One very special country

I, being someone who lives outside the US and who isn't considered a right wing lunatic in my home country, like the Democrats more than the Republicans.  I was happy when Obama beat McCain in 2008 and although Obama is far too right wing for me to support on his own he was definitely the lesser of two evils.  Despite my high hopes he continually manages to do things that make me cringe in disgust or fear, oftentimes both together.  I read over his State of the Union address recently and I really do wonder how anybody in any country could read this sort of thing and accept it at face value.  This isn't unique to Americans of course as most countries hold an unaccountably high opinion of themselves; rather in the same way that 90% of people are sure they are in the top 50% of drivers.   Some of the things in that address that jumped out at me:

America remains the one indispensable nation in world affairs - and as long as I'm President, I intend to keep it that way.

From the coalitions we've built to secure nuclear materials, to the missions we've led against hunger and disease; from the blows we've dealt to our enemies; to the enduring power of our moral example, America is back.

We will stand for the rights and dignity of all human beings - men and women; Christians, Muslims, and Jews.

It boggles my mind.  Nobody could get along without America; otherwise who would start wars with other nations on completely fabricated grounds and demolish other nations who do the same?  Who would stand alone defending archaic systems of measurement against the entire world who has standardized itself in Metric?  (To be fair, Liberia and Burma are also holdouts.)  It is true that America holds a unique position as the most powerful economic and military power worldwide but somehow that has been construed to mean that everybody else needs America rather than the other way around.

The moral example of might makes right really doesn't seem like the sort of thing America should necessarily be touting as a contribution to moral authority.  It is true that there are regimes in the world that are worse than the one in America in terms of how they treat their own people but one would be hard pressed to find a regime that has done more damage to *other* people.  Did the North Vietnamese really need a 500 pound bomb dropped on their nation for every single person in the country?  Were the various bombing campaigns America has engaged in throughout Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia somehow designed to convince us that America is good?  In my book murdering hundreds of thousands of civilians in other countries in pursuit of military or economic goals is much more akin to attempted genocide than a laudable moral example.

The fact that all people are determined to belong to either the group 'men' or 'women' is at least a widely accepted convention, though not accurate, but the assumption that all people belong to a Abrahamic faith is quite clearly and blatantly false.  Whether atheists, Wiccans, Taoists, Hindus and many others are simply assumed not to exist or are deemed irrelevant isn't clear but either way I don't much approve of a three way division of humanity into Jew, Muslim or Christian.

In the end this sort of hyberbolic nonsense dosed liberally with frothing patriotism isn't unique to America but it does seem to be at its worst there.  Canadians are known for being nonaggressive and accommodating and yet our politicians too paint us as the greatest of the great.  The difference may just be in plausible deniability; the Canadian Prime Minister can hardly claim we are indispensable to world affairs though I am quite sure he would if he thought he could get away with it.  I think being the sole superpower means that Americans feel entitled to speak of themselves as if their ascent is both deserved and eternal; they would do well to consider the fate of every other monolothic world power that has ever existed.  The Mongol Empire was mighty once too.

Picture from:  http://www.realmagick.com/mongol-empire-sources/

A moon base, seriously

Newt Gingrich has promised the American people that if he is elected President he will make sure there is an American moon base by the end of his second term.  We hear a lot of outlandish promises from politicians like "We will increase revenues by lowering taxes" and "I will fund tax cuts by finding efficiencies that do not reduce services" all the time but rarely does someone who is considered a real contender come out with something so utterly ridiculous.  The US is facing a debt and deficit issue that can be safely termed catastrophic and there are monstrous cuts coming to every part of the government and yet good ole Newt wants to find a few trillion to establish a base on the moon just for show.  There is nothing there that could possibly be thought to be worth the cost at this point so the only real reason is to show off.  Perhaps Newt thinks that America needs to compensate for something?

I remember awhile ago in Ontario elections the issue of the Catholic school board came up and politicians were scrambling to come up with a stance that wouldn't alienate the Catholics.  It is terrible that we still have this situation with the province officially supporting religious discrimination and homophobia (among other things) but the politicians are too worried about the Catholic vote to get rid of it.  One of the platforms that was put forward was support for separate school boards for all religions.  This way the Catholic church won't protest since it will still get to push its particular brand of insanity and we can offer the same for Jews, Lutherans, Buddhists, Taoists, Flying Spaghetti Monsterists, atheists.... Oh wait, that is just as stupid and impractical as a moon base.  A real party was literally suggesting that they would have hundreds of school boards to accommodate every religious belief around.  Somehow the staggering cost and the issue of supporting random cults and such never came up in their planning sessions?

I have a huge amount of tolerance for politicians who say stupid things under pressure in debates and such.  They are trying to appear smooth, suave, intelligent and patriotic while answering very difficult questions in many cases.  It is hard to do and sometimes even really clever and competent people make mistakes in such a situation.  What I can't fathom is how idiotic policies like moon bases and separate school boards for Wiccans (not to knock their religion in particular, just their numbers, which are clearly not worth a school board) get out of the planning stages.  Surely they have somebody listening at their meetings who can figure out that these sorts of crazy projects aren't going to work?  It doesn't surprise me that politicians are nuts but it does surprise me that their handlers and assistants don't manage to have enough brains and moxie to convince the politicians that their ideas are going to sink their campaigns.

High schools sucks

I have been reading a bit about homeschooling on Penelope Trunk's homeschool blog.  She says a lot of things that I would anecdotally agree with, like high school damages kids.  I had a lot of unpleasant experiences in high school and there are an awful lot of people I know that feel the same way but I still question the conclusion that everybody should homeschool their kids.  The trick is that there are, in fact, people who quite liked high school and just because thing X has big problems is no basis for choosing thing Y.  There are an awful lot of us who aren't particularly inclined nor especially skilled at teaching and a big advantage of having specialized teachers is that they are generally good at teaching and interested in doing so.  I don't particularly want to teach Elli full time for the next twelve years and I suspect that I would go quite batty trying to do it; other people are very different from me but I am sure that this is a common sentiment!

The question to my mind is not "Should everyone homeschool their kids?" because I think the answer is a resounding "No!" but rather "How can we make school better?"  There are plenty of different ideas out there but I think that this video presents some really good ideas; in particular we can start with dispensing with grades and grading as the primary organizing elements of schooling.  When I was younger I was disgusted with how the system did away with failing students who did not learn and perform but I have changed my mind in that regard.  I don't think that failing the kids who refused to learn would have helped them or changed their behaviour; they did not make their decisions based on rational, long term objectives but rather simply went moment to moment.  You can't cause an eight year old to work hard and study by having the possibility of failure at the end of the year as they will not do the work either way.  What you can do is try to give them the opportunity to do and to learn in the way that suits them best.

The daycare that Elli goes to seems fantastic in this regard.  They have the advantage, I suspect, of not having to submit grades and stick to mandated lesson plans like a school would but rather can simply do whatever it is that works.  They regularly tell us that the children have indicated interest in particular lessons, crafts or ideas and the teachers just run with it.  If the kids are finding ironing beads and the patterns they can make with them interesting then they do that; next week it may be books about dinosaurs or perhaps weather.  Regardless the kids end up learning all kinds of basic things like letters and numbers but the teachers take every opportunity to channel their enthusiasm for random topics into learning.

One thing I think is key here is that there is far too much to learn.  You can't learn all the facts out there but you can learn how to learn and how to think and making sure that the children are engaged and interested means that they get a lot out of the lessons.  Whatever facts in particular they miss they can pick up later when and if those facts are required.  No one ever failed in life because the didn't know the date Canada became a separate nation but many have failed due to lacking emotional awareness or problem solving skills.  We should focus on learning skills, not facts and prioritize interest over structure.

Warm air on the tummy

I do like the products of baking.  I finally managed to get a good handle on my bread recipe and can crank out respectable looking loaves of bread unlike the flat, thick loaves I used to be stuck with.  The food that comes out of the oven is great but the other products are wonderful too, particularly the warm tummy air.  After getting a loaf of bread out of the oven I crack open the oven door about ten centimeters so that the hot air comes flowing out of it and pours upwards and then I stand next to the oven and pull my shirt outwards so the hot air flows right up past me under my shirt.  It is almost like sitting next to a roaring fire, minus the flickering light and popping you actually get from a fireplace.  Am I the only one who relishes a warm column of air from the stove on my tummy on a cold winter's day?

Fancy jam and shower water

When I read How Bad are Bananas? it became very clear that the best sort of environmentalism is not buying new stuff to improve efficiency but rather just buying less stuff.  Don't chuck away the old dishwasher to buy a high efficiency new one but rather run everything you have into the ground and only buy something else when the old one can no longer be repaired.  The CO2 footprint of making a complicated, large device like a dishwasher is actually a huge component (often greater than 50%) of it's total impact over its useful life.  Keeping this in mind I decided to try to implement this throughout my life even in small ways.  One result was hauling a large number of random jam jars out of my fridge.  I don't know if everyone is like this, but I always end up with random jars of jams and sweets and such from Christmas, birthdays and other random events.  Despite them usually being very good I almost always default to just getting regular jam out of the huge jar without thinking and the interesting jars of jams procreate somehow and end up slowly taking over.

All of these are random jars of stuff that I don't use but are in my fridge for one reason or another.  I have decided that I simply must use all of them or determine that they truly are foul beyond redeeming; simply stashing them until they go bad is not an option.  No more jam, mustard or sweet sauces will be purchased until all of the old have been put on something or other.  Tonight I made spicy soft tacos with mushrooms, onions, tomatoes, lettuce, carrots and beef.  What goes on spicy soft tacos?  Mango chutney of course, since it is in my fridge and needs to go on something!  Surprisingly I quite liked mango chutney on taco so at least that jar will be used quickly and without waste.  Many of these others are just fancy jam and will go on toast for the next month or so; whether or not I will ever find a home for VH generic plum sauce is a bit of a rough question.

Of course it isn't just jam you can do this with.  I also noted in the book that the energy used by having a hot shower is really quite huge (I do love a scorching hot shower) but after noting just how much hot water I have been flushing straight down the tubes I felt somewhat guilty.  My solution was to just keep the shower water in the tub overnight and let the heat in the water warm the condo up; it has the nice side effect of dumping a ton of moisture into the air too which is good in wintertime.  Now of course I have to deal with the issue of a dirty tub.  Leaving the shower water in all night leaves the tub incredibly grimy and full of bits of hair and other detritus and requires me to wash it all the time... which uses more water and bathroom cleaner.  Now I am left with some truly difficult (impossible?) choices such as deciding between conserving energy, conserving chemical usage or conserving both but living in filth.  Such are the dilemmas of those who aspire to great environmentalism by eating fancy jams and refusing to send shower water down the drain in a timely fashion.

Pascal's Wager

Pascal's Wager is something often trotted out in discussions of belief in religion.  The idea is that Pascal proposed that one should profess belief in religion even if you are an atheist simply because if you are correct in your atheism then it does not matter which way you go but if you are wrong and God is real then you had damn well better be religious!  The Wager fails spectacularly and simply because it is a false dichotomy; there are a gazillion different ideas about how one must live to please spiritual forces and one cannot hope to please them all.  It also seems unlikely to me that what an all powerful deity wants is someone who spends their life faking beliefs all over the spectrum trying to hedge their bets!

I read another amusing take on the Wager today that used a Homer Simpson quote to outline a new take on the Wager.  Fundamentally it is just "false dichotomy" written for the average person but it is well done and I like to see this sort of thing written up in general news sources.  A little more support for my cause, as it were.    It also doesn't hurt to show Homer Simpson being more clever than Blaise Pascal which certainly would be a rare event.

Power to the people

SOPA and PIPA are dead.  Boingboing has a great infographic about the transformation after the day the internet went dark in protest over the US government bills that were going to destroy or at least maim freedom online.  Enormous numbers of US citizens (and presumably a few people abroad who called in anyway) managed to change the number of Member of Congress opposed to SOPA and PIPA by a huge margin (31 to 101).  While it may be true that individuals can often be entirely powerless in political situations it is clear that people can and do have a tremendous effect when they move as a group.  Those who organized the internet blackout got what they wanted:  The people saw what was going on and made those in power understand that their jobs were forfeit if they pushed SOPA/PIPA through.

One person has little to no power but if you can rally a couple million to your cause you can effect drastic changes.  All you need to do is find enough bodies willing to man the phones to convince the people in power that they must vote for their jobs instead of voting for their bribes.  Hurrah for "democracy"!

Picture taken from boingboing:   http://boingboing.net/2012/01/19/how-the-internet-blackout-affe.html