My Comments Are More Like Essays

A post on the Raven Entertainment Studio blog incited my ire enough for me to post one of my patented "unnecessarily long comments." I figured that since it was long enough to be a blog post in itself that I should post it here, as well - I'm a cheater that way.

Here's the news story that ruffled Raven's feathers:

By The Canadian Press
WINNIPEG - A Judo Manitoba official reduced an 11-year-old girl to tears Saturday when he refused to allow her to compete in a tournament wearing a hijab, or Muslim head scarf.
While other children squared off in the match at a Winnipeg gym, Hagar Outbih could only watch from the sidelines and wonder why she was singled out.
"He said that I can't fight. If I want to fight I have to take it off or I have to leave," Outbih said as tears rolled down her face.
Hagar's mother, Khadaja, tried to console her daughter.
"As a mom I feel so bad that my daughter would go through this." she said.
Judo Manitoba president Dave Minuk made the ruling.
He said it was based on International Judo Federation guidelines.
"It has nothing to do with religion, it is a safety issue," Minuk said. "It (the hijab) could be used to strangle somebody. It could fall over her face."
The Judo Manitoba ruling is the latest controversy in Canada over the wearing of hijabs by Muslim girls in sports.
In April an international referee said a Tae Kwon Do team of mainly Muslim girls was kicked out of a tournament near Montreal because the sport's rules don't allow hijabs.
The team, made up of girls between eight and 12 years old, is affiliated with a Muslim community centre in Montreal and five of its six girls wear the head scarf.
Last February an 11-year-old Ottawa girl was thrown out of an indoor soccer tournament for refusing to remove her hijab.
A federal Conservative MP as well as the Liberals and the NDP have defended the right of girl's to wear religious head-scarfs.
Conservative MP Rahim Jaffer, who is Muslim, has said that kicking kids out of sporting events is not the way to help communities live together in harmony.
Hagar Outbih agrees.
"I think they should change the rules because there are lots of people in the world," she said as she hugged her mom.
"There is not just Christians, there are other religions. They should be fair to everybody."
Outbih plans to write a letter of complaint to Sport Manitoba, an amateur sports organization whose chairman is appointed by the Manitoba government.
In a bid to mollify the girl organizers of the Judo match offered Outbih a participation medal, which she politely refused.
"Because I didn't deserve it. If I keep it it would just be bad memories."

Here's a link to the post with his response:

"Muslims and Martial Arts"

And here's mine:

Whenever I hear about someone being suspended from their job for refusing to wear the company uniform, or, as in this instance, not being allowed to compete in a sport because they want to wear unsafe clothing, I think of telling them this:

"Right now, you've got to make a choice: what's more important to you? Your devotion to a god(s) who isn't putting food on your table, or your career? If your religion is more important than your goals, then it wins, and you can go home and pray."

I think the most arrogant thing you can do is to expect an organization in a free country to pay a cost in safety in order to indulge you. Swim classes wouldn't allow a person to swim while wearing the hijab, would they? And would they be expected, if they were a co-ed organization, to start holding separate practices/tournaments for boys and girls if the hijab could not be worn? You can't accomodate everyone's whims, and in the end, it's up to the organization itself to decide what is acceptable. If we don't like it, we can always start our own group, or take the easier route and, instead of demanding that THEY accomodate US, accomodate THEM.

Let me share a graphic example: I worked at Canada's Wonderland a few years ago, and it was the typical minimum wage job - which is to say, I learned to look upon everyone with equal contempt. If you've been to Wonderland, you'll know that there is a "Season's Pass" available to purchase which will get you admission into the park for the entire season, May to October - it's worth the price if you live near Toronto and you're chronically unemployed. The pass requires that a photo be taken, because the rules of purchasing the pass specify that it be used ONLY by the purchaser - this is so that a person doesn't come into the park and pass their card back to their friend waiting outside. It's business, and it's the terms of the agreement to purchase the pass: no photo, no use. I think you can see where this is going: a woman in the full-covering hijab walks into the building where the photos are to be taken, and refuses to remove the face covering. This is either clever, or adamantly stupid, take your pick. We explian that your face needs to be visible - no dice. So we tell her she can't use the pass until the picture is taken. Obviously, she gets upset, because how dare we, HOW DARE WE, try to decide the terms of admission into the park? It's not like the owners of Canada's Wonderland actually maintaint he park, or provide you with the fun you so fervently seek. How dare they presume to decide that they can run their business as they please?

No one's forcing you to take part in the martial arts tournament, or get the job, or visit the theme park: if you don't agree to the terms, you can leave. That's the cost you pay for living with other people, THAT'S the key to "harmony:" negotiation and compromise. If taking part in a martial arts tournament is not worth the cost of removing your religious gear, then don't do it, just as if I don't think a litre of milk is worth $2, I don't buy it - I don't demand that the store owner give me the milk for the more-reasonable-to-me cost of $0.30.

If the cost is too high, don't pay the price - just because a hijab doesn't have a price tag on it doesn't mean that it doesn't count.

You've Still Got Your Voice, We're Just Taking Our Megaphone Back

or, The Public Arts: Artists Working Off Grants Should Learn From Freelancers

There was a very short piece in the Toronto Star's Entertainment section on November 17 that spun off from a main article about the new edition of Life of Pi, a book I've never read, have no interest in, and wondered why it would need an illustrated edition.

Or, at least I think it had something to do with The Life of Pi, and it certainly wasn't some smart-alec "artiste" trying to say "conservatives are stupid."

In the meantime, [Yann] Martel [the author of Life of Pi] is persisting with his campaign to persuade Stephen Harper of the virtues of public funding of the arts. For more than half a year, Martel has sent the Prime Minister a literary classic in the mail every two weeks, beginning with Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich and, most recently, Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke.

It got me thinking - what exactly does Martel think he's going to accomplish?

Was his master plan to get Harper to say "Wow! These books are great! I think I'll take money from the Canadian public in order to get more of them" ?

The answer to the "starving artist" problem is not the public fleecing of Canadians in order to finance the artists' projects. If an artist's work cannot attract popular support, than what benefit would forced patronage have for the people paying for it? If I don't think that a book is worth buying, forcing me to buy it isn't going to change my opinion of it. If I think a sculpture is particularly ugly, you cannot set it up in my front yard because you think I'm "uncultured."

Have you ever wondered why bad movies get made? It's because the producers, or the actors, or the directors, were able to convince the studios (or the people holding the purse-strings) that their idea had value. Have you ever wondered why sequels to bad movies get made? Because the first bad movie made money, which was an expression of the public's sense of value. Whether you agree the public should find value in yet another installment in the Rush Hour series or not is not the point.

Value is not an inherent quality - nothing is intrinsically valuable. To be valuable, something must be useful for some ends, something must have a purpose, no matter what that purpose is. It doesn't matter whether a forest is valued because it can be cut down to produce paper or because we enjoy the way it looks, the inescapable fact is that it doesn't have value until a human being places value on it. This is especially true of art - the more people that are willing to pay to see it, the greater its value. Hell, it can even have great value with only one supporter, so long as that supporter believes that it is worth more than everybody else does. For example, I thought the TV show The Lone Gunmen was of great value - unfortunately, Fox did not.

Let's look at a classic example, Star Trek: between its second and third seasons, the show hung on the edge of cancellation by CBS. It was only a great outcry from fans, an expression of value, that showed the network that Star Trek did indeed have more value than they originally thought. Star Trek was only kept on the air because the fans convinced the network that the series had value - in effect, they sold Star Trek to the executives, even better than the producers could.

And this is what our publically funded artists must learn to do, and quickly.

Stephen King, John Grisham, and freelance writers the world over have been using the technique of "selling it" for their entire careers. When you write a book and present it to an agent or a publishing company or the future readers of your work, you don't say "I worked really hard on this," you say: "This book will sell, and these are the reasons." Heck, Stephen King does not merely by putting his name on it: "I know you don't think I can write a non-fiction book about the Red Sox, but, hey - the Stephen King brand is hot right now."

If your writing's not earning you the money you need to live, you shouldn't be writing - likewise if you're any other kind of artist. You need to convince companies to give you the big advances, not rely on government to pay for your apprenticeship.

Well, since my baby left me, I've find a new place to dwell; it's at the end of a virtual street, at Habbo Hotel

From http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7094764.stm

A Dutch teenager has been arrested for allegedly stealing virtual furniture from "rooms" in Habbo Hotel, a 3D social networking website.

Your comments? I, for one, think this is more of a fraud case than a "theft" case. While the users did pay for the virtual items using "real money," the entire world that was set up is still owned by the maker of the game. If they stopped supporting the online capabilties of the game, for instance, users would have their virtual belongings "destroyed," because they would no longer be able to access them. In fact, what the users are paying for is not virtual furniture and knick knacks, but ACCESS to those particular snippets of code. If users stopped paying to access the game world, or otherwise abused their accounts, they would lose their right to access the game, and they COULD NOT argue that they should be able to keep, somehow, their unreal bedroom set.

My TTC Is... Filthy, smelly, frequently late, a waste of money, not worth the fare, horribly uncomfortable, grossly incompetent...

(photo from http://torontoist.com/2007/11/rightwingers_us.php, although I fail to see why being pissed off about the incompetence of TTC employees should be the exclusive domain of "right-wingers." Maybe "left-wingers" enjoy wastes of tax-payer money?)

The TTC (an acronym for "Toronto Transit Commission," or alternatively, "Take The Car"), that big swirling vortex that people who just really hate money like to support, has announced that, despite yet another fare increase a week ago, they're still hemorrhaging cash:

http://www.thestar.com/article/276279

If you thought last week's TTC fare increase would be enough to solve Toronto's transit woes, think again.

The TTC is already projecting a $32 million shortfall on its $1.2 billion operating budget next year.

Although the gap is pegged at only $14 million officially, the TTC's contract with its unionized workers expires in March and a new agreement is expected to cost an extra $18 million a year.

Unveiling the 2008 budget proposal yesterday, TTC officials said they face significant financial challenges, including $21 million in service improvements, increased costs and continued ridership growth.

So, hold up a second - you mean to tell me that that expensive new automated "stop announcing system" didn't generate millions of dollars out of nowhere, but actually cost money? And that new art project for a few downtown stations didn't generate any revenue either? But...how?

Could you imagine a private company running their affairs this way? Coming up short year in and year out, and yet announcing even more new and exciting projects which are expected to generate precisely zero dollars in profit? That company would fold faster than - and please excuse the cliche - Superman on laundry day.

Why wouldn't you get the system up to "tolerable" levels before adding new features? After all, would you buy caviar when you haven't even scraped together the money to buy the toast?

I am so sick of this. It's as if the heads of the mighty Transit Commission don't realize that they need to take in more money than they spend if they want to keep doing what they're doing. They don't consider future costs, they aren't willing to take a hard stance with their unions, they aren't willing to forgo some new thing-a-ma-jig or pet-project in order to save money, and they definitely aren't willing to consider any sort of revenue stream that isn't forcibly taken from people who don't even use, never mind enjoy the transit system. Instead of getting buses that can seat more than 12 people comfortably, we get buses with bike-racks on the front, or ad campaigns that give themselves pats-on-the-back, or some inane removal of helpful signs for what seems to be no other reason than an excuse to give incompetent employees who can't be fired something to do.

How can the TTC raise some money? For one, I proposed actually privatizing the TTC way back on my Facebook page. Of course, in conjunction with such a proposal, I also said that the system would then need to be opened up to competition, as monopolies are, and I believe I speak for everyone who's ever dealt with Canada Post when I say this, no fucking fun at all. Hell, maybe the system could be opened up for competition without privatization. Don't know how, but I think it's worth looking at.

I also suggested more vigorous advertising: there should be advertisements on subway train seats, subway station elevators, and even over the audio announcement system I derided before. It doesn't have to be elaborate, only a little "the TTC is brought to you by Future Shop," or some other crap. The website should also include advertising, which can be cheap and unobtrusive. Could such advertising be considered be considered obnoxious, or simply unsavory? Sure. But I'd rather put up with a three-second ode to H&M between the announcing of stops than pay increasing prices for decreasing service.

Here's the original post:

Things the TTC Should've Saved Money on...

...before running face-first into the inevitable shit-storm associated with voting in an ex-NDP mayor, and talking about cutting routes and raising ticket prices in order to scare the public into allowing them to raise taxes.

These things should have been done over five years ago:

- refrained from purchasing 800 buses that are cramped, uncomfortable, lurchy, and virtually seat-less.

- refrained from fitting those same moronic buses with bike racks stuck to the front.

- switched over to an all-token system: paper tickets have to be recycled every time their used. Metal tokens can last up to 20 years without wearing out. "Smart-cards" could also have been considered.

- looked into the "driver-less" automated trains like they use in Paris.

-stood up to their money-wasting unions.

- opened the system up to competition.

- worried about running an efficient transit system, not about tarting up the subway stations with "modern" art like 2-dollar whores (or, with fares today, $2.70 whores)

- built subway stations that followed demand, not wishful thinking (Sheppard subway, anyone? Anyone?)

- increased station advertising.

- given up and privatized it.

I don't blame them for not thinking ahead - I mean, they had that scheme to give the homeless free booze and cigarettes, and when you've got such a flawless plan, why would you hedge your bets?

I've also mulled over the possibility of removing the current system of child/student/adult/senior tickets, as would be necessary with an all-token system, and decreasing the fare to $1.50. I figure that a family of four (two adults, two kids) would have once spent (2.70 x 2 + 0.70 x 2 =) $6.80 to go one way on the bus. With 1.50 for everyone? $6.00. Okay, maybe we can make it $1.75. But the point is that you would not be losing that much revenue, considering that so much transit is paid for by students who use, fittingly enough, student tickets, and who are hassled every day by drivers asking for student I.D. This inevitably pisses off the student, forces the TTC to maintain a system of producing photo-ID cards, inconveniences other passengers when a particularly tenacious student without ID will not leave the bus after being told that the ticket he just threw into the fare box cannot be redeemed for a ride, endangers the driver if the student won't take it lying down, and pisses off the 12-year-old who just looks thirteen but is being hassled by a big dumb bald guy who thinks that he can verify age by sight alone. In case you couldn't tell, I have been witness to all of these events, and they never fail to tick me off.

I think that I may have steered a bit off of my initial purpose of this post, which was simply to feign surprise that the TTC is, once more, not in the black, but I take any chance I can to complain about the TTC. Holy fuck, do I hate this transit system.

First Post - Yesterday's News

Welcome to Canuckopia, a place where I'll be posting the news that I thought was interesting or enraging enough to warrant a mention. After posting no fewer than six items in one day to my Facebook profile, I figured that a blog might be a better alternative to bugging all of my friends.

I'm going to start by re-posting here the news that I posted yesterday, and then I'll take it from there. Excelsior, reader of discriminatin' tastes.

My Comments on the WGA Strike

Some of you who follow entertainment news (or hell, some of you who are actually in the entertainment industry) may have heard about this little strike that the unionists in the Writer's Guild of America have gotten into.

Now, some of you might think that you know my position already - that I'm anti-union. And if this were concerning any other group of workers, like automotive manufacturing worker, nurses, or teachers, you'd be right on the money. But this isn't about those grunts. No, no, gentle reader - read, and be both shocked and awed: I agree with the union this time. After all, was it not a "union" of sorts that went on strike in Atlas Shrugged?

For the most part, anyway. See, I'm only against unions when they engage in the tactics that are described here:

http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=5040

or when they otherwise coerce others by denying them a living (e.g. strong-arming employees into joining the union, paying dues, having those dues invested into businesses or causes that they don't support; not allowing the company to hire temporary workers or replace the lousy ones, even if there are throngs of potential employees throwing their resumes through the front gates).

Okay, I need to go on a short deviation from the flight plan for a second to tell you a funny story about unions. I know a guy who works in a slaughterhouse/meat-packing plant. This is an industry where if you've had experience crossing the street without incident, you're over-qualified. Anyway, the union there are in such a position that they've dictated that an employee cannot get a raise unless everyone in the plant (minus management, of course) gets the same raise. Are you with me so far? That amounts to saying that if a twenty-year veteran employee who's never missed work and has never had an issue with management deserves more money, so does the complete cluster-fuck who shows up once every two weeks and goes home early because he's scared of all the men walking around with knives. So, you'd assume that, naturally, there's no incentive to work harder. Hell, they've made such a convoluted mess of how you can fire someone that there's no incentive to work at all. But here's the kicker: management motivates employees using the union's own machinations against them. Employees are able to get extra pay for over-time, so a frequent practice within this particular meat-packing plant is for management to do some "creative" wage reporting. Since they can't pay a man what he's worth in a straight-forward, honest manner, they'll just add a few hours of over-time to his record. "We'll tell them he came in on Saturday," if anyone asks - but they never do. The union forces people to lie if they want to keep a valuable employee valuable.

Anyway, back to talking about other unions.

The issue at the heart of this strike involves "residual payments." Residuals are the money that a creator is paid when their work (a TV show, movie, song, whatever) is shown to the public. For example, every time a rerun of the original Star Trek is shown, William Shatner makes a little more money.

The process of paying out residuals is usually complicated whenever a new technology comes out. When movies began to be broadcast on television, the Screen Actors' Guild had to fight to get the studios to pay them for those showings, because television wasn't even a consideration when the original contracts were drafted. Likewise, home video and the rise of the VCR created trouble for producers, writers, and actors. The latest method of distribution to cause Hollywood lawyers headaches is the internet. How can creators be paid if there's no physical product being manufactured, and no real way to track "broadcasts?" Obviously, the distribution of entertainment over the internet isn't going to go away any time soon, so this is a problem that needs to be addressed.

Hollywood unions are unique in the world of organized labour. The revenues from a Tom Cruise are such that, if he were to simply stop working, or threaten to stop working over a grievance, millions, possibly billions, of dollars could be lost. Even a highly-trained computer programmer can be replaced by an equally talented programmer who'll work for less. But you can't replace Tom Cruise. Lord knows, we've tried. Hollywood unions don't have to resort to the thuggish tactics of their more menial counterparts in other industries: sure, "Heroes" might be able to continue production under a different writer who doesn't mind working for cheap, but it'll definitely not be the same show. There's little difference between an engine put together by a Canadian and one put together by a Japanese, but there are huge differences between a book written by Nick Hornby and one written by Dean Koontz.

That's why I support the WGA strike. Writing is a harsh mistress, and only a few will come close to mastering it. If their contract guarantees them revenues for every exhibition of their work (I specifically used this phrasing to avoid "work for hire" contracts, like those that used to be common in the comic book industry), then they deserve the money, no matter what technological medium is used.

But along with being problematic, this strike is also very exciting. It's a sort of legitimisation of the internet as a method of distribution, and an admission that there is big money for the taking. The industry would not be fighting it otherwise: if it wasn't worth it, the studios would specify residuals in their contracts, but then cut back efforts to use the web as a broadcast medium. And, unlike television, there's really no limit to how many shows can be made or become popular: timeslots would become a delightful anachronism. If five of your favorite shows all premiered at 9:00 Monday night, you wouldn't need to decide which one to miss; you could see them all. And don't forget the fact that the internet is cheap as hell.

This strike is, for now at least, a lot more of an "Atlas Shrugged" type than a "French Riot." It is a strike by creative people who are trying to show that their output can't just be replaced by someone else. They aren't trashing studios, or demanding that they get longer paid vacations, they just want to show that they are what drives Hollywood. Ideas and creative men drive the movie and television industries, just as they drive every other business. And for once, those creative minds can pull a "Wyatt's Torch" and consign an entire summer of blockbuster movies to the flames.

Let's just hope this doesn't get ugly.

Roofie-Dots

The Aqua-dots recall: just another leaky hole in the hull of China's manufacturing "industry."

You would think that a company would have a chemist or a scientist or something who would be able to look at the list of ingredients in a children's product and say, "You know, I think this one may contain a bit too much Roofie. We may need to go back to the drawing board and decrease the level of poison here."


Jimmy Carter is an Idiot

You know, a quotation attributed to Robert Heinlein reads: "An elephant: a mouse built to government specifications." And I really don't think there's any greater proof of the truth of that sentiment (or of the stunted psychology that is required to be a successful politician) than the revelation that Jimmy Carter once thought it'd be within the boundaries of a reasonable response to shoot a cat because he was a little too close to the birdies.

And that hook?

"Lamentably, I killed your cat."

Kills me every time I read it.

So he killed your cat. There'll always be more cats, and besides, his intentions were good. He just wanted to help the little birdies.

CBC - For the Glory of the State

CBC pulls a documentary on the Falun Gung after "concerns" expressed by Chinese bureaucrats.

Ah, the CBC... if it's a "documentary" showing us how Wal-mart is the harbinger of the end-times and only socialized medicine can stop it, it'll get play five nights a week - but we can't risk angering the communists, now can we?

Energy Drinks and Alcohol?

Yes, apparently heeding the warning on the can (you know, the one that says "Do not mix with alcohol") is a good idea. Remember folks: SCIENCE!

From ScienceDaily:

Twenty-nine state attorneys general have already condemned alcoholic energy drinks,” said O’Brien. “We believe the FDA has a responsibility to investigate the health risks of energy drink cocktails, and to make that information available to consumers. Students should be informed about the risks of mixing alcohol with energy drinks, as part of an overall program to reduce high-risk drinking and its consequences. And colleges should reconsider the free distribution of energy drinks at campus-sponsored events.

I have two comments regarding this:

1 - "State attorneys" are, like members of the UN's IPCC, not scientists, so I don't see why their opinion is relevant.

2 - Energy drinks are, as I've already said, labelled with a warning against drinking alcoholic cocktails: Red Bull says right on the can, "Do not mix with alcohol." It is simply unnecessary for tax-payers' money to be wasted investigating the effects of the ever-popular Red Bull/Vodka cocktail when it is already known that mixing the two types of drinks is not a good idea. If a private research company wanted to examine the specific effects of these drinks, then I'd be all for it - but an investigation into the health risks posed to University/College students (a group that would smoke arsenic if you told them it gave you a pretty good buzz), a group that is, collectively, more reckless and dissociated from reality than any other (except for their professors, maybe), should be on the bottom of the FDA's list of priorities.