Take Care Of The Little Ones

Today is the 54th anniversary of the death of my father's mother. A farmer woman in the rough and unforgiving land of rural Guyana, she had succumbed to a stroke in the prime of her life, breathing her last words into the ear of her eldest son, imploring him to "take care of the little ones." Thus, at the tender age of 19, my then uneducated and impoverished father undertook the care and education of his nine younger siblings, and managed to somehow raise five children of his own. In the twilight of his life now, he has oft remarked that after the death of his mother, he would never again cry at someone else's funeral (a vow I know he has broken at least once.)

His mother would never know that she was to be grandmother to some 30-ish individuals, and great-grandmother to a new brood, some of the former even aspiring to be authors, scientists and blowhard bloggers. Who knows what the great-grandchildren will aspire to become? Peacemakers, poets, plumbers, postmen, philanthropists or tyrants? Or maybe simple farmer folk like their departed ancestress.

I watched March of the Penguins earlier this week. It is, as you know, a heartwarming (and chilling) tale of the hardships and sacrificies endured by Antarctica's Emperor Penguins to ensure the welfare of their progeny. It behooves us to remember that such tales of supreme sacrificial parenthood are to be observed daily in the human world, as well. The story of the death of my grandmother, while of personal importance, is nonetheless a common one incarnated in a hundred thousand families around the world. Life is struggle and pain, peppered with moments of genuine transcendent joy. At the end of our lives, which shall we remember more?

Frozen Badness

(Note: Before reading this post, please consult the very serious Deonandan.com disclaimer.)

First, the news:

• In Manhattan there's now a law that allows cops to ticket a childless person who sits on a park bench near a playground. So retarded is this law that a 47 year old woman, waiting for a festival to start, was given a potential $1,000 fine. Jeebus, people. The overwhelming majority of childless people are not paedophiles. We have this ridiculous impression, created by the media, that every other strange man is waiting to steal our children. It is a curse upon civilization when basic liberties are curtailed to protect against extremely unlikely circumstances.
  


• Of course, another dog-fucking story. (For those of you new to this site, I do not include these bestial links because I advocate the behaviour; quite the opposite, really. Rather, they are exemplars of my thesis that such events are being increasingly reported in the mainstream media.)
  


• Want to see Jon Stewart versus drunken blow-hard Christopher Hitchens, he of the poor research? Click here.
  


• Want to read the transcript of Christopher Hitchens versus ron Reagan, he of the questionable sexuality? Click here.
  
  
• A new study suggests that societies are much worse off when citizens purport to believe in a god. Read it here.

Here's an angle on both global warming and the increased tendency toward viral pandemics that I had not considered before: the fact that ancient diseases may be waiting for us beneath polar ice. As is well known, both bacteria and viruses, some thousands or hundreds of thousands or, I think in one case, millions of years old have been revived through the gentle thawing of antarctic ice under laboratory conditions. If successful revivification can be done in the wild with natural thawing, this is bad news indeed. Modern organisms have no natural immunity to diseases of yesteryear, so there's a fair chance some of these pathogens will prove lethal to either humans or to our animal and plant slave species. Perhaps some of these bugs will go airborne. And given the propensity for modern viral diseases to reach pandemic status very quickly --due in large part to growing population densities and to the ease of air travel, both of which eliminate populations' natural defence against epidemics, i.e. geographic isolation-- there is a real chance that one or more of these frozen baddies will wreak untol havoc upon the Earth.

Stay tuned, kiddies. The world just got even more interesting.

Some Cheese With That Whine?

Sorry, folks, no biting political insights today. Still recovering from a work-related all-nighter, and am becoming progressively discouraged by the growing pile of work before me. Stupid me, I keep adding to it. In addition to things I actually get paid for, I've now agreed to: help start a research network in Trinidad, help start an NGO in Calcutta, judge a literary contest in Trinidad, and judge a science paper contest here in Ottawa-- all within the next 3 months. No wonder I now sleep on my couch, fully dressed. Who's got time to make the bed or change into pyjamas? Or to, you know, have a personal life?

The up side of overwork is that it has kicked an unused part of brain back to activity. I now have two ideas for new books.... the question now is, when will I have time to write them? Maybe if I cut back on the blogging....

Oh, one more anecdote before I dive into the pile of papers on the desk. Continuing with the theme of the Universe mocking my stated (and genuine!) heterosexual orientation, I came home last night to discover in my mailbox.... a free sample box of tampons. Thanks, God. Appreciate it. Love ya.

Lick That Toast!

What is this? The US government holds a fund-raiser so citizens can pay to rebuild Iraq out of their own pockets? And they only raised $600?!!!! Oh man, I don't know where to begin with that one. Best if I just leave it alone.

There's a bill before the US House that would permit the automatic collection of DNA from anyone arrested, but not yet convicted, of a crime in the USA. The DNA would enter a national database. Wow. For a nation that rejects the idea of a national ID card to nonetheless permit the creation of a national DNA database points in only one direction: the road to confused fascism. The government wants your DNA? Just arrest you for jay-walking or loitering and drop the charges a few hours later. Of course, for fools like me who have already shipped our DNA off into the postal ether, this is hardly a concern.

Meanwhile, Cousin Ajay sends us this story about a new technology that lets your toaster imprint the morning news or weather report on your toast. That's right: your toast. Just imagine the fun. News of a massacre? Cover it with strawberry jam. A flood? Dunk it in your coffee. Britney Spears gossip? Smother it with butter and... you get the picture.

Maybe I Should Just Get The Ass-less Chaps And Be Done With It

Good afternoon, my droogies. I'm back from a fun weekend in Toronto where I overdosed on all things lesbian: dinner with some lesbian friends, followed by the birthday party of a girl I met on lavalife who is now a lesbian, followed by yet another borthday party of yet another lesbian friend. The funniest part was during party #1, when a woman said to me, "I feel for you. It must be hard being gay in Ottawa." It's understandable, of course, since I was looking particularly glorious that night.

Damn, though, that's twice in one week. I need a girlfriend.

The ride back to Ottawa was with yet another group of very nice young people (some of whom are probably reading this right now). One fellow helped put some things into perspective. I've lived a fairly adventurous life, having sought out and engaged in a variety of extreme activities in extreme parts of the world. But for some people (in fact, sadly, a great many people) the adventure comes to them. This fellow told of being smuggled out of Afghanistan on camel-back during the Russian occupation, and of living in a refugee camp in Pakistan and India; happily he is now a well-adjusted law student right here in Ottawa. His refugee experience is the norm for a large number of human beings, and it behooves us to remember this.

Andrew Sullivan draws our attention to this book, with the commentary: when does a political ideology become the equivalent of a religion? When it attempts to indoctrinate 4-8 year olds.

Now here is an interesting and scary story. It appears that the US military has been training dolphins to attack humans by using toxic darts. (Who knows how they fire the darts? Male dolphins do have prehensile penises, I'm told.) But in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, some of these armed dolphins have escaped into the wild, and may be hunting human beings! Here's some fantastic commentary from Rotten.com:

"What's next, teaching cats ninjitsu?"

"What's with this 'could be' carrying toxic guns shit? Did the dolphins just pick up a couple of dart guns that were lying around? Did they raid the arms locker in a drunken rage?"

"I said I want sharks with friggin' laser beams on their head, not dolphins with toxic darts! "

Take A Hint

"Mr. President, this job can't be fun for you any more. There's no more money to spend--you used up all of that. You can't start another war because you used up the army. And now, darn the luck, the rest of your term has become the Bush family nightmare: helping poor people.

"Listen to your Mom. The cupboard's bare, the credit cards maxed out. No one's speaking to you. Mission accomplished. Now it's time to do what you've always done best: lose interest and walk away. Like you did with your military service and the oil company and the baseball team. It's time. Time to move on and try the next fantasy job. How about cowboy or space man?

"Now I know what you're saying: there's so many other things that you as President could involve yourself in. Please don't. I know, I know. There's a lot left to do. There's a war with Venezuela. Eliminating the sales tax on yachts. Turning the space program over to the church. And Social Security to Fannie Mae. Giving embryos the vote.

"But, Sir, none of that is going to happen now. Why? Because you govern like Billy Joel drives. You've performed so poorly I'm surprised that you haven't given yourself a medal. You're a catastrophe that walks like a man. Herbert Hoover was
a shitty president, but even he never conceded an entire city to rising water and snakes.

"On your watch, we've lost almost all of our allies, the surplus, four airliners, two trade centers, a piece of the Pentagon and the City of New Orleans. Maybe you're just not lucky. I'm not saying you don't love this country. I'm just wondering how much worse it could be if you were on the other side.

"So, yes, God does speak to you. What he is saying is: 'Take a hint!'."

-Bill Maher

Who Should Run The World?

Sent in by Mieke K, apparently copped from The New Yorker:





Cousin Ajay sends us this story about the French government providing financial incentives for French women to reproduce more. My male droogies, who knows of a cheap charter flight to France?

Ooooh, this is sweet. To watch Bill Maher verbally give Tucker Carlson an anal fisting, download this clip. Why does Carlson continue to be given his own shows? The man serves no purpose.

On a similar note, watch Phil Donahue battle with Bill O'Reilly in this clip. The combatants make reference to someone named Jeremy Glick. Glick is not this guy, but rather the son of a man killed in 9/11. Glick has nonetheless become a peace activist, and thus, to O'Reilly, a traitor. In an appearance on Fox, Glick was demeaned and threatened by O'Reilly; the transcript of their encounter is here.

The BBC is doing this cool online poll in which you are asked to pick 11 people to run the world. Here were my picks, chosen from the available list:

JK Rowling
Balthasar Garzon
Steve Jobs
Hugo Chavez
Vaclav Havel
Bill Clinton
Desmond Tutu
Noam Chomsky
Aung San Suu Kyi
Dala Lama
Nelson Mandela

Make your own list by clicking here.

Not That There's Anything Wrong With It

It seems Europe's vaunted EasyJet has expanded its cut-rate EasyCruise into the Caribbean! Sweet! Thanks to Cousin Ajay for the link.

Suicide by tree?

Here's a sad story about someone kidnapping a man's dog, then sending the poor man a ransom note and a bag of poop as proof-of-life. The money quote: "It looked like my dog's poop, but I'm not a dog poop analyst."

Last night I went to a mixer for local South Asian "professionals" in Ottawa. A good time was had by all, especially by yours truly, since the event was chock full of gorgeous women --and y'all knows how much I likes my gorgeous women. One particular buxom lass approached me and asked, "Are you single?"

"Why yes," I said, suddenly thankful for all the unnatural effort I put into my stylish appearance and demeanour.

"Good," she said. "Because I have a friend I'd like to fix you up with." While initially disappointed, I was nonetheless intrigued, since good looking women often have good looking friends. She continued: "So you're interested then?"

Never one to pass up a chance to allude to my recent heart break (hence still being single), I replied, "Of course. My girlfriend and I broke up some time ago."

"Girlfriend?" She reeled, "I thought you were gay!"

Note to self: need to stop putting so much unnatural effort I put into my stylish appearance and demeanour.

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Sleep Paralysis Redux

As I've alluded to several times, late last year was a period of intense stress and emotional turmoil for me. So it wasn't surprising that my brain started playing tricks on me about that time. Some of you may recall my "sleep paralysis" episode of that period. My blog entry from Nov 25, 2004, is reprinted here:

Okay, I have a very creepy dream to relate to you all. I know, I know, everybody's dreams are boring; it's true. But mine has a phsyiological moral to it. Last night (morning) I went to bed at 4:AM, 'cause I work late these days. No sooner had my mind drifted to neverland when I sensed an evil presence in the room, and felt strong hands pinning me to the bed, holding my ankles and shoulders. I could see no faces and, most terrifying, I couldn't even speak! I kept trying to yell, "f@ck off!" but all that dribbled out of my mouth were incoherent mutterings. Some seconds later, I was okay again and wide awake. The clock read 4:20 AM, and the weirdest part of all was that my ankles and shoulders still tingled from where they had been held. It hadn't felt like a dream at all, but rather like a hazy drugged experience.

Now, the paranormal enthusiasts out there are immediately thinking of stories of "the Old Hag" or the incubus or succubus myths of the Middle Ages. Maybe even the precursor to alien abduction? Meanwhile, the pragmatists are thinking poor widdle Raywat had a bad dream and now he's awwww upset. But the truth is that I experienced something that is physiologically common but not well known or understood: Awareness during Sleep Paralysis, or ASP.

Sleep paralysis consists of a period of inability to perform voluntary movements either at sleep onset (called hypnogogic or predormital form) or upon awakening (called hypnopompic or postdormtal form). See, your body goes into paralysis just before REM sleep to prevent you from acting out your dreams. But sometimes it does so prematurely, or fails to come out of paralysis once you awake. The strange thing is that, almost universally, the experience is accompanied, as in my case, by a sense of presence of a "malevolent being" who is often suffocating you or sitting on your chest. It really is one of the most terrifying experiences of my life, and yet it is simply a --well-- brain fart.

So if your brain ever farts, don't call the paranormal police. Just mutter, "f@ck off!" and everything will be okay.

Some months later, I discovered an epidemic of sleep paralysis cases in Zanzibar, with the added characterstic of forced sodomy. Let me point out that there was no hanky panky involved in my sleep paralysis experience! Now my readings are pointing to a connection between sleep paralysis, post-traumatic stress disorder and panic attacks. Cambodian refugees, for example, report a high incidence of sleep paralysis episodes. Meanwhile, a friend who does research on the paranormal suggests that the prevailing neurological models do not adequately explain the demonic experiences of sleep paralysis. Rather, he suggests that perhaps it is merely an altered state on consciousness that permits us to perceive things that are truly there, but which are typically shrouded from our view. Creeeepy.

Arrrrr

Where to begin today, my droogies? How about with reports, summarized on this conservative blog, that the USA now imports more goods from China than it does from Canada? This is actually very big news. Historically, Canada and the USA have been mutually dependent trading partners, which is one of the reasons that a US President's traditional first trip abroad is to Ottawa (a tradition broken, of course, by the current President In Chimp). The dethroning of Canada as America's biggest source of imports reminds me of Pierre Trudeau's failed, but valid, attempts more than two decades ago to diversify the Canadian export portfolio. It's ironic that Canada's present conservative ilk, traditional enemies of all things Trudeau, are calling for a return to his multipolar trade vision.

I forgot to mention that yesterday was the official international Talk Like A Pirate day. 'Twas me bad, maties. So in honour of Deonandan.com's favourite pirate lass --regular reader Michelle-- we link to this story about a new pirate novel authored by the late Marlon Brando. Yep, fat ass pirates sailing from buffet to buffet.

Hey, I'm thinking of going to India for a month at the end of the year. Anyone else going to be there? Wanna hang out?

*** UPDATE ***
Hw does everyone like the new colour scheme? Funky?

Cow + Magic = Cheese

This evening I'm off to walk my ex-girlfriend's dog and to have dinner with her parents, absent the ex-girlfriend, of course. What a magnificently troubled life I lead.

This past weekend I attended the Toronto concert of the guru of the sitar school where I am a student. Ustad Shahid Parvez provided perhaps the finest live performance of any musical instrument or style I have ever personally witnessed. I was able to record two minutes worth on my trusty Treo, and I will post the sample here for download once I figure out how.

NASA is offering a quater of a million bucks to whoever can design a better shovel for digging up lunar regolith. Anybody got any ideas? Need an epidemiologist on your team?

Okay, here's a reasoned attempt to explain why so-called "Intelligent Design" (ID) does not belong in classrooms as an alternative "theory" to Darwinian evolution. The author's thesis is essentially that a scientific "theory" must enable its adherents to make predictions; ID does not and so cannot be put forward as an alternate "theory" for the diversification of life. I am no defender of ID, of course, but I don't think this refutation is valid. The article cites the philosopher Popper, with whose precepts I was beaten over the head in graduate school. Popper stated that a scientific theory must be "falsifiable", or present its own opportunities to be proven false.

The problem is that, to my way of thinking, there's nothing intellectually wrong with operating within a different paradigm, one where Popper's guidelines do not apply. Using Popper's rules, the author has successfully convinced me that ID is not technically a scientific theory, according to the definition of theory embraced by most of the scientific world. This in no way disproves ID. Those making policy decisions on behalf of public education, and those who must choose what to what to expose their children, care little for the formal definition of theory. Rather, they want to know which truth is the true truth, paradigm be damned.

So in matters like this, the best authority is often The Onion. This graphic also describes well the folly of ID:




And for the record, while I am opposed to the teaching of ID in schools --for the simple reason that the observable evidence does not point in its direction-- I'm quite open to its idea, subject to further evidence being introduced. It would unscientific of me to discard an idea outright without reserving the right to re-examine it in the future, should circumstances indicate.

On a completely different topic, the NY Times is suggesting that Canada already has its own codified version of the US's detestable "extraordinary rendition" practice, citing the Arar case and others. This is certainly not surprising, though it will no doubt shock some of the more naive members of our society. My suspicion is that the security and military authority of this nation operates in relative isolation from official government instruction. Governments change every four years or so, sometimes drastically so; but the same dinosaurs with the same relationships with their US counterparts remain fixed in positions of power within this complex. I fully expect that over-eager and arrogant senior beaurocrats have developed and are enacting their own foreign and security policies, some of which skirt both Canadian and international laws. I'm not giving the government a free pass on this scandal, but rather am merely suggesting that it is very possible that these activities were occurring without the Prime Minister's knowledge or imprimatur. If this is the case, it speaks not just to the moral dissolution of our nation's powerful, but also to the existence of what amounts to an unelected parallel government in the form of bureaucrats who answer to no one... much like the Americans have been plagued with for generations.

ex-Presidents and Moon Jockeys

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Thanks to Brother Hrab for forwarding this article about former Guyanese President Janet Jagan, who is a Jewish woman from Chicago. Mrs Jagan is quite the historical figure, having suffered through arrests and harrassment with her late husband, Guyanese hero Cheddi Jagan. In fact, a little known movie titled Thunder In Guyana details her life and political struggles. She continues to wield much political power behind the scenes in Guyana and has in recent years collected as many enemies as admirers. I make no judgements about her politics or machinations, since I'm not sufficiently educated about the details of her political life, and am biased by her association with Cheddi Jagan, a man greatly admired in my family. But she is without a doubt one of the most fascinating women to ever ascend to the office of head of state --in any nation.

Back in 2000, when I was awarded the Guyana Literature Prize (for Best First Work), I had the great honour of meeting Mrs Jagan. She escorted me into the theatre and sat next to me during the reading of nominees, chattering on about her grandchildren in Canada. I had no idea who she was, so caught up was I in my own self-importance and nervousness. (I didn't have a speech ready and was fretting about what I was going to say in front of this crowd of dignitaries.) When it finally dawned on me who this person really was, I was quite abashed. Here's a pic of me with former President Jagan:




Now I have to get myself a copy of that movie!

Cousin Ajay sends us this article about lab-grown meat. That's riight, no animals are killed in the production of this flesh. So will vegetarians take to it? Depends on whether one eschews meat for moral or health or taste reasons. I, for one, look forward to its introduction into the marketplace. Animal slavery is real. Food production from animal sources is cruel and terrible. I love my meat, though, so my moralistic preaching is quite hollow and hypocritical. The advent of lab meat will allow me to preach with a tad more moral authority ;-)

It seems a Vienna man is offering to sell his kidney for the purchase price of a condo. The sale of organs is prohibited in many countries to prevent the abuse of the poor and to quash the emergence of an organ-trading black market, as was so presciently predicted in the novels of Larry Niven many decades ago. On the other hand, are we not free to sell whatever we own? And what do we own more undeniably than our own body parts? I argue for the rights of prostitutes to "sell their bodies", based on the same principle, and for the rights of any individual to inject his body with whatever substance he chooses, so long as the results of such actions do not directly deleteriously affect others; a la J.S. Mills's treatise that "your rights end where my nose begins." So what do you think, my droogies, yea or nay for the right to sell your body parts?

Apropos of nothing, I end today with a new story about NASA's long term plans for a $100 billion return to the moon. I fully support this plan. Yes, it's costly and the money could be spent doing much good here on Earth. But unlike military, industrial or entertainment-based wastages of money, any country's space programme has one important characteristic: it represents a first step in a long term enterprise to move large numbers of human beings permanently off the Earth. And, to my way of thinking, nothing is more important to ensure the survival of the human race.

Bureaucracy? I'll Show You Bureaucracy

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Below is an actual photo of George W. Bush writing a note to Condoleeza Rice at a recent conference. Not photoshopping, courtesy of Reuters:





When you gotta go, you gotta go.

Here's a story about a Florida mother complaining to the school board that her 16 year old daughter had to read Bapsi Sidhwa's 1992 novel, Cracking India (upon which Deepa Mehta's excellent film Earth was based). The mother's objection is that the novel contains a brief scene that describes heterosexual oral sex. Newsflash to the mother: your 16 year old daughter knows all about oral sex. And if she doesn't, she's gonna learn real soon. Why can't these people do their own parenting and leave literature alone?

Okay, further to Mischa's comment yesterday about National Geographic having some confused tracking system for his DNA kit, I thought I'd share the following story with you, just to emphasize how bureaucracies screw up at the highest levels.

In the summer of 2003 I was living in Washington, DC, and had just been invited on my first field mission to Guyana, which was to depart in mid-July, a week away. My Canadian passport was to expire in September and, for some reason, Guyana requires all visitors to have passports that do not expire for a year, otherwise entry is refused. (Don't ask why. It's not as if people are beating down the doors trying to illegally get into Guyana!) So I had a week to get a brand new passport, a task that would not be a problem if I'd been living in Canada, but was a little tight since I lived in the USA.

The embassy informed me that it could be done in 72 hours with special dispensation. I had to get a special form from them, then run around madly to get new photos and letters of support from CIDA and my client, CSIH. Because I'd been in DC for only 2 years, no one local was allowed to sign my photos, so I had to run around getting other forms and hire a notary public, all of which took a couple of days. Then I paid a large sum to courier my package to Hull for priority processing. And I waited.

And waited. Now, I was to leave on a Saturday, but the rules state that passports can only be shipped to the embassy, which is closed on weekends, so I had to make sure to get mine by Friday. I called every day, and each time was told that it had not yet arrived. I called the passport office in Hull Friday morning and was told that the application had just been processed and that I would receive my passport in another week! Another week!!! Keep in mind that by this point, the process had cost me hundreds of dollars.

So I had no choice. Saturday morning, equipped with my soon-to-expire passport and a sheaf of letters of support from everyone I could think of --CIDA, CSIH, the Canadian embassy in Guyana-- I headed to the airport. The Guyanese embassies in both DC and Ottawa had told me that there was no way I would be let into the country. In fact, I was told that the airline would not even let me on the plane! I got to Miami and attempted to board the flight to Guyana. The airline official took a second look at my passport, screwed up her face and said, "Hmmm, expires in September." My heart stood still. "Okay," she said. "Have a nice flight." And that was that.

But the story doesn't end there. When I returned to Washington a week later, I of course got a call from the embassy telling me my passport had finally arrived. Grumbling, I went to pick it up. Here's where the story gets good. When I picked it up, I was told it had been waiting there for me for two weeks. That's right, it had arrived in 72 hours, just as it was supposed to. But for some reason the officials in Hull still thought it was being processed, and the officials in Washington had no idea it had arrived.

That, my friends, is bureaucracy.

We end today with a public service annoucement. Deonandan.com guest blogger Sheila is trying to get rid of her apartment in downtown Hull. If anyone in the Ottawa area is looking for a new place, she's offering her 2-bedroom place for $685/month starting October 1st. If anyone is interested, please leave a comment below or email me (ray at deonandan dot com) and I'll pass it on to Sheila.

Income Disparity, The Trots and Ethereal DNA

Man, wasn't the Kevin Bacon Oracle from yesterday's post fun? Kudos to Mischa for finally finding an film actor who was un-linkable to Mr Bacon.

The astute among you will note that there is a new Auctions section to this website (see the navigation menu on the left). That's right, I've decided to make my Ebay sales public, so that you, my droogies, can bid on the crap not deemed worthy of remaining in my hallowed presence. So break open your piggy banks and buy my outdated and broken electronic devices!

Are you, like me, annoyed by automated phone operators? This site gives hints on how to outsmart the automaton and get to a real human operator.

Now, this NY Times article mentions that the world's 500 richest people have as much wealth as the world's poorest 416 million! Frankly, I expected the number to be in the billions, but it's still pretty shocking. The first response is naturally outrage that so much wealth disparity can exist in a world in which hundreds of millions are dying of starvation and lack of basic resources. But let me suggest that the issue here is not so much the disparity --our objection to which betrays a touch of schadenfreude-- but rather that the disparity exists contemporaneously with widespread suffering. How would we feel, for example, if the same disparity existed, but at the same time no one in the world was starving, deprived of medicine, education or shelter? I suspect that probably we'd still be outraged, but somewhat irrationally so, no? Anyway, it's something to think about.

It seems that British vacationers in Cyprus were freaked out when, on the anniversary of 9/11, two Pakistani Muslim passengers on an airplane were "acting suspiciously." They pair was removed and questioned. What was their strange behaviour? Well, one of them spent too much time in the toilet before the plane took off. He apparently came out sweating. Jesus, people, maybe the man had diarrhea?!

Okay, remember that National Geographic DNA kit I sent away for? The one that will track my ancestors' migration across the continents? Well here it is:




I'm about to swab my cheeks and put the sample in the mail. Hell, over the years I've sent over the Internet my standardized test scores, descriptions of my intimate life, photos of my driver's licence and even my retinal scans! It was only a matter of time before I shipped my DNA into the ether, as well. Twenty years from now, I won't be surprised to find a hampster in a lab proudly wearing my little rodent face.

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Buttholes and Bacon

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My new slow-cooker is 0 for 2. I've tried beef curry and now turkey chilli. The results aren't bad, they're just not as good as the traditional method. Any slow-cooker suggestions from the ether?

Want to know why the French population is better informed than us? Might have something to do with their TV news anchors.

Want to know why the Japanese have better hand-eye coordination than us? Might have something to do with their video games, such as this one, in which the player tries to stick his finger up someone's butthole. You know, this is what I always thought hunters should do to prove their manliness: don't shoot animals, just sneak up on them and stick a finger up their buttholes. I know, I know, South Park thought of it, too.

You know that game about Kevin Bacon? Apparently Kevin Bacon has something to say about it. More importantly, Cousin Ajay sends us this online automated version. It's erie. I've been trying obscure actor names all day and can't seem to get more than 2 degrees separation from Kevin Bacon! (I even used my buddy Andrew Currie and he was only 2 degrees away!)

Finally, a creative way to raise money for charity. Some highschool kids are blasting their school with Hanson's 'Mmmbop" until someone gives them enough money to stop.

The Price of Gas

Forty-eight hours in, and the first ever Deonandan.com survey has already collected over 20 responses. Thanks, people. To the best of my knowledge, this kind of study has not been done before, so we're all engaging in a little scientific frontiersmanship. To those who have not yet done so, please take the survey by clicking on the icon below:



While you're at it, there's another group doing a survey of blog readers (with different goals from mine). If interested, you can take their survey here. A description of their project is given here.

As I was away this weekend, I was not able to reflect on the anniversary of the events of September 11. Not the events of 4 years ago, but rather those of 1973 when US-backed General Augusto Pinochet toppled the democratically elected government of Chile and began his lengthy reign of terror atop that besieged nation. US imperial apologists are, of course, still in the game, sounding ever more ludicrous with each passing failure of their favourite kakistocracy. Darth Vadum has the nerve to comment that Pinochet "did Chileans a service when he overthrew the communist Salvador Allende, rescuing the Chilean people from tyranny". If there was ever a blog post that so clearly revealed the delusional nature of rightwing apologists, that was surely it.

So while I was in Montreal this past weekend, I learned that residents had recently taken to the streets to protest the upward surge in gas prices. Of course, it's fundamentally ludicrous to hold the city, provincial or even federal governments responsible for the pricing of a global commodity controlled largely by foreign powers... but whatever turns your crank, I say. (Pun intended.) Protesting the pricing of a commodity suggests in part that one has a right to this particular commodity, and I have a couple of things to say about that.

Let's begin with Brother Margolis's most recent commendable column, in which he summarizes Bush's monumental failures. He ends the article with the line, "Iraq's oil exports plummeted because of the U.S. invasion, contributing to today's shortages and high prices." The events in Iraq are one source of variable oil pricing, as is the tragedy in New Orleans, in which the hurricane damaged or forced off-line a series of important refining and processing plants. There is, of course, a political component, as well. OPEC began flexing its muscles in the 1970s when they realized they could coerce powerful governments simply by modulating their pricing strategies.

But ultimately it comes down to supply and demand. The demand for oil has never been greater and will only accelerate, mostly due to the expanding industrial economies in India and China. When those two countries are producing at the same rate as Japan, Germany and America, we will really see an energy crisis. The supply of oil, meanwhile, remains in question. The rightwing idealogues are fond of citing a growing number of reports showing that there is plenty of oil within the Earth's crust, enough to sustain our global economy well into the next century. This might very well be true, I don't know. But I do know that the easily obtained oil is almost gone. The rest of it is under oceans, under tundra, soaked into shale or otherwise geologically unavailable, given our present technology and level of desperation.

This price of gas in North America is not going down anytime soon. In fact, I would argue that it has been artificially depressed for years, and is only now approaching its proper level. Those of us who don't drive are not immune to this fact. Oil fuels the trucks that bring produce into our cities, for example. No amount of conservation is going to eliminate our dependence. The artificial low price of gas is, I believe, responsible for North America's irrational reliance on truck fleets for transportation. Freight trains and waterways are comparatively unused in this country, yet such media are more efficient. I predict that in 20 years, barring remarkable advancements in internal combustion technology, North American truck fleets will be substantially reduced and air travel will be prohibitively expensive. Oil is not a right, it's a luxury we have become far too dependent upon.

The price of gas may drop below a dollar sometime in the new year, but it won't stay there long. The Amazing Rayskin has spoken!

Survey Says!

Greetings from the bus to Montreal, my droogies. Before I put on the headphones and let the Sandman take me, I need to link to the Deonanddan.com survey...

HERE

Please be honest and please only respond once. Thanks!

Feh

You know, I was up all night designing an online survey to deliver to you, my droogies. I was going to unveil it this morning in all is glory. It was going to run for months, at the conclusion of which I would have shared its findings, specifically what kinds of people are lurking about Deonandan.com; who are you (mostly) silent folk who click on this site 200 times a day?

Well, the survey provider keeps crashing, the bastards, even though I pay for their services. With any luck, they'll have fixed the problem by tomorrow and I'll be able to post the survey then. So stay tuned!

In the mean time, John J. sends us this story about how Indian victims of the Asian tsunami are still homeless. Now that all the initial international concern has worn off, no one seems to care about these people anymore. I suppose we can keep giving to the Red Cross, but I'm wondering where all the money is actually going? Hmmm.

The same source sends us this story about the newest in weird Chinese culinary experimentations. It seems some people are pretending to sell expensive tiger meat, but instead are actually selling donkey meat marinaded in tiger piss. Reminds me of a day I spent in Shenzhen 13 years ago. I ate deep fried rat on a stick (it looked like chicken!) while a fellow defecated over a sewer grate in front of me. Asia: land of hygiene. Ray: hours of puking.

And continuing with Deonandan.com's ongoing obsession with stories of a particular sexual bent, here's a story of a Kenyan man from the town of Bomet arrested for allegedly screwing a goat. Here's the money quote:

"District Commissioner Samuel Otieno, however, downplayed fears that Bomet is winning a dubious reputation as a hub of bestiality.

'These things happen all over the world, there is nothing peculiar about Bomet,' he said."

Racism in New Orleans?

Thanks to John J. for pointing me to National Geographic's human migratory DNA study. I have sent in my $116 for a DNA testing kit to have my ancestry tracked by the scienists described on the website. Check back in a few months when I will report that I am descenced from Genghis Khan, Darius, Akbar and Rumplestiltskin.

It seems Germany's Anarchist Party has put out a TV commercial to describe their platform. If you view the video, it will show that German anarchists are all about gettin' it on with drunken, topless fat chicks. Any joke I insert here will necessarily insult someone, so this one time I will desist.

Back to New Orleans.... Andrew Sullivan sums up what I tried to say in an earlier blog post:

"The fundamental reason George W. Bush was re-elected was his commitment to national security and a government able to deal with post-9/11 real crises and calamities. That was his promise. And when the first real post 9/11 test came, he flunked it."

A lot of discussion is going on about whether or not the calamity has a racist dimension. There are those among us who see racism at every turn, and those who refuse to see it even when it grabs thm by the ears and delivers a sloppy wet kiss. Were the largely white-skinned emergency responders and leaders a modicum less motivated to go that extra distance to rescue non-white victims? I think this is likely, since everyone among us is more emotionally drawn to the perils of those who most resemble us. But would such a phenomenon manifest as the criminal inability to respond as was seen in New Orleans? I think not.

Instead, the determining factor here --as it was with the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004-- is poverty. Poor people have more fragile homes, less access to vehicles and information, less access to services and good infrastructure that would allow an easy evacuation. Poor people are more likely to suffer mental and physical disability, making their exodus all that more difficult. Poor people are extremely less likely to wield political clout and to complain when their needs are not being met. Poor nieghbourhoods are less well mapped, more poorly patrolled and have lesser representation within the larger societal support networks.

Moreover, poor people tend to have fewer personal and familial safety nets, hence are less likely to have a safe place to which they can evacuate; and their neighbourhoods are more likely to be fraught with crime. These factors combine to make poor people less motivated to evacuate, since there is a perception that their possessions are more likely to be looted by their neighbours at first opportunity. And yes, poor neighbourhoods tend to suffer from more violent crime, thus making them less attractive a destination for service providers.

In New Orleans, the poor people tend to be Black. So I believe that what we are seeing isn't so much overy racism, but rather an unfortunate confluence of poverty and race (which, of course, is typical across urban America). As always, those who have the least tend to suffer the most.

No More Fellating The President

(Note: Before reading this post, please consult the very serious Deonandan.com disclaimer.)

Not surprisingly, the regular apologist set is bombing the blogosphere with rationalizations for the US federal government's poor respose to Hurricane Katrina. First, they tried to slough off responsibility to the states and municipalities. But, as I showed yesterday, Bush's own codified response plan makes him responsible for disaster response. The new tack is to argue that the quagmire was unavoidable, as in this post from Ezra Levant's Shitgun. For these people, if George Bush tackled them to the ground and shat a steaming turd onto their foreheads, they'd find a way to argue he was sharing the benefits of trickle-down economics.

Their argument is complete bullshit, of course. Here's why. A typhoon this weekend in China forced the evacuation of one million people when levees and dams burst and flooding occurred. Damage is in the hundreds of millions, yet only 45 people were killed. the Chinese, endlessly mocked by some Americans for their poor infrastructure and lack of respect for life, managed to save their people, despite much fewer resources and a very vulnerable population. Do you really believe for a second that the Americans, who export disaster response strategies and expertise, are unable to do the same?

As mentioned in an earlier blog post, individual citizens have been able to get to affected areas in New Orleans and are helping at the grassroots level. Why is FEMA unable? If a dirty bomb were to be "detonated" in American city, there would be a similar explosion of refugees. Surely, Homeland Security has modelled that response plan? And anyone who knows anything about refugee camps --which is what the collections of people in various sports stadiums are-- knows that hygiene and security are the immediate priorities. The cynical among us would argue that the US federal government seems to know a lot about creating refugees but nothing about caring for them.

Could it be, as has been voiced by such public figures as Kanye West (watch this video, and check out Mike Myers completely caught in the headlights), that there is a racist element at play? I'm loathe to think so, but again the troglodytes on the extreme Right are fanning this flame. Check out this discussion on DailyKos, and pay particular attention to the quotations from widely cited supremacists, such as Steve Sailer, who said:

"It also should have been expected that a large fraction of New Orleans's lower class blacks would not evacuate before a disaster. Many are too poor to own a car, or too untrustworthy to get a ride with neighbors, or too shortsighted to worry..."

Map that against Barbara Bush's comment about refugees in the sports stadium, that "...so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them." She may not be Steve Sailer, but her complete lack of understanding of pain and privilege lends some insight into the mindset of her devil spawn.

Meanwhile, even the lowlifes at Faux News are coming around to see their demon masters as the incompetent amoral fucks they really are. This video shows field reporters Geraldo Rivera and Shepherd Smith daring to refuse to fellate the President, while the blowhard Sean Hannity weakly tries to get them back on track. Now, I've known some Faux News reporters. They've all told me that they're sick of having their reports politicized, but had given up trying to fight back. The reporters tend to be reasonable and apolitical, at least in my experience; it's the talking heads, the pundits, who are the partisan hacks. So it looks like the reporters have finally had enough.

But, Smith and Rivera, there's a lot more blood on your hands for years of partisan reporting. This one breakthrough in honesty does not forgive years of misdeeds. Besides, as this article reports, Geraldo is still busy disgustingly manufacturing photo ops for himself among the suffering in New Orleans.

Meanwhile, the world is responding. It seems odd that poor nations like Bangladesh, who has donated $1 million to Katrina relief, would be able to give so much, considering that that money could be used to stave off the next installment of Bangladesh's annual devastating floods. But it's the gesture that counts. Major style points to Sri lanka for giving a symbolic $25,000, and to Hugo Chavez's Venezuela, who couldn't resist adding a slight political spin to their donation by giving it to the Red Cross, that charitable entity so hated by the American Right.

Want Your Heart Broken?

Then watch this: the President of flood-wrecked Jefferson Parrish in Louisiana, Aaron Broussard, breaks down while responding to a question on Meet The Press.

Amazingly, right wing "news" site Newsmax.com is already in spin mode, heartlessly calling Broussard's breakdown a "performance." Of course, the nutbar echo chamber jumped right on the bandwagon.

For all those who wish to defend the US federal government's role in the ongoing debacle that is Katrina --you know, with the argument that it's ultimately the responsibility of the local officials to restore order-- I give you this:

"[During times of] any natural or manmade incident, including terrorism, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the population, infrastructure, environment, economy, national morale, and/or government functions, [the federal government pre-empts local and state government in its responsibility to act quickly.]"

That is from Bush's own 2004 National Disaster Response Plan. The clusterfuck that is the response to Katrina in New Orleans is the responsibility of FEMA, a federal agency, and hence the responsibility of the President and his kakistocracy. That this happened in the wealthiest nation in the world is ridiculous. That this happened after 4 years of preparing for terrorist calamity is unthinkable. What if Al Qaeda, and not Katrina, had burst the levees? The result would have been the same. Indeed, I find it unthinkable that a sabotaged levee would not be a terrorist scenario modelled by the feds. What then has Homeland Security been doing all this time, with its enormous war chest and mandate? Where is their response plan? Is the automatic response to mayhem always going to be, "let's bomb some country that can't hurt us"?

When Bush promised his people that he would do all to prevent 9/11 from happening again, did he mean, in the words of Andrew Sullivan, the specific case of hijacked planes flying into buildings in New York and Washington? Or did he mean, as the world took him to mean, the plight of hundreds of thousands of Americans fleeing for their lives within an American city? Surely his voters assumed the latter. Any viable terrorist response plan would have been called into action to save the people of New Orleans. Conclusion: there is no viable terrorist response plan. Is anyone really surprised? The "I will keep you safe" President is, of course, full of shit. And, again, innocents are dying because of his incompetence.

Go. Now!

Memo to potential commenters: if you're an arrogant dumb-ass, you will be treated as such and therafter ignored. Now we begin....

"Chinese Taoists say you become what you hate. In a zesty irony, the U.S. now finds itself in a similar position as demonized Saddam Hussein. Saddam [too] had to use his Sunni-dominated army to hold Iraq together by fighting Kurdish and Shia rebels. His brutal police jailed tens of thousands and routinely used torture." -Eric Margolis

Sing it, Brother Margolis. So if there any more birdbrains out there who still wish to argue that the Americans went to Iraq to save the Iraqis from Saddam, shut the fuck up already. I have no time to waste on you.

Over at fark.com, visitors were asked to photoshop movie posters that combined famous children's movies with famous horror movies. The delightful results are here.

Behold a lesson in how to live your life. Are we all paying attention? Especially all you armchair political critics who blithely advocate for war or make similar assertions about events you actually have little first-hand experience about. It's one thing to rant about the government or about naive do-gooders who should have done this or that. It's quite another to get up off your ass and actually do something. Everyone has the right to criticize his government or even other governments. But no one has the right to argue --as some do, when trying to defend the US invasion of Iraq, for example-- that any number of deaths were worth whatever political outcome was intended, not unless it was clearly to save many more other lives or unless it was your life or the lives of your loved ones that are being bartered. To come close to this kind of moral authority or understanding, you must have first got up off your ass and actually engaged in the world, seen misery first hand, and tried to do something about it. Armchair warriors and pundits, in the words of Mick Foley, you are all invited to line-up and apply oral suction to my groinal area.

What the heck am I talking about? I'm talking about the bravery, initiative and true living displayed by three Duke University students who got up off their asses and delivered aid to victims of Hurricane Katrina. They have now seen real suffering, have tried to do something about it, and can now speak convincingly of the true effects of policy on such matters. We can all do this, dammit, whether it's starting an NGO locally or in a developing country, joining an advocacy group or volunteering in a clinic or a shelter or a school. God knows, I try. And sometimes I've succeeded and sometimes I've failed. But God knows, I try. It's bloody heart-breaking sometimes, but it's the only way to live a real life and to accrue true moral currency.

So, I implore you, if you do care about this world --and I know you do, because you're reading this blog-- then get up and do something. Don't just have faux intelligent debates about the world, go live in it.

The Sports Cult

As many of you know, I used to write a very popular column on professional wrestling for what was, at the time, the Internet's 2nd most popular wrestling news site. I stopped writing the column because professional wrestling ceased being interesting to me. I used to defend its majesty of storytelling, its roots in the Greek theatre and in medieval morality plays. But the rampant sexism, racism and homophobia eventually became intolerable, even for me. Several of my columns generated a fair bit of email, however, not the least being one on whether pro wrestling qualifies as a sport. (It doesn't.) Interestingly, many of the emails were furious and hate-filled... because in the column I had dared confess that I do not watch sports.

It's true. Let me say it again for the record: I, a heterosexual North American male, do not watch sports. Not hockey, not baseball, not football, not even the Olympics. Occasionally, I will catch the odd boxing or MMA match, but only to bring back memories of my feeble martial past.

I was unprepared for the vitriol that followed that confession. Thus I was not entirely surprised when my Toronto Star article on Natalie Glebova, which satirically compared beauty pageants to sporting events, was met with a disapproving email from a sports fan who clearly could not understand the concept of satire. This lead to an email from a friend (who shall remain nameless to save him similar email bile) who, in support of my position, waxed vitriolic on his disgust for "the sports cult." I hope that he will not mind that I have excerpted a portion of his email here:

"One of the rules in this country is that you do not make fun of sports. It offends... the ones who, in a previous era, would have made a cult out of cold showers for young men... The sports cult makes it hard to get people thinking about, oh, say, science and math and engineering -- things that require mental effort and emotional stamina -- not just the ability to wave a stick around."

Athleticism has a role in every society. Young men, in particular, with too much testosterone and little guidance will more likely turn to violence and thoughts of sex crime --trust me, they will-- if an outlet is not provided for their boundless energies. Both sexes benefit from the discipline, fitness, body awareness, camaraderie and character that competitive sports can offer. I'm all for the promotion of exercise and athleticism as part of a balanced and healthy life curriculum. When I was young, my friends and I played touch football almost every night after school. We were no jocks, but we got our fresh air and our exercise, built some close friendships and developed an important sense of body awareness. When I was 19 I seriously started martial arts training, and this improved my life in a hundred important ways.

I can usually identify someone with no experience playing sports. They're the ones who stop at the top of excalators to look around, not realizing that a line-up of people is accumulating behind them. They tend to have minimal awareness of their bodies or of those around them.

But advocating an athletic lifestyle is not the same as supporting, as my friend calls it, a "sports cult."

Rather, the cult manifests on a more overt level. The promotion of team athlete from mere healthy participant to gloried gladiator creates the foundation of the sports industry. When egos become attached to athletic accomplishment, the aforementioned benefits of athleticism are erased; athletes become jerks who are more likely to have thoughts of violence and sex crime. Moreover, the cult of sports permeates to the most banal levels. In many bars and restaurants, the men's bathroom is peppered with excerpts from the local newspaper's sports pages, the implication being that men must be interested in sports, so much so that that is what we wish to read when peeing.

If our society truly valued learning and high intellect, then the space above our urinals would feature word puzzles, real news, excerpts from books or even a map of the world so we can learn geography while we pee. Let us call this the urinal quotient, the measurement of society's value system by what we are expected read while urinating.

My friend believes our society's kowtowing to the sports cult to be indicative of what he calls the "Anglo-Celtic" value system. There is some truth to this, as the sports cult is marketed in tandem with other pasttimes which the media promotes as being exclusively Anglo-Celtic, most of which can be gleaned from watching any beer commercial (all of which feature the same kinds of people). Other cultures' value sytems are not much better in this respect, however. As the world's culture continues to become homogenized, let us hope that abasement to the sports cult is not a characteristic that survives the melding.

There was an episode of the defunct sci-fi series Sliders in which the heroes travelled to an alternate Earth on which intellect was as highly respected as sports. In fact, the two had melded. That world's celebrities were super-geniuses who could perform great mental feats while playing a basketball-like game. I bet their urinal quotient was much different from ours.

Re-Designing The World

Here's something I've been thinking about for some time, and finally had a talk about it with a sociologist friend last night. It is my opinion that the current operating structure of NGOs (non-governmental organizations) is insufficient and ultimately destined to fail. Experience has shown that grassroots efforts, i.e. agencies and programmes born directly of the target population's stated needs and fueled by their energies and manpower, are the most potent and ultimately sustainable. They are also, for the most part, the most ethical, since the agendas of external donors and managers are mostly kept out. This is why when we started our tsunami relief agency in Sri Lanka, we chose the grassroots model.

But anyone who's ever visited an NGO-colonized nation, like India or Guyana (places whose NGO culture I know a lot about), quickly realizes that each agency is a monolith and that the plurality of NGOs acts in loco of the state, performing services that the state is supposed to provide. The result? A culture that obviates the need for the state to take responsibility for its people. NGOs are supposed to be an intermediate step between crisis and stability. Instead, they have become the norm and the first stop for anyone in one of these countries seeking a service.

Complicating this scenario is the nightmare of donor coordination. In Guyana, for example, our project, spearheaded by the CSIH NGO and funded by the Canadian government, found some of its services being duplicated by an American-funded enterprise that arrived a year later. The Guyanese government wasn't about to complain, since their funding was effectively doubled. And since funding of each enterprise by its sponsor government is a bureaucratic process, it's near impossible to re-task the project after it's been greenlit. Thus, it became a Herculean task to get all the local NGOs together for monthly meetings to minimize overlap and to make sure we were all on the same page.

So there are many forces conspiring to prevent a unified national presence in any country, among them competing donor agendas, each NGO's political slant (an abstinence programme has little overlap with a pro-condom programme), the host nation's own power trips, and the mind-dumbing bureaucracy that coordination often entails.

Yet I maintain that we need to compel the evolution of NGO "colony" to state-run services, or else forever be tied to this unacceptable donor-recipient relationship with the developing world. I'm interested in exploring new models of NGO governance, new models for building communities of NGOs and for facilitating the transfer of NGO best practices into state policy, to encourage the eventual transfer of complete service delivery responsibility to a better equipped and empowered host government. And I'm serious about this. If we as a concerned community can assemble a viable methodology, I would very much like to implement it as a test case in any number of possible nations which might benefit from this approach.

So please think about this and send me your ideas. If there's enough interest and a critical mass of enthusiastic thinkers, then the formation of a working group is not out of the question. This is an example of how the blogosphere might actually positively affect the world in a real physical sense.