The Gospel Of The Clueless

"There is an almost universal quest for easy answers

and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people

more than having to think."

- Martin Luther King

Do you get the feeling lately that there aren’t very many people paying much attention these days? I don’t mean paying attention to an individual issue, I mean paying attention period. Everywhere I go whether it is online or in the real world, I run into people who are so lost in their own little time and place they are completely oblivious to what is going on around them.

I was downtown the other day, stopped at a red light. A nicely dressed man, about forty, crossed the intersection in front of me with his finger buried up his nose. I can understand people in their cars forgetting that their windows are actually two-way glass and indulging in a little nasal mining but out on the street?

He struck gold and hauled it out of his nose to take a good look at it in the middle of the intersection, pausing to hold his finger up to seriously examine his find. What in God’s name could anyone possibly have up their nose that they would want to examine it? Were they expecting that this one time, whatever it is would be different than the hundreds of times before?

It’s incredible. People are completely tuned out.

Everywhere I go people are on their cell and smart phones. They’re texting, emailing and talking and they do it while they’re driving and while they’re trying to cross the street without regard to personal safety or the safety of others. Too often, they are so focused on the momentous communication they just received that they are completely unaware of the half-ton truck in front of which they’ve just walked.

I watched one young woman walk out into an intersection against a red light. She was so focused on her mobile phone, she didn’t notice either the light or even the intersection until the traffic slammed to a screeching halt to avoid running her over. Then, of course, she was suitably annoyed that someone almost hit her and forced to look up from her phone.

It is life without thought; life without even an attempt to think.

Earlier today I was listening to a radio talk show I particularly enjoy and they were discussing the issue of swaddling. You know, swaddling; as in “and Mary wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manager.” That kind of swaddling.

After centuries of swaddling newborns, apparently it has suddenly become dangerous. It arrests the development of newborns, could cause hip dysplasia, lead to SIDS and death. Where is the evidence to support this nonsense? Where are the overwhelming reports of cases of swaddling having threatened, injured or killed babies?

There aren’t any, of course. Like so many of the solutions being offered today, they are solutions by self-anointed experts looking for a problem.

The sad thing is that because we have become dumber, a lot of people will jump on the anti-swaddling issue just as so many jumped on the “vaccinations cause autism” bandwagon. God, even Oprah was behind that cause and her devoted fans followed her mindlessly as if she was a female reincarnation of Moses leading them out of bondage to the Promised Land.

It was a crock, a fraud by a single doctor in England who falsified a study for no more noble reason than the cash he received from a pharmaceutical company. Hundreds of thousands stopped having their children vaccinated for diseases like polio which was all but eradicated and is now making a comeback thanks to this stupidity.

It wasn’t that there wasn’t more than ample information available at the World Health Organization and government health departments around the world that contradicted the report. There were but people were too lazy to do any independent research. People like Oprah and Jenny McCarthy said it was so and that was good enough reason for them to risk their children’s lives.

To this day, even though the fraud has been exposed, there are still far too many who believe that vaccinations cause autism because people like Oprah once said so.

We have more information available to us than ever before thanks to technology but technology has dumbed us down to the point of becoming almost mindless. It has made us intellectually fat and lazy; too lazy to actually research things for ourselves and then analyze critically what we’ve learned. Why bother when you have Wikipedia and thousands of blogs and social media sites just itching to tell you the truth?

We can no longer separate fact from opinion let alone from fiction or fantasy.

There was a time when we actually paid experts to provide the facts for our encyclopedias. Now, any idiot with a keyboard and an Internet connection is an expert and there are plenty more idiots just willing to believe whatever they type.

It is the Gospel Of The Clueless.

The technology whiz kids predict that soon our refrigerators will maintain an inventory of the food they contain and when we’re running low, they will order more for us. Samsung is already producing a refrigerator with Wi-Fi for that amateur chef who suffers separation anxiety from being away from the computer for more than a few minutes.

Isn’t that just what we needed; machines that think for us and keep us connected to the Great Mindless Void that the Internet has become? Our phones are already smarter than too many of us and now we’re getting ready to have household appliances that will be smarter than us as well.

At this rate, we’ll be lucky if most people remember how to tie their shoe laces in the not too distant future although some bright light will probably develop an app to do that for us.

Whether it is political debate or an understanding of the major social issues challenging us today, most people have no more clues about what drives them than their toaster, although it appears their toaster may soon have enough technology to figure it out.

Everything has been reduced to emotions now rather than analytical thought. Emotions are easy, thought is difficult and requires some effort but we are becoming a society that is unprepared to make much of an effort to do very much of anything.

We don’t even want to pay our own way anymore. It’s just easier to whine about how difficult life is and demand that someone else pay for a part, if not all, of what we want.

University is expensive and working to earn enough money while going to university is hard so, make someone else pay. That’s easier and doesn’t take any effort at all.

Voting based on a candidate’s record actually means having to examine the record and compare it to the promises that were made in the last election and that, we all know, is hard. It’s just easier to support someone based on our feelings. If we like him or her, or think they’re cool; that should be good enough reason to vote them into office. What damage they might do while in office is really irrelevant compared to what we feel.

We’ve reached a time and place where nothing matters but what we’re doing at the moment. We don’t plan, we don’t think and we are unaware of the bigger world around us. We go online, see a few tweets about an issue and thanks to Twitter or Facebook or whatever, we have all we need to know to decide whether or not we will support or oppose it.

Thinking is not required. Neither is being aware let alone committed.

You don’t have to take my word for it, look at the inane comments from both sides of the Presidential election argument currently on Twitter. If you didn’t know better, you’d swear it was a badly written comedy show starring Charlie Sheen or an episode of the Jerry Springer Show. The amount of rational thought or critical analysis that has gone into the discussion is less than is required to slap together a piece of Ikea furniture.

Ok, bad example. Assembling Ikea furniture isn’t all that easy but neither is thinking. It takes effort; more effort than picking your nose in public or fiddling with your iPhone. It takes assembling information; real information, not the opinionated articles of this blog or others and once you have that information, it requires analyzing it.

I know that’s a lot of effort for many but if deciding who you’re going to trust to govern your country isn’t worth that effort; then you might as well let your refrigerator vote for you because it will probably give it at least some serious thought before casting its ballot.

© 2012 Maggie's Bear

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The content of this article is the sole property of Maggie's Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others

Follow The Bear on Twitter: @maggsbear or connect on Facebook: Maggie's Bear

And The Stupidity Continues - Now Peanut Butter Is Racist

My grandson is allergic to nuts; violently allergic as it turns out and that necessitates being very careful when he’s around. When he comes to visit, everything with which he might come in contact must be sanitized before he arrives in case it came in contact with someone who had eaten a peanut butter sandwich for example. It is a serious allergy but a minor inconvenience for the delight of having him visit.

My grandson’s allergy has made me aware of the need for caution in places like schools and I don’t criticize schools for being careful and even banning peanut butter where there is a possibility of a child going into anaphylactic shock. It can be terminal.

Where I draw the line, however, is when the politically correct step in and decide something like a peanut butter and jam sandwich is a subtle example of white racism in language. 

And that is exactly what they did in Portland, Oregon.

In keeping with recent ‘equity training’, one principal has decided that peanut butter and jam sandwiches are an example of white privilege. It’s part of a training program known as "Courageous Conversations" that has been introduced into Portland schools over the past few years. Staff members at this particular principal’s school have been going through sensitivity training and various classroom exercises which include reading current articles in the news and then discussing them as an issue of “white privilege."

White privilege? It's a statement that takes my breath away. Only a politically correct mind, uncluttered by any semblance of rational thought would think to characterize something that was developed by an Afro-American as a symbol of white privilege. It's stupidity on a scale that threatens to make your head explode.

The idea that the children of some immigrant families to the United States might not eat peanut butter and jam sandwiches, or even sandwiches for that matter, is hardly a racial issue. It’s a simple cultural difference. The problem with wingnuts like these educators (and I use that term loosely) is that they never look beyond their own sanctimonious bias at the bigger picture. They're in too big a hurry to demonstrate their sensitivity and moral superiority.

They have way too much time on their hands!

What’s next, Kraft Dinner? This lunacy ranks right up there with those who accuse as racist, anyone who has the temerity to question President Obama's record before deciding whether or not to vote for him. There is no room for common sense when it comes to accusations of racism these days.

I don’t know what’s happening to education but it is overrun by idiots who shouldn’t be allowed to make decisions, carry scissors while they walk from one classroom to the next lest they hurt themselves and definitely not be allowed to come anywhere near our children.

What I really don't understand is why we continue to allow it to happen.

When they’re not marching in Canadian and American streets demanding outrageous salary increases (but only for the benefit of the children of course), teachers, and the education departments for which they work, are hard at work, developing the most bizarre and contradictory policies and programs possible. 

Some schools in Canada have banned Halloween while others have changed the name to Black and Orange Day. Some have banned costumers at Halloween while others have decreed that students can dress up but must wear costumes related to public service or public safety occupations. So much for the true spirit and heritage of Halloween.

Most schools in both countries now ban Christmas concerts, Christmas trees, Christmas cards, even the mention of Christmas although both Christians and non-Christians alike still actually know that the holiday is called Christmas.

In New York City, the Department of Education has banned words like dinosaur, dancing, evolution, divorce and, my particular favourite, bodily functions. Now there was a phrase that was threatening the fabric of society.

In Texas, the State Board of Education has decided to place Senator Joe McCarthy, a man who made witch hunts more than just fashionable, in a more favourable historical light while downplaying the contribution of people like Senator Ted Kennedy. Clearly there is no political bias there, only the best interests of students are being considered.

It is an animal show of stupidity by stupid people and it knows no national borders. It is spreading as easily as peanut butter on a piece of white bread (another symbol of white privilege and racism no doubt).

The educational system seeks to protect children from words like dinosaur but introduce them to adult concepts like sexual knowledge before they’ve learned tie their shoes, or for that matter, discovered the joys of puberty.

In this 21st Century, one would have thought that the ability to think would have been a criterion for teaching and administrating education, or at the very least, there would be a requirement for a modicum of common sense. Apparently not! No idea is too outrageous it seems. In fact, it appears that only the outrageous is even being considered. 

Fortunately, the morally superior educators in Portland have overlooked peanut butter cookies and Reeses Pieces.....for now (apparently they aren't racist) but they should be warned. I have drawn a line in the sand. I've had enough of this absurd nonsense and I am prepared to rally the troops and go to the barricades if they try to ban Kraft Dinner.

As for Ben, we’re concerned about his allergy to all nuts when he starts attending school full-time. I appreciate that there are still some good and committed teachers out there (pray God) but considering the growing number of nuts at the front of the classroom these days, Ben's health may be in serious jeopardy. 

There is already no doubt that his education will be.

RELATED POSTS

Just When You Thought It Couldn't Get More Stupid

http://bearsrant.blogspot.ca/2012/03/just-when-you-thought-it-couldnt-get.html

How Much More Stupid Can It Get?

http://bearsrant.blogspot.ca/2012/04/sheep.html

Teaching Children To Achieve Mediocrity

http://bearsrant.blogspot.ca/2012/05/stupidity-virus-is-spreading.html

© 2012 Maggie's Bear

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The content of this article is the sole property of Maggie's Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others

Follow The Bear on Twitter: @maggsbear or connect on Facebook: Maggie's Bear

Trolls!

When we were kids, we didn’t have computers and the Internet, Xbox and Game Boy. We had hockey sticks, balls, trucks and books of fairy tales by people like Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm. Those books were full of mystical stories about wonderous creatures that included sorcerers, fairies, elves, unicorns, giants and…….trolls.

Trolls were ugly little creatures that, for the most part, lived under bridges and in caves. They were dangerous and at six years old, we were rightly frightened of them.

Later, I would learn that the mythology of trolls originated in the Scandanavian countries, primarily Denmark where originally they were considered to be the spirits that lived inside rocks and other inanimate objects. Later, they would evolve to take on a human-like form. Usually they were ugly creatures although in some tales, they were not.

I still remember those old stories somewhat wistfully because we lose that sense of wonder and the ability to believe in things that are magically, even if they are a little scary. All too soon, I became aware that fairies and elves, unicorns and sorcerers don’t exist but trolls do.

Trolls are real. They walk among us and can be found all over the Internet.

Internet trolls are the ones who post highly inflammatory (and usually incorrect) messages across social media and in chat rooms. They surf the web looking for memorial sites where they can leave hateful, spiteful messages that denigrate the deceased and which are designed to hurt those who mourn.

Internet trolls frequently jump into conversations which are none of their business, hurl insults at one or another in the conversation until it becomes impossible for the original participants to continue. They act alone and they act in groups. They are cowards, bullies and lack any standard of recognizable values.

Some think these trolls exist primarily because  the anonymity the Internet provides allows trolls to bring out the worst in themselves. But I think it is something else that causes people to become trolls.

I believe trolls are insecure people with small, petty lives in the real world. They are lonely nobodies crying out for attention in any way they can get it. They are ill-informed on most issues, have little interest in becoming informed and their self-esteem is so low that they are threatened by anyone who challenges their shallow beliefs and opinions.

I get accosted by one or more trolls every day. I don’t take it all that seriously because I see them for what they are; sad, pathetic people with pathetic lives but others, most of whom are more sensitive than I am, often take these troll attacks to heart and are either intimidated or hurt by them.

I have had friends on Twitter who have been bullied to the point of closing their account and for no other reason than because trolls decided to make them a target.

I’ve seen trolls attack families grieving for the loss of a child, gather together to encourage someone to commit suicide online for their entertainment and other trolls flock to web sites that pay homage to serial killers, racists and homophobes.

They offer nothing of value and their ideas and as much as they are hurtful, their words are silly and the comments absurd.

Trolls are everywhere and at some point virtually everyone who uses social media on the Internet, on a regular basis, will encounter one or more of them. When that happens remember this. Trolls can only hurt you if you allow them to hurt you. Block them, report them or ignore them. They crave attention. It is how they validate their pathetic little lives. Don’t give it to them. Instead, see them for what they are and simply move on. Their words can’t hurt you and they have nothing but hurtful words to throw at you.

Trolls are people who have accomplished nothing and so look for ways to undermine the accomplishments of others. They have no values so they look for ways to undermine the values of others. Don’t allow it. They are lower than spammers and scammers, they are the Internet’s bottom feeders sharing more in common with pedophiles and racists than any other group who uses social media.

Soon enough, just as it was when we grew up and fairy tales lost their magic, the Internet too will mature and grow up and trolls will fade away into the sewers from which they came. It can’t come soon enough for most of us but regardless of how long it takes, it is coming.

Until then, just remember that trolls are sleazy little imaginary creatures not worth concerning yourself over.

© 2012 Maggie's Bear

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The content of this article is the sole property of Maggie's Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others

Follow The Bear on Twitter: @maggsbear or connect on Facebook: Maggie's Bear

Out Of The Mouths Of Babes - The Communications Deficit

Election campaigns are not about ideas, they’re about words; lots and lots and lots of words; 90% of which signify absolutely nothing. It is like Twitter but with only a few members online. They speak obscurely and the rest of us do everything we can to make the message even more obscure once we've logged in to comment on their words.

Everywhere we go, there is talk. People are texting, emailing, tweeting, posting, calling and chatting but for all that chatter, there is precious little actual communication happening. In the 60s, the lack of understanding between the generations was called the communications gap. Today, we have a communications deficit. There is lots of noise with lots of words but precious little communication.

In fact, if words were money, language and understanding would have a bigger debt than all the western democracies combined. We would be bankrupt.

This is partly due to the fact that few of us are listening to anyone. We’re too busy talking and voicing our opinions. In some cases, it is the result of being under informed. In others it’s arrogance, dishonesty or emotional overload and in a few cases it’s just sheer stupidity. 

There are days when I scream silently for informed debate and discussion with someone who deals with reality rather than his or her perception of it; someone who sees the world as it is rather than as they wish it was. I have a few friends I can turn to for that communication but sometimes, I turn to a source of pure and unvarnished honesty; someone who sees his world as it is and who is unafraid of expressing his opinion about it openly and plainly. I turn to that source to remind myself that it is actually possible to communicate simply, honestly and effectively.

That island of communications sanity is my three year old grandson Ben.

Ever since he started communicating, Ben has expressed himself with great enthusiasm and a singular, simple focus that is both refreshing and informative. Before he was a year old, my daughter taught Ben how to sign and he took to it expressing himself like a bird takes to flight. He was liberated by his new-found ability to connect with those around him. Once he learned to talk, there was no holding him back and next to Monster Trucks, communicating is his passion.

Ben sees the world as it is, not as it is portrayed by special interest. He is not embarrassed to acknowledge what he doesn’t know and is curious enough to ask questions; endless questions at times. He is proud of this toy or that rock and is constantly requesting that you come and look with him at whatever it is that has caught his attention but mostly, he has opinions about his small world and he likes to share them.

These are some of Ben’s observations that he has shared recently.

On Chinese Food

"Rock on plum sauce"

Brutal Honesty:

One day, while his mother was changing into her bathing suit when Ben barged into her room and pointed out that she was naked. Then he pointed at her and asked "What is that". She replied, "You know what that is, it is my vagina". He replied, "I don't want to smell that thing".

On Housework

Ben: Mommy what are you doing with Daddy's vacuum?

Mom: It's not Daddy's vacuum, it's our vacuum.

Ben: Are you sure it isn't Daddy's? I've never seen you use it.

On Hockey

Ben: Daddy in hockey, the red light is for a goal, the green light is for no goal and the blue light is for darn it.

Dad: What is the blue light for?

Ben: Darn it, like when Mommy forgets to give Annie her money.

On Friendship

Ben: Do you want to go to the garage and do karate?

Keaton: Yep.

Ben: Did we just become best friends?

Keaton: Yep!

(Keaton is a Clint Eastwood type, a man of few words)

On Being A Good Neighbour

“It’s not ok to poop in other people’s gardens right, mommy?”

On Fashion

When his mother put a new sun hat on his baby sister Adele, Ben observed: 

"That hat makes Adele look like a lamp". 

Three year olds understand the true purpose of language. They may have a limited vocabulary but they aren’t afraid to use it. It’s a shame we take that away from them as they grow older. I wonder how much better we would be served by an election campaign where the candidates and their supporters were as honest and plain-spoken as toddlers rather than as sophisticated as adults. 

Unfortunately, it won’t happen.

Somewhere between being three and being adults we are taught how to use words in all the wrong ways. We lose the ability to communicate despite learning thousands of new words. Wouldn’t it be nice if instead of just learning how to talk, we learned how to talk intelligently; how to use words to explain, express and learn rather than to confuse, obscure and divide?

There are lots of words around these days, including my own but at the end of the day; the words that seem to be the most honest are the words that come from Ben and his friends and others like them. They say what they mean and mean what they say. 

Out of the mouths of babes? You bet! Wouldn’t it be nice if we all communicated with that same simple honesty?

© 2012 Maggie's Bear

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The content of this article is the sole property of Maggie's Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others

It's About Time

My grandson turns three this month and while he understands that birthdays mean birthday parties and birthday parties mean birthday presents, he has no concept of what it means to have lived for three years. Even though he has been fascinated by clocks since he was barely a year old, time is irrelevant to him. It simply doesn’t exist.

It’s like that for all of us. Time is a relative concept in our lives and its value changes as we move through the years of our lives.

When we are very young, just as it is with my grandson, we have no awareness of time. When we grow a little older, it moves too slowly. We can’t wait to be 8 or 10 when we will be allowed to stay up an extra half hour or perhaps ride our bike all the way to the mall and back. We tend to wish time away in our hurry to get to be older because the age we are is not the age we want to be and time is limitless. Time has no end for us then.

By the time we have become teens, we have become immortal. Time is once again irrelevant but it is not because we are unaware of it but simply because we feel like we will live forever. Sixty or seventy years seems like infinity so there isn’t much reason to worry about time. Puberty becomes far more intrusive in our lives than time and we give ourselves over to it.

In our later teens, time has value only in so much as we never have enough time. We’re in a rush all the time. We have friends to meet, hair to do and make up to put on before the big date. We have to have yet another bloody assignment handed in by tomorrow morning and we haven’t even started the assigned reading. Nothing clarifies the value of time like having a final exam in the morning and the knowledge that you haven’t even begun to study the night before.

Time moves more slowly when we get out into the workforce and start building a life of our own.

We’re busy and time is important in and only because it managing time is how we organize our lives. We schedule appointments, have deadlines for projects and may be late for work because we missed the bus. In terms of our lives, however, time stands still until one day suddenly; we’re celebrating our fortieth birthday.

Where the hell did that come from?

Forty is a benchmark along time’s road. We all experience and we pretty much all react to it in similar way, more or less. Like turning twenty-one it’s a big deal but the difference is that when you turn twenty-one, it is with a sense of liberation and time stretches before you like the ocean. When you turn forty, you become aware that at best, half of the time you have been allotted may be gone.

Beyond the party with the sarcastic cards and the joke gifts, turning forty is a time of reflection for most of us. It is when we become aware of what we have accomplished so far and how much we have yet to get done. For some it is a non-event but for most it is mildly traumatic or at least the reawakening of our awareness that we are not immortal and that while time may be infinite, our time is not.

By the time we turn sixty we have mixed emotions about time. On the one hand we are becoming increasingly aware that we are staring our own mortality in the face but on the other, we are fairly happy not to have shaken hands with it yet. At sixty, the end of time becomes a real, if faint shadow on our lives.

Some try to reverse time with plastic surgery, diets, vitamins, exercise and various other practices but we know in our hearts that time is moving forward and it will continue with or without us. Some fear the end of their time. Death frightens them, others never give it much thought but we are all aware that the end is coming. It may be soon, it may not be for awhile but unlike when we were fifteen, we are aware that it is coming.

We are constantly reminded as people we knew start to die. When we were teenagers, it was a rare event for one of our friends to die and usually it was the result of an accident or some other tragedy. Now our friends are dying from illness and old age and we seem to go to more funerals than weddings.

I personally have always felt that whatever age I was at the moment was the perfect age to be. I feel that to this day even though my arthritis is painful at times and I’ve lost too many friends and family to their end of time. I wouldn’t trade this age to be young again for anything because time not only takes life, it gives it.

With age comes knowledge from experience. There is richness in a life that has lived for many years and their satisfaction in seeing your children grow up and take on successful lives. It brings grandchildren and less emotional turmoil than we experienced when we were young.

Scientists have complex theories about the true nature of time but for you and me, it is simply linear. It travels in a straight line and it travels in only one direction.

Time is infinite. Life is not and we look at time differently throughout our lives but in the end, however much time we were given, our time is measured by the life we lived. It isn’t death that should be our great fear, death is natural. The great fear should be reaching the end and realizing we squandered the time we were given and have little to show for our time on this earth.

What a sad waste of time that would be.

© 2012 Maggie's Bear

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The content of this article is the sole property of Maggie's Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others

Sinkhole Of Common Sense

This past summer we experienced about five weeks with no appreciable rainfall at all. It was a drought that has devastated some crops and which caused two mini-forest fires within city limits. Both fires were contained fortunately but there was a significant amount of damage and threat to surrounding residential neighbourhoods.

The city’s first responders, in particular its fire department, did a solid job and are to be commended for their efforts. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could say the same about the bureaucracies behind them?

We can’t.

It took the first fire which went on for a couple of weeks to make the bureaucracy realize that it should be cutting the grass in its parks down to the bone. The grass had turned to straw which could be set afire with a carelessly tossed cigarette and that could easily spread to trees and other foliage also dry and almost like tinder.

Fortunately, the city did finally realize the danger and it did cut the grass down to the bone. Unfortunately, other levels of government that also own and maintain parkland within Canada’s capital did not.

They were bound by legislation to protect nesting water fowl rather than being bound by common sense.

Daily, during the drought, we would drive along the river through parkland where grass that was dryer than kindling, stood two feet high and not just out in the open. It bordered trees and small thickets, homes and businesses.

This is environmentalism gone mad.

I’m all in favour of protecting nature but when it is at the expense of protecting people, I part company with my friends in the environmental movement. What amazes me about the decision to wait until the nesting season was over to protect birds was the thought that if the nesting area caught fire and burned to a crisp, what would all those birds do then?

Given a choice, do you think the birds would prefer a closely trimmed, inconvenient environment for a month or two or no environment for years thanks to devastation by fire?

Nobody who makes the decisions about these things asked themselves those simple questions. They are bureaucrats and they are paid to implement legislation. They are not paid to think.

Last week, a sink hole emerged on a main route out of the city core into its large suburban east community. One unfortunate fellow drove into the hole but was unhurt fortunately. The same can’t be said about his car which seems to have pretty much disappeared.

Apparently a very large pipe that is part of the sewer system broke and that caused the sinkhole. The city had applied back in April for emergency repair to the pipe although they are now saying there wasn’t really an emergency.

It appears the city was denied the permit by another level of government that is tasked with protecting the fresh water fishery. The repair work the city wanted to undertake would be right in the middle of spawning season for various fish species and we can’t permit that, no matter how much damage and expense that decision may subsequently cause.

The river is huge and extends for miles, disrupting the spawning season in one small section would have had very limited, if any, impact on the river’s overall fishery. The decision, however, has had a major impact on people.

Traffic in and out of the east end of the city is virtually in gridlock. The cost to the city for repairs is significantly higher than it would have been six months ago before the pipe burst and in terms of additional transit resources it is now using to try and expedite getting people in and out of the community.

Here’s what I don’t get.

What if someone had been killed as a result of this decision? It is more than conceivable that the person who drove his car into the sinkhole could have been seriously injured if not killed. What if it had been a family with small children? How important would the environmental movement think those bloody fish were then?

The simple fact is that we have become so narrow in our focus these days that we are incapable of seeing beyond the ends of our noses. Nobody makes the connection of the possible outcomes of the decisions they take and virtually nobody in government or NGOs applies common sense. They blindly follow the narrow dictates of their policies and government legislation, only realizing after the fact, that the decision was the wrong decision.

It inevitably costs us money. It costs us time and lost productivity and sooner or later, it’s going to cost somebody their life.

© 2012 Maggie's Bear

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The content of this article is the sole property of Maggie's Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others

The Day After The Quebec Election

We were up and at ‘em this morning. Maggie had an early meeting and after I dropped her off at the big government office, I headed over to Reno Depot to pick up a some things I need for couple of small projects on which I’m working.

Reno Depot is a box store much in the same vein as Home Depot and Lowes. It carries pretty much all the same kind of stuff from tools to lumber, hardware and electrical to gardening supplies, paint, tile and plumbing fixtures and materials. It is Quebec-based and coincidentally a perfect symbol for Quebec.

Reno Depot takes great pride in promoting its custom project service, a service in which they will plan and implement renovation projects for your home or office. The first thing you notice when you walk into the store (which is huge) is that there are a series of large white plastic buckets strewn along the main aisle in front of the cashiers. They are there to catch the water dripping down from the leaks in the ceiling.

Apparently they can handle any project, large or small, for you but are unable to repair their own ceiling. It tends to undermine confidence a wee bit.

Recently Lowes made an offer to buy Reno Depot and the Quebec government immediately responded to indicate that it would move to protect Quebec companies from foreign investment or take over. Almost simultaneously during the recent election, that same government announced it would facilitate Quebec companies investing in or outright purchasing foreign companies in other countries.

And that is the perfect definition of Quebec, a society in serious need of renovations and repairs with a schizophrenic approach to business and investment. It is at the same time protectionist and expansive which means it is pretty much running in circles.

For decades the predominant focus of Quebec politics has been on two things. The first is language and sovereignty (separation from Canada) and the second is lavish entitlements that the province cannot actually afford. While various Quebec governments and special interest have focused on these two primary areas, some serious things have been happening that have gone unattended.

Quebec has the lowest rate of applicants for post secondary education in the country and the highest college/university dropout rate. It has the lowest median income in Canada and the highest debt to GDP ratio. It’s worse even than that of Ontario and you really have to work at it to put yourself in a worse position than what nine years of  Ontario Liberal government has done to what was once Canada’s economic powerhouse.

Per capita provincial debt in Quebec is higher than that of Greece and we all know how well that’s been working out for our Mediterranean friends. The only reason Quebec isn’t suffering the way Greece is suffering is because Quebec receives in excess of $17 billion in equalization, health care and other social transfer payments from the federal government. Without that annual infusion from Ottawa, Quebec would make a banana republic look prosperous.

On top of this, Quebec is the highest taxed jurisdiction in North America and the new government is already talking about tax increases.

I don’t say this with any rancor or satisfaction. I live in Quebec and I love living here. The people, for the most part, are a generous and happy people. They are creative and have a joie du vivre you won’t find in places like Toronto.

The French culture has a rich heritage and it is celebrated by French and English alike, when they aren’t squabbling over the size of different languages on signs. I believe Quebec has everything it needs to be one of the world’s great cosmopolitan societies but is being prevented from achieving that opportunity by a small percentage of narrow-minded bigots who focus on restricting the lives and rights of others instead of expanding the society’s potential through the diversity of its people.

The great contradiction of Quebec, however, is not language or culture; it is entitlement. At precisely the same time that governments, particularly former PQ governments have demanded more political independence for Quebec, they have made the province economically dependent on Canada. Many of the social programs, including $7/day day care and the second lowest university tuition in the country would not be possible without the money Quebec receives from Ottawa.

Quebec is not failing because of its people; it is failing because of the weakness of its political leadership.

That was abundantly clear during this last election which should have been about the economy and political corruption but wasn’t. Once again, language and demanding powers from Ottawa became a central theme and once again, the people of Quebec said they are not interested in those issues although they do want change. Once again they refused to give the separatist party a mandate to pursue separation from Canada and once again, the politicians refused to listen.

The rest of Canada, of course, simply dismisses all of Quebec as being the problem but it isn’t. It’s the 30% of the population that are hardcore separatists who cannot accept that their day has come and gone. Most Quebecers have moved on and believe that Quebec belongs to all Quebecers, not just the pur laine French and that the future prosperity and success of the province lies in uniting Quebecers rather than dividing them or suppressing the rights of some over others.

The new government is already talking about demanding more powers from Ottawa when it should be focusing on its debt, corruption and expanding economic opportunity by encouraging investment in Quebec. It has been like this for a very long time. Promise much, demand more from Ottawa and then mislead the people that this is the road to a strong and independent society while blaming the rest of Canada for your own political mistakes.

But there is hope even if one day after the election not much has really changed.

One government has been traded for another which at the end of the day will do pretty much what the former government did, the media will continue their absurd post-election commentary on unity but the people of Quebec have shown they are not fooled by any of it. They voted and they voted as Canadians primarily. They voted for change and if they don’t like the change they are about to get, they voted in a minority government to give themselves an opportunity to vote for change again…….and sooner rather than later……if need be.

It’s time for the politicians to catch up to the people instead of continuing to pretend they are leading them. It's time for politicians in Quebec to stop sowing the seeds of discord and start focusing on the real job for which they were elected. It's time for real political leadership and not this ongoing and destructive nonsense that has been part of our society for too long. (and while we're at it, perhaps the media could start actually covering the real issues instead of droning on and on about a crisis that only exists in their minds.)

The people have spoken!

© 2012 Maggie's Bear

all rights reserved

The content of this article is the sole property of Maggie's Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others

Non sinas bastardi tere te deorsum

I had a conversation on Twitter yesterday although to call it a conversation is to do the term a disservice. It would be more accurate to say that I was accosted by a fervent supporter of President Obama who decided that there was a need to straighten me out on a few things. She had jumped into another 'conversation' being led by yet another fervent Obama supporter who was offended by comments I had made on my blog.

She started by talking about all the jobs created by the president and it is true that over the past 29 months, the United States has seen consistent job growth and a decline in its unemployment rate from just over 10% to 8.3%. When I pointed out that this was still significantly higher than the 6.1% unemployment rate in 2008 when President Obama was elected, I was informed that the unemployment rate was fluid.

Fluid? Of course it is fluid; that was never at issue. The issue was, and remains. is it higher or lower under this president and according to the United States Board of Labour, it is higher. I was then sent a blog post by someone who went to great lengths to point out that the president wasn’t responsible for anything that happened during the first nine months of his presidency. Therefore, the steep increase in unemployment was the fault of the previous administration.

Sometimes the contortions people go through to try and avoid facing reality amazes me.

Innocence Destroyed

I write virtually every day. Sometimes I write about politics, sometimes social issues and sometimes just a rant about poor customer service or some other issue that;s on my mind. . I also write about children at risk and they are the most difficult articles to write. I find it difficult to control my anger as I try to speak out about what we are doing and are allowing to happen to our children.

Every ytear in North America, more than five children a day are killed by members of their own family/. Since 2006 more than 800,000 children in the United States and 60,000 in Canada have gone missing and more than 1,000 children in the care of Child Protection Services in the United States are murdered annually.

These are our children but nobody talks about them.

I Am Racist!

I know I’m racist because I’ve been told so. I’ve been told I’m racist because I don’t believe Barack Obama has been a very good president. Even though I could care less about the colour of his skin, I’m a racist because I believe he is the ultimate triumph of glib rhetoric over real accomplishment. I’m a racist because I believe his record as president illustrates his lack of commitment to his stated values and demonstrates little more than a love of the spotlight and a lust for power.

The American economy is in tatters. Unemployment is consistently over 8% and this president has ignored not only the spirit of the constitution but the letter of it. It is his Attorney General who stands in contempt of Congress for failing to turn over documents that were subpoenaed in the Fast & Furious scandal. It is this president who supported him in his disdain for the people’s representatives.

Democracy! "Everybody Knows The Good Guys Lost"

Everybody knows that the boat is leaking,
everybody knows that the captain lied 

Everybody got this broken feeling, 
like their father or their dog just died 

-Leonard Cohen

Merriam-Webster’s defines democracy as:

a) Government by the people

b) a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections

The Oxford Dictionary defines democracy as:

a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives

I see more posts, tweets and commentary on democracy than any other single topic. Everyone talks about it including politicians, the media, academics and every day people. Democracy is not a homogenous thing and it takes many forms. In fact, there are almost three dozen different forms of democracy currently in existence.

Some democracies use a first-past-the-post system of allocating representation. Canada and the United States are examples of this approach. Others, like Italy, Israel and Germany have representative democracies and allocate seats based on the percentage of votes received by each political party.

Some democracies, like Canada and Sweden, are constitutional monarchies while others like the United States and France are republics. Some democracies are actually totalitarian and a few are outright dictatorships which seems incongruous to our basic concept of democracy but which is true nonetheless.

One thing they all share in common, however, is that they are too easily corrupted by those who run for office.

Roses And Buckle Bunnies

Shakespeare wrote a number of sonnets about love and they remain some of the most romantic ever written. The bible also has some beautiful verses about the love between a man and a woman and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s, “How do I love thee,” is considered by many to be one of the most romantic poems ever written. These verses have stood the test of time and are still read and shared by those who fall in love.

It got me thinking about how we will be remembered for the way we expressed love. Certainly, thanks to the music industry, there are more songs about love today than all of the poems in recorded history and music is nothing more than poetry put to music. So what are we leaving to the generations to come after us? In a hundred years from now, will they still use some of those songs and verses to express their love for someone?

Let’s take a look at some of the modern expressions of love with which we have been blessed and will leave for future generations.

The Charter Of Common Sense

I have invited people in the past to write a post for this blog with great result. Each brought a unique point of view and sometimes certain poignancy to a topic that made each post well worth reading. I’ve invited a well-respected man to provide posthumously today’s post because I think what he said and wrote encapsulated the entire conversation in every area in which we are all participating.

It's a very short post but then he was a very thoughtful writer who was able to say in only a few words what most of us struggle to say in many. Ronald Regan referred to these 10 points as 'The American Charter' but I think of them more as simply a Charter of Common Sense.

How Much More Stupid Can It Get?

There are days when I have to remind myself that I am living in the 21st Century and not the late 1800s. Some of the commentary and opinion, the beliefs and prejudices that get thrown about are so out of touch with today’s reality that I wonder if the Internet and the iPhone are part of a technological conspiracy to warp us back in time to a bygone era.

This week, for example, Missouri Rep Todd Aikin mused about ‘legitimate’ rape on national television. It wasn’t just his attempt to characterize rape as legitimate and illegitimate that was so bizarre; it was his assertion that the female body can actually prevent pregnancy in cases of legitimate rape. Apparently Mr. Aikin is of the opinion that a woman’s body not only can differentiate between the two but will actually make a judgment call as to whether or not to allow the pregnancy to proceed.

Is it possible, in this day and age, to get more stupid than this?

Well….actually yes it is.

The Paradox

The world is changing and the pace of change is accelerating but for all that change, we have failed to make the world a better place. Instead we are building a bigger and bigger paradox, one that may eventually be too big for us to ever overcome.

We have more security all around us but are less safe and feel less secure. Violence is increasingly more random and less targeted.

We have more government but less satisfaction with how our nations are governed; increasingly higher taxes but more government debt and fewer government services.

We have more expensive and sophisticated educational opportunities but only teach students what, not how, to think.

We provide better clothes, more gadgets and expensive education  for our children because we love them but we spend less time with them. Instead, we fill their free time with play dates, organized sports, dance classes and other activities to replace the time we don't have for them.

We have more channels on television than ever before but less and less that is worth watching or remembering.

We have more opportunities to become informed but prefer simply to be entertained.

We have more mainstream news coverage but less actual news reporting. Truth is biased, controlled, edited, scripted, manipulated, massaged, distorted and often just ignored.

This Is Honouring Pearl Harbour?

On December 7, 1941 the Japanese Imperial Navy attacked Pearl Harbour damaging all eight of the battleships in the harbour, sinking four of which two were later raised and six later returned to active duty. More than 2,400 Americans were killed and 1,200 injured.

It was a surprise attack intended to prevent the United States from entering the war. The attack was successful, the intended result was a failure. It awakened ‘the sleeping giant’ and America did enter both the European and Pacific conflicts which ultimately led to the downfall of Japan’s imperialist ambitions.

That happened more than sixty years ago and since then the United States and Japan have been allies and trading partners. Japan has invested heavily in the American economy providing thousands of jobs at American-based plants of Shimano, Toyota, Nissan, Mistubishi, Sony and countless others. When the tsunami hit Japan last year, the United States was one of the first to provide aid and assistance.

In other words, enemies have become friends and that has benefited both nations as well as the broader world.

Fighting Crime? I Don't Think So.

I got up about 4:30 this morning. I wasn’t all that happy about it because I like lying in bed but lately, I’ve been haulin’ butt out of bed at ridiculous hours in the early morning. Sometimes I wonder if it is a function of getting older. Your body needs more sleep but damned if it doesn’t sense the time clock ticking down to eternity and try to rouse you not to waste any more time than necessary.

Anyway, up I got and dragged my butt downstairs to make lunches for Keina and the Maggmeister. This is one of my jobs. I make their lunches and then trundle them off to school and work later in the morning. I don’t actually mind doing it, I do most of the cooking here and Maggie does most of…ok….all of the baking.

I don’t like to bake, it’s way too finicky. Everything has to be measured and it reminds me of filling out a tax return. No estimates, no approximations, you have to follow the rules precisely. I’d rather cook, you don’t measure anything and if you make a mistake, you can just toss in something or other to correct it. Try doing that on your tax return and see how far it gets you.

So I finished the lunches, made myself a fresh Tassimo and went into the living room to catch some news. It was the usual reportage and I sometimes think I could be on Mars for a few weeks and when I returned, the news would be pretty much the same as it was the day before I left. Nothing much changes or if it does, the mainstream media are keeping it to themselves.

I was about to switch channels to the Olympics when a story about license plate theft in Edmonton, Canada caught my attention.

Yup! I've Had Enough

`Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past

three decades, has been a history

of replacing what worked with what sounded good.

-Thomas Sowell

I’ve been watching the American Presidential race with a sort of detached interest. It doesn’t directly affect me, I live in Canada but I do have a lot of American friends and it affects them and that concerns me. 

Politics in Canada is a blood sport that is only mitigated by the fact that we still have a line called “too far” that politicians cross at their peril. Apparently that line doesn’t exist in the United States.

The rhetoric and campaign advertising for this presidential race is beyond the pale. It is not just personal and vicious; it has become dishonest with flat out lies. How a candidate for the highest office in the nation could possibly believe that they will be respected upon election after their degrading performance during the election completely escapes me and I still can’t figure out how “the people” are served by this.

This isn’t leadership; it is like watching pigs fight in the mud over slop. It is disgusting and demeans the office to which both candidates aspire.

For And Against

There was a time when the debate on issues was not only civil, it was quite rich in content. It wasn’t so much an argument as an exploration of different ideas with both the left and the right bringing passion and conviction to an honest discussion of how best to resolve something. 

Today, there is none of that richness in the debate, no exploration of different ideas or the building of mutual understanding. Today it has come down to only two positions; you’re either for something or against it. Increasingly, the left which likes to call itself progressive and liberal is the ‘anti’ side of the argument and that is one of the major obstacles to our nations moving forward.

To be sure, the left is in favour of certain things but inevitably those things are at the expense of others financially or in terms of rights and/or individual freedom. They are threatened by the success of the individual claiming it comes at the expense of others. 

The left favours more government regulation on just about everything from the environment to healthcare. God alone understands why. If nothing else, government has demonstrated a remarkable inability to do anything cost-effectively, efficiently or in a timely manner.

Hot, Sticky and Stupid

The weather has just been flat out stupid this summer. 

It has been unbelievably hot, humid and we haven’t had any real rain in over a month. Some days, I feel like a slab of over-cooked meat. Before my friends in the Climate Change Brigade start rushing around yelling “I told you so” and “the sky is falling, flee the village”, we’ve seen this before.

Every now and then, the weather (like some people) just gets flat out stupid.

It has been so hot this summer that my garage door sticks when I press the remote, our grass looks like kindling and all the plants and flowers Maggie worked so hard to plant reach out and grab our ankles as we walk by whispering in parched little voices, “water, water, please…..some water.”

It’s so hot that even our Springer Spaniel, Jasper, is hard-pressed to be his usual psychotic self and spends much of his time sitting in a corner and staring at me with with a far-away accusatory look in  his eyes and his tongue hanging out as if the weather is my fault. It isn’t!

I recycle (not happily but I do it). Even though we live in the country, we use our car less than the average suburbanite and we use only electricity in our home. No green house gas emission there boy. We use air-conditioning sparingly, barbeque most of our meals and bag most of our groceries in ridiculously too large or too small cloth bags. We're careful about energy consumption and do what we can to keep our little part of the world clean.

In other words, we are living the dream. Like so many others we're following the mantra (or at least most of it) of the environmental movement and guess what? The weather is still hot and I personally don’t believe it is because there is Styrofoam in the landfill, gas-driven economies or plastic bags.

The earth is a hostile environment. It is beautiful in many places but hostile. It is filled with dangerous places, dangerous creatures (some so small you don’t even see them before they bite and poison you) and guess what? The earth has a dangerous climate because the earth is part of a dangerous solar system that is powered by a highly volatile star; we call the sun that is constantly throwing off sun flares which have a very dramatic impact on our world.

There were a number of serious solar flares over the past year and here we are with stupid hot weather. The solar flares burn off all that space dust that acts as a barrier between us and the sun’s harmful rays. Less dust, more heat gets through and my lawn turns to hay and Jasper's tongue comes out and his eyes start to roll.

None of this will matter, of course. The environmental fanatics will be down at the climate-change temple complete with its Icon of Al Gore, holding hands in a prayer circle to try and use positive energy to bring the world together in eliminating greenhouse gas emissions. Either that or they will be celebrating the fact that they were right and the end of the world has arrived.

Unless the temple is air-conditioned, I won’t be joining them. I’d rather burn a little more energy to cool down whatever room I’m in and I’m prepared to risk climate change to get my body temperature back down to 98.6 or somewhere near it.

What really annoys me though is not that our weather goes through periods of extremes like it is this summer but that it has those extremes upside down. It really is stupid. Smart weather would put some of the extreme hot period in winter where it would do some good and some of the extreme cool weather in the summer. That way, we might get some balanced temperatures throughout the year. This would be smart weather because it would be environmentally friendly (not to mention people friendly). It would cut down on the use of power consumption for air conditioners and furnaces to start with.

I’d like to blame politicians for the weather because it just seems to fit so nicely with everything else they’ve screwed up but the truth is, the weather isn’t their fault. I do believe, however, that our weather is a perfect metaphor for our politics; extreme and stupid (C’mon, you knew I was going to mention politics somewhere in the post).

But, in the end, this stupid heat wave isn’t the fault of politicians. It isn’t my fault or the fault of greenhouse gas emissions, SUVs or plastic bags either. It’s just part of the natural order of things and I suspect we would be a lot further ahead if we stopped worrying about who or what to blame for it and started devoting more time and resources to learning how to adapt to it and live comfortably and safely with it.

While you guys work on that, I’m going to get a cold drink and go sit in the air conditioning for awhile. It looks like it might rain soon. I’ve been fooled before by the weather (it’s such a tease) but there is always hope. 

Let me know what you come up with.

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George Carlin & The Bear On Saving The Planet
http://bearsrant.blogspot.ca/2011/09/screw-green.html

© 2012 Maggie's Bear

all rights reserved

The content of this article is the sole property of Maggie's Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others