That strange light in the sky must be an alien wanting to abduct me

So here's the thing: We're living in pretty stupid times. Now, I'll admit that by whatever personal criteria one might determine the stupidity of the ethos or zeitgeist or whatnot, one will probably be forced to admit that all times have been stupid. What in particular marks the impressive stupidity of the present age you might be but probably aren't asking? Here's the key: We don't care any more. We're no more or less stupid than at any other time in world, North American, Canadian, Albertan, Central Albertan suburbian, my house-ian, history except that whereas in the past we might have blushed at admitting what we didn't know, perhaps even harboring a desire to close the gaps in our meager understandings, today we merely burp and scratch at the unknown before settling into a deep pleasantly dream-filled slumber. Doubt my exaggeration?

Last night while I watched a Dateline NBC episode, riveting for its tedium and cliche, about people treating each other in terrible and terribly retarded ways, I was privileged enough to see the full splendor of the ignorance of our age. There it was basking like a great bird of prey in the morning sunlight, preening its magnificent plume unaffectedly, as though the sunlight was meant for no other purpose than to shine down on its morning bath. Here's what happened: Around 10 minutes to the top of the hour, a news anchor came on for a little teaser of the news which was to follow the Dateline show about repulsive human selfishness and depravity. Here's what he said:

"Our offices are being inundated with calls asking 'what's that strange light beside the moon tonight?' Well it's not a UFO (and here he leaned slightly towards the camera to emphasize the non UFO-ness of said light), it's Venus! More at 11."

I was struck by many things. The feigned intelligence of the broadcaster embodying all that has been parodied by the likes of Monty Python, SCTV, Kids in the Hall, SNL, Jon Stewart and the mighty Colbert. All the tropes, the canned expressions and gestures were on full display. Leaning into the camera he clears up that common misunderstanding in a chummy sort of way, "Hey I thought that light was an alien ship too, but it's actually a planet. Can you believe it?" And before the short commercial ends so that we might conclude our tale of selfishness and depravity, we are beckoned to remain sitting comfortably in our chairs for soon a great enigma will be unmasked.

It goes without saying that unless a person has a particular interest in astronomy, there's little chance that they'll be motivated enough to consider the basic rudiments of our solar system. That stars twinkle and planets reflect, when shined on by the sun, a consistent light isn't important enough to think much about, especially with Octomom and the beating of Rhianna to dazzle our awarenesses. So that Venus is always - all the days of our lives and even those of our eternal deaths - stubbornly cleaving its path near to the sun, doesn't receive much interest these days. The ocean may be in love with the moon, but Venus is in love with the sun, greeting it each morning and weeping goodbye each evening. What's the point of such obsolete trivia? Better to ponder the imminent invasion of earth by aliens instead.

Thumb Through the Pages

Good Morning Campers.
Apologies for the lack of updates, all of us are very busy at this moment. Formulating what angle to write my next post from will probably take me to the weekend, so patience is needed.
In the meantime, take some time to read over what is perhaps one of my favorite magazines around.




Cleek.

Where's my abacus at? I got some intelligence quotients to calculate

Some horses, though they seem to have been beaten to death, still stubbornly get up no matter how repetitively they are whipped and kicked. It brings a tear to the eye, watching those beleaguered beasts manage to stand once again on their wobbly legs. Today, tears filled my own eyes when I read that the old issue of ethnicity and IQ's is once again raising its obsolete corpse out from its well-deserved grave.

The monumental anniversary of both Charles Darwin's most famous book and the tenacious naturalist's own birthday have spurred countless thoughts to find their ways into books, articles and blogs. It's as it should be. But one issue I could have lived into my withered old age without ever noticing again is the one which wonders about the color of one's skin and the potential in one's head. Ethnicity, or "race" in the old-timey jargon, and intelligence was a favorite subject of the luminous pioneers of our scientific culture. Everybody had an opinion, and most, indeed the vast majority of the great enlightened thinkers of the nineteenth century, were convinced beyond doubt that it was mostly white people who were smart, the other kinds of people sadly lacking in whatever traits were necessary to make their boats fast and guns deadly. When the Portuguese took their super lithe boats and powerful canons up into the Indian ocean 500-some years ago, though of short stature and long noses, they laughed at the ease with which they took over the busy shipping ports. Centuries of trade in textiles and foodstuffs were almost immediately taken over and dominated by the super smart Europeans. The Indians and Chinese (The backwardness of Arabs and Africans went without saying, they said) just couldn't keep up.

Thus inaugurated western Europe's steady, seemingly inevitable rise to dominance in all things scientific, technical and economic. By the nineteenth century, Europe's hegemony was decked out in the pompiest pomp and circumstanciest circumstance. Her military and merchant captains tended to their proud mustaches with only the finest waxes. And her naturalists were scratching their heads about the best way to categorize and place into a logically satisfying gradation of quality all the races newly discovered. "Just how do we rank the inferiors?" they wondered. Many methods lost to time and a few dusty books came and went. If the heathen primitive be female, then her carnal offerings might be sampled, and a child left here and there to try at the life of a half breed. But more often than not those cunning natives would hide their women and children away, and it was only the proud warrior or duplicitous trader who represented their peoples. Almost at once these industrious naturalists set about sketching their faces, measuring their skull circumferences and mapping out the various rooms of their obviously limited cranial capacities. Anyway you looked at it, the savage, though noble, had less intelligence, less capacity for understanding, indeed, a lesser ability to grasp and savour the bounty that mortal existence seemed to intend for the enlightened European only.

Then came the mighty Darwin. The evolution of species was not a new idea, but the precise mechanism which effected the many transitions in the life of a species was not known. Surely there were environmental pressures, - an animal's access to food, shelter and safety from predators - but might there be something within the animals themselves, their blood or spirit, which also accounted for a species fitting just so in the niche it did? Many opinions were offered to explain this curious fact - that the world's species seemed to uncannily occupy their specific domains as though designed for the job - and Darwin's theories of natural and sexual selection, though quickly accepted by those in the know, competed among several. In no time his profound ideas became the talk of intellectuals across Europe, and as quickly they were taken up by our previously mentioned savage naturalists to explain the simplicty and inferiority of the many non-white races around the world. Now they had it! Non-white races were inferior because their ancestors had followed a less demanding and exalting evolutionary trajectory! Their primitive societies met the meager needs of their meager understandings! Ha! Problem solved!

Now to come up with a test, might not we call it an intelligence test, by which we might rate the capabilities of people and accordingly fit them into their proper places? Darwin's eager cousin Francis Galton looked at the dismal conditions of much of the world and said, "Now I must do something to ease suffering. Quickly! To the laboratory! I must needs calculate the exact intelligence of this person, the outcome of which may require I prevent her from passing her feeble mindedness to her offspring." And the white Europeans did flock to this visionary thinker's ideas on mental faculty measurement, and they christened his ideas in waters of scientific absolution, naming the blessed child psychometrics. Soon, Monsieur Alfred Binet and Herr William Stern got to wondering about a standard test to gather into its bosom all that matters in human thinking, and their labors resulted in the earliest intelligence tests. Get out your pencils dullards!

But my tears fall today because people who call themselves scientists, enthralled to their statistics, modelling and inferences from tiny samples, have the gall and gonadal instincts to trot out the aged cliche that non-whites aren't smart, oh, except the Japanese. I don't respect their points of view enough to treat them seriously, but I will ask a question. Why can't white males produce a dancable beat? Though countless thousand white males seek out rock star glory, a tiny minority produce a sound that induces anything more sweat-producing than a toe tap (I live in the land of the rod-rigid sway dance) and even then, its because they've thieved the music of those other, feeble-minded, cultures. Where is the test which determines the root causes of the white race's bland music making? A good thing not much intelligence is required to produce most of the meaningful music produced today! Thank evolution for stupidity!

A beheading by any other name

Muzzammil Hassan recently hacked off the head of his wife Aasiya. Everyone's wondering, how might one determine whether the brutal murder was one of honor or not? Was it a crime of passionate honor or merely a crime of passion? What difference does it make? Ask the old men, it is they who will tell you what's what. Some will nod in agreement, sighing resignedly they will note that it could be no other way: "She was leaving him with the children, he had no choice." Others will say, "no sir, Mr. Hassan erred in cutting his wife's head off. She should have been brought to heel long ago. His greatest mistake was in being so lenient towards his wife in the first place."

By what methods can we gauge whether the violence committed met some ineffable measure of one's sense of dignity and propriety? Is it the swiftness of the strokes of the knife which hack at the body of the wife, sister or daughter? The years of abuse and violence, can they too, in retrospect, be chalked up to maintaining one's honor? A wife's insolent gesture met with an honorable fist to the eye? A daughter's egregious flirtation met with a familial-prophylactic bullet to the head? Is the prayer mat still warm, denoting that a body recently laid there, prostrate and silent to the whispered imperative of God? Kill her, He commandeth.

Ethereality

The world's essential fragility,
it's constant unstoppable movement
towards death,
the deeper awareness that in this movement
lies the source of all meaning.
Do you see all this beauty?
Look closely for in a moment,
your heart will stop.

Feline Reflectology

S. Latitude 47°9', W. Longitude 123°43'

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has got to be one of the most solid and worthy organizations in the world. From charting the ocean's currents to warning towns of dangerous weather, they have done the foremost research on the relationship between the sea and the land. Hell, they even predict events before they happen. These blokes always know what's going on around them. Chances are, if it's happening in the sea, they know about it.

Except once.

Back in the spring of 1997AD, the autonomous hydrophone array on the Equatorial Pacific ocean picked up a somewhat strange noise. The spectrogram that recorded the noise didn't match any of the normal causes for such a noise (i.e man-made, whale, etc) The involved scientists didn't take much notice of the sound and merely dubbed it "Train" due to the fact that it sounded like a locomotive whistle.

Later in the summer something happened. The same array in the same area mentioned earlier picked up a sound. A huge sound. According to the NOAA it "Rises rapidly in frequency over about one minute and was of sufficient amplitude to be heard on multiple sensors and microphones, at a range of over 5,000 km." This time, the NOAA took notice, this sound was so loud that it couldn't be ignored. When one of the scientists sped up the sound of the recording sixteen times, he was shocked to hear a sound not unlike a human dropping a stone in a pond. "Bloop" was the name of this recording. However, this sound wasn't an isolated incident. Over the next four months, the same sound was heard many times, and it's "Bloop" was audible every single instance.

Then the sounds stopped. Somebody had to have an explanation; the sound was far too big to happen without a cause. Such sounds typical of this magnitude are usually explained by underwater earthquakes or volcanoes. Not this time. Many 'experts', when questioned said that the audio profile on the spectrogram very closely resembled that of a living creature. But for such an animal to make the sound it would have to be the biggest on this planet.

What's more is the general location of the noise at 50^oS; 100^oW. Which is eerily close to the location of a fictional creature, penciled by a penniless short story creator.

Muck.

I was approached recently by a friend who wanted my assistance in a great endeavor at some point this summer. She has been trying to seek information about the Oil sands up in Northern Alberta. Not unlike the oil sands themselves, finding proper information about the area is a quagmire. It's one of those issues that I cherish so much due to the fact that you're either all for it, or all against it. Personally, this fence is starting to feel like a couch. While the environmental concerns as well as the sociological issues really bother me, there are some genuine benefits to the oil sands themselves. To just get rid of them would be disastrous to the Canadian economy, let alone Alberta.

A different opinion was what I needed. So I asked a relative of mine what her thoughts were.
She works for the government in the energy department. In the ranks, she's fairly high up there. She even has her own office. I knew for sure that she'd have some words about the sands.
To begin our conversation, I asked her about the environment around the sands and their influence on the land. She shifted in her seat.
-Well firstly, I've been to Fort McMurray many times, she started, and I know a thing about the whole situation.
Immediately, I could observe that she was on the defensive and that she took me for a environut.
-If you want to talk about damage to wildlife, she continued, then ask about how many ducks have been decimated by the windmills down south.
I failed to see how talking about the ducks would enhance my education about the oil sands. I told her so.

At this point I realized that with such an issue when brought up, brings people to the emotion not the information. I had better tread carefully, this is the woman's livelihood. I tried to be as general and elementary as possible. Looking in her eyes, I asked what are the three biggest misconceptions about the oil sands.
- For one, she said, they don't destroy the land as much as people think. Suncor, when finished with a plot of land, returns the acres it uses to the same if not better condition that it was in when they got there.
Wondering if this is true, I urged her to continue.
- And the amount of water that they use per barrel to get the oil has decreased greatly over the last ten years. I know how much people whine about extraction and it's environmental effect.
This was in fact mostly true.
-As well as that, she paused and thought for a second, the statistic that the oil sands account for one third of the nations emissions is completely false.

In general our conversation wasn't very good. She either felt threatened by my inquisitive nature or was tired of talking about it. Asking her if she does have any issues with the oil sands, she leaned back and put her hands beside her hips on the seat and pushed her spine straight.
-Of course I do, but they aren't about the oil sands themselves. There are too many loopholes for corporations to get around. From the beginning the loose nature of the regulations for businesses to....
She went on to talk for another ten minutes about highly inconsequential topics, which gave me little information and in a manner that for a grown woman seemed very jejune.

After ending our talk, I was of the opinion that finding information about the oils sands will be harder than I thought. The emotion it stirs in people is an odd thing. For an issue as big as this, finding the 'facts' is going to be impossible, but finding somewhat accurate information might be achievable. I just have to be wary not to get distracted by the ducks.

Financial aptitude depends on location and hormone excretion of gonads

Trading is no place for wussies. When the pressure to deal is on you gotta be ready to act, a few seconds hesitation and you've lost millions. Like weavers at looms, thousands of invisible hands skillfully weave astounding profits from the arcane fabric of financial instruments. Up until the end of the eighteenth century, weaving was almost entirely done by males. The prestige of the trade and the skills required were for centuries, in Europe at least, believed to preclude women from professionally taking it up. They might spin the thread but as far as weaving was concerned, women simply knew nothing about warp and weft, silly creatures. Male dominance in this area didn't let up until the first industrial revolution, when machines meant that rote procedures made things simple enough for even the fair female to tend the loom.

Two centuries later, another male-dominant realm seems poised to let the ladies in among its ranks. Unfortunately not soon enough. Though women make up half of the entire American workforce, and have made significant inroads in a range of managerial positions, they account for a feeble 3% of Fortune 500 CEOs. In the high-stakes world of hedge fund management, women are "notable largely for their absence." They are also notably absent in stock market trading pits. Although a few women have known the highest offices on Wall Street, mostly men man the helms and tend the masts of America's great money-making institutions. Accordingly, it is they who deserve most of the credit and opprobrium for steering their charges into great shoals of greed and confusion.

As the positivist residue of so much social science continues to influence our theorizing, many account for the grossly disproportionate numbers of females in these hyper competitive, winner-take-all domains by pointing to their biology. It's testosterone silly. The greater the prevalence of that notorious hormone, the more likely a trader or CEO is to take risks, risks which lead to great profits. Like Luke Skywalker tapping into his manly intuition before firing his torpedoes at the Death Star, the financial heroes of our age shoot from the gut. It has something to do with the deep primordial contingencies of human evolution, you know, women pick berries and men spear woolly mammoths. Females just don't have the hormones essential for the risk taking necessary in the fantasy financial world. As Obama economic adviser Larry Summer pointed out sometime ago, women suck at math and science (probably art too) because of innate insufficiencies, their brains are smaller or something like that. It's simple, if they had the correct endocrine system then they too could lead the world into debilitating recessions.

There will always be those who assert that given the same opportunities women would prove to behave in the same reckless, opportunistic and selfish ways as men. I say that until they are given a real chance, not just a few token exceptions, the Margaret Thatchers of finance are exceptions which prove the rule: It's a man's world. It's not a call for the stale notion of affirmative action, but perhaps selecting candidates on the basis of something other than an unflinching willingness to club competitors over the head at the first sign of opportunity. All this aggressive, split-second one-upmanship created billions of pretend profits. Surely women can't do any worse? Surely they too deserve the chance to make pretend profits?

"I will examine the evidence, then determine whether the Holocaust really happened, you know, I mean really happened"

Whatever does this old man think? The clouds have parted and the first reluctant rays of sunlight are at last shining down on one and all: Bishop Richard Williamson has deigned to confer once more with his materials on the Holocaust. Soon he will decide once and for all if all those people really did suffer the fate they did. The matter needs "scientific" analysis, says the old man, before he's prepared to withdraw from its golden-gilded chamber his learned pronouncement of truth.

As he's always sought after the truth, do you think that he would, even for one moment, compromise his severe standards, let dull the keen razor of his judgment? As serious a thinker as he will never relent, so committed is he to filling his worldly existence with only the core sap of absolute certainty. It is to his laboratory of truth-seeking he will cloister himself, and after studying his texts - he will peer into them with great solemnity and urgency - and making his calculations - he will weigh the facts on the sensitive scale of his wisdom - only then will the words yay or nay be coaxed from amidst the infinite folds of his larynx, atop his lithe tongue and out the pursed guardians of his mouth. Did the Holocaust REALLY happen? Close your books and turn off your documentaries, the good bishop will soon settle the matter.

"Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions."
Thomas Jefferson, 1816

Ayatollahs and astrophysics

To commemorate this month's 30th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, a wide range of festivities are on offer. Most prominent in the celebrations will doubtlessly be the recent launch of Iran's first domestically produced satellite. By carrying out this impressive feat, Iran has entered a prestigious club of countries who have also reached such scientific and technological heights. Iranians should be proud of their achievement. And who deserves more credit than the ever-progressive Ayatollahs, without whose ceaseless promotion and support for science such marvels would be unthinkable?

In general, the satellite owes much to those thankfully not uncommon creatures whose commitment to religious scripture is matched only by a boundless inquisitiveness about the natural world. Nothing can stop religious conservatives from tinkering away in their laboratories, their passion for the natural sciences runs too deep! Exactly how do the processes of God's creation play out in this mortal domain they wonder? Leave it to the keepers of the holy books, those robed and bearded old men, it is on them that we must depend if the secrets of nature's abundance are to be made intelligible.

As their facial follicles produce a wealth of hirsute gravitas, so their keen analytical minds produce a proportional wealth of both scientific and religious insight and explanation. At once they gaze from atop those heady vistas of God's word, gently leading us through the gnarled moral complexities of human relations, while at the same time providing experienced advice about proper pipette operation. Where would civilization be without the selfless, visionary leadership of these exemplars of religious and scientific genius? And who better to guide and comfort both our mortal bodies in this world and our immortal souls in the next? God's speed little orbiter of the heavens! May your components and circuits reside safely in the bosom of the eternal almighty!

"Priests...dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversions of the duperies on which they live."
- Thomas Jefferson, 1820

Another Person I've had on my list to meet before I die...

......has just died. My list of wonderfully creative and inspiring people keeps getting shorter and shorter every year. And why the hell is it that the Punk musicians on my list are the first to go?

Lux Interior died this morning.

Interior was the lead singer of the band The Cramps, who for my money produced some of the greatest Rock music ever. No hyperbole. I'll take a Cramps song over any band if I just want to hear some great rock and/or roll.

Their music was more than simple and often repetitive. Songs with less than four chords, played with an immoderate amount of fuzz and sprinkled with the spirit of rockabilly. It worked so well that many have tried and failed to match their intensity.

Lux himself has been described as Iggy Pop's demented twin, and I'm sure he wouldn't have minded that. But Lux just had this playfulness that was rare in any frontman. Lux was born to do one thing and this was it; to chuck his 110 pound body around a stage in shiny spandex.
I've been told by others that apparently his record collection is legendary and his encyclopedic knowledge of music was unbelievable.

So why did he end up making the simplest form of music?

I'd like to think that Lux understood rock and roll better than 99% of those that 'claim' to play it. Because it is simple, stupid.

Play something catchy.

Make it short.

Make it loud/big.

Talk about what is on your mind RIGHT FUCKING NOW. Sex, doing drugs, getting angry at something, some strange idea you just thought of... Give it a beat and a riff and you've made a
better song than 'Stairway to Heaven.'

Lux, you've made things a whole lot better since you've been on this rock hurling through space. You've certainly made it weirder.
Shine on. Like Spandex.