Pettrichor

The end

2010-10-19T23:53:00.002-03:00

When I started blogging for Maclean's, my hope was to continue to post here now and again, but it has just not proven possible.

So this is the end. I'll be leaving existing posts up for a while in case anyone is interested, but there will be nothing new.

Thanks to everyone for reading and do come say hi at Maclean's Oncampus!

Rudolph the Realistic Reindeer (may offend)

2009-12-18T11:22:00.001-04:00

Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer
Had a very shiny nose.
And, if you ever saw it,
You would even say it glows.

All of the other reindeer,
Used to laugh and call him names
They never let poor Rudolph
Play in any reindeer games.

Then, one foggy Christmas Eve,
Santa came to say,
"Rudolph, with your nose so bright,
Won't you guide my sleigh tonight?"

Then Rudolph, said, "Are you kidding me? Where the hell were you when all the other reindeer were laughing and calling me names? I don't remember Jolly Old St Nick telling the other reindeer to let me play in the reindeer games! Oh, but now I can be of some use to you. Now, you need me, and now you want my help? Fuck you! Lead that team of bigots and assholes? Go to Hell, Santa!"

Need more Pettrichor?

2009-08-14T14:33:00.002-03:00

Well, you're going to have to settle for what's here.

But if you want to read more of my blogging, check out my education-themed blog at Maclean's OnCampus:

http://oncampus.macleans.ca/education/category/blogs/the-hour-hand/

I will still be blogging here, especially when it's too spicy for the mainstream media, but I've promised Macleans a post a week over there. I hope you like it.

Fast talk: On Smelling

2009-08-10T08:13:00.000-03:00

If I had to give up one of my five senses, it would be smell. I estimate that at least 95% of what I smell I would rather not.

I've heard that food doesn't taste as good if you've lost your sense of smell, but, frankly, that might be a relief. If food didn't taste as good, I would probably be a lot healthier. I once knew a guy who had a nasal condition that eliminated most of his sense of smell and he was as skinny as can be. I suppose smell is useful for detecting fires and things like that, but seriously, when was the last time you smelled your way out of danger? And there's always the smoke detector.

The Strangest Conversation

2009-05-29T16:04:00.000-03:00

Recently, I posted what I thought was a zippy little off-hand comment on someone's Facebook status which mentioned the need to have free university tuition. Then others started to respond and things kind of got out of hand. Here is a lightly parodied version:

Me: Free tuition would be bad for universities. People value what they pay for, so manageable tuitions, that don't unfairly burden graduates with debt, would be better than free tuitions.

Another person: How can you say that! People should not be kept out of university because they can't afford it! You obviously know nothing about education.

Me: Actually, as a university professor I know something about it, and I worry that free universities would lead to university standards slipping as they have done in high school -- because people would come to see universities as just another level of education to get through.

Someone else: You're obviously one of those free-market, right-wing elitist shitheads who think only the rich should go to university. Why not try selling your crap to someone who wants to go to university but can't afford it?

Me: No, you've missed my point. I think university should be much more affordable, just not free. There's surely a middle ground. Students could all afford $5 for the year, right? And for that matter, probably $100 or even $1000.

Still another person: With ridiculous ideas like these, you have no business being a university professor. Your arguments don't make any sense and are not backed up by sources. It's not appropriate for university professors to make these kinds of statements and you should really take some time to learn what good intellectual writing looks like since you clearly have no clue.

Me: What? This is a Facebook comment section! In a scholarly article, I would cite sources, but this is a casual conversation. As for my qualifications, if you are worried that I don't know what academic writing looks like feel free to check out my book which is held by libraries around the world.

Yet another: Ooh, he thinks just because he published a book, he must be right about everything! I could have published a book if tuitions weren't so high, but since you think high tuitions and massive debt are just great, you obviously don't care about people like me!

And so it went.

What struck me most about this strange conversation was that nobody seemed interested in reading what I had actually written or answering it on those terms. People continually assumed that if I were not in favour of free tuition I must be in favour of high tuitions and all that mean-spiritedness that presumably went along with that.

Now, maybe free tuitions are not such a bad thing. Many countries have free university tuition, and maybe they have found a way to keep standards high. I would be interested in knowing more about that. But not many people in the online conversation I've reconstructed above seemed willing or even able to see any of those complexities. It was either you are a fair-minded human being who beleives tuition should be free, or a selfish monster who believes students should suffer as much as possible.

I wonder if this is the way all political discussions are becoming: a series of binaries: pro-life or pro-choice, pacifist or war-monger, right or left, cultural relativist or racist. If so, our democracy is in for a rough ride.

And I should probably keep my thoughts off of Facebook.

You, Me and Other People

2009-04-30T16:13:00.000-03:00

American politicians love to criticize people who are nominated for things, and a recent Time magazine article mentioned that a current fight centres around US involvement in international treaties and laws. The worry is always about national sovereignty: "Why should our people be subject to rules and decisions made by people we didn't elect?" I heard similar objections when I was in England by people suspicious of the EU Parliament. A variation emerged in Canada when Stephen Harper said he was all about a "made in Canada" solution to global climate change.

You can see the emptiness of the argument by extending it. If I demand to know why I, as a Canadian, should be subject to decisions made in Geneva or New York, I must also ask why I, as a Nova Scotian, should be subject to decisions made in Ottawa. For that matter, why should I, as a Cape Bretoner, be subject to the whims of government officials in Halifax? Damn it, why should I, a resident of Glace Bay, have to kow tow to the fat cats in Sydney? I live on Quarry Point, so why should I care what the gang over in The Hub thinks? In fact, why should I, as a free individual, have to listen to anyone at all?

The answers are obvious and they extend right back to international cooperation. Simply put, as the problems get bigger, the solutions require more people. I can handle some things on my own, but I don't have a place for all my garbage, so I rely on my local government to collect my trash. My municipality can't run its own education or health care systems, so those are done by the province. Each province can't have its own military; the Federal government looks after that. Canada alone cannot solve our climate problems or eliminate nuclear weapons or any number of the big problems of the world. That has to be done on an international scale.

At every level, some personal autonomy is lost, but the benefits are worth it. I don't get to choose the day the trash gets picked up, but I don't care as long as it gets picked up. I don't choose the local high school principal, and I don't want to. I'll let others do that. Ditto for defending that borders. We all enjoy benefits from citizenship even if it means other people are making decisions that affect us. Alaskans benefit from being citizens of the USA just as Yorkshiremen benefit from being citizens of the UK, even if it means taking direction from the Congress in Washington or the Parliament in London; Chiang Mai depends on Bangkok, and Brisbane relies on Canberra. Fill in your own localities here.

Why should we give control to those that we ourselves did not elect? Because sometimes that's the only way it works.

Fox Hole

2009-04-01T10:00:00.000-03:00

I have just read yet another angry comment about comments on Fox News regarding the Canadian military.

Enough already.

For one thing, no one has yet explained to me why the original comment -- that Canada's military would take a year off after Afghanistan -- was not silly and not deserving of ridicule. For another, every time someone makes a stink about this, it insults the very military they think they are defending. To get up-in-arms about Fox News blather is to imply that our soldiers are going to be hurt by it in the first place, and that's ridiculous. It's like your mom coming on to the diamond to argue balls and strikes. Shut up, already. It's embarrassing.

The only sound response to the original comments about Canada being a ridiculous country that no one knew was even in the war is as follows: "Canadian men and women are putting their lives on the line every day to defend an oppressed people from extremist thugs. They are serious, disciplined, well-trained, and the ramblings of comedians on late-night talk shows couldn't bother them in the least. They have more important things to worry about."

Controversial

2009-02-17T15:06:00.000-04:00

Officials at Halifax transit have refused to allow atheist bus ads on the grounds that they are too "controversial." Controversial. That's a coward's word. It is Halifax transit's way of not dealing with the real issue. Either they are willing to defend free expression or they are not; if they are willing to deny paid, legal advertising that expresses the benign sentiment that "You can be good without God," they should be prepared to explain what's wrong with it. And if they do decide to arbitrarily stomp on free expression, they should not hide behind vague worries about "controversy." First of all, what's wrong with controversy? Isn't this a democracy where we seek to advance ourselves through debate and discussion? Aren't most important ideas controversial at some point? God save us from a world without controversy. Or is there a God? Apparently the Halifax transit authority knows for sure.

What is the effect of only allowing non-controversial opinions to be expressed in public venues? It is to allow free speech for those who hold the most conservative views and to exclude new and radical ideas. Avoiding "controversy" is the spineless administrator's excuse for supporting the status quo.

The ugly truth about tolerance

2009-02-07T20:20:00.000-04:00

Recently, atheist groups have been putting ads in buses saying things like, "There's probably no God. Now, stop worrying and get on with your life." Probably no God? What kind of atheists are these?

The ad campaign began in London and is spreading, including to Canada, where religious groups are, to no one's surprise, displeased. Charles McVety, who runs the Canada Family Action Coalition (atheists don't have families?) was quoted recently in the Globe and Mail saying that while "On the surface I'm all for free speech...these are attack ads." He goes on to say that these ads are bigotted because they are "intolerant of someone else's belief system."

Now, setting aside for a moment the observation that everyone seems to be in favour of free speech except when people say anything that makes them upset, McVety has a troubling, and all too common of view of what constitutes intolerance. He seems to feel that tolerance is not merely a matter of allowing others to think and say what they feel, but rather it is accepting quietly anything that others say. To attack the beliefs of others, he says, is intolerant.

Well, that idea is stupid.

Tolerance is only tolerance. Tolerance is tolerating the fact that others may have views that are opposed to yours -- even diametrically opposed. To tolerate is to allow freedom to speak, to not physically harm those who oppose you, or to put them in jail, or deny them jobs for no good reason, and so on. It cannot be expanded to include a requirement that we must accept or agree not to oppose those we disagree with.

Why not? Why shouldn't we accept the views of everyone? Two reasons. First, it can't be done. To suggest any meaningful point of view is to implicitly deny the truth of opposing views. What McVety really wants is not a world in which nobody denies anybody else's views, but a world where no one denies his views and he can go on denying theirs. He wants to be able to say that Christ is Lord without caring that he is opposing the beliefs of Jews, Muslims, atheists and other non-Christians. This, I suspect, is true of all those who say "I believe in freedom of speech but..."; after the but comes "not when it offends my beliefs." Indeed, the CFAC buys ads and issues press releases like this one saying that gay marriage must be overturned because it normalizes homosexuality. And they have the nerve to preach about tolerance?

The other reason we must be free to tolerate but oppose one another is that serious issues come up in the voyage of life and they must be dealt with. Only through real debate, with all the confusion, anger, and hurt feelings that can come with it, can we chart our course with confidence.

But shouldn't religion be off limits? Isn't criticizing someone's religion like criticizing their race? No and no. Religion must be in bounds because it is a set of views about the world and views about the world are not intrinsic to their holders. They can be -- and have been -- changed and reexamined or, as is often the case with history's religions, abandoned altogether. You cannot argue against a person's whiteness or their arab background -- these are biological and historical facts. But you can argue that Christianity contributed to the oppression of women or that Islam must be reclaimed by its moderates, or that there is no God, and so on. These are real issues, and they are serious, and we cannot let religious people attack the freedoms and beliefs of others while claiming they should be immune from such attacks themselves.

That's not tolerance. It's tyranny.

Fast Talk: It came from the Movie Title!

2009-01-30T09:52:00.001-04:00

Wal-Mart, I learn, will not sell the Kevin Smith film Zack and Miri Make a Porno unless the word "Porno" is taken out of the title.

Seriously? I wonder if the retail giant will go through its back titles to edit them, too. Dial M for Murder might get redacted to Dial M. What's next, The Unstigmatized Mental Illness of King George? Look for the final installment of the Star Wars trilogy as The Justifiable Concerns of the Sith.

Here are some more titles to look for coming soon to DVD at Walmart:

The Bright Knight
Frost/Obama
Dog Millionaire

Fast Talk: Receipts

2009-01-18T16:24:00.001-04:00

I was at a local big-box store today and purchased a set of headphones. One single item. I made my purchase, and was handed a receipt that measures over 11 inches in length -- longer than an ordinary piece of paper. The receipt includes the following information: the store name, the contract ID number (we have a contract?), the store's address and phone number, the date and time, the store name again, the item I purchased, the cost of the item, an invitation to tell them how they are doing online, a promise that if I fill out the online survey I could win a gift card, a series of codes for when I go online and do the survey, an indication of where I can find the contest rules (not printed on the receipt thankfully), a notice indicating I can order items online and pick them up at the store if I want to, the price of my item again, the tax amount, the total, four digits from my Visa number (plus 12 Xs), the GST registration number, something called the ACI/ISO#, and a final note that (wait for it) I bought just one thing.

Now, I'm glad to have some this -- the total and a reminder of which credit card I put it on, but do I really need all this information and does it really have to take up so much paper? This store must dole out the equivalent of thousands of sheets of paper a day at this rate. But what really bugs me is that half of the damn thing is marketing and advertising. I know stores must advertise, but can I not be shielded from the marketers even immediately after I've made a purchase? It's like the waiter at a restaurant bringing you another menu at the end of the meal in case you want to take something out or order ahead before your next meal. I'm not hungry! I just ate! Leave me alone!

Next time I'm tearing off the part I need and giving them the rest back. See how they like having a lot of useless paper on their desks.

Some wisdom for my walls

2009-01-06T22:34:00.000-04:00

As regular readers of this space may recall, I am not a religious man, but I do believe that all long-standing religions have some wisdom to offer us. How could it be otherwise when the best minds of the various civilizations have given themselves up to contemplating the world through the lenses of their various traditions?

But it was recently pointed out to me that my own home shows little of this attitude. I have some Buddhist pictures and related items around, and many books about various religions (and about atheism), but not much to suggest the view that I have outlined above.

Rising to this challenge I resolved (and promised) to select quotations from representatives of the great spiritual traditions of the world to adorn my study's walls. The stairway in my house already has quotations from some ancient pagans (like Aristotle), so I will take paganism as covered. Of course, I cannot have a quotation from every religion, but here is what I have for five, and I'm pretty pleased with them. In all cases I have tried to select either from religious texts themselves or believers (I had to rule out Einstein, here, because I am convinced that he was, in the main, an atheist).

Islam
"The ground's generosity takes in our compost and grows beauty! Try to be more like the ground." (Rumi)

Christianity
"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things." (Paul)

Judaism
"The question put by a wise man is half the answer." (Shlomo ben Yehudah)

Hinduism
"Weigh a man's merits and weigh his faults. Then judge him according to the greater." (Tirukkural)

Buddhism
"If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete." (Jack Kornfield)

The Death of Dignity

2008-11-29T17:21:00.000-04:00

So the good people of Valley Stream, New York, now have a dubious claim to fame: they are the world's deadliest shoppers. News reports around the world reported that Jdimytai Damour, an employee at the local Wal-Mart, died after a crowd smashed the door and trampled him as they rushed to find holiday bargains. This, at 4:55 am, 5 minutes before the store was set to open. As authorities struggled to close the store, shoppers were indignant. Even when told a man had died, some insisted they be permitted to continue shopping. Noone is being charged in the incident, but union officials and police are blaming Wal-Mart for having insufficient security.

Seriously? The fault is with the store for not stopping the crowd from becoming a deadly mob in the first place? Maybe, it's just me, but I'm inclined to blame the people who, you know, TRAMPLED A MAN TO DEATH.

To be sure, many were likely tired and frustrated by a long wait. Perhaps some were obsessed with finding the toy that -- in its absence -- would ruin Christmas for their children. And I'm sure that none of them meant for anyone to get hurt. There are plenty of excuses. Still, what line of reasoning compels not a few, but two thousand people to line up outside a Wal-Mart in the middle of the night, so that they can go shopping at five am? I wouldn't do it. You know why?

It's beneath me.

This sort of thinking is too rare these days. In our egalitarian world, the idea that certain things are beneath one's dignity seems like snobbery. Thus that which is crass and embarrassing can be undertaken without second thought. And if we feel no embarrassment over lining up at 3 in the morning to be the first to get a stuffed toy or MP3 player, what's wrong with pushing someone out of the way to get it. And if we're not ashamed to push people, why not step on one or two as well. And if someone dies, well, at least I have my new TV.

Fast Talk: Inappropriate

2008-11-26T14:40:00.000-04:00

I read in the news today that Carleton University's student's union has embarrassed itself by canceling its annual cystic fibrosis fundraiser on the grounds that the disease affects mainly white men, and why should they get any help? But what interests me most is the university's response. The President expressed "regret" over the decision and said the student union used language that was "inappropriate."

Leaving aside the issue of how one can regret something that someone else did, I'm really starting to chafe at the overuse of the word "inappropriate." To be sure, there are times when appropriateness of language is important, but it has become commonplace to reject any statement one objects to as "inappropriate." It's a nasty little trick, though. Nasty because it tends to head off any debate over the original utterance. One can't defend the original statement because it was never attacked as wrong, just inappropriate. And since what's appropriate is usually a matter of taste, the conversation typically ends there. Meanwhile the university president (or whoever) seems to take a thoughtful moral stand without having to actually take a stand on anything at all.

What the Carleton President should have said was that the student union's motion was wrong in its facts and shameful in its mean-spiritedness. But then I suppose I'm expecting too much for a leader of an institution of higher education.

Such courage would, I guess, be inappropriate.

Universities and Democracy

2008-10-20T19:47:00.000-03:00

I have voted in every federal and provincial election in Canada since I was old enough to legally do so. This past election, though, I seriously considered not voting at all. My reasons were perhaps predictable, and all went to a growing sense that electoral democracy was an exercise in futility. To wit:

1. A great many, if not most, voters are woefully under-informed about the issues.

2. A great many, if not most, voters vote based on things other than the issues, such as who their parents voted for.

3. Modern politics features very little debate over substantial matters and leans instead of ad hominem attacks and generic “messages” that ignore the serious and complex problems that we face.

In response to this, I could only feebly invoke the old saw that democracy is the worst system of government except for all the others. Shouldn’t there be a better way? I found myself frequently thinking back to the suggestion made by H.L Mencken that legislators should be chosen like jury members: at random and against their will.

But my thinking on democracy may be changing, and my inspiration came from a strange place: David Mamet’s play about university politics, Oleanna. In the play, a pompous professor, who has made his career by criticizing higher education as, among other things, a form of torture, is attacked by a student for various abuses of power. Her attacks are unfair, but he is finished before he even begins to defend himself because he has already refuted his own defense: which is the system itself is a fair one and justifies his exercise of reasonable power over his students.

In other words, what he should point out is that professors should have authority at universities because they have earned PhDs, and because they have won their positions over those less qualified, and because they have been reviewed repeatedly prior to earning tenure. But, comes the reply, does it not happen that poorly qualified candidates are hired? Yes. Do not some incompetent or mean-spirited professors earn tenure despite the reviews? Yes, they do. But the system itself is not a bad one, even with its imperfections, and it’s probably better than the alternatives.

Democracy is this way, too, I think. If a member of parliament were asked what gives her the right to enact laws, she would rightly say that being elected by her constituents gives her the right. Do some foolish and venial people get elected? Of course, but the system itself is a good one, and better than the alternatives. And not just better than the alternatives (as the old saw has it) but noble: the people choose who will rule on their behalf; the governors are responsible to those they govern.

All great endeavours are compromised daily by the quotidian reality of human life. But we persevere because the ideas themselves – justice, democracy, education – are worth holding onto.

Next election, I will be voting.

Wonderful World of ISDY: Seattle

2008-06-05T17:07:00.000-03:00

Recently, a staff member at a Seattle Mariners game asked two women in the stands (one of whom apparently was a minor celebrity following a stint on a reality TV show) to stop kissing because it was making other patrons uncomfortable, even though other heterosexual couples were making out nearby. The supposed reason the women were singled out? There were kids around.

Now, I can understand it (though not condone it) if an overzealous usher does something stupid. Stupid happens. But what has amazed me is that in a town that I thought would have roundly condemned this obviously discriminatory act, an enormous debate has broken out as to whether or not gays and lesbians should be treated like everyone else.

According to one Seattleite: "I don't think it's right seeing women kissing in public. If I had my family there, I'd have to explain what's going on.'' Right. Why on Earth would anyone want to explain something to a child? Where would parents be if they had to explain things to their children? Good lord, what if they start asking why the man running for President is black?

Seriously, what is so hard about saying to little Courtney or whatever her name is, "Well, a lot of men like to kiss women and a lot of women like to kiss men. But some men like to kiss other men and some women like to kiss other women." It's not like the kid is asking about the infield fly rule.

Of course, it's not that the outraged fans can't explain it. They don't want to. Why not? First, because if they have to explain it, they can't pretend it isn't real. Second, if they explain it to their kids, the kids might not disapprove.

People of Seattle: I'm so disappointed in you.

From the Mailbag: Not Single?

2008-06-01T12:59:00.000-03:00

Q. I've heard that you're not single anymore and that you have a girlfriend. What was the dating scene like?

A. The thing that no one emphasizes about dating is that it's largely spending time with strangers, and I have never been good with strangers. It takes me a while to get to feel comfortable with people. I kept imagining first dates filled with sparkling and witty conversation, and maybe that happens for people if they are really lucky. And if they are lucky enough to go out with someone more instantly charming than I.

As for my girlfriend -- and I have to say, I love saying I have a girlfriend -- she and I kind of stumbled into a relationship. For a while, I thought I definitely did NOT want to end up in a relationship that way. I wanted to meet someone out of the blue and be absolutely dazzled and all that jazz. But now I see that the old saw about the journey and not the destination does not apply here. With love, it's where you end up, not how you get there.

New Feature: Mailbag

2008-05-30T19:33:00.001-03:00

Every once in a very long while, someone tells me that they want me to write more on this blog. I'd like to help out, but I've been a little tapped out in the ideas department lately.

So help me out: what have you been dying to know about what I think?

Email me at pettrichor@hotmail.com and mention that the question is for the blog. I won't reveal your name to the blog-reading public in general, I promise.

Age and Respect

2008-05-30T19:18:00.000-03:00

A little while ago I came across a list of things that one was supposed to do to make the local community better. I remember two of them, one I thought was smart -- "Fix it even if you didn't break it" -- and one I thought was stupid: "respect your elders."

Now, in case anyone older than me reads this blog (I doubt it, but just in case), I'm not calling for a campaign against the elderly or anything like that. But I hear this "respect the elders" thing a lot and it never fails to bother me. When I was more directly involved with the Green Party I used to hear a lot about how we should be tapping this valuable resource that was the elderly; they were the ones who could guide the younger generation and so on and so on. In some churches, I understand, the board of directors is actually termed "elders."

But is it really the case that the simple fact of being advanced in years lends one a great store of wisdom and gravitas? I doubt it. Certainly, those who have been around the sun a few more times than the rest of us may have had the chance to acquire wisdom and no doubt some have, but as far as I can tell, age is just as likely to bring prejudice and bitterness as it is to bring compassion and wisdom.

The whole appeal to respect for elders is an instance of easy self-congratulation by those who make the appeal. If I look to the silver-haired old sages for guidance, I myself must be wise and thoughtful since I recognize the dignity and insight of the older generation. Don't fall for it. Judge people as they ought to be judged, on their own character and behaviour, not on their membership in any group. The young may be distinguished by their energy or burdened by naivete; the old may be enlivened by sagacity or weighed down by self-righteousness. Take your human goodness where you find it.

Fast Talk: Alphabetical Order

2008-02-04T14:48:00.000-04:00

Sometimes I get an idea for a blog entry but it doesn't really blossom into a fully formed entry in my head, so the darn thing never gets written. But then I thought, why should these little gems lay buried in the deep ocean of my mind, unseen by the masses hungry for my insights? Then I thought I was full of myself.

Nevertheless, I am instituting a new feature here on the blog. At first I was going to call them "Quickies" but hey, this is a blog for all ages, so I settled on "Fast Talk." These entries will be short and sweet but every bit as odd and charming as the full length versions. Enjoy.

Alphabetical Order

Every once in a while someone notices that my books and CDs and DVDs are arranged in alphabetical order and they chuckle at me with the look that communicates sympathy for my obvious OCD. Sometimes there is even a patronizing, "You put these all in alphabetical order?"

But I like alphabetical order. For one thing, there are often delightful little ironies that emerge when things are arranged alphabetically. My movie collection finds Finding Nemo right next to A Fish Called Wanda. How wonderful!

But even more wonderful is the profound elegance of it. A few easy to remember rules and any mass of information -- the titles of every movie ever made, let's say -- can be put into a useful arrangement with due diligence. I get a thrill putting a new title in it's proper place knowing it is in its proper place, Superman modestly moving aside to make way for Spiderman, 50 First Dates and 10 Things I Hate About You sliding in nervously next to 12 Angry Men (in my system, numbers go first before letters, though I could have treated them as if the words were spelled out -- these are judgement calls).

So when my friends snicker at me for putting things in alphabetical order, I snicker back with an equally patronizing, "how else would you do it?"

Sleepy thoughts on Foghorns

2008-01-31T23:42:00.000-04:00

I live near the coast, and when it's foggy I hear the plaintive cry of the local foghorn.

I like the sound of the foghorn, when it's foggy at least. And the other night, as foggy a night as it gets, as I drifted off to sleep I wondered what it was about that sound that seemed so comforting. And I think I figured it out.

It has to do with the foundations of civilization. I'm not kidding. The foghorn blows so passing ships have a warning and don't crash into the rocks near shore. The foghorn doesn't know who's out there, but it blows loud and clear just in case. I suppose some tiny slice of my tax money goes to pay for that foghorn, and I think it's money well spent.

You see, the very idea of the foghorn is a recognition that we are all in this thing together. We all need each other sometimes and, sometimes each of us gets lost. The foghorn sounds across the waves and tells anyone out there: though the mist and the darkness are all around, we are here, and we'll help you find your way.

So sleep well, my friends, and when you seem adrift, listen. Someone is out there -- you don't know who -- just beyond where you can see, and they don't want you to crash into the rocks.

Critical Mass

2007-12-30T18:17:00.001-04:00

This year for Christmas Eve, I did something that I had never done before: I went to midnight mass. Now, I am not a Catholic, or even a Christian, but my best friend and I wanted to see the inside of the Cathedral, and this seemed as good a chance as any.

Having been, now, I have to say I was deeply moved. Not because of the religious content, mind you; I remain as committed a secular humanist as ever. And certainly not because it evoked the supposed "true meaning" of Christmas. No, I was moved because at every moment I could see that those responsible for the event were convinced that this was something to be taken absolutely seriously. The decoration, the music, even the man who held the door -- every detail was clearly done with one thought ever-present: this is no time to rush, or fake, or skimp. It must be done right and done well.

It is this kind of seriousness of purpose that often seems to me to be lacking in most human endeavours. Nearly everything, even very important things like education, and art, and architecture are very often done with half-efforts and a pervasive sense of something-is-better-than-nothing.

Christmas, happily enough, is often a time when people get a surge of seriousness, I think. It's only once a year, and if there is real value in the ceremonies of Christmas -- finding the right present, preparing the perfect meal -- maybe it is the chance, at least once a year, to take things seriously. To try, if only this one time, to get things just right.

So maybe I learned something about the true meaning of Christmas after all. See you all next year. Seriously.

Neologisms

2007-10-10T13:58:00.000-03:00

One of my favourite pastimes is making up words.

A little while back, I coined the word "earlate" which is what you are when you arrive early and then find something to do to kill some time, but kill too much and end up late. You were late, but you should get some credit for having been early in the first place. So you're earlate. I was very proud of that; I hope it catches on.

Here are a couple more of my recent neologisms:

Pressert: the sweet part of the meal you usually eat last but eaten before the main course. I sometimes indulge in pressert when I am too impatient to wait for the main course to come out of the oven.

Carbage: the mess of fast food containers, drink cans, and other junk that builds up in the back seat of a car. I make an effort to keep my carbage to a minimum but every time I look back there -- there it is.

Please use these words as often as you can, preferably in print and referring to this blog if at all possible. I would like to be in the OED someday. It's my OE-Destiny. Hey, there's another one.

Single

2007-10-03T14:17:00.000-03:00

Those of you who know me personally (are there strangers out there reading this? how on earth did you find it?), I have recently become single for the first time in a long time.

Now, relax, this is not going to be a long whine about how being single sucks and how I'm so lonely and how depressed I am about never finding someone again -- none of that applies to me. I'm doing just fine in my single life, thank you very much.

But being a single adult is not entirely what I expected it to be based on my TV and movie experiences.

For one thing, no one is trying to set me up. I was under the impression that people are always trying to set up single people with other people they know. I'm not sure I particularly want to be set up, but it is a bit unnerving to think that nobody has been sitting around and saying, "have I got a guy for you!"

Which brings me to the second thing that has surprised me about being single. Nobody cares. In the movies and TV, it's somehow the defining characteristic of any single person. It's like there's a ringing alarm bell going off the whole time. It's all anyone can talk about. But here I am going on with my life.

Different than it was, and different than I thought it would be.

Anybody free next Friday night?

Academic

2007-10-02T18:09:00.000-03:00

For a long time I have resented the term "academic" as applied to people in my profession because it seemed dangerously close to trivializing the work. People say, "it's all academic" to mean it doesn't really matter. I preferred the term "scholar" because it suggested the actual work of what someone like me does. Scholarship. Dignified. Important. Certainly not just academic.

But lately I've been more deeply involved in the administrative side of the university, and I have a better appreciation of all the various things that need to be done to keep this ship afloat. Moreover, I've found myself thinking more and more about the future of this place and how I might contribute to it.

And it occurs to me that being a professor is about more than one's own research and teaching and even more than what is blandly called "service" around here. To be a professor is to be a custodian of an ancient tradition. Often neglected, to be sure, often sullied by cupidity and small-mindedness no doubt, but somehow, through all the years there is still, miraculously, a place where people like me are paid good money to be high-minded idealists.

It irks me to have to keep track of receipts for printers and desks, and it wearies me to get terse emails from faculty who have been accidentally left off mailing lists or who have been assigned a course they don't want to teach. But through all that I manage to work slowly away on a book whose only effect when finished will be to help readers better understand a single play. I spend hours every week instructing a captive audience on how to better read poetry. If universities had never existed, the idea of spending millions of dollars on public money for such things would seem absurd to our pragmatic legislators. But here they are, and here I am. And a great many of my colleagues feel the same way.

In a small way we are like the great Plato himself who was taught by Socrates never to accept conventional wisdom but to question everything and to seek for virtue and truth, no matter how remote they may be. He called his school the Academy and people like me try to keep that spirit alive as best we can.

This is the academy. I am an academic.

About Face II

2007-05-28T22:44:00.000-03:00

Since I wrote my earlier post about Facebook, I've thought alot about it, especially in light of numerous comments suggesting that the whole thing is nothing more than a fad. Maybe it is. But there's one question that keeps coming back to me.

Is the kind of social networking that happens on Facebook the first really new thing that the internet has given us?

Think about it. Most of what we do on the internet is really just faster or bigger version of things that we had been doing all along. Email is, as the name suggests, another kind of mail. Chat is a screened version of the telephone. Porn is porn, news is news, and online shopping is just a slightly faster version of what we used to call mail order.

In fact, the hubub over You-tube and Wikipedia has obscured the fact that the former is not much more than an elaborate take on America's Funniest Home Videos, and the latter is a rapid version of collaborative reference works like the Oxford English Dictionary.

But it's hard to find an obvious predecessor for Facebook. Even the paper facebooks of American universities (for which the site is named) are not really much like the site because of Facebook's interactivity and boundless connections. Internet social networking may be changing the way we relate to each other and the way we think of our world. It may be as big a development as regular mail delivery or the daily newspaper. Or it may be a fad. You know, the way the telephone was.

J'refuse

2007-05-23T22:04:00.000-03:00

As regular readers of this space will know, it was supposed to be heavy-items-pick-up week for garbage in my neighbourhood last week. I guess they're behind, though, because my heavy items are still there. I must say I am a little annoyed with the local authorities because through their negligence I have now gone from a guy throwing out heavy items to a guy who just has a pile of junk in his front yard. But that's not my point -- they'll get it eventually. I hope.

No, what I want to tell you is that the other night I was sitting in my living room when a car pulled up in front of my house. Out jumped one of the occupants who quickly apprised my heavy items, snatched up an old VCR that I had thrown out, got back in the car, and sped away. And it wasn't just the VCR either, by the way. My old lawn mower and weed eater had disappeared from the trash heap earlier in the week. And this very morning, my old cans and bottles were spirited away before the recycling truck could get to them. Now, I seem to recall hearing at one point that your garbage was yours until picked up by the municipality and that taking someone's garbage is stealing. But that's not my point -- I didn't want that junk anyway, and if someone else can make use of it, so much the better.

I suppose it was a little annoying that the people in question didn't ask if they could take it. It is on my property, after all, and wouldn't it be civil to knock on the door and say, "Sorry, but it looks as though you're throwing that out. Would you mind if I took it?"? But that's not my point, either -- this is not a part of the world where people stand on such ceremonies and that's fine.

No, what really bothered me about the incident was that somewhere along the line, I have become part of a class of people where my very refuse is valuable enough for people to search out and take for their own. Somehow have ascended to some kind of elite realm where stuff that is not even good enough to take up space in my closet is snapped up by eager passers-by.

My trash is literally another man's treasure.

Except for the junk that's still sitting there.

Telegy

2007-05-14T13:40:00.000-03:00

A little while ago a friend of mine referred to my TV as an "idiot box." It was a joke and I didn't take offense, but later I felt as though I should have defended my TV against the insult.

My lack of fortitude was brought into focus yesterday when I had the sad duty of putting an old TV in the garbage. It's heavy-items-collection week where I live and the TV is heavy and it doesn't really work any more, and it takes up valuable space in the closet, and so it has fallen victim to spring cleaning. But that TV was special; it was the first TV I ever bought, one of the first big things I ever bought on my own, in fact, and so that TV -- my first TV in a sense -- was part of the gradual, inexorable process that one day finds us as grown ups and wondering how it happened.

But through it all, one TV or another has been there. Keeping me company when I was alone, entertaining my friends when I was not. When I was a little kid we were just about the last family in my neighbourhood to have cable, and we begged my parents to get it to no avail. Then one day I came home from school for lunch and my mother suggested I eat my lunch at the TV, which was unusual. So I went downstairs and found the TV already on and tuned to a channel that we didn't get. And yet we did. We had cable! Of course, it's not the cable that gives this story a special place in my heart (I don't have cable now), or even that my parents caved and got it for us. It's that my mom knew how happy I would be and set it all up in advance so I could have a happy surprise. Thanks, Mom. And thanks, TV.

Not counting the one on the curb, I now have three TVs at my house -- each of which has its job. One anchors my movie obsession; one serves as a workout partner; one plays music for me on surprisingly good speakers. They never judge. They never complain. And the next time someone calls my TV an "idiot box" I know what I will say.

You can't talk about my friends that way.

Who would have thought I'd be at this two years later?

2007-04-22T20:07:00.000-03:00

Looking over my archives, I'm amazed to see that I started this blog over two years ago. At that time everybody had a blog, it seemed, and I didn't want to be left out.

At the same time, I didn't really find very many blogs very interesting because they were so pointedly personal. They really were web logs, literally logging whatever the blogger had done that day. Today I got up and watched SNL from last night and then had a shower...

So I decided to make my blog more about thoughts I had that seemed a bit nutty if I brought them up in conversation, but somehow seemed dignified by prose. You can't just walk up to someone and say, hey, guess how I get rid of weeds! I redefine them! But somehow in the blog it sounds sort of funny, I think.

One of my favourite parts about blogging is that every once in a while people actually seem to have read what I've written. One reader told me it changed her mind about blogs in general which was a very nice compliment. Another told me she didn't get her schoolwork done one night because she went on my web site looking for research material and ended up reading the blog instead. I'm still not sure how to feel about that.

I've also been fascinated by which entries have garnered the most comments. Religion seems to get people talking -- and I heard a fair bit about my critique of Jesus take the Wheel. One of the few highly negative reactions I got, though not posted, came after my post about the war in Afghanistan -- which is understandable. And for some reason the issue of gendered bathrooms sparked a fair bit of debate. So the blog lets me keep up on the state of the culture, too, I guess.

So for those of you who have been loyal readers or who would like to be, keep reading when you can, and I'll write when I have a thought. And keep the comments coming. And tell your friends.

And we'll see where we are in a couple of years.

About Face

2007-04-06T18:08:00.000-03:00

Recently it has been suggested to me that I am too critical and cynical in this blog and that I should write something positive for a change; it has also been suggested that I write something about the Facebook craze that I myself have recently become part of. So consider this a two-birds-one-stone entry for my loyal readers. Here goes.

I love Facebook.

For those of you out of the loop – as I myself was until recently – Facebook is a website that allows people to post personal profiles and then link to the profiles of other people in a variety of ways. It sounds simple enough – and it is – but it quickly becomes addictive. Looking at people's pictures, exchanging messages,and, my personal favourite, getting an updated “news feed” about what your friends are doing – this is how I've been spending my time lately. What are my friends woirking on? How are they feeling? Why are more than one of them pictured suggestively with fruits and vegetables?

Admittedly, Facebook stretches the concept of “friend” pretty far. Some of my “friends” are people I don't know all that well and some are people I haven't seen in years. But that is precisely the point: it lets you keep track of people that you wouldn't have time to catch up with otherwise, or that you had lost track of altogether, or that you've always wanted to know more about but were too shy to ask.

And I guess that's what I really love about Facebook. While so many people are out there using the internet for spreading hate or selling kiddie porn or trying to convince me that I can get millions simply by sending my bank account number to Namibia, Facebook is populated by people doing what we ought to be doing more often. Getting to know each other.

And if that's not positive, well I don't know what is.

The case for exams

2007-04-05T16:04:00.000-03:00

A recent item in the local newspaper did something very difficult: it offended me. It offended me so much, in fact, that I have set aside my piles of late-semester work and turned to the blog to provide a rebuttal. Perhaps some of you are wondering what the point of exams is and have set aside your studying to surf the net. Let's consider the case against exams recently presented.

The author took aim at the practice of giving exams at universities, my own in particular. "They do not benefit students at all," said the author, so why have them? His critique was as follows:

1.Exams exist primarily as means by which professors torture their students by forcing them to submit to the "twisted formula" by which students are assessed and by which their efforts are graded. They are, our correspondent intones, "a new form of hell created by vindictive teachers and professors."

2. Students do not learn from exams and so they can only be a means by which the diabolical instructors, that is, the benighted ones who don't "get it," exercise their arbitrary authority over cowering students. The students, he says, are so terrified that they freeze and "are afraid to do anything," not even scratch an itch lest they be accused of misbehaving.

3. Once completed and graded, professors use exams to subject students to further "humiliation" and "punishment" by telling everyone who got the lowest grades.

I respond as follows:

1. Professors do not assign exams to be vindictive or because they have never considered any other means of evaluation. Rather, we provide exams because they are, by and large, an effective means of determining which students have acquired a mastery of the material and to what degree. Moreover, they do so in a means that is relatively objective and fair. What is the alternative? We simply spend a semester chatting and at the end, I assign whatever grade I feel like? Surely that would be open to much more abuse of power than most exams today. Exams are not perfect of course, but in many courses (my own included) they are not the only means of evaluation either.

2. To complain that students don't learn from exams is like complaining that thermometers are lousy heaters: it's true but it misses the point. Exams are not meant to teach; they are meant to test what students have learned. To have such a testing process is reasonable. If I go to a physician, it is not enough for me that she has merely explored ideas about medicine; I want to know that she has demonstrated her deep knowledge of the subject to experts in the field and has satisfied them that she knows what she's talking about. Indeed, the public has the right to expect this rigour of all university graduates. An English degree should mean that the holder has demonstrated knowledge of the English language and its literature and has shown skill in thinking and writing critically about those things. Exams may not benefit students directly, but universities exist not to serve individual students per se, but to serve society as a whole by providing meaningful education. In this sense, exams do benefit students because they help establish that their degrees actually mean something.

The notion that students are so frightened by exams that they can only sit and cower (and not, say, answer questions) is absurd. By the time they reach university, students have taken many exams and they know how to handle it. Good students realize that if they are well prepared, there is no need to panic. To be sure, most students do get stressed, but there is nothing wrong with that. Difficult things are difficult. A few may be stressed beyond healthy levels, but there are avenues by which such students can get help, including a university counseling service, an office for students with disabilities, and, of course, a range of public health services.

3. In my nine years as a university student and my seven years as a faculty member, I have never seen a professor reveal a student's low grade in class or use a bad grade to deliberately humiliate a student in front of peers. I cannot even recall knowing anyone (other than our columnist who never says he actually saw such a thing, only that "some professors" do it) who ever claimed to have witnessed this kind of event. Perhaps it has happened, but such an action would be grounds for a very serious complaint to the administration, not least of all because it would violate a student's legal right to privacy.

Exams, like thermometers, take a small sample and though they are not always exact, they are usually a good indication of what's going on. Just as you only need one thermometer to tell you how warm the whole pool is, one three hour exam is a good indication of what the student has learned in the past three months. The fact is, that good students writing fair exams do well. Students who are not well prepared have themselves to blame. If the exam is unfair, there are means of appeal. But in my experience, most professors bend over backwards to ensure that exams are fair if not downright easy. We provide review, sample questions, and advice on how to study effectively. My exams are given in a modular format to allow students to take breaks and leave the room if need be. I have more than one student this year who will be writing exams in the disability centre so that they can more easily focus on the questions.

The kind of critique that I outlined above and tried to refute is offensive not because it calls me stupid, vindictive, and Satanic -- I can handle that -- but because it speaks from an alarmingly anti-intellectual position, a position that eschews standards and rigour in favour of the nebulous "free flow of ideas" as though every idea is equally interesting and every suggestion equally true. But if that were the goal, why have universities and degrees at all? Our columnist, I suspect, like so many others, wants the benefit of an education without the real costs. He wants to be taught by learned men and women while sneering at the process by which they have become so. He wants the credential that says he is an educated man without having to show what he has done to deserve that credential.

So to all students, I say this. I know it's hard. It's good that it's hard. Really valuable things are usually hard to get. So take a deep breath, let it out, and let's all get back to work.

Jesus, give me a break...

2007-02-12T15:58:00.000-04:00

Am I the only one who thinks that the (now) Grammy-award-winning song "Jesus, take the Wheel" is one of the worst hits ever recorded?

For those of you who have been living in blissful ignorance of this bit of pop culture bilge, it is the ballad of an ordinary woman who loses control of her car on an icy road and rather than, say, steer into the skid, throws up her hands and cries out "Jesus, take the wheel!" and is (I'm not kidding) miraculously saved. The experience causes her to repent her lack of faith and promises to let "Jesus take the wheel" from there on.

What bothers me most about this song is its unbelievably inane vision of life and of religious experience. On one level, this little ditty -- just about the most popular one in the world thanks to the media machine called American Idol that has made Woody Underwear a household name -- is an insult to religious people everywhere because it puts Christianity on about the level of the AAA. Christ as roadside assistance.

But of course the point is more profound than that. The story is a metaphor, but what is the metaphorical point? Apparently that the way to live in the world is to abandon all personal effort and let "Jesus" (as the Sunday school kids call him) control your life. And that to me, is the most horrifying part of the whole thing. Only the worst kind of zealot would suggest that human beings should exercise no agency in the world because, let's face it, the world has plenty of troubles and all the evidence so far indicates that if there is a God, he is not going to intervene to save us from ourselves (why not? well now, that's a question I would like to pose to Gordie Sampson, the Canadian author of this nugget of iron pyrite).

My point is not that Christianity, or any religion, is necessarily a terrible thing, but anyone who teaches, even by pseudo-Christian pop-culture allegory, that human beings do not have a profound responsibility to one another should be ashamed.

Weighing in on Small Business

2007-02-04T22:00:00.000-04:00

In the circles in which I run (academics, progressives) there is a general feeling that small business is a fine thing. Local, independent operations, run by ordinary folk who call their customers by name and go that extra mile because of the pride they take in their work and in their communities -- this is the vision that is usually offered. By shopping at such places, I am told, I keep big corporations at bay and support the local economy.

It all sounds very nice and homey and wholesome. But I find it harder to believe every day.

Living in a moderate-sized town these past six and a half years, I've come to feel that a great many small businesses are small for a reason. If the operators knew what they were doing, they'd be bigger.

Today, for instance, I decided it was time to get a new bathroom scale (yeah, I wore the old one out, hardee-har-har...). So I set out into town to find the sort I wanted. Digital and modern, you know the kind I mean. Anyway, to the hardware store -- no dice. They had exactly one scale in stock and it was a crummy dial model. So the big grocery stores (these are stores that sell barbells and cell phones -- is a scale too big a leap?) but no luck at either of them. So on to the pharmacies (three different ones). The closest I got was when I was told they sometimes get them in around Christmas time. I almost asked if they sold time machines, then, but I'm trying to rein myself in these days.

So home it was, and on to the internet where I found just what I wanted at a site called Canadian Weigh. Stylish and modern my new scale is and packed with cool features. And it was on sale too. This company is going to be big.

So my hard-earned dollars that might have gone to the local economy -- might have if any one of six different stores had what I was in the market for -- has now gone elsewhere.

And no one in any of those stores knew my name.

The Wonderful World of ISDY

2007-02-03T16:04:00.000-04:00

Today I bring you a new feature: ISDY, short for "I'm So Disappointed in You."

This first installment shakes a disapproving head at the National Restaurant Association. As you may have read, a new commercial shows Britney Spears' ex Kevin Federline in a glitzy music video, but the gag is that it's just a fantasy sequence and poor Kevin is really working in a fast food restaurant.

So far so good -- until Steven Anderson, president of the NRA (the food people, remember, not the gun people) complains that -- wait for it -- the commercial is insulting to restaurant workers. Imagine suggesting that some restaurant workers might actually prefer to be doing something else, like, oh, I don't know, being rock stars.

Now, I have worked in restaurants in my time, and I will be the first to say that it is hard work; those who bust their butts to make an honest living and help people get their meals have my admiration. But let's face it, for virtually all fast-food workers, this is not their dream job. They didn't go to university and major in Rapid Gastronomy so they could fry burgers and mop up spilled ketchup. I dare Mr. Anderson to go into any McDonald's or Burger King and offer a million bucks to anyone who's willing to promise to never to work in the restaurant business again. Do you think he'd have any takers? Of course he would. The place would clear out. Why do think they have American Idol?

My point is that lobby groups like the NRA (butter, remember, not guns) should actually be working to improve the conditions of the people they represent. When people like Steven Anderson come out with frivolous complaints about insults that never were, it breeds cynicism about social action in general and undermines the credibility of those actually trying to improve the lives and rights of working people.

So, Steven Anderson and the National Restaurant Association, I have only this to say: I'm so disappointed in you.

Playing favourites

2007-01-27T22:33:00.000-04:00

I'm going to let you in on three little secrets.

First, professors have favourite students.

Some don't like to talk about it, and some may pretend it isn't true, but its inevitable. Why? Not because we're "human" but because for the most part, professors get into professing because they want to inspire students the way they were inspired once upon a time. Now, I know that for some profs that has long worn off and their trying to get through the days without going crazy -- and not always succeeding. But those ones are in the minority. Professors care about what they're doing and they quite understandably want students to care too. And so when professors see two students, one carefully taking notes, the other staring at the wall, one actually listening, the other drawing cartoons in the margins of a scribbler, one asking intelligent questions and the other running off at every opportunity...well, which one of these students would make YOU feel like you're not wasting your life?

So here's another secret. I don't think that professors having favourites is such a bad thing.

The last secret is the secret to academic success. Find the professors you respect, the ones that really know their stuff, the ones that really care, the ones that really want you to learn. Then be their favourites.

TV Commercial Hall of Shame: New Members

2007-01-27T16:09:00.000-04:00

1. Toyota -- for their entire new series of ads that claim there should no longer be a difference between Want and Need. You get the idea? If you want it, you need it. No need for self restraint, moderation, a healthy bank account. Don't spend money on the braces that your kid NEEDS, you WANT a shiny new car and that's just as important. Yes, what you want is now what you need. Toyota ad execs, how do you look at yourselves in the mirror?

2. PharmaChoice -- for their latest "It's like having a pharmacist for your best friend" commercial. In this one, a woman in a restaurant orders a glass of water whereupon her "friend" launches into a whole big speech about how she might have diabetes. If my friend said that I'd throw the water in her smug face. "Diabetes? Are you trying to scare me to death? You're not a doctor!" Pharmacists everywhere must be cringing.

[Note: Earlier I misidentified the company as PharmaSave. Apologies. I don't know what their commericals are like, but they're not these ones.]

Dear Leaders of the World,

2006-11-11T14:27:00.000-04:00

Your states need to be entirely secular. Tolerate and protect religious diversity by all means, but your governments should have no official religion, nor should religious affiliation or ideas be involved in any way in the choosing of public officials.

Your laws should be entirely secular and not based on any faith tradition. No religious schools should be publicly funded, nor should religious groups be subsidized, even through tax exemptions.

Do this now and you will have peace. Continue to define your nations by religion, continue to rule with religious doctrine at the centre of your political ideology, continue to make religion the raison d'etre of your nations, and you will have endless hardship.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

Sincerely,

A friend at Pettrichor.

Today's Email

2006-11-08T11:22:00.000-04:00

Today I got an email urging me to write to Stephen Harper and urge him to change our aggressive policy in Afghanistan. Now, I'm not a supporter of Harper, nor do I believe we should "support our troops" without regard for what those troops are doing.

But I did find it strange that not too long ago I was getting equally impassioned emails telling me to urge our government to do something about the brutal Taliban regime in that very same Afghanistan.

The emailers were right the first time. The Taliban are fundamentalist toughs who by all accounts, brutalized women, suppressed freedom of religion and expression, and deliberately harboured and supported terrorists. They were never recognized by the international community as a legitimate government. And if the west played some role in bringing them to power when they were fighting Soviet occupation, that is all the more reason we should be there to set things right in that region.

The Taliban fighters are not heroes. They are thugs and bullies. And they deserve what they get.

And I'm emailing this to the Prime Minister.

TV Commercial Hall of Shame: First Inductee

2006-11-06T13:16:00.000-04:00

I like TV. I like it very much. And like most people I put up with commercials because they are necessary -- they have to pay the bills and all that.

Now as works of art, most TV commercials suck, particularly local commercials featuring spokespeople who forget how to string a sentence together once they are in front of the camera. C'est la vie. But every once in a while, I see a commercial that fills me with moral outrage and I just have to say something about it. And what are blogs for if not to pontificate about modern culture?

I'm talking about ads like the ones the government put out recently to promote work place safety. In one, a harried father is rushing about the kitchen trying to make dinner for one kid and help another kid with homework; but wait, that's not another kid who needs help learning to spell, that's a full grown woman whose been disabled by an injury! Another ad in the same series shows a little girl who clearly does not want to go out in public with her father who needs help to dress himself due to his injury. The message here is that you should watch yourself at work or else you may end up disabled, and, according to the government, disabled people are an embarrassment and burden on their families. Shame!

But those are a bit old, and my aim is to identify ads currently on the air to ad them to my Hall of Shame.

And the first inductee is: Pfizer, maker of the painkiller Celebrex! Current ads for Celebrex show a series of older folks turning to the camera and enjoing the viewer in various earnest ways, to "ask your doctor about it." Now, under Canadian law as I understand it, drug companies can say the name of the drug or what it does, but not both, so the makers of Celebrex are hoping that older Canadians will take their advice and ask their doctors. Fair enough. That's advertising. But here's the kicker: at the end of the ad, a particularly earnest grandmother type, looks right into the lens and says, "Ask your doctor. He's the expert."

Now, it's bad enough that this commercial implies that patients are supposed to do whatever their physicians advise -- after all, what the hell do patients know? This is especially interesting since a Google search of Celebrex brings up plenty of stories about lawsuits that have been filed against Pfizer in connection with the drug. What really makes this ad shameful, though, is the pronoun: "HE's the expert." He? Leave it to Pfizer to tell us that not only are doctors unimpeachable experts, they are all men too. Women have had to fight hard to gain access to the medical profession and the slow progress can be reasonably attributed to the attitude that real medicine is serious business and only suitable for men -- and this is the attitude that Pfizer encourages with ads like this one. Shame on you Pfizer.

The case against varsity athletics

2006-11-05T17:56:00.000-04:00

First, let me be clear on a couple of things. Number one, I have nothing against sports in general or athletes. More specifically, I have nothing against any particular varsity athlete at my university.

That said, I've been thinking lately about the wisdom of university athletics in general. And my conclusion lately has been that, on the whole, it's a bad idea.

For one thing there is the tremendous cost of such undertakings, even when they are relatively modest. At my own august institution, for instance, there are only five sports teams, with a total of 79 players. It is rumoured, however, that each of those player is paid some $2000 a year to be on those teams. Those payments alone -- if the rumours are true -- total $158 000. And that's just for players. Each of those teams has a staff of coaches whose salaries must, one would imagine, add up to somewhere in the six figures. Add in transportation, uniforms, whatever costs may be associated with training -- and of course, the extra help that athletes are given with their academics -- and the costs must easily exceed half a million dollars. If anyone has the exact numbers from the university budget, I would be grateful to see them, but in general I am not made privy to such information (a search of my university's web site for "budget" yields no help either).

To put that half million in perspective, it's roughly the amount that would be needed to pay salary of 10 new CBU professors. Or somewhere between 500 and 1000 new library books every year.

Now some would argue that this money is an investment. Sports, after all, get people interested and excited and thus draw positive attention to the university, so the money spent is good for everyone. But in a way, it is the attention paid to varsity athletics that is precisely the problem.

After all, sports, in general, is doing very well in our society. Top athletes make millions, sometimes hundreds of millions in salary and millions more in endorsements. Even amateur hockey draws thousands of fans to arenas and even makes the sports channels, not to mention the evening news. Intellectual pursuits, by contrast, do not fair nearly so well. Only an elite few pay any attention to scholarly matters, and for the most part, that doesn't bother me, since most of it is highly specialized anyway.

But the university is the one place that societies have set aside for the purpose of promoting and celebrating the life of the mind. That's what makes them special. That's what sets the university, as a social institution apart. Or ought to, in any case. Is it, then, too much to ask that university resources not be directed towards the celebration of physical agility rather than mental? Is it right that students who win major international scholarships get only passing mention while we are flooded with news about athletes? Is it right that many deserving students get no funding at all, while their classmates get a big chunk of their tuition paid by virtue of having a a particularly high vertical leap? Is it right that our athletic facilities are being constantly upgraded while our theatre fulls into ruin? And if sports do bring attention, is that really what we want to be known for? If that's the case, maybe close down the academic side altogether and make the school one big sports club.

Don't get me wrong. I like sports. And I stress in my experience, many student athletes are both nice people and good scholars. Moreover, I freely admit that I have enjoyed varsity athletics in the past. But I think I will take a break from attending such events.

Maybe we all should.

Why has no one noticed...

2006-10-20T18:28:00.000-03:00

...that more Americans have now died in Bush's Iraq war than did at the World Trade Centre on September 11, 2001?

Vanessa

2006-10-13T19:26:00.000-03:00

I try to keep this blog fairly non-personal because, well, I'm a kind of heady guy and my private life is not very interesting anyway. But it has recently occurred to me that there is someone who deserves to be recognized in this forum for her incredible contribution to my life and thought.

Her name is Vanessa and here are SOME of the things she has has taught me:

1. Sometimes being nice is more important than being right.

2. Sometimes being right is more important than being correct.

3. Think ahead.

4. Look back.

5. Everybody has a harder time getting through the day than you think. Don't begrudge them what they need.

6. You can't always tell what people are thinking.

7. You can't always care what people are thinking.

8. Almost everyone is a nice person if you know how to talk to them.

9. You don't have to be the best.

10. There IS a good argument against private health care: we want the richest and most powerful in our society to have a vested interest in the public system.

So if you see her, say thanks from me.

Help! I might not be opposed to private healthcare!

2006-09-20T16:49:00.000-03:00

Recently I was reading yet another article on private health care -- against it of course -- and I was struck by the hollowness of an argument I had never questioned before. You've probably heard it yourself: why should a rich person get faster or better care just because they have money? And we all reply: they shouldn't! down with private health care!

But what struck me this time was that if we apply that principle to health care, it is strange that we apply it virtually nowhere else among our important social institutions. After all, we don't ask the same question about public education. Why should rich people be able to send their kids to a private school while everyone else has to make do with the public system? Or transportation. Why should some people have to rely on public transportation when others get to drive in privately-owned cars?

The answer to all of these questions -- including the one about health care -- is that we value the freedom we have to earn money and spend it as we see fit. We don't want the state telling us exactly what we can and cannot do with our own money. It our money. We earned it or someone gave it to us and we want to trade it for what we want. That's why its better to be rich than poor. That's why we seek to alleviate poverty. That's why we all want to be rich.

Needless to say, this line of thinking has caused me a very Canadian crisis of conscience. How can I NOT be against private health care, progressive Canuck that I am? Surely someone out there can give me a convincing series of arguments that do not require being opposed to private property altogether.

Would the private system drain the best doctors away from the public? Maybe, but that might well be offset by the willingness of the best doctors to stay in Canada rather than pursue a private practice in the US. Moreover, my sources in the education field say that a great many teachers prefer the public system because they are willing to trade lower pay for greater stability. And in any case, the private system would presumably never be very big since there are -- by definition -- only so many elite patients willing to go there.

Would private health care mean governments would invest less in the public system? There's no reason it would have to. That would be a matter of allocating funds just as they do now, and private care would not mean less money would be available for public care. Indeed, the poor and middle class Canadians might be better served if there were fewer people in the public system as at least some seek care elsewhere.

You see how far its gone? Someone, anyone, throw me a lifeline!

Sunday shopping -- a dialogue

2006-07-03T09:28:00.000-03:00

C: What is your position on Sunday shopping?

T: In my view, the question is not Sunday shopping but rather Sunday opening. I believe store owners have the right to open on Sundays and that right should not be restricted.

C: But do people really need to shop seven days a week?

T: No, but nor do they need to shop six days a week. Or even five. If it came to need, we could probably get by with one day a week. But it isn't a question of need; it's a question of freedom.

C: I think it's good for families.

T: On what evidence?

C: Well, I don't know what evidence there could be.

T: Well, one indicator of healthy family life might be the divorce rate. If NS was the only province without Sunday shopping and had a much lower divorce rate than other provinces, that might be one bit of evidence. But it doesn't. In fact, NS, is right in the middle of the pack.

C: But still, it's good for families to be together one day of the week.

T: Maybe. Or maybe it's bad if the family is relying on income they could earn on Sundays. In any case, what about the families of people who work at drug stores or convenience stores?

C: Well, there are only a couple of exceptions.

T: Really? What about police officers, casino workers, tourist industry workers, people who work in restaurants and at movie theatres? People who work in radio and television? Taxi drivers? These people all seem to get along.

C: OK, but for those who do work in retail...

T: Yes, but many of those people work on Sundays anyway!

C: What?

T: Yes, because the law does not forbid people working, only the stores actually opening for business, so many stores actually have employees come in to clean and stock shelves even though the store is closed.

C: So what's the point of the law, then?

T: Exactly.

Frankly...

2006-06-18T13:28:00.000-03:00

So I finally warranted a mention in Frank Magazine. It was fleeting and inaccurate, but there I am, nevertheless, identified as one of the professors into whose class women came univited to read their feminist manifesto on International Women's Day.

First, as a matter of fact, this report is untrue. Students did not enter my class on that day. If they ever do, I will insist that they stay and answer questions, including questions from me. No one speaks to my class without having to answer for what they say.

Now my concern is that given my previous post on this matter and the Frank story and what I've just written, some of you might have the impression that I am not a feminist. So let me be clear.

I am a feminist.

By that I mean that I see the amelioration of the overall status of women in our society as a pressing social concern.

One issue that is of particular concern for me, is the unequal participation of women in Canadian politics. In Canada, for instance, we have a House of Commons where fewer than 21% of members are women (that, by the way, puts us 43rd in the world). No woman leads a national political party (though that MAY change soon) and no woman has ever been chosen Canadian Prime Minister by way of a national election.

Now, why has this come to be? Certainly not because women are legally barred from politics; they're not. Similarly, it cannot be that women are naturally unsuited to politics because politics itself is not a natural phenomenon. What we need to ask ourselves is how it it is we are teaching women that politics is probably not a very good path for them, and how is it that we are creating our political systems that they result in parliaments with less than half the women we should expect? Still further, what should we do to change the current situation?

So why have I not made a point of this before? Because on a few social issues, I have positions where, keeping in mind that feminists take a variety of positions on things, I suspect many feminists might strongly disagree and I did not want to seem that I was not taking feminism seriously by claiming to be a feminist and yet opposing what many would see as obvious "feminist positions." But I now think that no one could or should claim that any given feminist must hold any given position on a particular issue, provided that their overall view does not promote the reduction of women's rights or the degradation of women in general. Moreover, I think it is important and beneficial for men to identify themselves as feminists to help fight the notion that feminism is somehow a fringe concern or only the concern of women. It's neither.

Will I tell you on which issues I think other feminists would be inclined to disagree? I will, but before I take positions that might be taken as anti-feminist (I don't think they are), I want to make sure that I have treated the issues in a way that reflects their complexity. So stay tuned.

Don't Be Yourself

2006-05-07T17:06:00.000-03:00

Be yourself.

That's one of those things that people say when they want to sound wise without really thinking or drawing on experience. It speaks of honesty and wholesome integrity. Faced with any of life's problems, the answer can always be provided by a well-meaning parent or friend. Just be yourself.

I've been thinking alot about that lately, and I've come to the conclusion that, by and large, this little chestnut is just plain bad advice. It seems to me that being yourself is only called for if you're a genuinely fine person through and through. Now, I have met such people, so I know they exist, but in my experience they are rare. So for those of you genuinely wonderful folk, free of guile, and dishonesty, who never speak a word in anger, never find yourselves jealous or mean-spirited, go to it. Be yourselves.

The rest of us -- and that's most of us -- have a harder road ahead. Take me, for instance. Now I am a modestly decent person. I'm not a criminal; I have a pretty good sense of humour; I like music and animals and sunsets; and I like to think I have dedicated my life to a profession that, in its own way, makes a positive difference in the world. But left to my own devices, I am, by nature, oftentimes cynical and sometimes downright cold. I wish I wasn't. I wish I was a veritable fountain of light shining in the darkness twenty-four hours a day.

But I'm not. And so I work at being a little better than I otherwise would be if I wasn't trying. A little kinder, a little more understanding, a little friendlier. I look people in the eye more than I otherwise would, and I make a point of chatting even when I'm not in the mood. In other words, I try to be better than myself. Frankly, I wish more people would adopt this philosophy. It might be a little easier for me to be better than myself if so many others were a little less satisfied with who they are.

Ah, but there I go again. So I take a deep breath and find compassion and good humour. There we are. Now, I want to stress that I don't think there is anything wrong with not being entirely yourself. I think it's part of being a civilized person. Part of being an adult. So to those handful of supernaturally nice people I know -- Tammy, Linda, Sam, Richard -- you guys are great and, frankly, I don't know how you do it. But I'm not you. I'm me.

But I'm trying not to be.

What Am I? Glad you Asked.

2006-04-09T17:26:00.000-03:00

Every once in a while someone asks me about my religious beliefs, and I always almost feel uncomfortable. Sometimes it's because the askers are children and I worry that their parents will be upset in that what-are-you-telling-my-kids-THAT-for sort of way. Other times it's a student of mine who clearly has strong religious convictions, and then I worry that the student will somehow feel threatened in a way that has really nothing to do with the subject at hand. And then of course there's always the nightmare scenario which involves someone shouting about how professors should just stick to their subjects and not try to convert students to their twisted ways of thinking.

But lately I've been coming to the conclusion that there's no harm in speaking my mind respectfully in these matters. So, for those of you who've been wondering, here is the conversation that I hope to have in the future when a well-meaning and curious person asks.

WMCP: So, what religion are you?

ME: I'm an atheist.

WMCP: Really?

ME: Yes. I used to say "born again atheist" but I think that's maybe a bit flippant.

WMCP: So you don't believe in anything?

ME: Oh, I believe in a great many things. I just don't believe in a god. Or, rather, I believe there is no god.

WMCP: Who do you think made the universe?

ME: I don't think anyone made the universe.

WCMP: Then where did the universe come from?

ME: I have no idea. I don't know that it came from anywhere. Maybe it's always existed. Or it came into being spontaneously. Nobody knows and maybe we never will.

WMCP: Maybe it was God.

ME: Maybe, but I haven't seen any reason to suppose it was.

WMCP: But everything in the universe comes from somewhere, so the universe itself must have come from something, don't you think?

ME: Not at all. The qualities of a the parts of thing are not necessarily the qualites of the whole. A car tire is made of rubber, but cars are not made of rubber. And even if Something somehow caused the universe to come into being, there's no reason to imagine that Something was God in any sense that religions use the word.

WMCP: But you can't prove that God doesn't exist.

ME: No, but typically I don't expect proof for the non-existence of things. Typically I expect people to prove that something does exist. I can't prove that unicorns don't exist, but in the absence of evidence that they do exist, I feel confident that they don't.

WMCP: You're comparing God to unicorns?

ME: No offense, but in this case yes. Both are things that potentially could exist, and could be verified with evidence if they did exist, but they haven't been and so must be taken as non-existent.

WMCP: Aren't living creatures too complex and too obviously designed to have arisen by accident?

ME: No. In the final analysis, living things are not as complex as we often imagine. Just little strings of 4 bases that code for strings of amino acids called proteins. That's what's so profound about evolutionary theory. It explains how seemingly complex creatures arise from very simply processes.

WMCP: But doesn't the Bible show that Jesus was the Son of God and thus that God exists?

ME: Well, what exactly the Bible says about Jesus is fairly complex, but simply put, I don't believe everything in the Bible is reliable. I think there is good deal of wisdom in it, and that's valuable, but I think you can take the wisdom and not believe the everything.

WMCP: Some people say that Jesus was so wise, he could not have been a normal man.

ME: Maybe not normal, but there have been many extraordinary men and women who said and did remarkable things throughout history. As for Jesus, his call for peace and compassion are valuable, but I think his argument for non-violence even in self-defence is dubious. Further, I think the Christian notion of sin without action -- which Christ supported -- is a pernicious doctrine that has led to much needless suffering.

WMCP: I don't know...people have always believed in God. Most people still do. Are you saying that all those people are wrong and you're right?

ME: Yes. But that's not as egotistical as you make it sound. First of all, all those people you mention don't even agree with each other about what God or how many gods or even if there is a god in the way that you mean it. In the west, religious people often speak about "higher powers" and that sort of thing, statements that would have made them atheists by the standards of just a few hundred years ago. Besides the fact that lots of people have believed things in the past is no reason to believe them now.

WMCP: So you're against all religion then?

ME: Not at all. I think most serious religions have wisdom to offer and we would be foolish to ignore it. There is precious little wisdom in the world; I'll take it where I can find it. Whether it is a pagan like Marcus Aurelius or a Christian like C.S. Lewis or a Buddhist like Jack Kornfield. If you have someting that makes sense, I'll listen and be glad for the chance to think more clearly.

WMCP: What is the wisdom that Christianity has to offer?

ME: By their fruits you shall know them. An evil tree does not produce good fruit and a good tree does not produce evil fruit.

WMCP: You're paraphrasing, of course.

ME: Of course.

WMCP: And what happens to you after you die?

ME: Nothing. I don't believe in a soul or an afterlife.

WMCP: Doesn't that make this life meaningless?

ME: Just the opposite. It means we have to make the most of life while it lasts, because this is it. If this life is just a prelude to an infinite afterlife, well, that would make life seem meaningless to me.

WMCP: Hmmm... well, I still believe in God.

ME: I'm not trying to convince you otherwise. And I try not to be judgemental, either. Life is hard. Everybody does what they have to do to get through. If your faith helps you along the journey, I would not dare begrudge you that.

WMCP: Well, this has been a really interesting conversation.

ME: I couldn't agree more. Shall we get a muffin?

WMCP: Yes, let's. And some chocolate milk. I see the Blue Jays lost again...

Memo to...

2006-04-06T19:36:00.000-03:00

Winning Sports Teams: if you are photographed in front of any kind of banner indicating that you have won something, there is no need for you all to put up your first fingers to indicate that you're number one.

The Bob Show: New Episode

2006-04-06T19:31:00.000-03:00

Twelve Angry Bobs: Bob is on a jury and disagrees with the other eleven members and so must convince them that he's right.

Bear Alert

2006-03-26T16:25:00.000-04:00

In light of recent events at CBU, I want to stress, for the record, that this blog is a personal site and not in any way affiliated with or endorsed by Cape Breton University.

Although I provide a link from my university page to this page, I have done so only so that students might, if they choose to do so, see what a professional intellectual thinks about in his spare time. Judging from past comments, a few readers have sometimes found the postings here amusing, and I will endeavour to keep it up as time permits.

Because... (revised)

2006-03-25T22:38:00.000-04:00

Recently our university was the site of a series of classroom interruptions in which female students came, uninvited, into classes and read the following statement:

Because woman’s work is never done
and is underpaid or unpaid or boring or
repetitious and we’re the first to get fired
and what we look like is more important
than what we do and if we get raped it’s
our fault and if we get beaten we must have
provoked it and if we raise our voices we’re
nagging bitches and if we enjoy sex we’re
nymphos and if we don’t were frigid and if
we love women it’s because we can’t get a
‘real’ man and if we ask our doctor too many
questions we’re neurotic and/or pushy and
if we expect childcare we’re selfish and if we
stand up for our rights we’re aggressive and
‘unfeminine’ and if we don’t we’re typical
weak females and if we want to get married
we’re out to trap a man and if we don’t we’re
unnatural and because we still can’t get an
adequate safe contraceptive but men can walk
on the moon and if we can’t cope or don’t
want a pregnancy we’re made to feel
guilty about abortion and ... for lots and lots
of other reasons we are part of the
women’s liberation movement.

This manifesto has been around for many years and it always annoys me. Not because I am anti-feminist; just the opposite. I am pro-feminist, but statements like this, simple-minded as they are, do a grave injustice to those who really want to ameliorate the place of women in the western world.

I was going to look at this line by line, but I can only take so much at once, so let's look at just a few particularly interesting passages.

“Because woman’s work is never done,
and is underpaid or unpaid or boring or
repetitious”

Well, I suspect that most people, men and women, feel that their work is never done, is underpaid, boring and so on. Unpaid work in the house is an interesting issue, but hardly a woman's issue; studies show that men actually do as much housework as women although it is not always the same tasks (men tend to mow the lawn, shovel snow, maintain the home and so on). That women are underpaid is a serious issue but one that is far more complex than this document allows. For instance, some studies have shown that the difference in pay between men and women is largely a function of education. That is, women who are as well educated as their male counterparts get paid just as well. Aha, but then why are women not as well educated. Good question. Social prejudice? Legitimate choices on the part of women who pursue childbearing instead of education? Or is the latter another kind of systematic discrimination? These are serious questions and they are done no service by the kind of absurd over-simplification of the manifesto quoted above.

“we’re the first to get fired and what
we look like is more important
than what we do”

That men were sometimes kept on in times of financial trouble on the ground that they had families to support may have been true at one time, but such action would hardly hold up in court today. That women are principally judged by their looks may be true in a few fields of endeavour (acting, modelling), I can see no indication that it is widely the case.

“and if we get raped it’s our fault
and if we get beaten we must have
provoked it”

Sadly, it is true that there are those who may try to discount some cases of rape on the absurd grounds that the woman somehow "provoked" it -- and such dismissals are rightly criticized. But the blanket statement that implies that all rapes are blamed on the woman is a needlessly inflammatory overstatement. If this were true, rape would not even be a crime. Of course, many rape cases turn on the difficult question of consent, and to be sure, many guiltless women have had to endure humiliating questions for the sake of guilty men. But what is the alternative, the presumption of guilt in rape cases? Here again, the simplistic treatment of complex isssues is unworthy of scholars.

“and if we raise our voices we’re nagging bitches
and if we enjoy sex we’re nymphos”

I have never heard anyone define “nagging” as speaking with a raised voice. I have never heard anyone define “nympho” as a woman who enjoys sex.

“if we expect childcare we’re selfish”

Apparently the women who were reading this statement last week entirely missed the last election campaign, where every major party was promoting increased funding for childcare as a key part of their platform! Now, as to whether the public should pay for childcare is an issue for another day.

“and because we still can’t get an adequate safe
contraceptive but men can walk on the moon”

Safe contraception? When was this thing written? Probably around the time of the first moon landing. Women have come a long way since then, largely through the work of brave women who fought for them.

Those women deserve better than this.

A Little Bit Political

2005-11-28T22:54:00.000-04:00

OK, it has been my custom not to be political in this blog, but in honour of the election campaign that begins tomorrow, I do have something to say.

Conservative politicians like to say that the government should cut taxes because Canadians know how to spend their money better than the government can. Now, that's a nice little bit of canned rhetoric, but is it really true?

I consider myself about average when it comes to money. I'm no fiscal genius, and I'm not getting rich in the markets, but I get a regular paycheque and I pay my bills on time. I don't run a balance on my credit card, and thanks to my pension plan, I have some long term savings. That said, if I got a big tax break, I'm pretty sure that money would not go into some stable mutual fund; I'm pretty sure I would buy surround-sound speakers for my living room. I know the arguments that the government should not have the CPP or should privatize it since individuals could make more money by investing those funds, but I like the idea that the government takes a bit of my money every other week and holds onto it for me. It's just a little insurance against my own natural weakness.

Now, don't get me wrong. I don't mind having more money in my pocket. But if you want my vote, don't try to flatter me by pretending I'm some kind of canny, prudent financial wizard. I'm not. If you want to sell me on a tax break, tell me what kind of wide screen tv I'll be able to afford.

t.

In Praise of Junk Food

2005-10-10T10:52:00.000-03:00

The downside of junk foods of all kinds has been widely publicized. Too many calories, too much fat, trans fats, cholesterol, acids, and then there's that matter of disappearing union activists in Columbia.

But the great virtue of junk food is rarely mentioned.

Predictability.

The great joy of junk food is that you know precisely what you're going to get. Delicious, yes, but dependably delicious. Every time. Every Big Mac, every bag of M&Ms, every can of Coke. Each one as tasty as the last.

How many other things in life are so reliable? Friends, teachers, store clerks, banks -- all can be wonderful, but all apt to let you down when you need them. The VCR fails to tape, the CD is scratched, the waiter is a moron, the authorities are small-minded, even the sun often hides behind the clouds. Unless you really need it to rain.

Yes, junk food will clog your arteries and mess up your blood sugar and make you fat. But it never promised not to. It only promised quick gustatory satisfaction. And that it does.

Every time.

Eccentric City (warning: naughty word included)

2005-10-01T15:18:00.000-03:00

The following is a fair approximation of a recent converstation between an Air Canada flight attendant and myself.

FA: Would you like something to drink, sir?

Me: Yes, could I please have an unopened can of Coke?

FA: (puzzled) You just want me to open it?

Me: No, I want you NOT to open it.

FA: (still puzzled) You want one that's already opened?

Me: No, I want one that's never been opened.

FA: (pause) Oh, okay.

Now, I don't fault the flight attendant for not getting what I wanted, right away, and I give her credit for happily giving me what I asked for once she knew what that was.

But it did make me wonder what I would have said if she had asked me why I wanted an unopened can of pop. The long answer is something like this: I like to have the can because if they just pour you a cup, you hardly get any, especially if there's ice, AND the can is better than the cup on the plane because it's less likely to spill, AND I like the feel of the can in my hand, AND I enjoying popping the little tab at the top because I like the sound as well as the pleasant aroma.

But you can't explain all that on the plane, now can you?

So what I would have said is this. Why do I want it that way? Because I'm an eccentric.

I was quite pleased when I thought of that, because it seems like a good way of explaining the vast number of strange elements of my character. Why do I divide my clothes into Tier 1 and Tier 2? Why do I insist on desserts with no fruit involved? Why do I carry my own lectern to class (and it's not a podium by the way)?

I'm an eccentric.

Eccentric is not crazy, of course. An eccentric is just someone who likes something a certain way and isn't too intimidated to suppress or hide that desire. I suspect that most people are closet eccentrics, they've just been to ashamed to admit it.

Well, I say no more. Say it with me. I'm eccentric, I'm here, get used to it, don't fuck with me.

The End of Time

2005-09-19T13:09:00.000-03:00

Lately I've noticed that very few people seem capable of estimating time in any kind of sensible way.

On the ferry going to NL, I asked at the information desk how long it takes to unload the cars once the boat had docked. He said it would take a while.

A while.

In other words his only response was that the process was not instant. Now, of course, there are factors and variations. I get that. But what would be wrong with saying, "well it can vary, but it usually ranges between half an hour and an hour" or something like that?

Today I asked someone at the university how long changes to an important document would take and he said, "a good while," apparently under the delusion that his response in any way answered my question. Somewhat peevishly, I said, "tell me in hours or days" and it took a while for him to understand what I talking about.

I can't help but wonder if this is part of a general movement away from numeracy in our culture. When I last got my hair cut, I asked for it cut down to three quarters of an inch. The woman didn't have that size on her trimmer so I said a half inch was OK but no shorter. Then she suggested three eighths, apparently thinking that three eighths was closer to three quarters because they both had threes in them.

Are we really to the point that ordinary people are incapable of estimating using numbers and understanding basic fractions? On the way back from NL, I asked someone else how long it would take to get off the ferry and he said, "it depends."

Ah. I never would have imagined it depended on anything.

By the way, the first time took five minutes, the second fifteen. But presumably it might have taken days, since it could be quite a while...depending.

Memo To:

2005-09-17T00:40:00.000-03:00

Retail clerks: Check the signature on credit cards after the person signs the receipt. Didn't you wonder why credit cards have signatures on the back.

People with any kind of headphone-based music player: If other people can hear it, it's too loud. If you're at the front of the bus, and I can hear it at the back of the bus, seek treatment for your ears or heart or brain or all three.

Institutional custodians: From now on, please unlock both sides of double doors. How are people supposed to guess which one you've done if you only do ONE SIDE?

Hyperbolic People: 100% means everything. For a while it was cute to say you were going to give 110% but now it's just gotten stupid. Now people are claiming they're going to give 200% or 250% or 1000%. Enough already.

CBC employees: Don't picket the Governor General's installation or any other place that's not CBC-related. There's reasonable protest and then there's just being a jerk.

Smokers: At your earliest convenience, please explain what is is about nicotine that compels you to throw LIT cigarette butts onto the sidewalks and streets of the nation? We all have our stuff -- Lord knows I do -- but I throw my junk food bags in the garbage.

Medical people: Stop complaining about people going to the emergency room for non-emergency medical problems. Open your eyes: tons of people can't get timely medical attention any other way in this country. Also, stop referring to "universal health care" as though we had it. When people can't get appointments with competent physicians, when patients are kept on waiting list for years on end, when emergency services are routinely closed, it's not universal.

Changes

2005-07-11T00:24:00.000-03:00

OK, gang, sorry for the confusion, but with luck, this blog will be up and running with all my silly ramblings soon.

The old site, pettigogy.blogspot.com will be for course announcements, information and so on.

Best as always,

t.

The Bob Show

2005-07-10T01:25:00.000-03:00

This is an ongoing project. The aim is to come up with 22 stories for an imaginary sit com where every episode is a story that's been done to death on TV.

Here's the current list. New episode suggestions are always welcome. Thanks to all who made suggestions.

The Bob Show Episode Guide

1. Pilot: Bob goes to his high school reunion

2. "Just the Gay it is": Bob learns that an old friend of his is homosexual.

3. "My two Bobs": Bob accidentily makes a date with two girls for the same night, but at different restaurants and frantically tries to keep them both.

4. "Bob Strikes Back": Bob is upset when he learns his sister has read his diary.

5. "Return of Bob": Bob returns to his home to find his kids have thrown a wild party in his absence.

6. "What Bobs Up Must Bob Down": Bob gets stuck in an elevator with strangers, one of whom is a pregnant woman.

7. "Was she Man Enough?": Bob's date turns out to have had a sex-change operation.

8. "All in Bob's Family": Bob's long lost brother Steven returns, claiming to have mended his ways, but he hasn't changed a bit.

9. "Caught with his Pants Down. Again."" Bob's date with a beautiful woman goes awry when Bob is caught in an embarrassing misunderstanding.

10. "Revenge of the Bob": Normally peace-loving, Bob is aghast when he loses his temper and punches another man. When he goes to apologize, Bob loses it again and hits his enemy a second time.

11. "Bob Mate": Bob's ego takes a pounding when he loses repeatedly at chess.

posted by pettigogy | 9:10 PM

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Some TV shows I love

2005-07-01T01:18:00.000-03:00

OK, Pettrichordates, I know it's been a while, but hey, I did write a book and it won a prize, so I hope you will forgive me.

But if you've waited patiently, here is some more useless information about me.

10 TV shows that I love

1. Dharma and Greg: I've been rewatching these on Fox and this may be the best sitcom in history. Very funny and genuinely human.

2. The West Wing. Best drama TV has seen since I've been watching. Sure, it's had its ups and downs, but how many shows really address serious social issues like the West Wing. How many other shows can you name that have debated the merits of an international court? Seriously.

3. M*A*S*H. Like much great art, MASH defies categorization. Call it a sitcom if you want, but at its best it dared to go where no sitcom had gone before and none has gone since.

4. WKRP. This show was designed to feature tired stereotypes because the network thought they would be funny: ditzy blond, stoner, black dude, nerd, shy girl, sleazy salesman and so on. But the cast and rewriters refused to allow them to be the cliches and the result was a unique TV comedy.

5. Sportsnight. Though only on for 2 seasons, Sportsnight was doomed by its very intelligence. Women didn't watch because it looked like it was about sports and men didn't watch because there wasn't enough sports. Do yourself a favour, get the DVDs and watch, watch, watch.

6. The Greatest American Hero. This was one of my favourites when I was a kid. It had the best theme song ever (Look at what's happened to meee-eee...) and the funniest premise too: a superhero who's lost the instruction book to his own powers.

7. The White Shadow. Another friend of my youth, and I have a feeling that if I watched it today, I might cringe, but what can I say, I love inspiring mentor stories. A washed up pro basketball player takes a coaching job at a high school as a favour to an old friend and becomes a friend and mentor to his players (he's white and he's always behind them, get it?)

8. House. This is new, so if you haven't been watching it, tune in this fall. One of the best main characters in a show since Archie Bunker. Greg House is a brilliant physician burdened by chronic pain, drug addiction, and, oh yeah, a hatred of people. The genius here, though, is that the producers cast British comedian Hugh Laurie who somehow makes House likeable.

9. Monk. Tony Shalhoub is a genius. So there.

10. The Daily Show. Jon Stewart is the hope of the USA. First of all, he does what Mencken said good journalists must do: comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. He also does what great humourists must do: he holds the ridiculous up to ridicule.

I'm afraid no Canadian shows made the list. Sorry gang. Rick Mercer at his best might make it, but he does too many bits in too few episodes. Get some help, Rick! Also, I like Pop Cultured but only when Laurie Elliot is on it. And I don't know who the hell is watching Corner Gas.

A Weed by any Other Name

2005-06-12T01:16:00.000-03:00

Saturday, June 11, 2005
A Weed by any Other Name

Now that spring has finally arrived on Quarry Point, I have begun the annual fight to keep my lawn mowed with enough frequency that my neighbours will not complain that I am dragging down their property values. The task is onerous because my property is sizable and because my mower is a small, worn-out electric model.

One thing I don't worry about, though, is weeds.

When I first moved in my mother advised me to take action against the weeds on my property. I can't remember what she suggested but I remember thinking that it sounded like work, so I can up with a strategy that has completely eliminated every single weed on my lawn, and I didn't have to lift a finger.

I simply redefined them.

You see, what counts as a weed depends on opinion and perspective. Grass on the lawn? Good. Grass in the vegetable garden? Weed. So a weed is really nothing more than a plant that you don't want in a given location. Thus it is that I welcome all plants on my property. If you can grow there, and you can tolerate occasional mowing, I say welcome to the neighbourhood.

So, everything is wanted and thus nothing is a weed. What my mom would call a weed, I simply call wildlife. Biodiversity.

And the best part is that my lawn is far more interesting as a result, featuring all kinds of interesting plants. My favourites are the wild strawberries that produce nifty white blossoms and act as natural birdfeeders. And while my neighbours complain that infestations have ruined their grass, my own lawn, more resilient since it is not an artificial monoculture, remains green. And what's better for property values than that?

The Change I am a-Timin'

2005-05-26T00:59:00.000-03:00

OK, so I'm walking down the street and I see a dime on the ground (it was dark, so yay for my cat-like eyes). I pick it up. Why not?

But then I think, is it really worth the time and effort to bend over and pick up loose change?

So I did the math.

I estimate it takes roughly two seconds to pick up a coin from the ground. Which means that you could, in theory, pick up thirty coins a minute, or 1800 in an hour.

In other words, picking up dimes is like working for $180 per hour. Picking up change on the street turns out to be the highest-paying job I've ever had.

And that's just for dimes. Picking up quarters pays a whopping $450 an hour.

Even pennies pay a decent hourly wage of $18 -- much better than minimum wage.

A couple of months ago I found a twenty dollar bill. During the two seconds it took me to pick that up, I was earning a tidy $36 000 an hour.

Some Movies I Love

2005-05-10T00:55:00.000-03:00

1. Inherit the Wind. My all-time favourite. Spencer Tracy is the best there ever was and I will fight with my fists if anyone says otherwise.

2. Rocky. If you haven't seen it, and you think you know how it ends, get it and watch it.

3. Twister. My nominee for best action movie ever made and possibly the only blockbuster Hollywood action flick with no guns. Also a landmark in motion picture special effects.

4. Deep Impact. This movie is often confused with the absurd knock-off Armageddon to which it is superior in every way. Includes my all time favourite line in a movie: "Well, at least we'll all have high schools named after us." And admit it, we all want Morgan Freeman to be President.

5. Broadcast News. Sometimes mentioned as the best movie never to win an Oscar.

6. Shakespeare in Love. I like this movie more every time I see it. The key is that it is the life of Shakespeare as Shakespeare himself might have written it, with no regard for historical detail if it gets in the way of the story.

7. Twelve Angry Men. Now this, my children, is acting.

8. The American President. A bit sentimental but Aaron Sorkin is the man. I also like Dave, which is similar in many ways but less sophisticated.

9. Mr. Holland's Opus. Also sentimental but required watching for anyone who wants to be a teacher.

10. Dead Poets Society. Suffers from the common problem that the English teacher never actually teaches English, but beautifully shot and a stunning last half hour. Also early performances from some of today's best actors including a young Robert Sean Leonard and a very young Ethan Hawke.

My stomach is getting fired.

2005-05-03T00:52:00.000-03:00

According to diet experts, my stomach is full for twenty minutes before it tells my brain that it's full.

What the f*&# is up with that?

The stomach is clearly the lamest of the organs. It sits there all day, whining about food, and then when it finally gets some, it says, "Oh my, that was lovely. I think I'll do nothing for 20 freakin' minutes while this moron keeps eating."

I mean, come on. My stomach is, like, two feet from my brain and it has its own built-in network. If I put my hand on a hot element, does my brain say, "Oh, my, poor Mr. Hand is burning. I better tell Hand to move in half an hour"? No. When my brain has something to say, it says it. Instantly. And the heart, why it never stops at all. No thanks to Mr. Stomach, I might add.

Why does it take my stomach 20 minutes to speak up? Does my stomach have a whole lot of other organs it has to call first? Is my brain so touchy that my stomach has to pause to consider the right words?

No, my stomach is a lazy, greedy, selfish bastard. That's the truth. And it's going to pay, believe me.

Happy Birthday to you, whoever you are...

2005-04-29T00:49:00.000-03:00

My wife's birthday is coming up and our home now has a layer of birthday cards in its interior. My wife will not open any of them until her actual birthday, but that's another day's blog entry.

The point I want to make is this: I am terribly impressed by those who send birthday cards regularly. These people seem to me to be wizards of consideration and efficiency. I myself have tried to keep track of such things. I had a Palm PDA for a while but it died and I can't afford to buy any more disposable computers. I made a list of birthdays of people I know, but I've lost it somewhere in my desk, and even before I did, I forgot to check it regularly.

As for my brain, it has room for approximately six birthdays. I'm not kidding. I know mine, my wife's, and both of my brothers. I have a general idea of my parents' and my sisters. Oh, and I know Shakespeare's as well as anyone does. One of my neices was born on Groundhog Day and one of my nephews was born on Victoria Day so I sort of remember those.

And that's pretty much it. It's entirely possible, of course, that all this makes me a bad person. But I prefer to think it's normal and that Jane, Stacey, my Dad, and everyone else who remembered Vanessa's birthday in time to send a card are saintly models of virtue.

If any more cards arrive tomorrow, I may have trouble keeping up the illusion.

A Defense of TV

2005-04-27T00:46:00.000-03:00

Recently, the Word-a-Day email list was flooded with posts about the evils of television. Here's what I sent in return.

First, while most of what is on television is nonsense, so is most of what is printed in books, not to mention magazines and newspapers. Those who imagine that "reading" is vastly superior to television really mean that carefully selected reading is better than simply turning on the TV and watching whatever is on. Perhaps, but the comparison is unfair. Of course there are brillian books to be read, but that doesn't mean that reading is itself an intellectually challenging or dignified activity. Indeed, I am appalled by the lack of really good fiction available today. I read novel after novel and find myself constantly slogging through tortured, self-indulgent prose (I pray for a well-chosen verb), the same tired themes (thank God for the modern novelist lest we think abuse and injustice are good things), and the same narratives over and over again (marginalized group has a hell of a time but maintains its dignity).

Even an average TV writer, by comparison, one who actually has to entertain a large number of people (rather than impress professors and granting agencies), is a master of economy and narrative precision (consider the best episodes The West Wing, or, more recently, House). Moreover, television is one place where our society retains its sense of humour, something that has been lost in too much fiction and too much of modern life, for that matter. I am grateful for frequent doses of Jon Stewart who, in the greatest tradition of satirists and other humourists, cuts through pretension and folly on the acclaimed (by those who watch) Daily Show.

Still further, television enables us to see things that men and women in similar circumstances would never have been able to see for most of the history of humankind. I recently witnessed the announcement of a new Pope. Such historic events, events that in previous ages would have been witnessed by thousands, were available to millions, if not billions via television.

Of course we should not encourage mindless passivity, but TV has no monopoly on that. If we were out to stop kids from sitting for hours without real intelletual stimulation, we should start with the public school system.

What you can do.

2005-04-25T00:37:00.000-03:00

When I'm feeling down, I go to my bookshelf and take down my copy of the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. It usually gives me inspiration, and today was no exception.

Today, I was struck by the following passage, and I thought I would share it with you, gentle readers. Marcus writes:

You cannot hope to be a scholar. But what you can do is to curb arrogance; what you can do is rise above pleasures and pains; you can be superior to the lure of popularity; you can keep your temper with the foolish and ungrateful, yes, and even care for them. (VIII.8)

Sometimes you need to hear what you don't know; sometimes you need to hear what you know.

Have a good weekend

2005-04-24T00:33:00.000-03:00

I don't quite get it when people say, "have a good weekend."

I think they think the weekend is a fun time, free from the cares of the working week. Thank God it's Friday. Have a good weekend.

Maybe it's just me, but I kind of dislike the weekends. Not only does the TV suck, but there's always so much to be done. I work as much on the weekend as I do during the week and usually more. And a lot of that work is not the work I want to be doing, not the work I'm trained to do, not my job, but trivial drudgery like fixing the toilet or doing my income tax. The weekend is two days of hard labour that I endure until I can get back to what I want to be doing.

Thank God for Monday.

Pett Peeve: Washrooms

2005-04-11T00:41:00.000-03:00

I understand that there is a certain logic to having washrooms designated for men and women, but surely that only applies when the facilities in question are designed to be used by more than one person at a time. There are at least two sets of washrooms at Cape Breton University of the sort that can only be used by one person at a time, and yet in both cases, they are designated men's and women's.

Why?

If there's only one person in there at once, what difference does it make who uses which? Worse than that, if there happen to be two men or two women in need at the same time, someone will have to wait while a perfectly good washroom stands empty.

What really bugs me though is that the only explanation for this phenomenon is that whoever is responsible for such things just did not bother to think about it. You have two, then one is men's and one is women's. That's just the way it is.

OK, so it's just a washroom. But it's a small example of a very dangerous principle: things must be the way they are because that is the way they have been.