we cover the blisters in flannel

Here's a review of a great new book by Christopher Lane - Shyness: How Normal Behaviour Became a Sickness.

The opening lyrics to Andrew Bird's, A Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left:

Over prescribed / under the mister / we had survived to / turn on the history channel / and ask our esteemed panel / why are we alive / and here's how they replied / you're what happens when two substances collide / and by all accounts you really should've died

biofuel's dark side

The development and use, especially in Europe, of biofuel was seen as a great advance. Biofuels reduced our environmental footprint and seemed without sideffects. But things have changed for the fuel composed mostly of plants. Read here to see what its use has done to food stocks, prices, and its effect on the rainforest.

more on facebook

Here's an increadibly interesting article on the people behind facebook. This social-networking site is starting to look uglier than John C. Reilly. One day it'll be worse than an episode of Family Guy. Or an R.L. Stine book.

But sadly I'm still on our beloved facebook.

big pharma comedy

Bill Maher




Chris Rock

if this is leadership, who needs it?

Africa is burning, and if we want to put the fire out we'll have to start with its leaders. The presidents and prime ministers African states have appointed since colonialism have been some of the worst ever. They are at best incompotent and unfit to rule, and at worst corrupt, stealing from innocent people who deserve much better, and murderous, going as far as genocide in some cases.

One of the worst offenders has been Robert Mugabe, the dictator of Zimbabwe. Read this review of some new studies of Zimbabwe, the failed state, and the role Mugabe and his party have had in its slow death.

notes on facebook

Facebook is helping to alter our idea of privacy, according to this article from The Nation. I found this piece to be very interesting, and just a little scary. Perhaps we have become less discerning over who knows the previously private aspects of our lives, and how much they should know. The article suggests there are overwhelming pressures to become a part of the new culture: one of weakened inhibitions, and lowered guards. We are asked to open up and reveal as many things about ourselves as possible, and to an ever growing network of "friends". The article also suggests this is, in part at least, for business purposes. Companies need information to determine exactly what the people demand. So, they encourage this new culture of information dissemination, and use it to tailor their marketing to our supposed needs.

kenya

Is there yet another genocide in Africa? Some are calling the recent killings in Kenya over a disputed election just that. Read this news alert for details.

op-eds of the year

I'm a big fan of the New York Times' editorial page. The articles are often written by experts in their respective fields. They are usually insightful and the pieces are consistently well-written.

Here are some of the notable op-eds according to the ny times.

children of war

Can people become accustomed to their surroundings so well that even conflict zones become livable, exacting little to no punishment on their psychological state? I admit I once entertained the thought. I felt that if you grew up in a war-torn region, regularly witnessing violence and unanounced disruptions of even great scale, you would eventually view them as minor inconveniences with no major costs. Well, I was wrong. It turns out Palestinian children in the West Bank (and I'm sure this would apply to those in the Gaza strip as well) and Jewish children in settlements are more susceptible to various anxiety disorders because of the constant state of war they have found themselves in. Read this archived article for more.

The article hints at the effect this would have on future societies. I mean, widespread mental illness is nothing to base a community on.

the eyes of God are not unlike the State's

In China, the Communist Party allows the practice of Christianity as long as it's under their very careful watch. It's an example of extrememly organized religion, you might say. Here's some news on the underground houses of worship littered throughout China and the trouble they've encountered.

peace in the valley

I spent some time today reading about religion, God, and faith. Although I'm not religious, I yearn for the comfort held in religion's promise of attainable redemption and salvation. I want to experience the "oceanic feeling": what Sigmund Frued described as "a sensation of ‘eternity’, a feeling as of something limitless, unbounded", but that he also dismissed as just in our heads. I fear he may have been right, but I'm still open to the possibility.

Here are some pieces (one of which is a poem by William Blake) I came across earlier:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/leading_article/article3090488.ece

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=d256048a-cbef-4752-a7b2-58d7a68e836a&k=18488

http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10015255

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/reviewofbooks_article/4204/

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070625/aronson

http://www.bartleby.com/236/58.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-dawkins/why-there-almost-certainl_b_32164.html

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=searching-for-god-in-the-brain

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=191304

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article2778493.ece

http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_4_oh_to_be.html

Sunny D, come back to me

Published at Schema Magazine

Non-white Canadians have insufficient amounts of Vitamin D, putting them at greater risk for rickets, cancer, osteoporosis, tuberculosis, and influenza, among other nasty things.

“The research, which is awaiting publication in a medical journal, found that 100 per cent of those of African origin were short of vitamin D, as were 93 per cent of South Asians (those of Indian or Pakistani origin), and 85 per cent of East Asians (those of Chinese, Indochinese or Filipino origin, among other countries).”

This was the grave finding reported in The Globe and Mail’s December 19 cover story: Are you getting enough Vitamin D? Although higher levels of melanin, our natural pigmentation-producing sunscreen, help protect tanned people from being sunburned in hot climates, they impede the production of Vitamin D in colder and darker locales (ie. Canada).

Read the article to find out just why. And then drink some milk or something.

Notes on Mill and multiculturalism

I apologize beforehand for this unorganized post. I wrote this fairly quickly, and I’m sure I’ve sacrificed clarity. Please forgive me Clarity. I didn’t mean nothin’ by it.

In 1859, John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty was published. It presented arguments for the very intuitive conclusion that people should be unrestrained in their pursuit of activities that cause no one but themselves (if even that) harm. But this ideal was met by opposition. There were two sources of needless curtailment of freedom, according to Mill. The first had since lost its power: the unlimited rule of the state over its subjects. With rapid political reform, citizens had greater control over the civil rights being legislated. Political democracy had more or less trumped authoritarianism. But the second source still reigned in Mill’s time. This was the oppressive nature of “collective opinion”. The mores and sentiment’s of a public’s majority has a great effect on dissenting individuals. Minority groups not in line with the traditions of the majority can experience a sense of alienation and seclusion; which is not a great thing for Mill, because they are being punished for opinions that, presumably, cause harm to no one. They are compelled to accept a worldview not their own, or pay for it with scorn and derision. Mill’s On Liberty, is therefore very applicable 150 years on considering the very heated debate over “reasonable accommodation” in Canada and the so-called “muslim problem” in the UK. Take a look, for example, at the almost absurd argument over the right of female school children to wear the Jilbab. Now, considering the very obvious relevance of Mill’s work, whether or not you agree with his conclusion that minority groups should be free to do what they like as long as it causes no harm, I was mystified by a review of a new biography on Mill. Here is what the author of the review had to say near the end, ultimately denying the relevance of Mill's work to today's context:

“When Mill wrote, there was a lot to be said for this focus. The mid-Victorian state was one of the least oppressive in the world - at any rate for the respectable classes to which Mill belonged. On the other hand, mid-Victorian society was complacent, conformist and intolerant of deviant opinions and lifestyles. The wheel has come full circle 150 years later. The multicultural, multi-ethnic society of the 21st century is not in the least like an eiderdown; it is a ragged patchwork with huge holes between the pieces. Particular ethnic or cultural enclaves sometimes oppress their own members, but if they go too far, the law can step in; and, in any case, they do not endanger diversity or individuality in the wider society. In a sense, there are no longer any deviant opinions or lifestyles to be intolerant about: there are no fixed standards to deviate from. There is only a cacophony of divergent voices.”

There are in fact fixed standards against which minority groups are judged: negatively, to be sure. They are habitually judged as not-really-Canadian, or not-really-American, because the description of a Canadian and American is based on an unchanging concept. And the evidence seems to disprove the claim that no cultural group (even the majority) endangers “diversity or individuality.”

fly me to the moon

I found an article at LiveScience titled "Is Attractiveness Hereditary?". Is it me or was this question answered a long time ago? Maybe it was just one of those assumptions science had yet to prove definitely.

This, on the other hand, was a bit of new information for me. Apparently attractive people have very "average" faces. That is, if you take a number of faces and then create a composite of them, an average, the result will be quite beautiful. Read the article to see exactly why. It has something to do with the brain's ability to take in information. The more recognizable the shape and features of a face, the easier it is on the brain - and hence, the brain is happier.

What's eating Canada's multiculturalism?

Robert Putnam takes on the issue of multiculturalism in his most recent book, E Pluribus Unum. The sobering conclusion is that with greater ethnic and cultural diversity comes more conflict, less social trust, a decreased willingness to volunteer and engage in cooperative ventures with fellow citizens. But, Putnam is an American scholar and his analysis is based on the research of American cities: 41 to be exact. Would the same conclusion fit Canada?

It turns out it might. Maclean's recently published an article titled: Canada: A nation of bigots?. The article points out that to an increasing number of Canadians (mostly Quebers), "reasonable accomodation" for foreign-born people should be limited as much as possible. The general sentiment seems to be: "if you want to live in our country, you must forget your old practices and assimilate". This feeling expresses itself, in part, in the ways Putnam describes in his book: conflict, decreased social trust, etc. It also alienates ethnic groups, making them feel as if they were trespasers. They consequently sequester themselves, worsening the threat to social trust.

Here are two more articles, from another Canadian magazine, that discuss the same phenomenon: 1, 2

stereotyping

This is a very important article. I was convinced of this aspect of stereotyping before, but now I'm fortunate enough to have some evidence to point to, as support.

prejudice

Many people assume that prejudice of any kind is a conscious belief about one group or another. You are aware of your dislike for “people from country X” or your fear of “people Y”. And more than that, you endorse these beliefs. But this isn’t always so. Although the above is definitely an example of prejudice, it doesn’t exhaust the ways in which people express bias. Most of the time, prejudice is an unconscious state. You may not be aware of your prejudice against “people from country X” or your fear of “people Y”.

Now, this poses a problem for how they can possible be discovered – our prejudices, that is. If these thoughts are unconscious, hidden even from ourselves, the most prejudiced among us can feign neutrality, confident he or she will not be disproved. Well, fear no longer. There are now tests to uncover our hidden thoughts. The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is one. The IAT is actually a series of tests, determining your degree of prejudice towards a number of different groups. There is a “skin-tone”; a religion; a disability; an Arab-Muslim; and a race (black-white) test. These tests depend on rapid associations between various words. There is no time, for example, between the presentation of a traditionally Arab name, like “Akbar”, and the options of “good” and “bad”. The reasoning goes: with no time to tease out the “politically correct” answer, an individual experiencing a bias towards Arabs will characterize “Akbar” as “bad” more than someone that doesn’t have that bias.

I took most of the tests. With great regret, I have to say I revealed a prejudice on a few of them. I won’t tell you which tests, but, in my defense, the prejudice revealed was usually small, sometimes negligible. I’m not that bad! Also, no one, I think, can go through life in a prejudiced world without soaking some of it in. But this doesn’t mean we’re all doomed. This is not the secular version of original sin. We are still capable of being good people. We would just need a more attainable, more human, standard of what it is to be good. Perhaps a good person – one who’s realistic in this kind of world - is not someone that’s perfect, unblemished by prejudice and moral blind-spots. He or she is simply willing to be self-reflective and to constantly examine their flaws. Even to the point of masochism. Their goal is not to be perfect, untarnished. Maybe they just want to consistently improve; to constantly be a little better than they were before. So, I’ll acknowledge my prejudices and try to work them out.

Akbar Ganji

In 2003, the Iranian-Canadian photographer, Zahra Kazemi, was killed during her stay at the infamous Evin prison in Iran. She was in Iran to take photos of a demonstration for students jailed in Evin, with the permission of government officials. But, she was accused of taking pics of the prison and apparently this is a crime. During her prison stay she was beaten to death. The two Iranian intelligence agents charged with her death were cleared and aquitted. But recently a retrial has been called because of "some procedural faults". Perhaps soon Kazemi will finally have justice served on her behalf.

This is one of the more famous violations of human rights in Iran. But it really is just a drop in the bucket.

On November 30th, the Iranian journalist Akbar Ganji, will be giving a talk titled "The Challenges of Journalism in Iran" at Simon Fraser University and he will certainly discuss human rights in Iran.

"Mr. Ganji, a well-known journalist and author and former Revolutionary Guard turned activist, will share his insights about the relationship between human rights & civil liberties, and the challenges against free expression and investigative journalism in Iran."

"Akbar Ganji spent six years in Tehran's infamous Evin prison on charges stemming from a series of investigative articles exposing the complicity of then-President Rafsanjani and other leading members of the conservative clergy in the murders of political dissidents and intellectuals in 1998."

"During his time in prison, Mr. Ganji undertook a hunger strike that lasted from May to August 2005. He also produced a series of influential political manifestos and open letters calling for Iran's secularization and the establishment of democracy through mass civil disobedience. The works were smuggled out of prison and published on the Internet."

I'm really looking forward to this talk.

human development report

The United Nations published their 2007/2008 Human Development Report. Not much in it is new. The report reiterates the urgency of environmental regulations (reduction of greenhouse gas emissions through various methods) and the early signs of the breakdown of our common environment due to global warming (floods, droughts, hurricanes...etc.)

But one point is highlighted in this reported, and it's one that has unfortunately not been emphasized enough, let alone mentioned. In the first paragraph of the summary: "The poorest countries and most vulnerable citizens will suffer the earliest and most damaging setbacks, even though they have contributed least to the problem." This is a major violation of human rights. The poor are being punished for a negligence they didn't practice; and taxed for goods they didn't purchase. How unfair.

Read the report to learn more about how unstable environmental conditions affect countries with inadequete infrastructure. We have to remember that most developing countries don't have their own Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). And we all know how great a job they did with Katrina.

16 days

Read here to learn more about the 16 days of activism against gender violence, running between November 25th and December 10th.