No more limbo

The Guardian reports that the Catholic church is nixing limbo. Limbo was a sort of antechamber, not heaven, not hell. The only problem is that "it" never "was". It was invented to allow theologians to state that Plato and others weren't in hell. No, they were in limbo. Theologians who came up with this afterlife filing system would have made good programmers or accountants, except that programmers and accountants are constrained by a more rigourous set of standards than were those who thought up limbo.

TV or not TV

Not TV. That is the answer. The kids go to bed at 8:30 or 8:45. I go to bed a bit after 11:00 (I sleep on the bus in the morning, I'm good at that). This leaves me with a bit more than 2 hours of time to get other things done in the evening such as do the dishes, tidy up, re-tile the washroom, etc. Also, I'm writing a web application to sell posters online. TV is a waste of my precious time. I'd rather be sitting at the kitchen table programming or playing Scrabble with Nancy than finding out who killed a woman with a hot glue gun or why what seemed to be an infection from an ingrown toenail has spiralled into what looks like rabies but really isn't but will probably end up being a micro tumour on the pituitary or adrenal gland.

Blue colour blindness

Blue color blindness. Blue color blindness, which is rare, is an inability to distinguish both blue and yellow. Blue and yellow are seen as white or grey. Although as many females as males have this deficiency, it usually appears in people who have physical disorders, such as liver disease or diabetes mellitus. However, it is not uncommon for young boys to have blue/green confusion that becomes less pronounced in adulthood.

also

Blue color blindness, also known as incomplete achromatopsia or blue-cone monochromatism, is an X-linked recessive disorder in which only the blue cones and the rods are functioning properly. A previously proposed theory states that signals from rods travel in the same pathways which carry signals from the blue-cones, making color vision in a blue-cone monochromat impossible. However, current research on blue-cone monochromats shows that signals from some rods and cones may be traveling by separate pathways to where wavelength discrimination takes place, making color vision possible in this type of monochromat, when both rods and blue cones are working simultaneously under twilight conditions.

Lewis often mixes up blues and greens.

Flu shot

Just got a flu shot. First time. Got two stickers that say "I'm Protected - The Flu. You can't afford it". That's a message for those listening to the business case for paying for someone to come to the workplace and do the injections, not for someone who just got a flu shot. What about "I just got a flu shot!". My kids will like the stickers, nonetheless.

Wikipedia libel controversy

There's a controversy at Wikipedia, an online collaboratively built and managed encyclopedia, over potentially libelous statements about John Seigenthaler Sr., a former administrative assistant to Robert Kennedy. The statement suggested that Mr. Seigenthaler had been suspected of involvement in Kennedy's assasination and had subsequently moved to the Soviet Union for ten years. None of this is true.

What I find more interesting is that this incident has sparked a debate on the article's discussion page on whether anonymous editing should be disallowed in favour of editing by members with verified email addresses. Probably not a bad idea and a necessary one as Wikipedia becomes more of an authority and comes under pressure to enact policies and procedures to increase accountabililty.

I love Wikipedia. Where else can one read carefully constructed articles on such diverse topics as Namibia, Spider Man, the Greek civil war, and Babylon 5? It's great not having someone else decide what's valuable information and what's not.

Lewis's favourite books

Lewis likes the books

• Poppleton in Winter, about a pig and his friends. Not sure why he likes it, but the stories are pleasant.
  
• The Adventures of a Nose, about a nose who wants to "fit in by sticking out". In each picture the nose is surrounded by objects that serve to frame it as a nose in a face. Lewis requests this one every night. I think he's fascinated by seeing an anthropomorphic nose and its framing within each picture.
  
• Yum Yum Dim Sum, about all the foods that one can get when having a dim sum dinner. The pictures are photos of carefully crafted paper art. Lewis loves the pictures.

Janneke

Janneke was working on a magick trick the other day, trying to make a bead disappear. It worked! She lost track of the bead and only found it later five feet away. The funny thing is that when the bead disappeared she figured that she had somehow performed magick and decided to look in her ear to see if it had been transported there.

Ruminations on terrorism by an Iraqi blogger

... I try to imagine what would happen to me, personally, should this occur. How long would it take for the need for revenge to settle in? How long would it take to be recruited by someone who looks for people who have nothing to lose? People who lost it all to one blow. What I think the world doesn’t understand is that people don’t become suicide bombers because- like the world is told- they get seventy or however many virgins in paradise. People become suicide bombers because it is a vengeful end to a life no longer worth living- a life probably violently stripped of its humanity by a local terrorist- or a foreign soldier.

I hate suicide bombers. I hate the way my heart beats chaotically every time I pass by a suspicious-looking car- and every car looks suspicious these days. I hate the way Sunni mosques and Shia mosques are being targeted right and left. I hate seeing the bodies pile up in hospitals, teeth clenched in pain, wailing men and women…

But I completely understand how people get there.

New PQ leader

Quebec's separatists are counting on a politician who admits to snorting cocaine to win independence, writes Anne McIlroy.

"Snorting cocaine to win independence". I see more than one interpretation of this phrase. Will PQ politicians also torture kittens to win independence? Who knows how low they'll stoop.

Weasel words

From MSNBC

“There is a great deal of misinformation feeding on itself about U.S. forces allegedly using ‘outlawed’ weapons in Fallujah,” the department said. “The facts are that U.S. forces are not using any illegal weapons in Fallujah or anywhere else in Iraq.”

Venable said white phosphorus shells are a standard weapon used by field artillery units and are not banned by any international weapons convention to which the U.S. is a signatory.

From the Christian Science Monitor

But they do raise the issue of the military's judgment. Because fires can burn out of control during a battle, the Convention on Conventional Weapons in 1980 banned the use of incendiary devices, like white phosphorous, in heavily populated areas. America, however, did not sign the agreement.

Ah. The US also decided not to sign on to this treaty's prohibition of the use of lasers. Nor has the US signed on to the land mine treaty. If the US wants the "freedom" to use phosphoros weapons in populated areas it should not complain when it's vilified for doing so.

The US is a very powerful and influential nation. I like the US and am married into an American family. I have deep emotional ties to the US. That's why, I suppose, I'm so bothered when the US passes up the opportunity to show leadership in the restraint area. They can do better than that and could help others see how to do so as well.

Lewis

Lewis put a bead up his nose Monday and became, understandably, rather distressed. Nancy called me and I told her how to make a rounded hook out of a paperclip. I saw the doctor do this last time Lewis stuck a bead up his nose. Several hours in the emergency room avoided. Lewis is now probably old enough to remember not to put more things up his nose.

White phosporous

The Globe reports on the US military's response to an Italian news article on the use of white phosphorous in its assault on the Iraqi city of Fallujeh.

"WP proved to be an effective and versatile munition," the authors wrote. "We used it for screening missions at two breeches and, later in the fight, as a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents in trench lines and spider holes when we could not get effects on them with HE [high explosive]" munitions.

One man's psychological weapon is another's weapon of terror. Is napalm sprayed at civilians a psychological weapon? Is the weapon "psychological" when used against "enemy combatants" and one "of terror" when used against civilians? Perhaps it's difficult to only burn the flesh off the bad guys when you're assaulting a city. Perhaps people might not like the United States after seeing their family members scream in agony as phosphorous burned them to the bone despite attempts to smother it or immersing it in water.

Military invasion is not a "surgical" tool for peacebuilding. It should be a last resort, carried out with a heavy heart. The world is not a chess board, but rather filled with actual real people. People cannot really create reality through the might and power of their wonderful empire.

Black Eyed Peas - Gone Going

Johnny wanna be a big star
Get on stage and play the guitar
Make a little money, buy a fancy car
Big old house and an alligator
Just to match with them alligator shoes
He's a rich man so he's no longer singing the blues
He's singing songs about material things
And platinum rings and watches that go bling
But, diamonds don't bling in the dark
He a star now, but he ain't singing from the heart
Sooner or later he's just gonna fall apart
Coz his fans can't relate to his new found art
He ain't doing what he did from the start
And that's putting in some feeling and thought
He decided to live his life shallow
Passion is love for material

[Chorus]
And its gone... gone... going...
Gone... everything gone... give a damn...
Gone be the birds when they don't want to sing...
Gone people... up awkward with their things... gone.

You see yourself in the mirror
And you feel safe coz it looks familiar
But you afraid to open up your soul
Coz you don't really know, don't really know
Who is, the person that's deep within
Coz you are content with just being the na¯ve brown man
And you fail to see that its trivial
Insignificant, you addicted to material
I've seen your kind before
You're the type that thinks souls is sold in a store
Packaged up with inscent sticks
With them vegetarian meals
To you that's righteous
You're fiction like books
You need to go out to life and look
Coz... what happens when they take your material
You already sold your soul and its...

[Chorus]

You say that time is money and money is time
So you got mind in your money and your money on your mind
But what about... that crime that you did to get paid
And what about... that bid, you can't take it to your brain
Why you on about those shoes you'll wear today
They'll do no good on the bridges you burnt along the way

All that money that you got gonna be gone
That gear that you rock gonna be gone
The house up on the hill gonna be gone
The gold -- on your grill gonna be gone
The ice on your wrist gonna be gone
That nice little Miss gonna be gone
That whip that you roll gonna be gone
And what's worst is your soul will be gone

[Chorus]

Money spent in Iraq by the US

Antiwar.com has an article on the costs related to the invasion and occupation of Iraq and what could have been done with that money instead

If the $204 billion appropriated for the war so far had been used instead for social programs, according to the report, it could have paid for the health care of the more than 46 million citizens without medical insurance, the hiring of 3.5 million elementary school teachers, or the construction of affordable housing units for nearly two million people.

The same amount of money would also be enough to effectively cut world hunger in half and still cover the costs of life-preserving anti-AIDS medication, childhood immunization, and the clean-water and sanitation needs of the world's developing nations for almost three years.

Celebrity cook

Last night I watched with amusement and surprise as a news piece on the new White House head chef and the fact that this one's the first woman to hold the position. Why, I wondered, was this making the news? Ah, it makes sense if one considers that Bush is getting a lot of bad press over a woman camped near his Texas retreat, demanding to speak to him and have him tell her why the US is in Iraq and why her son died a pointless death. Bush apparantly met with her before, but didn't know her name or the name of her dead son and kept trying to act as if he was at a party.

The White House probably sent out a nice media package to be "consumed" by all relating to the new chef at the White House. A tasty diversion from Bush's otherwise unpalatable life at the moment. At least he's alive.

Fisking the War on Terror

Juan Cole gives a summary of the rise of radicals and the War on Terror from Reagan to the present. This summary would not meet with agreement from George Bush, I think.

Letter to John Reid, Information Commissioner of Canada

To: John Reid, Information Commissioner of Canada
From: Ian Marsman

I direct your attention to the website of National Resources Canada (http://geonames.nrcan.gc.ca/index_e.php), in particular, to the section of the site dealing with downloads of place name data (http://geonames.nrcan.gc.ca/prod/data_e.php). The data in question deals with populated areas and geological features and includes for each place information including latitude and longitude, province, type of location, etc. In order for a Canadian citizen or anyone else for that matter to gain access to the whole dataset a fee must be paid and a licensing agreement (http://geonames.nrcan.gc.ca/prod/endusr_e.txt) must be agreed to. The fee to be paid ranges from $70 for information about obsolete place names to $660 for the complete dataset. The licensing agreement (called a "sales agreement" on the link to the agreement file) reads like a software end user licensing agreement and includes restrictions on usage, referring to additional licensing that must be obtained if the data is to be accessed from a centralized server. I have a few questions.

• Is it legal to charge a Canadian citizen whose collection has already been paid for by Canadian taxpayers (I am both a Canadian citizen and taxpayer)?
• Is it legal to place restrictions on the legal usage of the data, restrictions that seem to be designed to extract additional revenue?

I would like to point out that the United States government makes available at no cost downloads of data for US place names ( http://geonames.usgs.gov/stategaz/index.html) and for place names for other countries, including Canada (http://earth-info.nga.mil/gns/html/cntry_files.html). I have not found any mention of any sort of limitations on legal usage for this data. Why in the world should National Resources Canada charge me for data on place names in my own country while the US govenment provides similar (probably not as comprehensive) data without charge?

I am interested in using data on place names in Canada, the US, and possibly Mexico for a web-based business I am in the process of starting. I will be selling identification cards, posters, games, and other things relating to insects one can find in North America. My target audience is educators and amateur naturalists. In addition to the products I will be charging for I will be providing a service whereby people can submit places where one can find diffferent insects. This information will be available for free. Additional free services may include submission of insect sightings and display of sightings in the context of maps using Googles map service (http://maps.google.com) and their freely available map API (http://www.google.com/apis/maps/). The idea is to be able to make a living and also to get people more interested in insects and in issues such as biodiversity and the effects of human enterprise on the natural world. If I am unable to obtain Canadian place name data for free or for the cost of to Natural Resources Canada of downloading I will use the data freely available from the US government. I will then be in the ironic position of providing much better service to Americans than to Canadians, since the US data will be much more comprehensive.

Why is Natural Resources Canada getting in the way of educational and legitimate business usages of Canadian Place name data by Canadians, data whose collection has already been paid for by the Canadian citizen and taxpayer? I could understand a small charge to offset the cost of data storage and transmission bandwidth, but the fees charged and restrictions on usage made don't match this sort of cost-recovery strategy. I'd finally like to note that I wrote a few years ago asking why Natural Resources Canada charges for this data and received a reply that in effect said that this was their policy. This correspondence occurred in the context of my interest in using the data for a course I was teaching at Malaspina University College in Nanaimo, British Columbia. I ended up using the American data. I would appreciate your timely investigation of this matter and reply as to your planned actions. Thank-you very much for your time and attention to this matter.

Total educational awareness

Just follow this simple flow chart and no child will be left behind!

Found from Doc Searls

To Bush and his crew, education is all about measurement. What's sickening is that just about every educational "reform" involves more of this crap. Kids' natural curiousity, their ability to learn in their own ways, their unique non-curricular aspirations, their inherent genius, the fact that all of them develop at different rates and in different ways, are all flattened like pavement. "No child left behind" is the box nobody (least of all kids) are allowed to think outside of.

Reminds me of the flow charts made by people in US government beaurocracy for the "Total Information Awareness" program. Like TIA, what this chart probably represents is a way to spend billions of taxpayer dollars on beaurocratic machinations without actually addressing the underlying problems. I see a love and worship of computers and databases and Visio here, but not of the human beings who are teachers and students and parents. This program, if it ever staggers to its feet, will probably be ISO certified.

Incidentally, the No Child Left Behind program stipulates by law that schools must provide contact information for their students to be used by military recruiters. From what I've read, these recuiters seem to have been trained in agressive sales and cult recruitment techniques. This data gathering tactic fits in with the total information awareness philosophy and seems a perversion of what is implied by the name of the program.

Schneier link

Bruce Schneier has a nice pointer to a news snippet whereby soldiers boarding a commercial flight were required to surrender pocket knives, nose-hair clippers, and lighters, despite being decked out in full combat weaponry (rifle, handgun, etc.). Another example of failing to build human discernment into a system designed by lovers of rules and data. I like the quote Scheier gives at the end as well:

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Wikipedia entry on the Byzantine Empire

Wikipedia has an excellent entry on the Byzantine Empire. In scope it covers the time from the unified Roman Empire through the split up to the dissolution of the empire during the time of the Crusades. I very much enjoy the coverage of the strategies employed by various leaders to hold and expand the empire, including the interesting thema system used to expand, settle, and militarily hold onto territory. Also of great interest is coverage of the interplay between religion and politics in the eastern and western portions of the Roman empire and in the crusades and ultimate end of the empire.

Who'd have thought

Yes indeed, patenting of plots. Link from Slashdot.

Knight and Associates is the first patent prosecution firm to attempt to obtain utility patent protection on fictional plots. Knight and Associates consists of Andrew Knight and a team of independent contractors comprising skilled writers and experienced patent attorneys, ready to turn valuable new fictional plots or storylines into U.S. utility patent applications. Knight and Associates is located in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, the hub of American intellectual property law and the location of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Stallman on software patents

I love the commons, the ability to share ideas, to expand on them, to bring them to new places. Richard Stallman does too. Those who see only money in human endeavour, record labels, software patent houses, "intellectual property" advocates, do not.

Patent absurdity

If patent law had been applied to novels in the 1880s, great books would not have been written. If the EU applies it to software, every computer user will be restricted, says Richard Stallman

Monday June 20, 2005

Next month, the European Parliament will vote on the vital question of whether to allow patents covering software, which would restrict every computer user and tie software developers up in knots.

Many politicians may be voting blindly - not being programmers, they don't understand what software patents do. They often think patents are similar to copyright law (except for some details), which is not the case.

For example, when I publicly asked Patrick Devedjian, then the minister for industry, how France would vote on the issue of software patents, he responded with an impassioned defence of copyright law, praising Victor Hugo for his role in the adoption of copyright.

Those who imagine effects like those of copyright law cannot grasp the real effects of software patents. We can use Hugo as an example to illustrate the difference between the two.

A novel and a modern complex programme have certain points in common: each is large and implements many ideas. Suppose patent law had been applied to novels in the 1800s; suppose states such as France had permitted the patenting of literary ideas. How would this have affected Hugo's writing? How would the effects of literary patents compare with the effects of literary copyright?

Consider the novel Les Misérables, written by Hugo. Because he wrote it, the copyright belonged only to him. He did not have to fear that some stranger could sue him for copyright infringement and win. That was impossible, because copyright covers only the details of a work of authorship, and only restricts copying. Hugo had not copied Les Misérables, so he was not in danger.

Patents work differently. They cover ideas - each patent is a monopoly on practising some idea, which is described in the patent itself.

Here's one example of a hypothetical literary patent:

Claim 1: a communication process that represents, in the mind of a reader, the concept of a character who has been in jail for a long time and becomes bitter towards society and humankind.

Claim 2: a communication process according to claim 1, wherein said character subsequently finds moral redemption through the kindness of another.

Claim 3: a communication process according to claims 1 and 2, wherein said character changes his name during the story.

If such a patent had existed in 1862 when Les Misérables was published, the novel would have infringed all three claims - all these things happened to Jean Valjean in the novel. Hugo could have been sued, and would have lost. The novel could have been prohibited - in effect, censored - by the patent holder.

Now consider this hypothetical literary patent:

Claim 1: a communication process that represents, in the mind of a reader, the concept of a character who has been in jail for a long time and subsequently changes his name.

Les Misérables would have infringed that patent too, because it also fits the life story of Jean Valjean.

These patents would all cover the story of one character in a novel. They overlap, but they do not precisely duplicate each other, so they could all be valid simultaneously - all the patent holders could have sued Victor Hugo. Any one of them could have prohibited publication of Les Misérables.

You might think these ideas are so simple that no patent office would have issued them. We programmers are often amazed by the simplicity of the ideas that real software patents cover - for instance, the European Patent Office has issued a patent on the progress bar, and one on accepting payment via credit cards. These would be laughable if they were not so dangerous.

Other aspects of Les Misérables could also have fallen foul of patents. For instance, there could have been a patent on a fictionalised portrayal of the Battle of Waterloo, or a patent on using Parisian slang in fiction. Two more lawsuits.

In fact, there is no limit to the number of different patents that might have been applicable for suing the author of a work like Les Misérables. All the patent holders would claim they deserved a reward for the literary progress that their patented ideas represented - but these obstacles would not promote progress in literature. They would only obstruct it.

However, a very broad patent could have made all these issues irrelevant. Imagine patents with broad claims, like these:

Communication process structured with narration that continues through many pages.

A narration structure sometimes resembling a fugue or improvisation.

Intrigue articulated around the confrontation of specific characters, each in turn setting traps for the others.

Who would the patent holders have been? They could have been other novelists, perhaps Dumas or Balzac, who had written such novels - but not necessarily.

It isn't necessary to write a programme to patent a software idea, so if our hypothetical literary patents follow the real patent system, these patent holders would not have had to write novels, or stories, or anything - except patent applications.

Patent parasite companies - businesses that produce nothing except threats and lawsuits - are growing larger.

Given these broad patents, Hugo would not have reached the point of asking what patents might get him sued for using the character of Jean Valjean. He could not even have considered writing a novel of this kind.

This analogy can help non-programmers to see what software patents do. Software patents cover features, such as defining abbreviations in a word processor or natural order recalculation in a spreadsheet.

They cover algorithms that programmes need to use. They cover aspects of file formats, such as Microsoft's new formats for Word files. The MPEG 2 video format is covered by 39 different US patents.

Just as one novel could infringe many different literary patents at once, one programme can infringe many different patents at once. It is so much work to identify all the patents infringed by a large programme that only one such study has been done.

A 2004 study of Linux, the kernel of the GNU/Linux operating system, found that it infringed 283 different US software patents. That means each of these 283 different patents covers a computational process found somewhere in the thousands of pages of source code of Linux.

The text of the directive approved by the council of ministers clearly authorises patents covering software techniques.

Its backers claim the requirement for patents to have a "technical character" will exclude software patents - but it will not. It is easy to describe a computer programme in a "technical" way, the boards of appeal of the European Patent Office said.

The board is aware that its comparatively broad interpretation of the term "invention" in Article 52 (1) EPC will include activities so familiar that their technical character tends to be overlooked, such as the act of writing using pen and paper.

Any usable software can be "loaded and executed in a computer, programmed computer network or other programmable apparatus" in order to do its job, which is the criterion in article 5 (2) of the directive for patents to prohibit even the publication of programmes.

The way to prevent software patents from bollixing software development is simple: don't authorise them. In the first reading, in 2003, the European parliament adopted the necessary amendments to exclude software patents, but the council of ministers reversed the decision.

Citizens of the EU should phone their MEPs without delay, urging them to sustain the parliament's previous decision in the second reading of the directive.

© 2005 Richard Stallman (rms@gnu.org). Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article are permitted worldwide without royalty in any medium provided this notice is preserved.

Ouch

Star Wars is made a metaphor for the state of North American society in the New York Times by the author of Snow Crash

Scientists and technologists have the same uneasy status in our society as the Jedi in the Galactic Republic. They are scorned by the cultural left and the cultural right, and young people avoid science and math classes in hordes. The tedious particulars of keeping ourselves alive, comfortable and free are being taken offline to countries where people are happy to sweat the details, as long as we have some foreign exchange left to send their way. Nothing is more seductive than to think that we, like the Jedi, could be masters of the most advanced technologies while living simple lives: to have a geek standard of living and spend our copious leisure time vegging out.

If the "Star Wars" movies are remembered a century from now, it'll be because they are such exact parables for this state of affairs. Young people in other countries will watch them in classrooms as an answer to the question: Whatever became of that big rich country that used to buy the stuff we make? The answer: It went the way of the old Republic.

Banning of speech in China

Entering "I love freedom of speech, human rights, and democracy" in the title of a blog on MSN China results in the following error message

您 必须输入您的共享空间标题。标题不能包含禁止的语言，例如亵渎的语言。请键入一个不同的标题。Which means: “You must enter a title for your space. The title must not contain prohibited language, such as profanity. Please type a different title.”

Never place too much trust in anything big and unaccountable like corporations and all-too-often, governments.

Don Murray on debt relief for African countries

Don Murray comments on the details of debt relief for African countries and ends with this:

Africa is a tangled, bloody web.
But, of course, much less interesting than the Michael Jackson trial.

Henry Morgentaler's honorary degree

I'd like to preface this entry by stating that I may modify it or add to it once I've had the time to listen to the full speech Mr. Henry Morgentaler made as he recieved his honorary degree from the University of Western Ontario. The topic of this entry is a loaded one and I want to express myself clearly and to benefit from the thinking that takes place as I write and reflect on it.

Mr. Henry Morgentaler was born in Poland and survived the WWII in a German concentration camp he was placed in because of the fact that he is a Jew. He studied medecine after the war, lodging with a family required to house him under the UN programme that provided his education. Following this he moved to Montreal and became more and more involved in the cause of abortion rights, opening abortion clinics across the country and several times facing charges and doing time in jail in the process.

There are many stances one can take on abortion, including that it is morally wrong, that it can be justified under certain circumstances such as pregnancy due to rape or threat to the life of the mother, and that it represents the right for a woman to control her own body. The underlying philosophies for one's stance on abortion, likewise, can vary as well. One's stance may spring from religious, feminist, or humanist underpinnings and may vary between people though they claim to be basing their stances on a similar foundation.

A subject as broadly defined and justified and as tied to strong beliefs such as the rights of the fetus and the rights of women is, not surprisingly, extremely prone to heated disagreement and the entrenching of opposed and embittered camps. The language surrounding the issue is polarized, with terms such as "pro-choice", "anti-choice", "pro-abortion", and "anti-abortion" used both to describe and to condemn. Mr. Morgentaler has been right in the middle of this in Canada.

As I stated above, I have not yet listened to the full speech Mr. Morgentaler made. I will though. I have read the CBC article on the speech which included a few quotes. These quotes seem to indicate that as part of his speech, Mr. Morgentaler suggested that abortion offers a woman the opportunity to have children whom they can love and that the increased in the ratio of loved to unloved childred is good for society. He stated that "Well-loved children grow into adults who do not build concentration camps, do not rape and do not murder" and that "the most important factor is that there are fewer unwanted children, fewer children likely to be abused, brutalized or neglected ... children so victimized they may grow up for a thirst for vengeance which seeks an outlet in violence". Mr. Morgentaler also made a causal link between a decrease in crime since 1991 and an increase in the women's access to abortion.

I can understand a conviction that the right to abortion is important because it is part of the right of a woman to wrest control of her body from the state and from a male-dominated society. I can understand the justification of abortion to save a woman's life or because the pregnancy came about through rape. I can understand but do not accept the argument based on the bettterment of society through pruning away those who would not be exposed to loving environments. Mr. Morgenaler's argument has a wierd similarity to the one made by Swift in A Modest Proposal. One difference is that Mr. Swift was attempting to evoke revulsion in his audience. Both arguments, however, involve an argument that devalues human life in the process of pursuing what is presented as a greater good.

My main objection to Mr. Morgentaler's rationale for abortion is that decisions must never be about whether or not people should live or not based on social or humanistic or genetic goals. Mr. Morgentaler does make such an argument since it is based on considerations of human beings and their actions once born, not women and their rights to privacy and control over their bodies. His argument stems from his humanistic values rather than from the femenist values most often associated with the fight for abortion rights for women. In essence, Mr. Morgentaler has carried out a thought experiment in which a fetus is born and grows up unloved. The results of that experiment leads to a decision to condone the abortion of a fetus. This is dangerous. This line of reasoning, besides being used to support abortion rights, can lead to things such as eugenics programs, forced sterilizations, and genocidal campaigns such as occurred in Rwanda and Europe under the Nazis in WWII. How far one runs with this reasoning is, of course, relevant to the judgement of a person's actions. I am not discussing the relative severity of results of reasoning here, but rather the line of reasoning itself. Life must never be devalued in any rationalization for any action. Life is a greater good. If one wants to fight hatred one should fight to do things that show a value for life such as working againsts poverty, inequity, enslavement, violence, and a myriad of other things that devalue life. Working against these things may indeed lead to fighting for abortion rights.

One final note; a reduction in crime rates between 1991 can be explained well by the fact that a large proportion of the population, namely the Baby Boom generation, has passed through its youthful criminal age. Through demographids, there are fewer kids (not fewer "unloved" kids) around, proportionally, to commit acts of vandalism, burglary, assault, etc.

Linguistic ambiguity

Juan Cole tries to address problems arising from Americans having trouble understanding the meaning of the term "fixed around", as in But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. Having grown up with some exposure to the English language as used in North America and in the UK and elsewhere in the commonwealth, I did not have trouble understanding that this term meant that a policy was extablished first and then everything else was made to fit. I think the misunderstanding stems from the misapprehension of the word fixed. Fixed can mean to set in place, to glue, to bind to. Americans probably understand it only to mean to repair, to make whole again. I think that this take on the word leads to difficulty grasping the expression.

I do find that when listening to or reading the English as used in the media in the UK, a higher standard of vocabulary usage is found than when one is audience to English used by the media in the US or Canada. This is evident when one watches even popular comedies such as Keeping up Appearances, or Black Adder, or even Red Dwarf. Most North American comedies end up foregoing linguistic comedy and sticking with making people look foolish by placing them in incongruous situations. It's not that the message is not being conveyed in North America, but rather that the arsenal of words to use is smaller. Perhaps it's not even that; perhaps it's that when one has a less subtle and varied grasp of one's vocabulary one is led to a more literalistic and direct usage of the language. Perhaps knowing lots of words is not enough. Perhaps one needs to strive to know words intimately in all their shadings. I think that the result of the failure to do so can be a diminished capacity for subtle communication.

Mixed up world

Maine border officials confiscated a homemade sword, a hatchet, a knife, brass knuckles and a chain saw stained with what appeared to be blood from a Gregory Despres the other day but let the man, sporting blood-stained clothes, into the US. Soon thereafter, the brutally slain bodies of the two people he had killed, a country musician and his wife, were found.

One might think that this is a case of incompetence and an example of how the system is failing us. However, the Maine border officials seem to have jumped through hoops trying to find a way to detain Mr. Despres but in the end let him in because he's a US citizen. Cooperation between Canadian and US officials soon did lead to the apprehension and arrest of Mr. Despres. Actual human thought and social interaction took place here.

In other news, US airport screeners labelled a woman a terrorist and put her on a watchlist because a misplaced bread knife used earlier to make sandwiches was found in her luggage. Officials seem to have taken pleasure in telling the woman that she is now considered a terrorist and that her constitutional rights do not apply.

Setting aside the gruesomeness of the first crime, I find the behaviour of the officials in the case of the bread knife to be much more disturbing and lacking evidence of actual mental processing. I'd much rather deal with the thoughtful and diligent Maine officials than the airport screening zombies.

Border security

A few weeks ago our family went to Michigan for the funeral of one of Nancy's uncles, Tom Dempsy. We always fear getting pulled over at the border, not because we have something to hide but rather because it's a hassle and is carried out by people with unquestionable power to mess up your day.

We arrived at the border and in due time pulled up to the customs booth. The border guy and we had the following exchange:

• You Canadian?
• Yes.
• What is your destination?
• Grand Rapids. We're going to a funeral.
  
• Sorry to hear that. Dutch?
• Yes.
• Bye.

If you were the head of a terrorist organization the best way to get something into a country would probably be to pander to the "feelings" of border officials. It seems that "feelings" are used all to often, leading to the very real risk of arbitrary action and decisions made on the basis of prejudice. To get more accurate in detecting true threats it would probably be best to keep track of who is being hauled in for a detailed inspection and match that up with actual results. This is a basic rule of behavioural psychology. To improve a skill with inherently poor success/failure feedback you need to improve the quality of the feedback. I would much prefer this to the current favourite technique of putting all of your personal data in a huge database and using that to judge you. This is corrosive to a free society and reflects society's current love affair with databases and technology over human wisdom and oversight.

UPS a daisy

Well. I made a complaint to UPS yesterday about a driver who stops most days on University by Union station right where my bus picks me up. He stops during rush hour, usually for ten minutes or so. I feel that this slows traffic down rather a lot and is an unfair tradeoff between the time he saves and the time he wastes for hundreds of commuters.

I made a call to UPS to complain about this yesterday and just got a call back from a very knowledgeable guy who knew that there's a laneway behind the building. He said he'd talk with the driver and ask him to park in the laneway.

We'll see what happens. I'm glad to say I was polite during the whole exchange and was greeted back with equal civility and professionalism. I still feel a bit like a whiner though.

As I understand it, the power a pope has to declare someone a saint is tied to Jesus's telling Peter that whatever Peter "bound on Earth would be bound in Heaven". The Pope is said by those in the Roman Catholic church to be in the line of Peter and thus able to declare someone to be a saint. The CBC has an article declaring that Pope John Paul II will get his ride to sainthood sped up.

VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI is fast-tracking his predecessor's nomination for sainthood, telling clergy in Rome Friday that the traditional five-year waiting period will be waived for John Paul II.

It strikes me as odd to have what is supposed to be a special authority bestowed on the Pope by God become manifest as a beaurocratic process that can be fast-tracked.

To be declared a saint by the Pope, a person is required to perform a miracle from beyond the grave. I wonder what miracles John Paul will do post-ascendum. Hopefully he will come through with one or two. Otherwise he'd be slowing down the fast-tracking.

Or perhaps, like Peter, the current Pope will have a vision in which he is told that now that Christ has risen there is no longer a distinction between Jew and Gentile, slave or free, ordinary believer and saint. Perhaps, as with Peter's vision, if such a dream came to the current Pope he'd have to see it in re-run several times before he saw through the veil of tradition.

Acts 10:34 Then Peter began to speak: "I now realize how true it is that God does not show favouritism but accepts men from every nation who fear him and do what is right.

Woody Allen Quote

"I think that I'm cynical in general, but for me cynical is reality, with a different spelling."

CBC Commentary item on anti-semetism

Heard a commentary item on the CBC yesterday on anti-semetism to mark Holocaust Memorial Day. While the topic is vital I don't agree with the way the argument was put. Essentially, Murray Teitel, the author, says that criticizing Israel is tantamount to anti-semetism by other means.

While those who rail against Israel may be anti-Semitic, I can't see how this is necessarily so and I also am puzzled that Mr. Teitel, a lawyer, would think so. Surely one can criticize the actions of a country's government because one genuinely believes that they are wrong.

I personally am no fan of the current Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon. I find him to be swaggering, predatory, and opportunistic, not at all admirable or the man to lead Israel to peaceful co-existence with its neighbours. I am on the other hand a great admirer of a previous Israeli prime minister Yizhak Rabin. Nancy and I seriously considered naming our son Yizhak, after both the biblical and political figures. Where does that place me? Is one an anti-Semite if one is horrified at the continued suicide bombings by Palestinians yet also notes that many of the Palestinian children killed by Israeli troops were shot in the head or chest (i.e. probably not accidentally)? I think that the truth is that there's plenty of hatred to go around and that the painting someone as anti-Semitic for criticizing Israeli government policy is yet another foolish attempt to try to make black and white something that clearly is not.

Painting people with valid criticisms with the same brush as one paints true purveyors of hatred is illogical and has the effect of allowing those who really are anti-Semitic to hide amidst the resulting confusion. I think that an extra effect of aggressive arguments such as the one expressed by Mr. Teitel is to foster a sense of invulnerability amongst those in charge in Israel. This can lead to a weakened sense of accountability and an increase in ill-considered action.

Finally, the aggressiveness of Mr. Teitel's argument and its all-encompassing scope seems to me to put it push it away from the realm of the rational and toward that of propaganda. I don't trust propaganda from any source.

This commentary piece was made to mark Holocause Memorial Day. I wish we could do so with more clarity, for clarity and resolve are truly required to both remember the Holocaust and act on its lessons.

Looking at Wikipedia, I examined its section on logical fallacies. Mr. Teitel suggests that because other countries have committed horrible atrocities, those committed by the state of Israel are not significant. This would seem to be an example of a suppressed correlative fallacy. When Mr. Teitel suggests that since if you are anti-Semites you will criticize Israel therefore if you criticize Israel you must be anti-Semitic, he is using the fallacy of affirming the consequent.

Real estate tactics

Wired has a good article outlining findings related to real estate agents and their behaviours when selling a house. Holding out for an extra few percentage points when selling is not really worth the effort and so is not often done. The study this article is discussing compared ad wording and selling prices for homes sold by real estate agents versus ad wording and selling prices for homes sold by and owned by the agents. When selling their own homes bide their time and hold out for more money. Also, wording used in ads is telling. Less concrete words (e.g. well maintained, cozy) are hints to other agents to bid low and more concrete words (oak flooring) are hints to bid high. The name of the game is to move product at the most efficient combination of time on market and price for the agent.

One conclusion of the article is that knowing what's going on in terms of motivation, tactics, and language can put the person selling a home more in the driver's seat.