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So Bush is flaunting his success at stopping a terrorist attack three years ago. Notice how he has to brag about things he's done in his previous election term.
Of course, being a CNN article, it neglects to mention whether any of the new US laws, such as the patriot act, helped stop the attack. However, reading the article, I see two interesting pieces of information:
Bush credited international cooperation in the war on terrorism with saving American lives.
"You'll all recall that there was the arrest of the shoe bomber Richard Reid in December of 2001, and he was instructing the cell leader on the use of the same technique," Townsend said, but later added it was not clear if Reid was directly involved in the Los Angeles plot.
And, if I remember correctly, that shoe bomber was stopped by fellow passengers - not by airport security (correct me if I'm wrong; it's been a while). So basically, Bush is bragging about stopping an attack that was, in fact, foiled by the international community and American citizens. The new patriot act, and all the other anti-terror legislation had absolutely nothing to do with it. The one thing he might claim helped is the new incentive for inter-agency information sharing. An incentive that, by all accounts, is hardly working well. |
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That's right, Canada now has a right-wing government, so we're well on our way to becoming the 51st state.
Or maybe we'll keep our provincial borders and become the next 10 states and three territories. Regardless, we just finished electing Stephen Harper and his cronies, and they are the usual self-aggrandizing, right-wing assholes.
It's probably not as bad as that for several reasons, but this predicament shows the problems with the Canadian electoral system. The Liberals are generally disliked by Canadians now because of the sponsorship scandal. The NDP simply don't have enough people running to run the country, and there is nobody else to do it. That leaves the Conservatives, who are the old radical Reform party with a thin veneer of civility that embodies itself in the creepy demeanour of Harper. Everybody distrusts him, but nobody really knows why.
Interestingly enough, about 36% of the Canadian population voted Conservative, while 30% voted Liberal and 17% voted NDP. That gives a total of 47% who wanted a left-wing government and 36% who wanted a right-wing government, and yet, the right-wing government is now the ruling body. I've left the BQ out of this, since they are neither left- or right-wing as far as I can tell; they are simply prostitutes who sell themselves to the highest bidder. Whoever is in power will get their support if they can extract preferential treatment for Quebec.
However, at least these people aren't US right-wingers. They actually have some decent ideas, such as getting rid of the costly gun registry created by the Liberals (which was a shambles), fixing the day-care idea that the Liberals came up with, and creating guaranteed wait times for health care - maximum waiting times before treatment is received. They certainly have their share of bad ideas, such as getting rid of the Kyoto protocol (they prefer a "made in Canada" solution, so to speak), cutting taxes, and increasing defence spending (though that could be a good thing if it's spent in the right areas).
Furthermore, the bad ideas may not even pass. The NDP and the Liberals are probably going to prevent the Conservatives from doing anything too radical, since the Conservatives have a minority government: without the support of either the Liberals or the Bloc, they cannot pass a single bill. The Bloc will sell their souls to split Canada, but they aren't stupid. I don't think they'll stand by while the Conservatives wreck the economy or the environment, and the Conservatives won't simply allow Quebec to ignore Ottawa, so they will very likely force compromises from each other.
Anyway, as unfortunate as these circumstances are, they will likely remain for a while, because the parties simply don't have the financial resources to run another election soon. Therefore, it's quite likely that all concerned will have to put aside their differences and make this government work, which is something they didn't do the last time. |
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I've been reading a book called The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, and it has proven to be very interesting. The argument that Sam Harris expounds is that faith is an inherently destructive force that is leading humanity, inexorably, to one of two possible outcomes: the annihilation of faith, or the annihilation of man.
So how is faith supposed to lead to the destruction of man? Through weapons of mass destruction, of course. When suicide bombers begin strapping fission bombs to themselves and walking into Central Park, the end will be near. Such claims are an old mainstay of the religious right, but with Iran's imminent nuclear armament, and North Korea's instability, perhaps the idea of terrorists obtaining nuclear weapons isn't so far-fetched. Nonetheless, that a critic of the Bush administration would use the very same ammunition against them is deeply ironic.
However, Harris also likes to attack the religious moderates of all colours of the political spectrum. The problem, as Harris sees it, is that religious moderation lends legitimacy to the extremist views because an extremist is simply a moderate who has gone just a little further in his belief. Combined with the moderate belief that all religions are equally valid, this view renders it difficult, or even hypocritical, for a moderate to criticize an extremist. He sees Islam to be the worst offender here because there are so many calls to violence in the Koran and so few means to counter the call to violence, all of which are easily bypassed.
While these sweeping generalities are argued at length in the book, Harris' prose presents some problems for someone who expects rigorous justification. Many of his ideas are good, but often he does a poor job of arguing them, often appealing to straw men and emotion to make a case. For example, he tries to argue that Nazi Germany's persecution of the Jews was couched in religion, even if the outward appearance was completely secular. While the entire argument is hazy, the most notable fallacy comes when he tries to argue that the church is partly responsible because it didn't try to stop it (though he does also argue that the church aided the Nazis). Another example is when he says something like, "Will it take a new sunrise over Los Angeles to put aside these bedtime stories?" Though not a direct quote, it illustrates his emotionally charged writing.
One final controversial argument that I'd like to mention is Harris' dislike of pacifism. He considers pacifism to be deeply immoral because it makes non-violence more important than the survival of our species. In other words, pacifism doesn't scale; if everyone were a pacifist, then one person with a weapon could annihilate humanity. However, to truly make pacifism immoral requires that the survival of our species be considered important. As someone who does, I have to agree with Harris' analysis on this point.
Regardless of how much I agree or disagree with Harris, the book has proven interesting. It was worth reading, even with all the shortcomings of the logic, because many of his points are valid, it is well researched, and the viewpoints are a refreshing departure from the standard rhetoric of complete tolerance of liberals and divine righteousness from the religious right. |
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So it seems that CNN has gotten hold of what our dear Prime Minister has said.
It's really quite funny how Americans can illegally (by the rulings of American courts) tax our lumber exports, and continually try to browbeat us into joining them in their selfish war in Iraq, and then turn around and say that we are responsible for the breakdown in relations between the two countries. The blame for the poor Canada-US relations lies squarely on the shoulders of the Bush administration who simply expect Canadians to do what they tell us.
Martin's stance against the US is working, as is apparent from the recent reduction in lumber kickba^W tariffs. Pretty soon, he'll probably have them reduced to 0. Maybe we can even recover the illegally applied fees on previous imports. I think the US government should also have to pay for damages in lost sales, but I know that will never happen.
Maybe, if he keeps it up, he might even be able to knock some sense into GWB's head about global warming. With some help from Bill Clinton, of course. |
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CNN is running an article about how a teenage girl committed suicide with the help of some people on a usenet group. Aside from the usual silly ranting about how internet forums are brainwashing people into doing awful things, like commit suicide, the article illustrates an extremely poor reporting style. Any basic primary school student knows that there are six important questions that must be answered by any decent news article: who, what, when, where, why, and how?
The who and what are pretty straightforward. A 19 year old girl committed suicide. She swallowed potassium cyanide in a Florida hotel room two years ago, so that covers how, where, and when. What the article completely forgets is why she did it. Apparently, the reporter chose to ignore that question entirely, presumably with the hope that anyone reading the article would simply assume that the internet forum was what caused it. Of course, the flaw in that argument is that she had to seek out the forum in the first place, so something obviously caused her to decide to start frequenting a suicide newsgroup.
Are people really this stupid, or does this reporter just think they are? I find it hard to believe that anyone could come away from that article without asking themselves why she would suddenly start talking about how she was going to kill herself on a public forum, but apparently, that's exactly what this CNN reporter expects.
I think I'm going to stop reading CNN. It rots the brain. |
| » SomethingAwful.com lives up to its name |
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Right here
The executive summary is that some guy who couldn't write English to save his soul started asking where to find buckshot on a forum. He made it clear that he wanted it for self-defence because some guys came around shooting his pumpkins every Halloween and had injured his family doing so. The forum members, after explaining why buckshot really was better than bird shot and giving some hints about where to find it, gave him advice not to shoot anyone, or even point a gun at anyone, and told him not to come back.
A little while later, the guy shot and killed two people, and would have killed more if the gun hadn't jammed. He then went home and killed himself. He was a 19 year old autistic male (he seemed to have Asperger's syndrome). It's unclear why he shot those two people. If the media gets hold of this, I do hope they don't try to blame this on the Internet, autism, or somethingawful.com...
Nov. 6th, 2005 @ 12:49 am
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| » Back alive |
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I just got back from the hiking trip to the Cascade Mountains. It was an interesting trip because we ended up getting stuck in rain, snow, fog, and hail. The top of the mountain was quite cold, and enough snow had fallen to make the descent somewhat dangerous, especially with the large number of small paths with a rather large dropoff to one side. Unfortunately, due to the snow and fog, I didn't get a lot of good pictures, either. We also arrived a bit late, and, on top of getting lost for a little while, barely made it back before dark (in fact, we weren't really out of the woods before dark).
But despite all this, the hike was fun, nobody got hurt, and I do have some decent photos which I hope to post in the next few days, as soon as Flickr stops rejecting all sane attempts to upload photos, and I actually get a chance to shrink the photos down to a manageable size (currently, they are ~1 MB a pop).
Oct. 3rd, 2005 @ 01:41 am
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| » I haven't posted in a while |
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It's been a while. That's because I've had my laptop die (Dell was quite happy to replace it, but I was without an internet connection for a while), then I moved to Seattle and I've been trying to deal with the American way of living. I still don't have an SSN, but at least I've now got a phone, internet, furniture, and other things I need.
Anyway, working for Amazon is pretty nice. It pays well and the work is pretty interesting, and there are a few nice added benefits, like good weather, discounts on books, and still being close to Canada. I had to buy a digital camera so I could take pictures of all the interesting places I've been going. Maybe I'll post some pictures here some time. I'm going hiking this weekend and then it's off to Vancouver the next weekend, so I should have a lot of photo opportunities.
Sep. 26th, 2005 @ 11:39 pm
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| » Machines and ethics |
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One problem that is present in the idea of moral relativism (the more extreme forms) is that you cannot judge another person since his morals are different from your own. Such reasoning leads to difficulties because it is then impossible to punish criminals with a clear conscience, because it is impossible to judge them guilty of any crime.
Perhaps one way to solve this is to determine whether the act was wrong according to the person committing the crime. Of course, this approach is ladden with problems because it is impossible to get an honest idea of what the perpetrator considers immoral if the perpetrator does not consider honesty to be a necessary part of morality. Furthermore, it also means that those who are willing to admit to transgressions and try to hold themselves to higher moral standards are more guilty than those who honour no moral code, since if you consider nothing immoral, you cannot perform an immoral act. Clearly, such a system would be disastrous.
A more practical way of solving the problem is to recognize that, according to moral relativism, everyone is bound by their bodies and environment to act in a certain way, and therefore free will is an illusion. This logic degrades humans to the level of machines and the ones who are acting in ways unacceptable to society may be considered broken and in need of repair or disposal. The laws of the land may be considered what is acceptable to that society and repair and disposal are akin to rehabilitation and execution.
Therefore, it is possible to justify our society's judicial system using moral relativism, though the argument for it is just as distasteful as moral relativism itself.
Jul. 27th, 2005 @ 03:14 am
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| » So we passed bill C-38 |
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Much to the annoyance of Stephen Harper. I fail to see what the big deal is about all this. Why is this threatening the pillars of our society and one of our oldest institutions? Do these people believe that all the heterosexual people out there are going to rush to convert to homosexuality now that they get some additional tax breaks? Or that homes will break up and children will not have parents if we allow gay people to have equal rights to heterosexuals?
Of course, this whole debate is inane when you put it in context. Marriage itself is just a silly ceremony where two people promise not to screw other people in exchange for a reciprocal promise, some tax breaks, and the ability to sue the pants off the spouse if he or she breaks that promise.
It's not even like the war on Iraq where there is at least something tangible at stake (oil, and defense spending). It's just some arbitrary institution that happens to work well because monogamy turns out to be a practical way of life for most people. Of course, the religious folks have a good reason for opposing this. After all, thousands of years ago a bunch of people worshipped some insignificant idol by practicing sodomy. Therefore, sodomy is a mortal sin against god for all time. Furthermore, marriage must be between a man and a woman to the exclusion of all else, because, well, that's how it was originally defined. And we all know that people who lived in antiquity are so much smarter than we are today.
Jul. 22nd, 2005 @ 04:57 am
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| » Worst of all possible worlds |
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Gottfried Leibniz was a mathematician and philosopher in the 17th and 18th centuries. He was one of Newton's contemporaries and co-invented calculus independently of Newton (much of the syntax we use today in Calculus is the result of Leibniz).
Leibniz also had a theory that this must be the best of all possible worlds, since God could have created any world and he would have chosen only the best.
First, this assumes that there is a god, but let's assume there is one for the purpose of this argument.
Second, it assumes that god is good. If god is not good, then he may have created the worst possible world just to be sadistic. However, once again, let's assume that god is good.
Finally, it assumes that god, being good, must create a good world, in fact, the best one. This is simply not true. Consider the bible, which seems to suggest that this world is only a test before we can enter heaven. If that is true, it is much more likely that this world is, in fact, the worst possible world so that the test would be all the better. If the world were perfect, then it would not make for a good test of character. Therefore, if we assume there is a good Christian god, then we can assume that he has created the worst possible world that would suit his purposes.
That should make all the Christians feel good about themselves.
Jul. 14th, 2005 @ 12:05 pm
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| » I know some people like this |
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I didn't know that sheep were quite this dumb.
I wonder whatever gave them that idea.
Jul. 12th, 2005 @ 03:14 am
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| » Almost Four Years |
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It's been almost four years years since the September 11th attacks and now we have another terrorist attack on western civilization. It's very sad that this happened, but there is a bright side: it seems that at least some measures are working. After all, blowing up a few buses isn't nearly as bad as flying airplanes into skyscrapers. The number dead is two orders of magnitude smaller, for example.
However, there is a much darker side to these attacks. First, it shows that we are still vulnerable to attack. Though nobody can ever be secure, this attack brings it much closer to home. Second, attacking the public transit system is likely to cause a lot more fear than hijacking an airplane, since with airplanes, you can just increase security at airports and declare the problem solved. Now, Londoners who ride the bus have to be looking around wondering whether that man sitting in the adjacent seat is carrying a vest filled with C4, and there isn't a lot that can be done. Anyone walking down a city street can attach a bomb to the bottom of a bus and press a trigger, or carry something onto the bus.
Last I heard, there were some 700 wounded and approximately 40 dead. That is a lot of people, especially considering there were only four bombs. That is a tragedy, but I hope that the British government does not use this act as an excuse to restrict the freedoms of the British people as American politicians have. That would be an even bigger tragedy, because doing so concedes a victory to the perpetrators of the crime.
Unfortunately, it seems the fear-mongers have started in Canada.
"Spain, Australia, the U.K. - they were on that list. And it's not to scare people, but people need to be vigilant and to know that the threat of terrorism is very real. It's not just an abstract concept, it's there and it's real."
I don't think there are a lot of people paying attention to her. What exactly are we supposed to be vigilant of, anyway? Until she can give something more concrete, I'm assuming she's just out to scare people, because she's certainly not helping anyone.
Jul. 9th, 2005 @ 12:22 am
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| » Halfwits and Charm |
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You know what the worst kind of halfwits are? The helpful ones. There are two reasons for this diagnosis. First, the helpful ones tend to pass on their malformed ideas to the rest of the world, and second, they invoke empathy.
Normally, halfwits are ignored, or at least not taken too seriously, but occasionally, one comes along with just the right mix of charm, knowledge (and lack thereof), and generosity to be a real danger. The worst part about these people is that, unlike normal halfwits, I can't, with good conscience, castigate them. After all, their hearts are in the right place; they just aren't very good at helping.
So the approach I use is to mildly reproach them while pointing out the correct methods. Of course, being halfwits, these people tend to take this as encouragement or healthy debate and will either assume that I am the one in the wrong (it's been known to happen, but not in this case), or decide that it is time to further expound on their radically misinformed ideas.
Oh well. Sometimes it just doesn't pay to be nice.
Jun. 1st, 2005 @ 03:04 am
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| » Will Wonders Never Cease? |
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I never thought I'd say this, but I've actually gained some respect for Eminem.
Eminem calls Iraq war "mess," blames president
I know this is probably old news to a lot of people, but... wow. But I guess it does make sense. Eminem does say he didn't have a very good upbringing, IIRC, and it would only make sense for him to see himself in the soldiers in Iraq, persecuted by the very same system that persecuted him.
Dec. 12th, 2004 @ 02:43 am
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| » Well, here goes nothing. Literally. |
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I'm not much of a diarist so I don't expect to be writing personal accounts here. Furthermore, I don't like to reveal very much about myself so that's another reason why I won't be using this for diary entries very often, if at all.
So, knowing this, the obvious question an observant reader would ask is why I bothered creating this journal in the first place. The reasons are twofold.
First, I have taken to reading and occasionally posting in other people's journals here and I thought it would be more welcoming to users if they were greeted by more than a blank page when they clicked my name (although, admittedly, this is little better).
Second, I may post things here occasionally, which, knowing me, will most likely be rants and raves, or just pieces of code. This page can serve as an introduction (read warning) to that so you know what to expect. Feel free to respond to anything I may write (and I do mean "may") and have no mercy in telling me I'm wrong. I don't even mind spelling flames, if you feel the need.
On that note, I'm going to conclude this perfunctory tour and leave this entry for any miscellaneous things anyone wants to post. Perhaps I will end up using this thing and perhaps I won't.
Oct. 30th, 2004 @ 06:02 am
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