Stop the Bridge

The Powers-That-Be have all but decided that a bridge needs to cross the river from Gatineau and land on the front doorstep of our neighbourhood. Of all the options that could have been chosen, this one affects (negatively) the most people. Check out the fine purveyors of bridge-related information at Stop the Bridge.

Security and Surveillance

“It’s bad civic hygiene to build technologies that could someday be used to facilitate a police state. No matter what the eavesdroppers and censors say, these systems put us all at greater risk.  Communications systems that have no inherent eavesdropping capabilities are more secure than systems with those capabilities built in.” – Security Expert Bruce Schneier.

Taking the anti-abortionists seriously

Slactivist has a very salient point to make about the right’s response to the murder of abortionist Dr. George Tiller by Scott Roeder. They roundly condemn the murder and for all intents and purposes are horrified by it. But the truth of the matter is that they liken abortion in America to the Holocaust and people like Dr. Tiller to Nazis running death camps. If that claim is true then Roeder’s killing of Tiller is the logical and, frankly, moral outcome of the claims to be true. If abortion in America is the same as the Holocaust one does indeed have duty to stop it by means considerably more forceful than voting for the Republican Party every four years. The fact that they (the right) is shocked by Roeder’s murder of Tiller only shows that they really don’t take themselves seriously. If they did, they’d have to count it as a victory that Tiller was murdered. But they don’t and that means that the anti-abortion talk is at best disingenous – a convenient rhetorical high horse from which to harangue everyone not on Team Jesus and from which to push for a repeal of the estate tax. It is, in short, fatuous hyposcrisy.

It is dangerous fatuous hypocrisy, too. Tiller’s murder is the logical and natural consequence of the rhetoric of the Holocaust. We are responsible for the foreseeable consequences of our actions and death is a reasonable consequence of that kind of overheated rhetoric.

1001 Rules for My (un)Unborn Son

via Joey deVilla, some advice for young (and not so young) men.

Currently up to #359: If you are going to reinvent yourself, hold the patent.

I like #16: You are what you do, not what you say.

(Very Gradual) Change We Can Believe In

via Mike Rosulek

Change

link

Atwood on Politics

By politics I do not mean how you voted in the last election, although that is included. I mean who is entitled to do what to whom, with impunity; who profits by it; and who therefore eats what.

Margaret Atwood – The Writer’s Responsibility

“Mrs. Tulliver was what is called a good-tempered person – never cried when she was a baby on any slighter ground than hunger and pins, and from the cradle upwards had been healthy, fair, plump, and dull-witted, in short, the flower of her family for beauty and amiability. But milk and mildness are not the best things for keeping, and when they turn only a little sour they may disagree with young stomachs seriously. I have often wondered whether those early Madonnas of Raphael, with the blond faces and somewhat stupid expression, kept their placidity undisturbed when their strong-limbed strong-willed boys got a little too old to do without clothing. I think they must have been given to feeble remonstrance, getting more and more peevish as it became more and more ineffectual.”

-George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss, Chapter 2, pg 62 in the 1979 Penguin edition.

This is the peril of the parent (moi) who has always gotten by by getting along. Your kids don’t care whether you’re amiable (although they do want you to be kind). The result is a parent whose remonstrances are feeble and who can’t understand why Johnny won’t try to get along himself. Growing increasingly frustrated with the ineffectualness of their corrections, they become frustrated and (great word!) peevish.

Peevish. Don’t let that be my epitaph.

(See also, Teaching, frustrations with)

Crisis

Crisis is the rallying cry of the tyrant.

-James Madison

Build an Igloo

Wanna know how to build an igloo? This handy NFB doc shows it being done. This is radical simplicity in the service of practical needs.

A little bit less either/or

A great insight by the always intriguing Micheal Pollan. The notion of wilderness is a beautiful thing but it has made it all too easy for us to dismiss the not-wilderness as beyond redemption – as outside the circle of care. What’s needed is an ethic of sustainability that applies to all the other part of nature not given wilderness status.

Here he is:

We’ve had in this country what I call a wilderness ethic that’s been very good at telling us what to preserve. You know, eight percent of the American landmass we’ve kind of locked up and thrown away the key. That’s a wonderful achievement and has given us things like the wilderness park.

This is one of our great contributions to world culture, this idea of wilderness. On the other hand, it’s had nothing to say of any value for the ninety-two percent of the landscape that we cannot help but change because this is where we live. This is where we grow our food, this is where we work. Essentially the tendency of the wilderness ethic is to write that all off. Land is either virgin or raped. It’s an all or nothing ethic. It’s either in the realm of pristine, preserved wilderness, or it’s development– parking lot, lawn.

The Definition of Vice

A vice is something that you repeatedly do even though you know it will make you unhappier in the long run.