor dear!

The medium overwhelms the message

2005-11-15T05:29:00.000-05:00

"Breasts Not Bombs" was in the news earlier this month. Two women were arrested for exposing their breasts as part of an anti-Schwarzenegger protest on the grounds of California's state Capitol. If convicted of committing lewd acts, they may be registered as sex offenders! In my opinion, that would be a ludicrous overreaction.

The leader of the movement, Sherry Glaser, explains that the tactic was inspired by the infamous Janet Jackson "wardrobe malfunction":

The "Crass and deplorable stunt" that occurred during the half-time show of the Superbowl over took National Headlines. The fact that George Bush Lied to the World and the American People about Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction didn’t even make the paper that day. I guess Janet’s Breasts bounced it right off the front page. Am I also to believe that her breast exposure is more horrifying than the death of another six US soldiers and who knows how many Iraqi children and women? Or more indecent than the fact that people are being detained and tortured without any constitutional rights in Guantanamo Bay?

I understand that The FCC is going to order a probe into the Breast situation. They are going to probe the breast exposure. … Isn’t it more in the best interest of Americans for there to be an investigation into Dick Cheney’s ties to Halliburton and his secret meetings with the energy taskforce? …

What I have to surmise from this obsession with Janet Jackson’s breast is that the Breast is mightier than the sword. It seems as though we women have a secret weapon we knew nothing about. The power of the breast. Like any super hero, underneath our everyday clothing lay our true identities. With the slip of some leather and the revelation of a little bit of flesh we command the front page.

I agree with Ms. Glaser to a point. I think the American reaction to the merest flash of Janet Jackson's breast was bizarre. The degree of outrage suggested a certain sickness in the American psyche. Millions of Canadians watched the same half-time show, and the Canadian equivalent of the FCC received fewer than 100 complaints.

But I think Ms. Glaser is misguided to make breasts a vehicle of political protest, as I will explain.

There are three topless people in the photo at the top of this post. (Of a different protest, not the one at California's state Capitol.) Let's consider each of them in turn.

Beauty is a very subjective concept, but I assume we can all agree that this woman is physically attractive.

Maybe too attractive. The medium (breasts) threatens to overwhelm the message (not bombs). I can't help thinking of the line from the James Bond film, Tomorrow Never Dies:

• Admiral Roebuck: With all due respect, M, I think you don't have the balls for this job. [Note: M is a woman.]

• M: Maybe. But the advantage is, I don't have to think with them all the time.

It's pathetic, but true: men tend to "think" with their balls. When a man is in the presence of a beautiful, topless woman, all the blood rushes out of his brain and settles in his groin.

I freely confess that if this woman asked me to sign a petition, I would not hesitate. I would sign in hope that she would direct that warm smile at me. Then I would wander aimlessly for the next couple of hours in a happy erotic haze.

But I would be no more of a pacifist than I was before. Throughout our encounter, the medium would have more of my attention than the message.

This photo may offend some folks, but it doesn't have much impact on me one way or another. (source) I understand that some men are convinced they are really women trapped in a man's body. Some such men resort to hormone therapy and radical surgery to become the other. And some, like this fellow, are content to stop half way and be a bit of each.

I've never had a transsexual friend, so I'm sure I'm not as sympathetic as I might otherwise be. But I can't help but wonder about this person's motives. Is s/he here, sans shirt, primarily because s/he believes so deeply in the pacifist cause? Or is the cause primarily a pretext to expose his/her breasts and flaunt his/her transgendered state?

In the final analysis it probably doesn't matter too much. We all suffer from the same syndrome: even when we do the right thing, we never do it 100% for the right motives.

But I know this much for sure: the medium is once again overwhelming the message, even more powerfully than in the case of the first woman.

Meet Sherry Glaser, the driving force behind the "Breasts Not Bombs" movement. She says it takes real courage for a woman with a body like hers to disrobe in public:

I must confess, as I did before I disrobed, that this act was terribly frightening. Not just because there were police ready to arrest me and media surrounding me, not to mention registered sex offenders, but because my breasts are huge, I know. I don't have to tell you that.

I do not fit into the acceptable, popular culturally desirable body type. I'm more like every woman. Every woman who has doubts about her body. Every woman who is afraid to undress with the light on for fear that her flaws will overwhelm her beauty. Everywoman who blossoms at middle age into her full power and voluptuous sexuality. Every woman who is afraid some man will judge her as ugly or fat. Every woman who is afraid that she's just not right. So it took a mountain of courage for me to do this act.

I find Ms. Glaser's first-person account very moving. And her fears have been realized: some men are infuriated because Ms. Glaser isn't young and gorgeous:

I receive e-mails that are downright stunning as to what my body looks like to them. "Beastly" HUGE TITS" "Disgusting" "hideous" — things like that. People calling me a moron, suggesting I should go to a mental hospital. …

My favorite interaction came from a retired Army Sargeant who served in Viet Nam. His e-mail began, "Do you have any "members with a DECENT HUMAN set of tits? All I have seen are OINKERS. Now I know the meaning of pornography. Put your shirts on Mothers." Our correspondence began that way and went on for a couple of weeks with a total of about five messages to each other. We came to realize that we were both angry and it wasn't really about each other.

If Ms. Glaser is willing to put up with such crap, she is obviously deeply committed to the pacifist cause. It's hard to criticize a woman who is willing to pay a deeply personal price for her convictions. But, in the final analysis, I still think she is misguided.

It's clear from the hate mail Ms. Glaser receives that the medium is, once again, overwhelming the message. I think it's appalling that people attack her for not having smaller, perkier breasts. But clearly that's the only impression the protest makes on many observers.

Aside from the tendency men have to think with their balls, there is another reason why such protests are doomed to fail: there is no natural connection between breasts and pacifism.

Ms. Glaser and her colleagues try to establish a connection in people's minds. They cry out,

Breasts Not Bombs, Titties Not Tanks, Nipples not Napalm, Mammaries not missles. The issue is SOFT TISSUE!

I admire that last phrase, "the issue is soft tissue" — it's very clever. But even if we set the sexual response to one side, the first subject (breasts) does not provide any kind of segue to the other (the carnage in Iraq and elsewhere).

The medium seizes our attention, quite effectively. But then Ms. Glaser and her colleagues struggle in vain to shift our attention to the message. What remains is only the base sexual response, which leads either to arousal or disgust, depending on the beauty of the woman and the maturity of the onlooker.

I have a short follow-up post in mind — no more than a post script, really. But here's my advice to Ms. Glaser and others who stage similar protests involving public nudity. To achieve your goal, you've got to find an intermediary step to shift attention by stages from the medium to the message. I have an example in mind which I'll share tomorrow.

If the women readers have a different perspective, I'd be very interested to hear it. I know I've discussed the issue entirely from the perspective of the male response.

Race riots: coming soon to your neighborhood?

2005-11-13T15:54:00.000-05:00

First, an update on the rioting in France. Since Wednesday, forty municipalities have imposed curfews on minors. In Paris, according to the Globe and Mail,

police banned public gatherings that could "provoke or encourage disorder" from 10 a.m., local time, Saturday to 8 a.m. Sunday. It was the first such ban in the French capital in at least a decade, said police spokesman Hugo Mahboubi.

Rioting has weakened in intensity since the curfews were introduced. Nonetheless, police counted 315 cars torched across France yesterday night.

Europeans are nervously monitoring events in France, wondering if they soon will be facing a similar crisis. The Washington Post reports:

The burning cars and social fury exploding across France have transfixed the rest of Europe, where countries with sizable and growing immigrant populations are confronted by some of the same underlying tensions but are cautiously hopeful that the violence won't spread. …

While politicians and police chiefs in other European nations with substantial immigrant populations — notably Britain, Germany, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands — say they have seen no visible signs of unrest, they acknowledge that the French riots have grabbed their attention and reminded them of what could happen if they don't do more to address problems at home.

One phenomenon cries out for an explanation. The discontent in France and elsewhere is traced not to recent immigrants, but to the children of immigrants. In other words, visible minorities who were born in Western cities. The issue first came into focus when it was discovered that some of the perpetrators of the London bombings had been born in England.

An article in yesterday's Globe and Mail offers an interesting perspective. Recent research

shows an emerging population of Canadian-raised daughters and sons of visible-minority immigrants à la France whose accents and cultural reference points are as Canadian as maple syrup, but who in many respects feel less welcome in the country than their parents.

"Their parents came to improve their lives," says University of Toronto sociologist Jeffrey Reitz, one of Canada's foremost academic experts on immigration and multiculturalism.

"They can make comparisons to where they were. They can [move] on. But for their children born in Canada, they don't have the option of going anywhere else. And they expect equality. Therefore their expectations are much higher."

I don't know that this is the full explanation, but it's the first analysis that makes any sense to me.

(an idyllic photo from Citizenship and Immigration Canada)

Visible minorities born in Western cities have higher expectations than their parents. Westerners boast about equal opportunity for all, and they take those comments at face value. When they discover that a lot of doors are closed to them it comes as a rude shock.

Are the doors closed because they are visible minorities? Or do they face the same kinds of obstacles as those who are not visible minorities?

We all start out with some characteristics that work to our advantage and others that hold us back. For example, some studies have shown that income is related to height, with each inch adding about $789 to one's yearly income. If this is true, the fact that I'm vertically challenged (5'6½") holds me back economically.

On the other hand, if you're Paris Hilton, you can become rich and (in)famous despite having neither talent, brains, nor anything else that should qualify you for success in a meritocracy. Equal opportunity for all doesn't work out quite as advertised.

Still, you can't argue with people's experience:

Listen to the voice of 22-year-old Rahel Appiagyei, a third-year student in international relations attending Toronto's elite bilingual Glendon College at York University.

"No, I don't feel accepted," she says. "The one thing I don't understand — me, personally, and for blacks in general — is why we're still seen as immigrants."

In the Canada of her experience, she says, "the word 'immigrant' is used to mean coloured and the word 'Canadian' is a code word for Caucasian." Her parents emigrated from Ghana in 1988, when she was 5. Immigrants from Ghana — along with those from Ethiopia, Somalia and Afghanistan — have the highest rates of poverty in Canada, between 50 and 80 per cent. She, her parents and five siblings live crowded into a three-bedroom apartment.

Ms. Appiagyei, whose idiom and accent with trademark raised ou diphthong are flawlessly Canadian, says with pride that her family has never needed a penny of welfare, that her father has steadily worked since he arrived, and that she is the first in the family to be accomplishing what her mother and father brought their children to Canada to do.

She cites the Toronto school board's policy of zero tolerance for violence and points out its targets are overwhelmingly black students. Something can't be right with a policy that winds up being aimed at a single racial group, she says. "It gives me a lot of messages."

Ms. Appiagyei tells the story of living one summer in Quebec with a family to learn French. The father made clear that he associated blacks with poverty and one day commented that he had never thought blacks attractive until he met her. "It was a compliment and insult at the same time."

The Ethnic Diversity Study found 37 per cent of Canada's visible minorities report discrimination, and for blacks alone the figure is 50 per cent.

Ms. Appiagyei says the more engaged and involved in Canadian life she becomes, the more she encounters gaps between her expectations of what Canadian society should be and the reality she encounters.

She tells of being often asked: "'You're from Africa, how come you know English so well?' I feel I'm always being assessed with lions and tigers, with remoteness. Why is it we're not allowed to feel we belong here?"

I accept that visible minorities face an additional obstacle to success. And maybe it's a big obstacle — there's no way for caucasians like me to evaluate it.

Nonetheless, as I explained in my previous post on the riots in Paris, I think the social problem is particularly acute in France. Citizens of other European nations evidently feel the same (returning here to the Washington Post article):

European lawmakers and analysts also pointed to evidence that the French riots were being fueled by conditions that were not mirrored elsewhere. While there is widespread dissatisfaction with the pace of integration and assimilation throughout Europe, they said, segregation, unemployment and social alienation seem much more pronounced in the suburbs around Paris and other French cities. …

Friedrich Heckmann, a professor of immigration studies at the University of Bamberg in Germany, said studies show that it is more difficult for second-generation French to move out of the slums or segregated neighborhoods and find jobs than for people of the same age and background in Britain and Germany.

That's my impression, too — that conditions here in Canada are not what they are in France.

But maybe I'm unduly complacent. What is your opinion? Are similar riots likely to break out in Canada? Are they likely to break out in the UK or the USA?

Variant accounts of John the Baptist's message

2005-11-12T10:09:00.000-05:00

I've published a new post over at Ragged Glory: Jesus' performance evaluation, part 2: variant accounts.

The topic is still the depiction of John the Baptist in the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke). In the new post, I explore the difference in John's message as reported by Matthew and Luke, on the one hand, and by Mark, on the other.

This leads to a brief discussion of the "two source" theory.

Lest we forget

2005-11-11T06:23:00.000-05:00

World War 2 Death Count

	Military	Civilian	Combined
USSR	13,600,000	7,700,000	21,300,000
China	1,324,000	10,000,000	11,324,000
Germany	3,250,000	3,810,000	7,060,000
Poland	850,000	6,000,000	6,850,000
Japan	— —	— —	2,000,000
Yugoslavia	300,000	1,400,000	1,700,000
Rumania	520,000	465,000	985,000
France	340,000	470,000	810,000
Hungary	— —	— —	750,000
Austria	380,000	145,000	525,000
Greece	— —	— —	520,000
USA	500,000	none	500,000
Italy	330,000	80,000	410,000
Czechoslovakia	— —	— —	400,000
Great Britain	326,000	62,000	388,000
Netherlands	198,000	12,000	210,000
Belgium	76,000	12,000	88,000
Finland	— —	— —	84,000
Canada	39,000	none	39,000
India	36,000	none	36,000
Australia	29,000	none	29,000
Albania	— —	— —	28,000
Spain	12,000	10,000	22,000
Bulgaria	19,000	2,000	21,000
New Zealand	12,000	none	12,000
Norway	— —	— —	10,262
South Africa	9,000	none	9,000
Luxembourg	— —	— —	5,000
Denmark	4,000	none	4,000
Total			56,125,262

World War 2 death toll in perspective

First World War (1914-18): 15,000,000
Russian Civil War (1917-22): 9,000,000
Stalin's regime (USSR, 1924-53): 20,000,000
Second World War (1937-45): 55,000,000
Mao Zedong's regime (China, 1949-1975): 40,000,000

Religion, politics, and tax-exempt status don't mix

2005-11-09T22:08:00.000-05:00

The Los Angeles Times reports,

The Internal Revenue Service has warned one of Southern California's largest and most liberal churches that it is at risk of losing its tax-exempt status because of an antiwar sermon two days before the 2004 presidential election.

Discussion over at Ragged Glory.

French nationalism and the Paris riots

2005-11-08T21:49:00.000-05:00

No doubt most of you are aware that Muslim youths have been rioting in Paris, nightly, for nearly two weeks now. A 61-year-old man was beaten to death. A woman in her 50s, on crutches, was doused with a flammable liquid and set on fire. The rioters are burning more than 1,000 cars per night.

I would like to draw a connection between the riots in Paris and an event here in Canada ten years ago.

On October 30, 1995, residents of Quebec nearly voted to separate from Canada. According to Wikipedia, the final vote was 50.58% against to 49.42% in favour of separation. English Canadians watched the returns with our hearts in our throats: we had no say in the decision as our nation was very nearly torn in two.

But what is the connection between this event and the riots in Paris? The answer is, French nationalism.

Someone who was being interviewed on CBC radio tried to explain the alienation of the Muslim youths who are rioting nightly in Paris. He said that the majority of the population does not regard them as "really" French. Even Muslims who were born in France are up against that prejudice.

When I heard those comments, I thought of the 1995 referendum.

Let me step back and provide a little historical context. There was a time when the Francophone population of Quebec had good reason to resent English Canada. Mordecai Richler explains,

[French Canadians] can recall when they weren't welcome in the higher reaches of Quebec's leading law firms, brokerage houses or banks. In 1961 French Canadians, though they made up something like a third of Canada's then population of nineteen million, held somewhat less than fifteen percent of responsible federal jobs. A survey showed that while four fifths of the directors of 183 major companies in Canada, were Canadian born, less than 7% of these positions were held by French Canadians.

But those days are long past. The sea change began in the early 1960s with the Quiet Revolution, which profoundly redefined the role of Quebec, and Quebeckers, within Confederation. Quebeckers have assumed their rightful place in the boardrooms of the nation and at the highest echelons of government. It is often pointed out that Canada's Prime Minister has come from Quebec for 32 of the past 33 years.

Thus it is hard to understand Francophone Quebeckers' continuing alienation. At a time when the United Nations repeatedly chose Canada as the best nation on earth in which to live, Quebeckers seriously considered leaving Canada to found a separate nation.

The impulse is attributable to French nationalism.

When the result of the 1995 referendum was clear, the leader of the separatist cause offered an infamous explanation of the result. Then Premier Jacques Parizeau said:

Let's stop talking about the francophones of Quebec. Let's talk about us. Sixty per cent of us have voted in favour.

We need to pause here just for a moment. Who is the "us" to whom M. Parizeau refers? The answer is, "real" Quebeckers. These folk sometimes identify themselves as pur laine (pure wool) Quebeckers — those whose ancestors came from France and who settled in Quebec many generations ago.

M. Parizeau was dividing Quebec voters into "us" and "them". They may be francophones insofar as they speak French, but they are not to be mistaken for us. He continued:

… It's true we have been defeated, but basically by what? By money and the ethnic vote. All it means is that in the next round [i.e., the next referendum], instead of us being 60 or 61 per cent in favour, we'll be 63 or 64 per cent.

This notorious phrase, "money and the ethnic vote", continues to resound ten years later. It is true that allophones (those whose first language is neither French nor English) voted against separation en masse (see the Wikipedia article sited above). But all residents of Quebec were entitled to participate in determining their fate. M. Parizeau's remarks suggest that he bitterly resented allophones for scuppering his pet project.

Now let us return to those Muslim youths in Paris — the ones who doubt they are accepted as "really" French. Is this scenario plausible? I think so.

By no means do I condone the rioting in Paris. All around the world, Muslims are responsible for acts of violence and the murder of civilians, just as we are now seeing in France. Evidence continues to mount that there is something in contemporary Muslim culture which lends itself to such acts.

But surely we should still consider whether the Muslim youths of France have just cause to feel alienated. Timothy Smith, described as a specialist in French history, offers this opinion:

Whereas Toronto has small pockets of self-segregated ethnic communities (which tend to disperse over a generation or two), Paris has entire suburbs, with hundreds of thousands of immigrants living in almost complete isolation from the mainstream, decade after decade.

The French government refuses to recognize ethnic communities as legitimate actors — it would prefer that they simply disappear quietly into the mainstream. North Africans are expected to jettison all their cultural and religious baggage at the border, and pretend that their ancestors are the Gauls. Multiculturalism is dismissed as a dangerous Anglo-Saxon import. … The French believe that multiculturalism would only privilege individuals by association with their ethnic, religious or racial roots.

Smith believes that France could learn a thing or two from Canada's example:

There is no such concept as Algerian French. By contrast, one can be Chinese Canadian and still be considered a full citizen. Before immigrants to Canada become equal in the economic sense, their culture is already considered equal in the theoretical sense. The one helps lead to the other. …

Most Canadians see immigrants in a positive light — they add diversity to the cultural scene, they spice up our cuisine, they make important economic contributions, they will help pay for the boomers' pensions. …

Obviously, racism exists in Canada, but where is the equivalent of France's unabashedly xenophobic National Front party, which received 5.5 million votes in 2002? Which political party in Canada is led by a man who plasters city walls with election posters vowing: "When he [this leader] comes, they [the immigrants] are going?"

Even in Quebec, multiculturalism has been embraced as a social good. Jacques Parizeau's offensive remarks on the night of the 1995 referendum marked a high-water mark in bitterness directed toward "ethnics". The new generation of separatist leaders actively courts the allophone vote. They hope to hold another referendum some day, and they want immigrants to feel that there is a place for them in an independent Quebec.

France can, indeed, learn a few lessons from Canada's example. The article by Timothy Smith concludes:

Amazingly, there isn't a single member of the National Assembly from mainland France who is a visible minority, even as 9 per cent to 10 per cent of the population is Muslim. If there were one such politician, perhaps he or she could visit the suburbs and deliver a message of hope.

Escaping gravity

2005-11-06T16:45:00.000-05:00

All of us have dreams in which we are flying. I wonder why that is. Why do we all dream about doing something that none of us has ever done?

In my dreams, people are always amazed that I can fly. I explain that anyone can do it, and I show them how.

When I was younger, I used to fly higher than I do now. I would start running, and somehow get in sync with the wind, and then I would lift off the ground. I would fly high above the trees, cutting great swooping arcs through the sky like a kite. I would feel it in the pit of my stomach, like you do when you drive over the crest of a steep hill.

I didn't flap my arms to fly. Not like the old joke: I flew in from Miami yesterday … and boy, are my arms tired.

It was just a matter of escaping gravity. As long as my feet were on the ground, gravity had me in its grip. But once I lifted off just a little, I was free: the sky was the limit.

And why not, I ask? Scientists tell us that gravity is a weak force:

Although it may be hard to believe after you have helped a friend move a sofa up to a third-floor apartment, gravity is by far the weakest of the fundamental forces. The reason it dominates our lives the way it does is that we spend our days on the surface of a huge mass (the earth) that functions as a gigantic generator of gravitational force. However, the fact that you can pick up a nail with a magnet shows that even the entire earth pulling on one side cannot counteract the magnetic force exerted by something that can be held in your hand. (James S. Trefil, The Moment of Creation.)

I still fly in my dreams, just as I did when I was twenty years old, but now I stay much lower to the ground. I've put on a few pounds in the intervening years. Maybe gravity has more of a hold on me.

Or maybe the explanation is psychological. As a kid, I was sure I would grow up to be a pro hockey player. As a teenager, I dreamt instead of being a rock star or a renowned actor. Then, as a young adult, I developed a bit of a Messiah complex: I was going to save the world, or at least rescue many individuals from their unhappy circumstances.

Much to my surprise, it didn't work out that way. These days, my ambitions are much more modest. I am grateful to have a decent job and provide for my children's financial needs. Mary P. and I bought a house together last June, and I'm relieved that we can make the mortgage payments.

My ambitions are much more modest; and in my dreams, I fly much lower to the ground. Coincidence? I think not.

But I still believe that anyone can do it. Gravity is a weak force. And the human spirit is designed to soar.

Jesus' performance evaluation

2005-11-05T06:48:00.000-05:00

Over at Ragged Glory, I have published a new post. I encourage inquirers to subject Jesus to a kind of performance evaluation.

Each of the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) begins with John's prophecy about the "Coming One". That prophecy functions as a standard against which Jesus may be judged — suitable criteria for a performance evaluation.

Is Jesus the Christ (i.e., the Messiah)? His ministry corresponded to John's expectation — but imperfectly.

I'm going to publish the historical data section as a separate post, probably later this weekend. There I will discuss the difference between the accounts of Matthew and Luke, on the one hand, and Mark, on the other.

This will open up a discussion of the "two source" theory of Gospel origins. The two source theory suggests that Matthew and Luke had two primary sources which they utilized in constructing their Gospels. First, they incorporated most of Mark in their Gospels (with many editorial changes). Second, they utilized a lost account of Jesus' sayings, which scholars designate "Q".

(Yes, just like my pseudonym in the blogosphere … what a coincidence.)

Why it's better to be a boy

2005-11-03T21:23:00.000-05:00

A colleague at work forwarded a jpeg image to me, which sparked an amusing dialogue. Here's the image:

I'm not taking this warning very seriously; maybe if I was another ten or fifteen years older it would hit closer to home. But naturally, I had to respond to the sender.

The dialogue is colour-coded so you can keep the characters straight. Hint: blue is for boy.

Every pre-pubescent boy's fantasy! (I don't know what little girls do for entertainment. They're at *such* a disadvantage.)

I am not going there!

... can't even write their names in the snow.

Yet can write novels at a very young age.

Hah! You call that *fun*?!!!

And that's where the dialogue ended. My last point was so compelling she turned off her computer and left work early.

Stanley Cup winning coach reveals he is illiterate

2005-11-03T07:02:00.000-05:00

Jacques Demers, now retired after achieving great success as a coach in the National Hockey League, has just revealed that he is illiterate. He managed to hide the fact from his colleagues and even from his children until now.

Demers coached more than 1,000 games in the NHL; he won the Jack Adams Award as NHL coach of the year twice; and he capped off his career by guiding the Montreal Canadiens to a Stanley Cup victory in 1993.

The story is very moving. Demers' father, who was an alcoholic, physically abused him. CanWest News Services quotes Demers:

"My young life was so negative, I developed a positive side to hide everything from people. By not telling people what my Dad was doing to my mom and me, I developed a positive side to hide the ugly truth.

"It was my way of surviving, but I developed anxiety," said Demers, who eventually sought professional help to deal with his personal torment.

"Going to a doctor two years ago helped me understand that when your father says, 'You're a no-good SOB,' you don't go to sleep at night and you can't function or learn at school."

In the 1960s, Demers assumed responsibility for three younger siblings when his parents died a few years apart. He was only sixteen when his Mom died.

A new biography reveals Demers' secret for the first time:

In Jacques Demers: Toutes En Lettres, a biography written by Mario Leclerc of Le Journal de Montreal and released yesterday, the 61-year-old former Canadiens coach divulges that he never learned to adequately read or write, and shrewdly masked his embarrassing deficiency by getting others to do his paperwork. …

"Everywhere I went, in Detroit or St. Louis, the trainers or someone would always fill out the lineup without knowing my secret," Demers said yesterday.

"I would always tell them, 'You're the best, you know who's playing, you know the sweater numbers in the room.' Eddy [Palchak, the Canadiens trainer] did it for me every single game here and then I'd have an assistant coach look it over.

"No one ever knew my secret but my wife Debbie. In 1984, we were sitting in our kitchen in St. Louis and I asked her to pay some bills. She finally said, 'Look, I'm not your damn secretary.' So I had to tell her and we both kept it a very dark secret.

Even then, Demers continued to hide his illiteracy from his children. According to the Globe and Mail, he told the eldest of his four children only on Tuesday. As of yesterday afternoon, he still had not told the others, who live in the USA.

Demers feared exposure throughout his coaching career and even later, when he became a television commentator for a Francophone TV station:

"Nobody can ever hurt me again. Nobody can fire me now," he said in an interview yesterday.

"But for all those years, I always had at the back of my mind that I could be fired, I could be embarrassed, I could be humiliated.

"I coached five teams, and there's no way the National Hockey League would have given me a chance.

"There's no way they were going to hire someone who says he's an illiterate." …

Former Canadiens star Serge Savard said he only found out the truth about Mr. Demers at the end of their time together with the Montreal Canadiens, in the 1990s.

"He fooled everyone," Mr. Savard said. "He always had notes with him and he looked like he was writing something."

Demers says he learned his survival skills from his mother, who also endured bloodied beatings at the hand of her husband.

When his Canadiens won the Stanley Cup, Demers thought of his Mom. "She was my hero and would have been very proud of me."

Demers plans to donate 60 cents from each sale of the book to Le Chainon, a Montreal shelter for battered women.

An intractable social problem

2005-11-01T20:02:00.000-05:00

In Canada, we call them First Nations. In the USA, they are called Indians. (In fact, Indian is the historic term here, too; it survives in legal texts such as the Indian Act.)

Many First Nation communities live in desperate circumstances. One all-too-typical story is making news this week.

The Kashechewan First Nation, in Northern Ontario, has been under a boil-water advisory since 2003. The community's plight became much worse two weeks ago when deadly E. coli bacteria were found in their drinking water.

E. coli often causes severe bloody diarrhea and abdominal cramps. In vulnerable people, the infection can cause a complication which can lead to kidney failure. A small number of survivors will still have abnormal kidney function many years later, and a few will require long-term dialysis. Other potentially lifelong complications include high blood pressure, seizures, blindness, paralysis, and the effects of having part of one's bowel removed.

In short, E. coli in your drinking water is a serious problem. And the Government of Canada (which has jurisdiction over Indians and Indian reserves) has known about the problem for more than two years. It received an alarming report from the Ontario Clean Water Agency in 2003.

This week, the Government of Ontario declared a state of emergency in Kashechewan after seeing graphic photographs of the community's children. Many of the children are infected with scabies, a nasty parasite, and impetigo, a bacterial skin infection. Meanwhile, the Globe and Mail reports,

95 other Canadian reserves are also under boil-water advisories. A 2001 report by the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs found that 75 per cent of the aboriginal communities in Canada faced "a significant risk to the quality or safety of drinking water." In a sobering report last month, the Auditor-General of Canada reported that most water-treatment plant operators on native reserves across Canada don't "possess the knowledge and skills required to operate their plant safely."

Around the world, wherever indigenous populations have survived into the modern era, the same issues exist. Socio-economic problems abound. In Canada, as summarized by Canadian Press,

The average rate of aboriginal youths committing suicide has soared to six times higher than the national average for the age group. …

Native communities also have higher incidences of infectious and chronic diseases, earlier mortality and face more barriers to health-care access than the general population. …

The high prices for everyday food items in communities like Kashechewan — where a pack of hot dogs costs more than $11 — makes it difficult for residents to eat healthily … although the price of cigarettes does not differ greatly from the rest of the province.

This is an intractable social problem. The Government of Canada spends billions of dollars per year on First Nations, and yet this intolerable situation persists.

Full disclosure here: I am an employee of the Government of Canada. Specifically, I work for Health Canada, in the First Nations and Inuit Health Branch. I am not trying to exonerate the Government of Canada, nor do I wish to castigate it. I am simply stating a fact: that if the funding is calculated on a per capita basis, an extraordinary amount of money is invested, to no avail.

The Globe and Mail offers this opinion:

For thousands of years, the James Bay Crees survived by seasonal migration, travelling and living in small groups. Now the Kashechewan residents live in about 200 pre-fab houses in a community of 1,700 with only a tenuous connection to the old ways — some trapping, some crafts, a goose hunt a couple of weeks a year. They survive on money from Ottawa because there are few jobs beyond the ones Ottawa pays for. The Kashechewan unemployment rate is 87 per cent. …

The majority of [Kashechewan residents] are under 24. They need to live closer to employment, with training that will give them a realistic chance of landing that employment — a statement that could be as easily applied to the other remote reserves in this country.

In other words, the Globe and Mail advocates a permanent relocation of the community. Move them south, where the jobs are, and give them the training they need to join non-Aboriginal Canadians in the workforce.

What does this recommendation amount to? The old policy of assimilation: First Nation people should give up the attempt to maintain a distinct identity and become like the rest of us. Live where non-Aboriginals live, cultivate the same skills that non-Aboriginals rely on, and get yourself the same kind of job.

If that's the solution, it stinks.

I don't have anything brilliant to say here. It seems to me that First Nations are being forced to choose either the frying pan or the fire. Refuse to assimilate and continue to live in squalor and misery; or forfeit your Aboriginal identity for a shot at prosperity.

What kind of choice is that?

How to become a world famous writer

2005-11-01T07:43:00.000-05:00

… in three easy steps:

Write something.
Get it published.
Become world famous.

Mary P. has offered to write a column for The Oscar, our local community newspaper, which publishes monthly. Their response, naturally, was to jump up and down for sheer joy for a while. But eventually they calmed down enough to compose an e-mail and take her up on the offer.

The first column ("Diaper Maelstrom") was published this month; we received our copy yesterday. (The November issue hasn't been published online yet, so for now you won't find Mary P.'s column at the link.)

Writing for the local community newspaper is a modest achievement, but I'm proud of her! By my calculation, Mary P. is two thirds of the way to being world famous.

Rocks and trees and trees and rocks

2005-10-30T15:13:00.000-05:00

Canada is a rugged country. Thing's birthplace is located somewhere on the Canadian Shield — it must be so!

This weekend, we travelled from Ottawa to Peterborough to attend my Mom's 75th birthday party. (See previous post.) The distance is 270 kms / 167 miles. The drive takes about three and a half hours, one way.

Canada is vast and sparsely populated. It takes about 45 minutes to leave Ottawa behind. After that, you pass through occasional towns; but mostly, Canada consists of thousands of square miles of uninhabited land.

The trees are colourful since we're well into autumn weather now. (In fact, many trees have lost most of their leaves.) And in this part of Ontario, the highway has been cut through tonnes of rock.

Note the parallel, vertical lines in this photo:

Years ago, when they built this highway, they wanted to make it as straight as possible. So they opted to cut through much of the rock rather than curve the highway around it. The lines resulted when they drilled long holes into the rock. They dropped dynamite into the holes and blasted the rock away. As a child, I sometimes heard the blasts in the distance. ("Mom, I just heard thunder, but it isn't raining.")

If you've never visited Canada, how shall I describe it to you? In the immortal words of the Arrogant Worms:

We've got
rocks and trees and trees and rocks
and rocks and trees and trees and rocks
and rocks and trees and trees and rocks
and rocks and trees and trees and rocks
and water.
Water? I almost forgot:

Brule Lake, Ontario
photo taken by my sister Arlene one week ago

75th birthday

2005-10-30T14:20:00.000-05:00

This weekend my sister Linda hosted a 75th birthday party for my Mom.

Actually, there was a bit of a mix-up. Mom turned 75 last year, but we thought it was only her 74th birthday. (Only?)

When we found out that Mom was already 75, we scheduled the party one week before her 76th birthday. Snuck it in just under the deadline!

To make the most of the occasion, Linda purchased a pinata.

Here's the birthday girl, taking a poke at the pinata with her cane.

And here she is, withdrawing from the field of battle, her dignity intact.

It was a draw: Mom didn't bust open the pinata, but it didn't bust her open, either.

Roadside memorials

2005-10-27T21:40:00.000-04:00

[source; note the work gloves]
From time to time, I pass a handmade cross on the side of the road. I am vaguely aware that such crosses mark the site of a tragedy. These are very personal memorials to loved ones who died prematurely and violently. But I hadn't really attended to the practice until this weekend.

Evidently they have become a social phenomenon.

It was this article in the Ottawa Citizen that made me stop and think. And today, when I googled "roadside memorials", Google returned 38,000 hits, including this one:

On the Pacific Highway in [New South Wales, Australia], north of Clybucca, is a white cross by the roadside.

It tells any passerby that Timothy was born on November 5, 1987 and on April 8, 2001 he was 'born to eternal life'. Motorists speeding by see Timothy's memorial out of the corner of an eye, friends and family come to mourn there and bring floral tributes, and road maintenance workers know to leave it alone.

In the process of claiming public road space for themselves, those who construct these memorials clearly desire to go beyond the management of mourning practices and spaces provided by the traditional authorities of the church and the state. Timothy was 'born to eternal life' by the roadside; that place is now sacred space.

[source: Pointers, journal of the Christian Research Association, Australia]

Road memorials mark the site of a traffic fatality. They have proliferated because so many people die prematurely in automobile accidents. The Citizen reports:

Once found mostly in Catholic countries, roadside shrines are now common in Canada, the United States, Europe, Britain and Australia, where about 20 per cent of road deaths attract memorials. With an estimated 1.2 million traffic deaths worldwide annually — including nearly 2,800 in Canada, 850 in Ontario and about 30 in Ottawa — there's no shortage of victims to memorialize.

Undoubtedly this is part of the message of these roadside memorials, sprouting up like so many mushrooms after a week of rain. They are probably not intended as a gesture of protest, but they do have that effect. Don Baccus puts it succinctly:

What's the message behind these photos? How does "drive safely" sound?

It's a good reminder. When you're behind the wheel of a car, it only takes a moment of inattention at the wrong time to cut short someone's life. I do not want to live with that on my conscience.

Despite the obvious connection with automobile accidents, roadside memorials originated in an era before cars. This account takes us back to a simpler time:

THE CUSTOM of marking the site of a death on the highway has deep roots in the Hispanic culture of the Southwest, where these memorials are often referred to as Descansos ("resting places"). …

"THE FIRST DESCANSOS were resting places where those who carried the coffin from the church to the camposanto paused to rest. In the old villages of New Mexico, high in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains or along the river valleys, the coffin was shouldered by four or six men.

"Led by the priest or preacher and followed by mourning women dressed in black, the procession made its way from the church to the cemetery. The rough hewn pine of the coffin cut into the shoulders of the men. If the camposanto was far from the church, the men grew tired and they paused to rest, lowering the coffin and placing it on the ground. The place where they rested was the descanso.

"The priest prayed; the wailing of the women filled the air; there was time to contemplate death. Perhaps someone would break a sprig of juniper and bury it in the ground to mark the spot, or place wild flowers in the ground. Perhaps someone would take two small branches of piñon and tie them together with a leather thong, then plant the cross in the ground.

"Rested , the men would shoulder the coffin again, lift the heavy load, and the procession would continue. With time, the descansos from the church to the cemetery would become resting spots. …

"Yes, there have always been accidents, a wagon would turn over, a man would die. But the journeys of our grandfathers were slow, there was time to contemplate the relationship of life and death. Now time moves fast, cars and trucks race like demons on the highways, there is little time to contemplate. Death comes quickly, and often it comes to our young."

[source: Descansos; the text in quotation marks is from Descansos: An Interrupted Journey, by Rudolfo Anaya, Juan Estevan Arellano and Denise Chavez (Del Norte , 1995)]

Contemporary memorials mark an evolution in our religious practices; a kind of democratization of religion, given that this is a grassroots phenomenon. The Citizen reports:

"These practices mark an historic change," says John Belshaw, acting dean of arts at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, B.C. "The grieving process has gone into the public domain." …

One of the striking things about roadside memorials is their similarity in every country in which they appear. While some are simple wreaths or bouquets of flowers, the more permanent shrines usually feature crosses, often with the name and date of death of the victim. Some also include personal mementoes such as stuffed teddy bears, pictures, cards and letters, sports equipment and other meaningful items.

A few shrines are virtual celebrations of hard-living, risk-taking machismo. While such memorials are most common in Australia, they can be found in Canada as well. One that Mr. Belshaw and Ms. Purvey found in B.C. featured beer bottles and packs of cigarettes, with images of well-endowed women plastered on the cross.

"In that case, the cross is clearly being used ironically," he says. "He clearly didn't lead a good Christian life." …

Mr. Belshaw admits that when he and his wife began their research, the whole notion of roadside memorials left him feeling a bit queasy.

"I thought it was a bit grisly and grim," he says, "but I'm increasingly of the mind that it's one of the healthiest things the public's ever done."

That's a view shared by another academic who has studied the roadside memorial phenomenon, Jennifer Clark, of Australia's University of New England. …

This represents "a dramatic shift towards the democratization of memorialization," Ms. Clark contends.

"Roadside memorials are not earned as a reward for selfless or admirable deeds, nor do they commemorate service in public office. Rather, those they remember are ordinary men, women and children with no claim to fame. They may even have died because their actions were foolish, such as speeding, driving while drunk, or driving while tired."

I found this comment particularly poignant:

Researchers have noticed the tendency to infantilize victims in their teens and twenties by surrounding their memorials with soft toys and other talismans of childhood.

To Mr. Belshaw, this is a reference to the victim's lost potential for redemption. "When a 19-year-old comes out of a bar three sheets to the wind and wraps his car around a lamp post and the next morning you find teddy bears at the accident site," he says, "that's a statement that essentially this was a good person who could have been redeemed."

The article from Pointers (cited earlier) also reflects on the spiritual significance of road memorials. The authors call attention to the concept of sacred space:

Although memorials that use apparent religious symbols signal a significant link with Christian faith, this is not necessarily the case. The use of such symbols may in fact be little more than an attempt to find culturally appropriate symbols to express death, where there has previously been a paucity of such symbols apart from those offered by institutional religion. …

The memorials witness primarily to the spiritual significance of place. Their role is to mark the very spot where life was lost. Some memorials are explicit about that and refer, for example, to Sharon who was 'tragically killed at this spot' or Sandra, Stacey and Joanne, all 'tragically taken at this spot' or Jody who 'died here'. …

When a roadside memorial is erected it suggests that the cemetery or crematorium is unsatisfying as a focal point for mourning. Anecdotally the place of death holds a stronger spiritual connection with the individual than any place of final rest of the body. There remains something intrinsically more important about the place where life ceased or, more accurately, where a life-changing event occurred.

At this point, I think we are approaching an explanation for the phenomenon. The majority of people no longer feel any sense of personal attachment to a religious institution or a church community. When it's time for a wedding, a baptism, or a funeral, the clergy who performs the rite of passage is often a complete stranger. Even the cemetery has become a place of little spiritual consequence:

When the state-controlled secularised cemeteries replaced the more communally-based churchyards in the 19th Century, a sense of community was lost, as well as a spiritually meaningful place to mourn the dead.

'The cemetery,' wrote Thomas W. Laquer, 'would not speak of a place but of people from all places … unknown to each other in life and thrown together in a place with which they might have had only the most transitory acquaintance'.

By contrast, the site of the death is instantly infused with a profound personal significance.

Not everyone is thrilled with the proliferation of roadside memorials. It certainly puts municipalities in an awkward position: the space has been privatized and hallowed, but it remains public property. West Virginia has posted a primer for roadside memorials on the Web to try to retain some control.

Private citizens may have mixed feelings, too. Returning to the Citizen's account:

Family members are not always pleased when friends erect roadside memorials to their loved ones.

Mr. Belshaw tells of a woman in Victoria [British Columbia] whose son was killed in a traffic accident. Friends put up a memorial and she went along with the idea. But she had to drive past it every day to get out of the cul-de-sac where she lived. "It was like a knife through her heart," he says. "She really suffered with it."

Sometimes property owners near the accident scene object because they find the constant reminder of tragic death depressing.

"People tend to react fairly viscerally to them one way or another," says Mr. Belshaw. "Some will say, 'I don't need to be reminded of my own mortality on a daily basis.' Others will say, 'Yes, you do'."

Put me in the latter camp. We're too insulated from death in our society. If road memorials remind people that we all have to take death into account, I think that's a social good.

[source: Don Baccus, cited above]

The "war on terror" is like ...?

2005-10-25T22:00:00.000-04:00

This is a follow-up to my previous post, in which I summarized an article written by Rick Salutin.

I am gratified to note that in their recent comments on the post, Jack and Cyberkitten are taking the discussion in precisely the direction that I felt we needed to go. They are debating whether 9/11 constituted an act of war.

But let me take one step back. In the previous post, I didn't say whether I agreed with Salutin or not. For the record, Salutin is too far to the left for my comfort. In particular, when he suggests that we should seek out a different interpretation altogether of events such as 9/11, I'm a little alarmed by the direction he's taking us in.

Even so, I think his perspective is valuable, which is why I shared it with you. Salutin provokes us into examining the "war on terror". I find myself asking questions like, Is the "war on terror" really a war?

Or this one: when President Bush whips up support for the war by saying, "We stand for democracy and peace; the extremists would ban books, desecrate historical monuments, and brutalize women" is that just typical war-time propaganda? — so much empty rhetoric?

Similarly, the terror alerts: is fear just another tool to whip up support for the "war on terror"? (Note the irony, if the Bush administration is fighting terror by sowing terror among the US citizenry.)

I propose that we explore the issue as follows. I invite you to fill in the blank in the following sentence: The "war on terror" is …

like World War II.
In this analysis, Osama bin Laden is cast in the role of Adolph Hitler; George "Dubya" Bush therefore plays the part of Winston Churchill.
David Warren, a columnist for the Ottawa Citizen, is a proponent of this point of view.

like the Cold War.
In the Cold War, communists and proponents of democracy fought for the global supremacy of their system of government. The war was largely ideological: the USA and the USSR never declared war on one another (hence the term, "cold" war).
Over at Kerckhoff Coffeehouse, Dr. Bean and ball-and-chain believe the "war on terror" is the same sort of conflict.

a phoney war.
Rick Salutin is a proponent of this position. To reiterate: The "war on terror" is no real war, more an endless state of tension like the wars in Nineteen Eighty-four. Even George Bush says it will last years, or decades.

I think the question is significant. How we fight the "war on terror" depends on how we characterize it. In World War II, England and Germany bombed each other's cities into a state of ruin (and the USA dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan). In the Cold War, there was no direct conflict between the USA and the USSR; but a series of proxy wars played themselves out around the globe (for starters, Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan come to mind).

On the other hand, if the "war on terror" is a phoney war, presumably the West shouldn't resort to military force at all.

At this point, once again, I turn the discussion over to you. I'd like to hear your answers to the following questions:

The "war on terror" is …?
Therefore we should fight it …?

Problematizing "the new normal"

2005-10-24T17:49:00.000-04:00

Rick Salutin has a written a particularly good column on the subject, Torture and the new normal. First he poses the question:

Can you justify torture under "the new normal"? This is sometimes done in the name of the ticking bomb. What if you know one is set to go off in a subway etc., wouldn't that validate torturing a terrorist who has details?

Then Salutin concedes that we're all capable of committing acts of violence if the provocation is sufficient:

Now, I certainly think you can imagine a situation in which any of us might act brutally under stress for the sake of a noble result, often involving kids or loved ones, or mass murder of innocents. You don't have to be Jack Bauer on 24.

Personally, I can imagine anyone doing almost anything, under certain conditions. If you get tossed into that blender, you have to achingly do what seems right or required, and live with the consequences. That's what having a conscience is all about: lonely individual choice and responsibility.

This is a provocative point in its own right. My inclination is to agree. Occasionally — though I don't know why I should daydream about such a topic — I imagine how I would respond if someone broke into our house and threatened my sweetie. I don't have any trouble believing that I could resort to violence, and be pretty pleased with myself about it, too.

As Salutin says, the scenario necessarily involves kids or loved ones. If the only person at risk was me, I'd be more likely to passively cooperate with the intruder and hope he only wanted my valuables. (An amusing thought, because I have no valuables.)

Salutin asserts, "having a conscience is all about lonely individual choice and responsibility". That's an interesting image: when it comes to moral choices, Salutin pictures each individual as alone in the universe, just her and her conscience.

As a theist, I don't quite see it that way. I believe that moral direction comes from outside of ourselves. And not only that, I also believe that God provides support to help us do what is right: at least an inner nudge in the right direction. It's a partnership, not a lone individual grappling with a grave and difficult decision in an indifferent universe.

But I admit, even from the perspective of a theist, there's truth in Salutin's way of expressing things. When I am confronted with a moral decision, ultimately only I determine which path I take. It helps if there's someone watching. A little social pressure often tips the scales in favour of the good. But ultimately I am responsible for my moral decisions: not God, and not society.

But we still haven't gotten to the issue Salutin set out to address. Here it is:

U.S. law prof and human-rights buff Alan Dershowitz thinks torture should be legalized under clear conditions in these harsh times, so as to control and regulate its negative effects. He says this precisely because, he claims, he is opposed to torture. There's a fine legal mind at work. …

I'm against legalizing acts like torture. … They should remain crimes, to be punished or — very rarely — treated as exceptions, full of moral ambiguity.

But perhaps it doesn't seem so ambiguous to you. Isn't it just a matter of the end justifying the means, even if that means is torture? I'd say the problem with means-ends arguments lies usually not in the means, where attention mainly focuses, but in the ends, which tend to go unexamined.

I have set the last sentence in bold type because this is the point upon which the discussion pivots.

We need to pause here to consider what "means" and what "ends" Salutin has in mind. Torture is proposed, by people like Alan Dershowitz, as a means to a noble end. The end is, the victory of good (Western ideals like democracy, individual freedom, the separation of church and state, equality for women, and the like) over evil (terrorism, Islamo-fascism and the like).

That's the logic that is being thrust upon us, and we're not supposed to examine it too closely. But Salutin deconstructs it. He doesn't just want us to reject the means — torture — he wants us to reject the end:

The "war on terror" is no real war, more an endless state of tension like the wars in Nineteen Eighty-four. Even George Bush says it will last years, or decades.

It makes me respect the power in that phrase, the new normal. It normalizes what is absurd, objectionable and entirely questionable (and not so new, either). Instead of challenging this absurd and disastrous "new" version of reality — clash of civilizations, war on terror and their like — you end up agonizing over issues like torture, as a response to it. You don't seek out a different interpretation altogether of events such as 9/11. Instead, you fall in line with the war mentality, though you might be for or against a particular tactic.

Means and ends reverse: The end of fighting a successful war on terror becomes the means to multiply practices such as torture and moods such as fear. I'd say this applies as much to Osama bin Laden's jihad as to George Bush's "war." All the intensity would be far better invested in rejecting their versions of reality, which jibe minimally with actual conditions in places such as the Middle East and offer no hope for a better future.

There are all kinds of provocative remarks here:

the "war on terror," is no real war, more an endless state of tension;
we should vigorously reject this absurd and disastrous "new" version of reality;
we should not even consider torture as a legitimate means to achieve victory in the "war on terror";
neither "George Bush's 'war'" nor Osama bin Laden's jihad — the two worldviews are depicted as parallel — offers any hope of a better future.

Well! You are cordially invited to offer your thoughts in response to Salutin's provocative point of view.

In the shadow of John the Baptist

2005-10-23T19:33:00.000-04:00

Over at Ragged Glory, I have published a new post, "In the shadow of John the Baptist".

In brief, the New Testament writers emphatically consign John to Jesus' shadow. Despite such assertions in the Gospels, in those early years, Jesus' superiority to John was hotly disputed. The Church laboured to remove Jesus from the considerable shadow John had cast.

My analysis of this subject illustrates how historians approach events in the Gospels and try to determine the actual history.

Rick Mercer reports from Afghanistan

2005-10-20T19:55:00.000-04:00

Readers who do not live in Canada (which is 72% of you, and nearly 100% of those who leave comments) presumably have no idea who Rick Mercer is.

(Shame on you! What passes for culture in the USA and the UK, anyhow?)

Mercer is a comedian from the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. All the funniest Canadians hail from that province. Potatoes grow in the red earth of Prince Edward Island; comedians sprout from The Rock.

Mercer is an honest-to-goodness icon. I have irrefutable proof: he has his own entry at Wikipedia. In the digital age, that's how you demonstrate that you've joined the ranks of the gods.

Anyway, Mercer just returned from a week in Afghanistan where he visited the Canadian troops and did the Bob Hope thing. Mercer comments:

Show-biz folk love a captive audience; we will gladly travel across the world and visit a war zone to find one.

Mercer is also a blogger. He has cleverly named his blog, Rick Mercer's blog. (No one is inspired 100% of the time.)

Mercer's posts on Afghanistan stand out among his usual fare. (Mostly he likes to roast Canadian politicians you've never heard of.) This excerpt is the highlight for me:

This was my second trip to Afghanistan and the capitol city of Kabul has changed dramatically since Canada showed up. Kabul looks and feels like a city on the mend. New construction is everywhere, the stores are crowded, there is fresh produce in abundance and women are seen everywhere on the streets — many without Burkas. Canada has played a huge part in this transformation.

Now things start to get real tricky. The bulk of Canada’s troops will soon be stationed in Kandahar. This is the Wild West. Kandahar is, bottom line, far more dangerous than Kabul. If you wanted to drive home this fact all you have to do is take a look inside the front gates of the Canadian camp. Inside the gate sits a British armoured vehicle that was recently hit by a suicide bomber. Because of the armour everyone walked away from that attack.

Canadians on patrol in this area drive now similar vehicles made by Mercedes.

But check it out for yourself — Mercer provides an interesting, first-person perspective.

Catholic priests and their wives

2005-10-19T22:44:00.000-04:00

I've published a new post at Ragged Glory. First, I discuss a group of Roman Catholic clergymen who are married, with the Pope's approval.

Then I quote an evangelical author who attempts to explains why Jesus and Paul promoted celibacy as an ideal state for some Christian ministers.

The world is getting safer

2005-10-18T20:44:00.000-04:00

Another story from today's Ottawa Citizen. And a good news story at that! The world is a more secure place than many of us imagine it to be:

A startling new Canadian study has found that all forms of political violence, except terrorism, have plummeted 40 per cent since the early 1990s.

The first Human Security Report, by the Liu Institute for Global Issues at the University of British Columbia, which is being dubbed the most comprehensive survey to date of trends in warfare, genocide and human rights abuses, has also found that the gravity of armed conflicts has dropped dramatically since 1992.

In 1950, the study found, an average of 38,000 people were killed in each conflict; by 2002, that number had dropped to 600 — a decline of 98 per cent.

While the number of deadly terrorist strikes has increased sharply since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S., terrorism still accounts for a fraction of the annual death toll from war, the report points out.

The study's findings "run very much against the grain of today's conventional wisdom," says Andrew Mack, director of the University of British Columbia's Human Security Centre and author of the study.

Mr. Mack blames the popular misconception that we live in an increasingly violent world on the media, which "gives far more coverage to wars that start than the greater number that quietly end."

Until now, he adds, there was little data to combat such myths because "no international agency collects data on wars, genocides, terrorist acts or core human rights abuses," not even the UN, where Mr. Mack served as an adviser to Secretary General Kofi Annan from 1998 to 2001. "The issues are just too politically sensitive," he explains.

The report, which was funded by Canada, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Britain, is to be published by Oxford University Press next month. It identifies trends in world violence:

In spite of massacres in Rwanda and Bosnia, the total number of genocides and other mass killings worldwide plunged by 80 per cent between 1988 and 2001, Mr. Mack says.

Reports of human-rights abuses have fallen in five of six regions in the developing world since the mid-1990s, and the number of attempted coups has declined by about 60 per cent since 1963, the study says.

The generations born after the end of the Second World War have enjoyed the longest interval without wars between major powers in hundreds of years, the report says.

Mr. Mack cites a number of factors which contribute to the reduced loss of life. If you are a critic of the United Nations, you'll be taken aback by the first item on his list:

Mr. Mack traces the trend to a more peaceful resolution of conflicts to the United Nations, which, despite high-profile failures, has been quietly leading "a remarkable explosion" in conflict prevention since the end of the Cold War. The report notes that, since the end of the Cold War in the late 1980s, UN diplomatic missions to head off conflicts have risen six-fold; the number of peacemaking missions has quadrupled.

He also cites a study by the RAND Corp., a U.S. policy think-tank, that found that two-thirds of the UN's peacebuilding missions had succeeded.

Other factors, according to Mr. Mack:

So-called proxy wars, where the major powers bankrolled conflicts in other countries to undermine each other, ground to a halt in the late 1980s when the Cold War ended.

The end of colonialism also brought a sharp decrease in violence, as the wars of liberation that raged around the world from the 1940s to the 1980s finally wound down.

The nature of conflict has changed. While Cold War-era clashes often led to major wars involving large armies, today's clashes typically pit weak governments against ragtag rebels.

Many more civilians now flee conflict zones, so fewer wind up in the line of fire.

Mr. Mack says displacement, while it has reduced battlefield casualties, is a "humanitarian tragedy," and stresses that the study did not take into account millions of indirect deaths related to conflict, such as disease and malnutrition.

As for terrorism:

Despite its relatively low death toll so far, terrorism remains a significant threat, Mr. Mack says, pointing out that the "war on terror" has sparked major conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, and "almost certainly increased the number of potential terrorist recruits."

Even more chilling is the lingering fear that terrorists may acquire weapons of mass destruction, he says.

Clinton weighs in on the softwood lumber dispute

2005-10-18T20:23:00.000-04:00

This is a follow-up to two earlier posts on the Canada/USA softwood lumber dispute, American government shows contempt for the rule of law and a later update.

The issue is still front-page news here in Canada, but I gather that it receives little attention in the US media. The Wall Street Journal is a notable exception; it has repeatedly supported Canada's position, most recently a couple of weeks ago.

Former US President Bill Clinton spoke in London, Ontario, last night, and offered his thoughts on the Canada/USA softwood lumber dispute.

According to the Globe and Mail, Mr. Clinton "strongly endorsed Prime Minister Paul Martin's tough public stand on softwood lumber and implicitly criticized Washington's refusal to abide by a NAFTA panel ruling on the issue."

Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin has, indeed, been talking tough. Earlier this month, the Prime Minister implied that that the USA may be jeopardizing its access to abundant Canadian energy supplies. On October 8, the Globe and Mail reported:

Paul Martin won kudos from The Wall Street Journal for his tirade against U.S. tariffs on softwood lumber while he was in New York, but George W. Bush's spokesman conceded he wasn't even aware of the Prime Minister's public relations blitz south of the border.

"I haven't seen his comments," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said yesterday.

In a New York speech Thursday, and later in a brief afternoon interview on CNN, Mr. Martin hinted at using Canadian energy as a trade weapon and called the U.S. refusal to lift the roughly 20-per-cent duty "nonsense."

In an editorial yesterday, The Wall Street Journal said the duties on Canadian lumber are at odds with Mr. Bush's professed belief in an integrated North American economy.

"Americans have a stake here too, since the duties add about $1,000 (U.S.) to the cost of a new home and affect thousands of jobs in industries that depend on lower-cost Canadian lumber," the editorial said.

"President Bush's vision of a strong North America depends upon the integrated market being allowed to work. That's as much in the interest of Americans as Canadians."

Mr. Clinton says that Prime Minister Martin had no other option. "If I were the Canadian prime minister, that's what I'd say."

At the same time, Mr. Clinton echoed the line taken by senior U.S. officials in recent days, repeating that both sides should get back to the bargaining table. …

Mr. Clinton repeatedly called for a return to negotiations, saying the North American trade relationship is simply too important to do otherwise.

"If I were [Mr. Martin], I'd be very firm in public and try to work on it behind closed doors," he said.

Mr. Clinton believes that the NAFTA ruling harms American states. Nonetheless, he implied that the US government should abide by it:

He spoke at length about U.S. states' concerns over Canadian stumpage fees — payments to provincial governments for cutting trees — which U.S. lumber producers say are unfairly low.

However, he repeatedly suggested, without going into specifics, that he strongly believes in bilateral and multilateral agreements, and that countries should enter into and adhere to those agreements, even if they occasionally sustain rulings not in their favour.

"I believe in institutional co-operation, even if it means you disagree with the occasional decision now and then."

In my view, that last paragraph is exactly right.

Of course the US government doesn't like the fact that the NAFTA panel ruled against it: no one likes to lose in arbitration. But the free trade agreement is a package deal. On the whole it is in the best interests of both countries. For that reason, the USA should respect the NAFTA ruling, even though they don't like it.

It may seem absurd for Canada to get into a trade war with the USA. It seems obvious that Canada needs the USA more than the USA needs Canada.

But not so fast: Senator Orrin Hatch doesn't see it that way. According to today's Ottawa Citizen:

Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, one of the most influential Republicans on Capitol Hill, said yesterday Canada is poised to surpass Saudi Arabia as "the world's oil giant," and that energy-hungry Americans can ill afford to alienate their northern neighbours.

"Neither of us can afford to kick the other one in the teeth," Mr. Hatch, a 29-year veteran of the Senate, said ….

Mr. Hatch said the U.S. will increasingly need to tap into the huge supply of Canadian oil from Alberta's oilsands.

"Anyone watching what is happening up north will recognize that, before long, Canada will inevitably overtake Saudi Arabia as the world's oil giant," Mr. Hatch said.

"What does this all mean for the United States? … It means that the United States can enjoy a new gigantic source of oil from a friendly neighbour." …

Canada ranks second to Saudi Arabia in proven crude oil reserves, including an estimated 174 billion barrels from the oil sands.

Most Overrated Virtue, revisited

2005-10-17T08:13:00.000-04:00

When I published this post the discussion went off on a tangent. I raised a general question, What is the most overrated virtue? I didn't anticipate that my comment on the narrower issue of introverts and extroverts would provoke a controversy.

The post continues to show up in search queries. And the question I posed continues to interest me.

I just received a late entry from anonymous, and I think it's a good one:

the most underrated virtue? thats easy, silence. everyone has something to say. whatever happened to just shutting up and listening for a change?

Hmmm. I wonder whether anonymous has read the other posts on this blog. "Everyone has something to say" describes the dynamic pretty well.

In other sports news

2005-10-16T18:01:00.000-04:00

You think boxing is a tough sport? Consider hockey:

Pat Quinn, coach of the Toronto Maple Leafs, sports two black eyes
If this is what the coaches look like, imagine what it's like to be a player!

(I apologize for the poor quality of the photo, but it's a picture I took of a TV interview.)