Reasons to Have Hope

Browsing through this blog, you might get a sense that one of the things I struggle with is a poverty of hope. From time to time TED talks do give me a little bit of hope, but often that hope collapses either because I realize that it's too much optimism and not enough substance, or because I see that it solves one problem and seriously exacerbates another, worse problem, or because the next TED talk I watch seems to think that the solution involves simply fancier technology.

However, from time to time I see ones that, I think, might stick, because they show ways in which social interaction can be rearranged for substantial improvement along lines that are already working in other areas. The following three talks are excellent examples I've recently encountered.

The first two are both by Rory Sutherland, an ad man whose ideas really need to be taken up by advocacy and activism groups. (Talks 1 and 2) His big thing is that if we want to lose some of our materialist culture, we need to develop new senses of value, something that the advertising industry is expert at creating. In the second talk, he discusses how we're biased towards costly solutions when minor solutions are sometimes just as powerful.
The third is by Jane McGonigal, a video game designer who is working on harnessing the problem-solving skills of our young gamers for real-world problems. (Here's the link.) She discusses the difference between problem-solving in MMOs and the sort of problem-solving attitudes those same people have in real life, and also discusses how gamers have actual skills that non-gamers do not have. They are experts at those skills, and we need them.

Global Warming

Right, so it's Blog Action Day and I'm supposed to talk to you about Global Warming.

Now, maybe one or two of you have been reading my blog for more than a year now, or have gone through my archives, or whatever, and are now saying, "But didn't you once try to poke holes in Gore's An Inconvenient Truth?" Well, yes, I suppose I did. But that was because his data wasn't conclusive--or even relevant--and his argumentation had gaps in it, not because I disagree with his cause. Some people will point it out if you have a hole in the seat of your pants; some people will point it out if you have a hole in your car door; I point it out (or want to) if you have a hole in your argument. That's all. I dislike blatant misinformation.

"But," you might say, "didn't you say in that same post that you don't believe that global warming actually has been proven beyond all doubt?"

Well, of course I said that. I'm even marginally informed and I try to be honest, which pretty much means that I don't believe that global warming has been proven beyond all doubt. Not only do I think that almost nothing is proven beyond all doubt (which is impossible in an empirical system of knowledge, fyi), but I recognise that there is some evidence which suggests that global warming either a) doesn't exist or b) isn't man-made. That's not the same as saying that it's proven beyond all doubt that it doesn't exist or that it is even unlikely to exist. All it means is that there is room for doubt, or interpretation of data, or disagreement, or what have you.

If you did read that article, you may remember that I said we ought to act as though global warming exists, whether it does or not. Firstly, I think that it may very well exist. I think there might even be a good chance that it exists. Secondly, even in the event that it doesn't exist, most of the means that I know of for trying to prevent/postpone global warming are good for the environment for other reasons, too. Fewer emission is better for the air (and all that breathes it). Decreased fuel consumption is not only better for human civilization in terms of long-term energy reliability, it might also help mitigate ecosystem destruction. And so on.

Except that I add a caveat to this: we ought to be careful about what we do to mitigate the damage. Consume less, by all means and any means. Of course. I mean we ought to be careful about assuming that our 'green' energy programs are actually greener. We must check that relying on wind power doesn't kill off the endangered Tibetan cuttlefish and Australian ground sloths and Chilean pushmi-pullyus. In our well-meant but hasty drive to prevent one disaster, we must be careful that we don't cause another.

I suppose what I mean is this: Let's all start by consuming less. Much less. That's a good one, and it doesn't require a whole lot of thought to get started. Don't drive when you don't have to, put your thermostat lower, wash clothes only when you have a full load, fly economy if you must fly, buy domestic, buy used, buy less, throw out less, eat less. (Keep your empty jam jars, because they make good cups. Read those red-neck repair jokes not for laughs but inspiration.) And then let's all think very carefully about what our next step is, and not let partisan biases and our fear of not sounding environmentalist enough get us headed the wrong way.

And let's not lose hope. Or, let's find where we put our hope. 'Cause on this issue and on all environmental issues, I'm not sure I've still got mine handy.

I know! Let's pray on this. And I mean this not in a pray-as-an-automatic-response way, like lots of Christian-type bloggers will, but in the way of modern media. In Battlestar Gallactica, one character is diagnosed with cancer. They talk about treatments, and the doctor half-jokes about trying prayer. But then, just as the doctor walks out of the room, he turns to her and says, "And for the record, I would seriously consider prayer." For some people, prayer really is a last resort, and I'm scared that that's where we are right now: on the edge of apocalypse. That by now it's out of our hands, and our only job is to try not to make things worse and just hope they get better. I'm really, really scared that this is the case.

But I'm sometimes struck by something. A person who has been shot three times in the torso can sometimes still walk to the hospital. Our bodies are frail enough that a little damage in the right place (well, wrong place, I guess) can kill us in seconds, and yet our bodies can also stumble on when damaged beyond recognition, and still even recover. I know a man who was hit full-on by a transport truck, and he was walking again within a year. Maybe, just maybe, even after all the abuse we put our world through, it (we) can still stumble on and then recover. But in order for that to happen we must stop the abuse, and I suppose that's what this whole Blog Action Day and every environmental awareness campaign is supposed to be about. I think the problem is that we need to stop being so big on 'awareness' and more about 'action plan' and 'hope.' 'Awareness' just seems to be code for 'fear-mongering,' and breeds either despair or resistance. Neither of these are any good at all. What we need is cooperation. And practicality. And cheerfulness.

I saw a This Hour Has Twenty-Two Minutes skit where the newscaster said that the Catholic Church was criticizing advertising companies for using sex and greed to sell products; they should do what the Church has always done and use guilt and fear. My first thought was, Isn't that more of an environmentalist or social activist thing than a Catholic thing? I recognize that elements in the Catholic Church have used guilt and fear a lot and I also recognize that many social activist groups are trying to get past that, but it does seem to me that there's little difference between hell-fire and gun-fire or forest-fires as far as public relations go.

One way or the other, I hope the global warming/environmental responsibility campaign will come around.

I probably did not write something in the spirit of the Blog Action Day proposal, did I? Well, I suppose this must do, because I have nothing else.

Good luck. Go read more useful Blog Action Day posts.

eHarmony: Homosexuality and Business

Edit 22 Jan 2013: Ugh. I have pretty much entirely moved my position on this. I won't take it down because I don't feel like that's a responsible thing to do, but I want to state right here that as much as I understand why eHarmony would do what they did, I no longer feel like it's justifiable.

So the whole eHarmony-bigotry showed up a little while ago, but since I was thinking about it today, I decided to write a post about it.

If you aren't aware of what I'm talking about, I'll fill you in briefly: a number of people are upset that eHarmony does not match same-sex couples. There is also something out there about a misleading commercial, but I don't know much about that.

Today I decided to play a game, which I call, "Let's pretend that the organization/company/government/justice system isn't doing what they're doing because they're stupid and mean, but instead have a solid reason for what they're doing from their point of view." I don't think the game will catch on (maybe the name is too long?), but I like playing it.

This is what I came up with:

eHarmony is essentially a business. Unlike most dating websites, it has its customers fill in a questionnaire and then uses your input to match you with a prospective partner. This is more complex, as I understand it, then taking a woman who likes ska, is passionate about the environment, and doesn't care too much about cleanliness, and matching them with a man who also indicated that he likes ska, is passionate about the environment, and doesn't care too much about cleanliness. No, in actuality they've done years of research, and read generations worth of research, to determine what factors contribute to a successful relationship. Due to the money, brains, and plain-old time they've poured into this project, they can boast about extraordinarily high success rates. eHarmony is a marriage-focused business, and so they measure success by the percentage of matches who get married, stay married, and are happy with their marriage. As I said, eHarmony is a business. This is all statistical for them. I am sure they care that their customers are happy with each other; otherwise, they wouldn't be in this business. However, they do need to sell their product (which is the matching process), and so take a particular amount of interest in their accuracy.

Here's the catch. That accuracy relies on expensive, time-consuming, brain-consuming research that has been done exclusively on heterosexual couples. So if eHarmony were to suddenly open the floor to same-sex matching, they wouldn't have a whole lot to go on. I'm no expert on the dynamics of a same-sex relationship, but I'm going to say that the statistics for a heterosexual marriage do not neatly apply to a homosexual relationship. I'm also going to say that eHarmony doesn't have any statistics for same-sex compatability. So eHarmony would be sacrificing their reputation as accurate if they allow for same-sex matching. At least, their accuracy for those couples would be lower, but I'm sure that the eHarmony team is at least nervous that that would drop their popularity. If the percentage of all couples' success (homo and hetero) is several points lower, then fewer hetero people will use their site.

Perhaps you will then say that eHarmony should do that research to get those statistics to get acheive that accuracy. I say, do you remember when I mentioned how expensive it is? Do you remember when I pointed out how much time it takes to accomplish that? I'm sure you'll get the brains for it: queer theory is fairly popular these days, picking up where race theory and, to a lesser extent, feminist theory are starting to peter out. The point, though, is that not only will it take a long time to accomplish this, it will take a lot of money. So when it does come out, eHarmony will have to charge more to cover those substantial costs. Does eHarmony charge everybody more? But why should heterosexual couples need to pay for a service that they don't need, want, or use? But then do the homosexual patrons have to pay more than heterosexual patrons? Consider that the eHarmony team is likely concerned about a lower number of same-sex users compared to heterosexual users. This means that the homosexual patrons would likely have to pay far more than the heterosexual ones if they bear the start-up research costs all on their own, since there are fewer of them to divide it between. You can imagine how well that would go over. Those people complaining now that the service is not available will certainly be complaining that eHarmony makes them pay more for the "same" service (even though the cost in providing that service is at least at the beginning more expensive for the company).

To some degree, all of these concerns will have to be dealt with by eHarmony on a financial level. Can they afford (in terms of both expenses and lost revenue) to offer this service? It's like any company thinking about providing some new product. They have to balance the cost of preparing for, obtaining, advertising, and selling the new item/process/information, with how much they think that item/process/information will bring in. At this point in the game, I'm going to say that eHarmony has decided that, at the moment, they cannot afford to provide the service.

NOW, this does not make it any less disappointing, frustrating, and perhaps embarrassing for homosexual people who would like to use eHarmony. Hopefully, though, this indicates that it is less offensive/insulting than some people seem to make out. And of course I realize that there may also be other factors contributing to this decision, ranging from bigotry to fear to ignorance. But in the end I think that we ought to at least gesture to the benefit of the doubt while still arguing--when reasonable--for respect of people's basic rights.

Someone might here object that even businesses must be concerned with ethics, and I would absolutely and without hesitation agree with that someone. People speak of business being an amoral feild; I, however, think that the phonetic similarity between "amorality" and "immorality" is not a mere coincidence semantically (ie. there is no such thing as amorality, and those who claim to be acting in an amoral feild are most likely acting immorally in a moral feild). Yes, corporations should ensure that they do not do actual harm while pursuing a profit. No, corporations shouldn't shave off bits of their consciences so that they can also shave off expenses. However, consider this: I walk into a 'free-thinking' bookstore (they exist) and then make a fuss when I can't buy a Christian-audience Bible companion there. "It's a book," I say, "so all bookstores should sell it! Not to sell it is discriminatory!" And then you say, "But, Christian, look, they can't reasonably be expected to sell every book in existence. So you can't just walk in there and then get angry when they don't happen to sell a book you want. You can't even get angry when they don't sell any book that fits your lifestyle. It's their store. You can't expect that they simply must sell your sort of book, even if they don't want to or it would damage their reputation as a 'free-thinking' bookstore. That just doesn't make sense." And you'd be right. As far as I'm concerned, it's the same thing here. Yes, I agree it's a shame that homosexual people do not have access to a dating site as comprehensive and reliable as eHarmony. (There are same-sex dating sites, but as I understand it, like any dating site that requires you to do your own profile browsing, they're not as good as eHarmony.) But that doesn't mean that we have any place to blame the company. If they were matching same-sex people with straight people just to be devilish, then, yeah, get angry. If they say, "We don't match same-sex people, not only because they're demon-spawn and communists, but also 'cause it's icky," then, yeah, get very angry. But that's not what's going on here; what's going on is that they are providing a service which doesn't help some people. For the final analogy on this point, it would be like getting mad at an autobody shop because they don't have foreign car parts available in-store. It's a foreign car; how can you possibly expect a domestic garage to stock parts for every foreign car?

Lastly, if this were a government-organization or maybe even a not-for-profit organization (though only a very large one, I think), then that would be a different story. If I went into a store that was commissioned by the Government of Canada to be the Official Bookstore of Canada, and I couldn't find anything on Bible interpretation (or queer experience or Aboriginal spirituality or women's rights or Quebec separatist philosophies), then I'd have a right to complain. But eHarmony is not sponsored by the government, and the government would have to be stone moronic to get into that sort of thing (remember Trudeau on the government's place in people's bedrooms?). It's a privately-owned business, and we have to treat it like one.

So, if you want eHarmony to provide same-sex services, I'd suggest you write them and get your friends to write them, saying that you'd be willing to cough up the extra for said services. If they get enough letters, maybe they will be confident enough of the customer base to provide an "orientation-optional" edition of eHarmony.

Anyway, I Googled the issue and found out that eHarmony implies in some official statements the sorts of things I've said here, as well as giving some (in my opinion) less convincing reasons. This link I'm providing (http://www.pinoy.ca/eharmony/339) also has some on-line commenter opinions which you may or may not want to peruse.

Caveat: I do not want to imply here that I am either for or against homosexuality as a lifestyle. I know that I have readers that will be upset if I indicate that I do not "agree with homosexuality" in some way or another, and I know that I have readers that will be upset if I indicate that I do support homosexuality in some way or another. As far as I see it, your sexuality is between you and God, and no one else. I don't really take the time to formulate opinions on what I think God thinks about homosexuality, and that's the bottom line, as far as my public voice goes. As far as society and politics are concerned... well, I think non-judgementality, equality, and above all love ought to be the standards of our decisions, and that's the bottom line for now.

Last caveat: I am aware that there is more to this issue as regards the commercial, which I have not seen. There may be actually justifiably upsetting things in that advertisement; not having seen it, I don't know. What I am discussing is only the upset about the fact they don't provide the services desired, and why eHarmony is justified in not providing them. If that company has done anything else offensive, please DO NOT take this post as an endorsement of those actions. Obviously if I had a large readership a number of people would do precisely that, even with this caveat, but I am sure that you, my regular readership, will in fact use both your eyes and your brains before you use your fingers (on the keyboard). Thanks.

7 Quick Takes (VII)

1. On Saturday, I set up a computer in my room. Do you recall reading that my computer is fried? Well, it is, in case you didn't read it or don't remember. Anyway, I got the hard drive recovered--that is, I got it ripped out intact and bought an external reader.
Well, I used my Dad's old tower and keyboard, and my Mom's old moniter and speakers, and a brand-new mouse, and I cobbled together a new computer for my room. I got a desk and rearranged the furniture and plugged everything in and voila, I have a personal computer.
Only it doesn't have the Internet, so for this I'm still using my folks' computer.
And the hard drive? Well, it's apparantly still protected by my old password, which I know, only I can't type it in anywhere that I can find because I am now trying to open it like a file. Yeah.

So, while I do have a computer, it does not have Internet and I cannot use it to read any of those old files I wanted to open.
I still have a few tricks to try, but I gave up for the moment. By which I mean week.

2. On Sunday I again attended St. Thomas' Anglican Church across the road. That's about all I have to say about that, except that it might be easier to pay attention to the front when Sunday school resumes. Children are awfully disruptive there.
Oh, and I'll mention that they are very enthusiastic about sharing the peace. There are some there who want to say "Peace" to every person in the congregation; there are some who hug everyone, too. One woman, who seems quite friendly, noticed the paint on my arms and joked about it.

3. I also decided sometime in here (though there's not really a defined date) that I'm not likely going to school in New Zealand come February, as I had planned. I will still go to school in September, though, if all goes well. I'm not just not really sure for what, yet. This isn't a crisis so much as an indecision.

4. On Monday I got married. Well, ok, maybe not for real. A photographer came into Heritage Park to take pictures, and he/his clients wanted models dressed in historical garb in the buildings. 'Models' turned out to be Heritage Park employees. Some pictures were taken in St. Aiden's Church, which is our 'wedding' church. It has nice white pickets fence around it and is still rented out for marriages. The models were to be getting married. Since I am the only current male employee in roughly the same age bracket as the female staff, I was the groom. A nice girl named Dayna, who I really hardly know, was the bride.

So I now have professional wedding pictures (oodles of them, let me tell you), and eventually these will surface. There is a good chance that they will turn up on Facebook, and there is also a good chance that they will turn up in promotional material for Fort McMurray Tourism and Alberta Tourism. So if you ever see a picture young bride and groom, where the groom has weird sort-of-blond, sort-of-brown hair, and the bride is pretty and quite thin, wearing a hat, and they are walking down a boardwalk with a white picket fence in the foreground, and the picture is in a pamphlet or something which encourages you to visit Alberta or Fort McMurray or Heritage Park, then the groom is likely me.

And if they do get on Facebook, I am sure many of my highschool friends will be congratulating me and asking why they weren't invited and so forth. Only some of them will be joking.

I have heard that the pictures are quite good. They were somewhat awkward to take. Have you ever tried to fake being in love with someone for a camera? Apparently we did it well.

Some of the other staff saw the photos, and one of them said she wanted to use them for her own wedding. Her guests would say, "These aren't of you," and she'd say, "I know, but aren't these ones so much better?"

5. The rain finally broke off. We got some sun starting on Tuesday, and it's been nice and bright ever since. This means...

6. We finally got painting done! The decks look so much better properly painted. They are oxide red, which is regulation. Before they were a faded oxide red overlaid with black spray and white spray from adjoining surfaces, mingled with dirt and rust. Now they are a solid, strong colour. On Wednesday we did the whole of the barge in one go, and then on Thursday we got a good deal of the Miskanaw deck done. Today my supervisor finished off the Miskanaw and I painted some silver on pipes and vent hoods and things on the D250. My supervisor was very pleased with the amount of work we got done, as was I. However, there was a drawback.

7. Since Wednesday, my knees have been sore. I have spent most of the week on my hands and knees, which means my knees were resting on the bare metal deck. You know, "resting" is such a bad word for this context. "Weight-bearing" is a better one. On Thursday my Dad lent me his kee pads (and thanks again for that, Pa), so it wasn't as bad as it could have been. But oh, man, my knees were stiff and weak both Wednesday and Thursday night, and somewhat this morning, too. Even now I can feel that they're a little weak. Whenever I hit them against anything, they hurt more than usual.
But I can be such a masochist. See, you'd think that the above paragraph is self-pitying, complaining. But, no... it's bragging. I am pleased that my legs hurt. Why? I'm not sure, other than, perhaps, that it's a reminder or badge that I worked hard and that I'm tough enough to take that pain. If it's work-related, I don't mind pain. Discomfort makes me squeamish, but pain I can manage.

And that's 7. See, it's been a busy week. Lots of work, some pain, a wedding, all sorts of good stuff.

Remember to visit the Quick Takes Queen!

the advertisements

there is something serial about assembling limbs
accumulating fleshy prosthetics
scissoring legs off of bodies
peeling navels from stomachs
stretching anonymous skin across a book cover
serving up this woman's thigh or that girl's breast

it's like a reverse amputation
paring off the ankles in basement surgeries
knifing the hamstrings and unshut eyes
carving out unwanted identities
taking a scalpel to the neck and head
prepared like puffer-fish sushi to be free of any deadly person

they leave no stomach unturned or untucked
and the parts lay bloodless like a puzzle
so the king's men can keep a piece each
add to their skin-tone collector sets
cross-referenced by anatomy

the magazine racks are delis
the shutter a mortar
the page a snare
and the models are drawn and quartered

The prof's comments were, "This is clever, but it reads far too staccato for my taste, like machine gun fire, so that it accumulate as too much of a list and not enough of a flow." Staccato was my aim, however; any guesses why?

Real Life vs. the Movies

Watch these two clips...



and


(feel free to start at 0:58 and stop at 1:20)

and see if you notice any similarities.

Obviously, this is not a case of life imitating art (and how cliche a phrase is that?). An exploding propane facility in Toronto has very little to do with the fictitious Cloverfield attack.

Instead, I want to point out two things.

1) How quickly fiction--in this case, a movie--leaps into my mind when I see news; I assume it's not only me. Whenever anything at all out of the ordinary happens, I immediately think of all of the movie situations which seem to apply, regardless of how silly they are (zombies, aliens, combines, etc).

2) How YouTube was so crucial to the success of Cloverfield, in that the sort of footage that movie provided makes such instinctive sense to those of us who witnessed the 9/11 massacres from hand-held cameras, and to those of us who get much of our news from similar sources on YouTube.
I was speaking with a friend--a History major--once, who went on for some time about how interesting Cloverfield was to a history major, in that it displayed the relevance of primary documents, and highlighted the excitement a historian may have in finding a particularly good document.

There's a fair amount I could say as an English major, as well, but I don't really feel in the mood. Sorry.

I hope the links work.

Mystery Solved!

The mystery of the Diced Ham Cookies has been solved! CaraKay has on a previous post commented her discovery, and I had some others (JW, you know who you are) reply as well.

Here is a link:

https://www.askingcanadians.com/wix2/p80224799.aspx?r=624195&s=YHQBBBDF&__qid=i1

Diced Ham Cookies: Real Chunks of Ham!

I just saw this ad on Hotmail half an hour ago, and I have no idea what it's about. I doubt it's real--it'd be disgusting if it were--but I have no idea what it's about. Granted, I didn't click the link because I was in the middle of an e-mail, so maybe I could have found out.

Any ideas?