More and more I am finding myself surrounded by and deeply effected by alcohol. And I have had just about enough of it. I look at my aging generation and all I see are a bunch of kids who can only entertain themselves with this drug. And my regular choice of sobriety is further and further alienating me from my peers.
It's frustrating because I am the one who gets ragged on for "not having fun" hanging out with a bunch of borderline alcoholics. Get chastised for only attending daylight rugby festivities, or opting to stop dancing and catch the last train home (for $1.60) rather than anti-up the $25 cab fare. I talk with friends online and can smell their acrid breath over the internet they are so stinking drunk. And it's just gross. And I have had enough of it.
People say, it's not just your generation, alcohol has always been used like it is now, it's just that now you are old enough to be part of it. Further, people always died of all sorts of liver disease and alcohol related stuff, but before it was called demons, a weakness of spirit, or just accounted to whatever, "God said it was his time." And these are very true and valid point, of course I was never part of the alcohol using society until 19 or there abouts, so I am fairly new on the scene.
But its getting gross. The NHS in England is stepping up efforts to help people drink smarter not harder (uhh...) so I guess I'm being exposed to a lot of media just now about alcohol, use and abuse. Media that is of course affecting my thoughts about the drug. But I'm sure that there is more going on in my life and the worlds of my close friends than media hysteria. It's difficult to gage, knowledge, surveys, stats can be overwhelming without help interpreting them, putting them in context and stuff.
But even this media is troubling. It talks about younger people being admitted to hospital with various liver diseases etc, about how much different age cohorts drink and how it compares to surveys from the past. And it talks about what individuals should do. Of course William Pitt, the youngest Prime Minister of England, died of "liver disease."
Unfortunately NHS's advice is know your limits and know your units. But there seems to be very little suggestions about what to do with this knowledge. It's great to know I drank 15 units of alcohol last night; sweet some kids will think, I'm going to see if I can beat it. And what are "my" limits? Most people think of a limit as the outward boundary, the final edge of ability. Feeling hungover or puking might be, by some, considered a limit, but it can often take more than 15 units of alcohol for people. This 15 units seems like way over a healthy intake limit. Becoming so drunk as to fall and get injured, or get alcohol poisoning and require tax-payer dollars in medical establishments to have bones set and stomaches pumped, is definitely a sign that you have had too much to drink and "reached your limit". But again this is takes well more than the recommended 4 units a day. So talking about limits should not really be about the limits of your body.
Rather it's a long term limit these media watchdogs are referring to. Maintaining a level of consumption that will not cause long term irreparable damage.
Really the message needs to promote and build up people's strength to make a choice. To choose to drink less. To choose to engage activities that are not consuming drugs and sitting around. To choose to support their friends and family members who want more from a clearer vision of the world. One that is unblocked, unfuzzied by drugs. Maybe even empower us to choose to drink. For too many it isn't even a choice, its just a default state of being.
I think globally we need to help empower each other to recognize that we get to choose. We get to choose to pray. We get to choose to work. We get to choose to dance on Fridays. We get to choose to find means of empowerment. And we don't have to fully bend to the will of other people choice, that we can choose to find out more about other peoples reasons. Other people choices.
But we need to begin freeing ourselves from the attitude "I'm free to choose how I live my life and you can't belittle me for that choice, and you can't take the choice away from me" If our choices are affecting emotions on other people, so strong that they would take legal measures to take away your choice, you should think carefully about how you force others to live with your choices.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Mareux update
My poor puppet, I think she is more than a little shell shocked after her hostage situation. I thought she was just tired, but she isn't talking or anything. Just lying on the chair watching the sky. But it is a bit rainy today so maybe its just a grey day.
Anyone got any tips for picking up a depressed puppet let me know.
Anyone got any tips for picking up a depressed puppet let me know.
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
Honk Kong Debrief
So Hong Kong was pretty sick. Absolutely gorgeous, packed sweaty filled-to-the-brim skyscrappers 7th story gardens, wrap around sidewalk escalator alley ways through the third story of the city of new old colonial futuristic nonscape and land sences twisted like emotions in every direction. Wow. What a ride.
So we lost, but it was bound to happen. I'm not to impressed with my play. Totally not seizing the opportunity on the field, conserving too much energy and not communicating well. But a good game. Saw some great ideas, nice thinking and good development.
Highlights: picking up jellyfish, pouncing Mel (the pillow thrower) in the middle of the morning, singing, shopping (not that I did much of it), dancing, hanbok wearing, eating chicken butt (I heartily do not recommend it), junk boat tour (sweet food, people and a boat to jump off and swim with), swimming, totally sweet ginger pineapple smoothy, did I mention rugby...oh yea...RUGBY!!! totally sweet.
Only one minor incident involving a terrorist attck and hostage situation. But I think Little Roo will pull through. She was pretty quite when we got in this morning, but I think she was probably tired of all the trravelling, and with having to deal with the stress and anxiety of being taken hostage so far from home.
Oh, tip for anyone carrying sweaty rugby kit through customs, sniffer dogs do not like sweat...so our kit bag got a big buzzing pad lock on it. So I took it for Xray where the man put his hand into the twoday old sweaty kit and pulled it out quick saying eerr...before i could explain it was two day old sweaty kit...oh well.
Another great weekend for the books.
So we lost, but it was bound to happen. I'm not to impressed with my play. Totally not seizing the opportunity on the field, conserving too much energy and not communicating well. But a good game. Saw some great ideas, nice thinking and good development.
Highlights: picking up jellyfish, pouncing Mel (the pillow thrower) in the middle of the morning, singing, shopping (not that I did much of it), dancing, hanbok wearing, eating chicken butt (I heartily do not recommend it), junk boat tour (sweet food, people and a boat to jump off and swim with), swimming, totally sweet ginger pineapple smoothy, did I mention rugby...oh yea...RUGBY!!! totally sweet.
Only one minor incident involving a terrorist attck and hostage situation. But I think Little Roo will pull through. She was pretty quite when we got in this morning, but I think she was probably tired of all the trravelling, and with having to deal with the stress and anxiety of being taken hostage so far from home.
Oh, tip for anyone carrying sweaty rugby kit through customs, sniffer dogs do not like sweat...so our kit bag got a big buzzing pad lock on it. So I took it for Xray where the man put his hand into the twoday old sweaty kit and pulled it out quick saying eerr...before i could explain it was two day old sweaty kit...oh well.
Another great weekend for the books.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Do we believe yet that Capitalism has failed?
Why are world food prices so suddenly on the rise? I mean, I know it can't be so suddenly as it seems, but it is suddenish. Is this rise unusual? I mean as I understand it, prices should rise, that mean the capitalist economy is working...doesn't it. Of course they shouldn't raise too quickly. That's like dropping a frog into boiling water. But slowly slowly, the value of symbols should decline, as thus we should require more of these valueless things in exchange for goods. Of course it is an exponential rise, isn't it. Things move like the Yeatsian gyre, slow at first from side to side extreme through extreme turning over, each time a little fast, a little further. Maybe I am only just noticing the gyre for the first.
But are things, like the increase in agricultural space being used for biofuels, really a cause? What about the rapid deforestation leading to the desertification of much of the globe? And why is deforestation happening? To make room for people, and for homes, and to make wood for pencils and chopsticks...of course there are just more people. We are, like the deforstation, like the desertification, like population growth, like the capitalist economy, all growing exponentially in our different directions. Maybe we just need a good alpha predator to come and make living more difficult for us.
I think it is interesting to think that any alpha predator to attack humans would have to be invisible to human sight. If we can see the source we seem pretty good at doing something about it. Spontaneous combustion might work. It's these things we can't see. Like what is causing the appaerntly sudden upward spiral in the price of food.
And at the same time it seems easy. Our own hubris led to this.
But are things, like the increase in agricultural space being used for biofuels, really a cause? What about the rapid deforestation leading to the desertification of much of the globe? And why is deforestation happening? To make room for people, and for homes, and to make wood for pencils and chopsticks...of course there are just more people. We are, like the deforstation, like the desertification, like population growth, like the capitalist economy, all growing exponentially in our different directions. Maybe we just need a good alpha predator to come and make living more difficult for us.
I think it is interesting to think that any alpha predator to attack humans would have to be invisible to human sight. If we can see the source we seem pretty good at doing something about it. Spontaneous combustion might work. It's these things we can't see. Like what is causing the appaerntly sudden upward spiral in the price of food.
And at the same time it seems easy. Our own hubris led to this.
Saturday, April 05, 2008
It good to be back!
My goodness, what a total high!!! So i played 7s today. How totally awesome! All the greatest parts of rugby, with 7 minute halves! Score 7 for the good guys.
So of course, I am not one to shirk any tradition, and came off 3 minutes into the first game with a nose bleed. I love it, that would be the first game of every season of rugby i have ever played has begun with the traditional nosebleed...granted this time there were no tampons involved. So once we got the guizer under control, it was back out to rock and run it hard.
It was a pretty physical game as we are mostly new to the sport, or 15s converts, so it was a pretty rough game! But wow, how sweet it is to be tearing it up on the mudtracks once more. And i do mean mud tracks. As perhaps I have mentioned, there is no such thing as grass in Korea, its just one of those things like cheese that they just don't understand how to use. I was at a plant shop today and they had stacks of dry yellow sod cut into 4x4 inch squares...i don't know what they were to be used for... but clearly they don't really know either.
So we played on a mud/sand pitch. Which I actually quite liked, except that spandex have this amazing funneling power, what ever gets into a pair of spandex always seems to funnel right into the crotch...I must say, in that respect i wish we had been playing on grass. But I can't compain. Course my boots were too small, so I sold them and borrowed a pair. But that's fine.
As for the play. It was awesome, went for a couple awesome runs, scored a couple tries, set up some nice play and had a smashing time.
Ahh...what a high. Right. I need a beer and then its off to bed (there is more rugby in the AM!!!)
So of course, I am not one to shirk any tradition, and came off 3 minutes into the first game with a nose bleed. I love it, that would be the first game of every season of rugby i have ever played has begun with the traditional nosebleed...granted this time there were no tampons involved. So once we got the guizer under control, it was back out to rock and run it hard.
It was a pretty physical game as we are mostly new to the sport, or 15s converts, so it was a pretty rough game! But wow, how sweet it is to be tearing it up on the mudtracks once more. And i do mean mud tracks. As perhaps I have mentioned, there is no such thing as grass in Korea, its just one of those things like cheese that they just don't understand how to use. I was at a plant shop today and they had stacks of dry yellow sod cut into 4x4 inch squares...i don't know what they were to be used for... but clearly they don't really know either.
So we played on a mud/sand pitch. Which I actually quite liked, except that spandex have this amazing funneling power, what ever gets into a pair of spandex always seems to funnel right into the crotch...I must say, in that respect i wish we had been playing on grass. But I can't compain. Course my boots were too small, so I sold them and borrowed a pair. But that's fine.
As for the play. It was awesome, went for a couple awesome runs, scored a couple tries, set up some nice play and had a smashing time.
Ahh...what a high. Right. I need a beer and then its off to bed (there is more rugby in the AM!!!)
Thursday, April 03, 2008
All the wrong reasons
I get all hot and bothered when I read about the incredible damage humankind all by themselves are doing to this planet. I mean I know we suck and all, but we are not the only factor...I mean how could we be. And this is what gets me so upset. The fact that it seems we scientists, academics and people who want to know more can't quite accept. No matter how much more we know, we can't know everything. We can't account for it all.
I think if we could accept that one point, or concede that one point, or somehow manage to bring within our grasp that one point, we would recognize that we should just proceed with caution. This doesn't mean, stop progressing. That is dumb.
Don't just stop using oil, or stop using electricity, or stop buying everything, or stop being part of the human race. It just mean's procede with caution. With each progressive step assess does this work, how well does it work. Does this put myself or my family under unnecessary risk? Does this put my city or country at risk? Does this put strangers at risk? What about the water I drink...does it affect that? Does it impact on my favourite places to walk and play?
If my answer is I don't know...well I should have a look around as see. If the answer is maybe...well then I should have a look, but also keep in mind I should look for new ways too...just in case. If the answer is yes...well then I should ask then do I really want to be using it. And if the answer is proudly loudly no, then I should still look around, continue finding new ways, because everything is always subject to change, or rather everything is change. Always.
But here is the thing. We need to be real about that...we need to start globally embracing the possiblity that we can and do change. Maybe. That whatever our impacts and affects, big or small, they are subject to change. They are going to change. So lets stop arguing about the affects and impacts and look for the most exciting ways to going about changing. It's evolution baby.
I think if we could accept that one point, or concede that one point, or somehow manage to bring within our grasp that one point, we would recognize that we should just proceed with caution. This doesn't mean, stop progressing. That is dumb.
Don't just stop using oil, or stop using electricity, or stop buying everything, or stop being part of the human race. It just mean's procede with caution. With each progressive step assess does this work, how well does it work. Does this put myself or my family under unnecessary risk? Does this put my city or country at risk? Does this put strangers at risk? What about the water I drink...does it affect that? Does it impact on my favourite places to walk and play?
If my answer is I don't know...well I should have a look around as see. If the answer is maybe...well then I should have a look, but also keep in mind I should look for new ways too...just in case. If the answer is yes...well then I should ask then do I really want to be using it. And if the answer is proudly loudly no, then I should still look around, continue finding new ways, because everything is always subject to change, or rather everything is change. Always.
But here is the thing. We need to be real about that...we need to start globally embracing the possiblity that we can and do change. Maybe. That whatever our impacts and affects, big or small, they are subject to change. They are going to change. So lets stop arguing about the affects and impacts and look for the most exciting ways to going about changing. It's evolution baby.
Friday, March 28, 2008
All this noise is depressing me.
Sigh. What a low! I've been looking forward to Friday all week, and now that its is here I'm ready to just go home. To do standard transmission type classes: ask a question, look at tired sleepy faces, listen to the silence of bored children, grudge it out and go home.
I had a really good day too...I woke up, just predawn, and watched the sunrise. I had really good Oatmeal (hmm I sound like a bit of a hippie...) went to yoga (a lot like a hippie). I exchange English lessons for yoga lessons and i always enjoy them. But today especially so, my yoga teacher bought me a Korean vocabulary book. So now we have a real language exchange going. It was a lot of fun. Yoga was great. That's i suppose when things started to get noisy.
The whole way home it was like there were just people everywhere, noise everywhere, thousands of construction projects, motorbikes on sidewalks, cigarettes, honking impatient drivers, cars doing 140km/h on city streets. Just noise noise noise. Even when I got back to my apartment it was filled with humming buzzing noise. My one neighbours television, the others instant messenger. More construction, more cigarettes, more cars, more children...now usually I like the sound of children, but it wasn't laughter and shrieks it was demanding voices balli-wa, balli balli...
Now I'm trying to find something nice to do on a spring Friday to give the students new ways of using language, and all I can find is noise. Videos ordering people to act. News stories complaining about the ineffectiveness of protest. Nothing just posing a question to talk about, only opinions, orders, demands and reprimands.
Sigh. It is such a battle against all this global and personal hopelessness.
Well Buy Nothing Weeks are still going well at least. I'm really enjoying it a lot, in fact. It's so easy now to just say, "No I don't need (or really even want) that." It's probably not good to remove myself so much from everything, but it's nice to live in a world where consumerism isn't the normative writ. Where there are choices, and they each feel valuable, like they matter. So it's cool if other people think it is weird. I'm enjoying myself. I suppose I should just teach TOEFL and get on with it. If they do well we can have a debate about hair cuts or something...
I had a really good day too...I woke up, just predawn, and watched the sunrise. I had really good Oatmeal (hmm I sound like a bit of a hippie...) went to yoga (a lot like a hippie). I exchange English lessons for yoga lessons and i always enjoy them. But today especially so, my yoga teacher bought me a Korean vocabulary book. So now we have a real language exchange going. It was a lot of fun. Yoga was great. That's i suppose when things started to get noisy.
The whole way home it was like there were just people everywhere, noise everywhere, thousands of construction projects, motorbikes on sidewalks, cigarettes, honking impatient drivers, cars doing 140km/h on city streets. Just noise noise noise. Even when I got back to my apartment it was filled with humming buzzing noise. My one neighbours television, the others instant messenger. More construction, more cigarettes, more cars, more children...now usually I like the sound of children, but it wasn't laughter and shrieks it was demanding voices balli-wa, balli balli...
Now I'm trying to find something nice to do on a spring Friday to give the students new ways of using language, and all I can find is noise. Videos ordering people to act. News stories complaining about the ineffectiveness of protest. Nothing just posing a question to talk about, only opinions, orders, demands and reprimands.
Sigh. It is such a battle against all this global and personal hopelessness.
Well Buy Nothing Weeks are still going well at least. I'm really enjoying it a lot, in fact. It's so easy now to just say, "No I don't need (or really even want) that." It's probably not good to remove myself so much from everything, but it's nice to live in a world where consumerism isn't the normative writ. Where there are choices, and they each feel valuable, like they matter. So it's cool if other people think it is weird. I'm enjoying myself. I suppose I should just teach TOEFL and get on with it. If they do well we can have a debate about hair cuts or something...
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Any ideas?
Can you imagine a world without strangers? Could you function without doubt? Would you know what to do without a computer? How long would you last without a phone? What would you do with one litre of water? What would you do with one set of clothes? What would you do with one meal a day? What would you do for one hour without electricity?
These are all the wrong questions, I think. Because it doesn't really matter what you would do. I have to ask myself first.
As I continue to read and prepare for Earth Hour on Saturday I have stumbled on many different and interesting questions. Each of which I am posing again and again to myself. What would I do? Could I do it? The more I think and wonder about these questions the more I am sure that thinking and wondering won't get me very far. I will have to try. So I took the stairs. I get 1 hour on the computer, to make three class handouts, a report about my classes, check the news and email and write this blog. Then its power down again. It's loose leaf tea in my reusable strainer.
But I keep coming back to this last question. What will I do for one hour without electricity? I think, go for a walk, or to play rugby in the dark. I could pick up garbage. Or just sit around in my apartment. Maybe I will invite a friend over, light a candle and talk, about something or other. I could read, because there is a lot of light pollution in my apartment. I'm just not sure...not yet. Any ideas, suggestions?
These are all the wrong questions, I think. Because it doesn't really matter what you would do. I have to ask myself first.
As I continue to read and prepare for Earth Hour on Saturday I have stumbled on many different and interesting questions. Each of which I am posing again and again to myself. What would I do? Could I do it? The more I think and wonder about these questions the more I am sure that thinking and wondering won't get me very far. I will have to try. So I took the stairs. I get 1 hour on the computer, to make three class handouts, a report about my classes, check the news and email and write this blog. Then its power down again. It's loose leaf tea in my reusable strainer.
But I keep coming back to this last question. What will I do for one hour without electricity? I think, go for a walk, or to play rugby in the dark. I could pick up garbage. Or just sit around in my apartment. Maybe I will invite a friend over, light a candle and talk, about something or other. I could read, because there is a lot of light pollution in my apartment. I'm just not sure...not yet. Any ideas, suggestions?
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Earth Hour
Join the march. Join the chorus. Do it for and hour. Do it for a day. Do for the rest of the week or month. Heck, do it for life. Do it for yourself. Do it for your friends. Do it for me. Just do it. This March 29th is global lights out. At 8pm local time(s) in at least 29 cities globally, people will be participating in a lights out protest. They will be turning out the lights, turning of computers, cell phones, ovens, other electricity consuming devices. For one hour we are challenged to make greener choices and to try to avoid wastefulness.
But don’t get swept up in the rhetoric.
Don’t just mark the cursory occasion a novelty, think no lights for an hour... but to take to heart the message. We don't stand against waste...we work with every choice we make to reduce it, recycles it, reuse it and replace it with a new way of thinking. A new way of living and interacting with the world. We can't really protest environmental abuse with a 60 minute commitment, but its somewhere to start.
In myself I am slowly kindling the belief that every hour is Earth's hour. I am super excited for the big Earth hour celebrations this week. Granted, I'm sure nothing is happening here in Korea; in my own little world there will be. A class in the dark. A day without computers, ovens and other nonessential. A challenge to myself and to those around me.
I don't want to spend sixty minutes inconvenienced by darkness, but 60 minutes thinking about a new way of working. A new way of thinking about how I will and should and could interact with this earth to help keep it beautiful. To help make it a place of continuous health and positive growth. I want to challenge myself to make the choice...take the stairs...go for a walk...buy local...buy organic...put my money where my mouth is, and put my actions ahead of my words.
So how has my adventure been? For the past few weeks I have been working on a buy nothing scheme. My aim to buy nothing I don't need. It seemed amazingly difficult, and there are some things that get me often (chocolate for example). But it has been an amazing experiment. Already I've noticed I'm putting out less garbage. I have more recyclables because I'm choosing to buy foods in recyclable packaging, if packaged at all. I now always carry bags with me to the grocery store. I'm choosing to buy less and be sure to use all the food I buy, wasting as little as possible. And the biggest surprise, I don't want things as much. Every day it gets easier to buy nothing.
It was amazing to me at first, how many times a day I would think, oh I'll just get this or that. Or I'd buy a snack on the way home from work or yoga, instead of eating the food I already have in my home. How I would have to tell myself forcefully "no" and would usually argue with myself at length that it was essential enough, or it was silly to deny simple things like chocolate bars, notebooks, pens. But I have enough of these things at home, I would eventually agree.
But the greatest lesson is this ongoing lesson about choices. There is never one choice to make and that's that. It is a continuing process, a thousand choices everyday. So I hope you all have a beautifully peaceful Earth Hour. Send someone your love. And think about the choices you get to make today.
Love you all!
But don’t get swept up in the rhetoric.
Don’t just mark the cursory occasion a novelty, think no lights for an hour... but to take to heart the message. We don't stand against waste...we work with every choice we make to reduce it, recycles it, reuse it and replace it with a new way of thinking. A new way of living and interacting with the world. We can't really protest environmental abuse with a 60 minute commitment, but its somewhere to start.
In myself I am slowly kindling the belief that every hour is Earth's hour. I am super excited for the big Earth hour celebrations this week. Granted, I'm sure nothing is happening here in Korea; in my own little world there will be. A class in the dark. A day without computers, ovens and other nonessential. A challenge to myself and to those around me.
I don't want to spend sixty minutes inconvenienced by darkness, but 60 minutes thinking about a new way of working. A new way of thinking about how I will and should and could interact with this earth to help keep it beautiful. To help make it a place of continuous health and positive growth. I want to challenge myself to make the choice...take the stairs...go for a walk...buy local...buy organic...put my money where my mouth is, and put my actions ahead of my words.
So how has my adventure been? For the past few weeks I have been working on a buy nothing scheme. My aim to buy nothing I don't need. It seemed amazingly difficult, and there are some things that get me often (chocolate for example). But it has been an amazing experiment. Already I've noticed I'm putting out less garbage. I have more recyclables because I'm choosing to buy foods in recyclable packaging, if packaged at all. I now always carry bags with me to the grocery store. I'm choosing to buy less and be sure to use all the food I buy, wasting as little as possible. And the biggest surprise, I don't want things as much. Every day it gets easier to buy nothing.
It was amazing to me at first, how many times a day I would think, oh I'll just get this or that. Or I'd buy a snack on the way home from work or yoga, instead of eating the food I already have in my home. How I would have to tell myself forcefully "no" and would usually argue with myself at length that it was essential enough, or it was silly to deny simple things like chocolate bars, notebooks, pens. But I have enough of these things at home, I would eventually agree.
But the greatest lesson is this ongoing lesson about choices. There is never one choice to make and that's that. It is a continuing process, a thousand choices everyday. So I hope you all have a beautifully peaceful Earth Hour. Send someone your love. And think about the choices you get to make today.
Love you all!
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
A Little Prayer
My thoughts are with you Jessie. That we caught this early, that you recover swiftly and shine on with the grace and strength, with the beauty that your cousins wish they had! Love you always!
Cous.M
Cous.M
Thursday, March 06, 2008
Someone has to pay
What is criminal justice? Two interesting cases in the papers today. In Indonesia three men have had death sentences commuted to life in jail over drug smuggling charges. Their lawyers argued that they were first time offenders and not likely to repeat, thus death was a rather steep way to pay for their crimes. In Canada a man who murdered his neighbours, brutally, was found guilty but not criminally responsible for the deaths. The court has agreed that Despres who lives with schizophrenia , was delusional at the time of the attck, and thus cannot be found responsible for his actions. A member of the family is quoted as saying "I just think that you're responsible for your actions regardless of what you do. If you're not responsible for your actions, who is? Someone should pay for these two people being murdered, and I don't think we got justice today."
I find criminal justice one of the strangest ideas we ever came up with.
I find criminal justice one of the strangest ideas we ever came up with.
Monday, March 03, 2008
Patience
How long does it take to forget your history?
As a supermix of nations my siblings and I stand in a unique position, none of our parents, grandparents or great-grandparents were born in and grew up in the same country. We have, for generations, been a globally dispersed family. We have moved for all sorts of reasons from prejudices to royal orders, because of military or individually driven free spirit. My parents stumbled into Canada I guess nearly 2 decades ago, and my siblings and I did most of our growing up there.
We often ponder and talk about our history, or our confusion about our history. There are many races in conflict in our genealogy, so it's hard at times to hold part of our history as valid and important because it directly conflicts with another part of that history. But, in the end, we usually agree it doesn't matter too much; what matters is what we do now and next and after that.
I recently stumbled on a pleasantly bigoted Facebook group striving to keep Canada Canadian. Purporting that there is a proud history that must be upheld, that is being diluted and forgotten by us newbies. Not only must the new guy adapt to the entirely new world, but he must do so to inculcate in himself the old stories and beliefs, the mythologies and semiotics of this thing called Canada. "Learn the language," the group argues, "get a job, stop sucking on the government for handouts."
Come on people. I know we have the freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, freedom of press in whatever form press might take. But that doesn't mean we should use those freedoms to further divide our country, to generate antagonism, persecute new Canadians, to scapegoat the government and anyone else we can for our own lazy uninformed opinions about the woes of our land.
Some of the best signs that this idea of the "Canadian Canada" is that the national anthem was written in English and shouldn't be sung in any immigrant languages. Well, first off, English is an immigrant language. Second, our anthem was written in French. Thirdly, at many time throughout its history it has been sung in different language, in native Canadian languages at NHL games and other official events. And who cares what language it is sung it, especially when that translation helps make O Canada dear to the hearts of even more Canadians. It the act of singing a song that symbolizes our unity and pride as a nation that is of importance...isn't it? I mean you'd think this group would be more offended by the regular booing of the anthem at NHL and CFL games in Montreal...maybe.
A friend just sent me a youtube or googlevideo or something from the Ellen Degeneres show about little billy and bobby somewhere in the US. Billy killed Bobby because Bobby asked Billy to be his Valentine. Ellen's message that it is not alright that we are perpetuating the message that it is wrong to be (different). It is not okay that we make being different the punch lines in our jokes. That we can hate difference so deeply so vehemently that we can commit heinous crimes in an attempt to stamp out difference around us. Degeneres is talking specifically against the message it is wrong to be gay, but it has deeper implications.
We must change the message that it is wrong to be different. What is more it is our responsibility to find ways to make our differences what makes us strong. We must find ways to use our conflicts to generate positive change. And find ways to accept that sometimes that difference will be difficult to understand. Sometimes that difference won't make sense, especially when we are unwilling to ask for or to offer help.
But mostly we need a little patience. I learned the most wonderful expression while I was in Japan Shogyo mujo (諸行無常). It means All things in the world/phenomena are impermanent. I.e. all things change. The philosophy promotes the idea that things change so we should wait and watch, observe and delay so we can see what will change and what needs our intervention or help. We must accept that our history that was will not repeat, but create a new and different self as it continues to move forward in time, and these changes are for us to experience and embrace, for us to enjoy and be challenged by. For us to protest and for us to challenge. There may be similarities and redundancies, things we can avoid by knowing and not forgetting our past, but that past is a greater memory and a greater tool, when it is out diverse and diverging pasts used to help those who are new to the situation.
As a supermix of nations my siblings and I stand in a unique position, none of our parents, grandparents or great-grandparents were born in and grew up in the same country. We have, for generations, been a globally dispersed family. We have moved for all sorts of reasons from prejudices to royal orders, because of military or individually driven free spirit. My parents stumbled into Canada I guess nearly 2 decades ago, and my siblings and I did most of our growing up there.
We often ponder and talk about our history, or our confusion about our history. There are many races in conflict in our genealogy, so it's hard at times to hold part of our history as valid and important because it directly conflicts with another part of that history. But, in the end, we usually agree it doesn't matter too much; what matters is what we do now and next and after that.
I recently stumbled on a pleasantly bigoted Facebook group striving to keep Canada Canadian. Purporting that there is a proud history that must be upheld, that is being diluted and forgotten by us newbies. Not only must the new guy adapt to the entirely new world, but he must do so to inculcate in himself the old stories and beliefs, the mythologies and semiotics of this thing called Canada. "Learn the language," the group argues, "get a job, stop sucking on the government for handouts."
Come on people. I know we have the freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, freedom of press in whatever form press might take. But that doesn't mean we should use those freedoms to further divide our country, to generate antagonism, persecute new Canadians, to scapegoat the government and anyone else we can for our own lazy uninformed opinions about the woes of our land.
Some of the best signs that this idea of the "Canadian Canada" is that the national anthem was written in English and shouldn't be sung in any immigrant languages. Well, first off, English is an immigrant language. Second, our anthem was written in French. Thirdly, at many time throughout its history it has been sung in different language, in native Canadian languages at NHL games and other official events. And who cares what language it is sung it, especially when that translation helps make O Canada dear to the hearts of even more Canadians. It the act of singing a song that symbolizes our unity and pride as a nation that is of importance...isn't it? I mean you'd think this group would be more offended by the regular booing of the anthem at NHL and CFL games in Montreal...maybe.
A friend just sent me a youtube or googlevideo or something from the Ellen Degeneres show about little billy and bobby somewhere in the US. Billy killed Bobby because Bobby asked Billy to be his Valentine. Ellen's message that it is not alright that we are perpetuating the message that it is wrong to be (different). It is not okay that we make being different the punch lines in our jokes. That we can hate difference so deeply so vehemently that we can commit heinous crimes in an attempt to stamp out difference around us. Degeneres is talking specifically against the message it is wrong to be gay, but it has deeper implications.
We must change the message that it is wrong to be different. What is more it is our responsibility to find ways to make our differences what makes us strong. We must find ways to use our conflicts to generate positive change. And find ways to accept that sometimes that difference will be difficult to understand. Sometimes that difference won't make sense, especially when we are unwilling to ask for or to offer help.
But mostly we need a little patience. I learned the most wonderful expression while I was in Japan Shogyo mujo (諸行無常). It means All things in the world/phenomena are impermanent. I.e. all things change. The philosophy promotes the idea that things change so we should wait and watch, observe and delay so we can see what will change and what needs our intervention or help. We must accept that our history that was will not repeat, but create a new and different self as it continues to move forward in time, and these changes are for us to experience and embrace, for us to enjoy and be challenged by. For us to protest and for us to challenge. There may be similarities and redundancies, things we can avoid by knowing and not forgetting our past, but that past is a greater memory and a greater tool, when it is out diverse and diverging pasts used to help those who are new to the situation.
Saturday, March 01, 2008
Facebook you Frustrate me
Here I am again. Again facing this apparently growing sentiment that the world is not welcome in Canada. That if you are not of the majority you can stay where you are, my home is not your home. And the source of this confrontation, a group a colleague joined on Facebook. It may just be time for me to leave that monstrosity of a creation. It's a useful tool for networking and communication, but there is no order to it, you can say what you want and not have to care not what other's think about it, but the reality it creates for others.
The group is called Let's Keep Canada Canadian. And is supports and propagates the idea that to be Canadian you must speak one of the two languages. You must not cost social security a nickle. You should not feel you can proudly display your religion unless it is of Christian roots. You should not proudly share your cultural heritage, unless its the food and its favourable to our Canadian palate. You should not expect the help of the government in settling, or of the community. You should not settle with others of similar culture/history/heritage unless you are a WASP (or former WASP), otherwise you are ghettoizing our country.
I am afraid of this growing community of Canadians who have this vision of Canada as an anglo-saxon pseudo christian nation that doesn't change. And yet if this is so, many of their complaints are actually cries for change.
Some of the complaints on this group: Canadians should speak the language of the land;immigrants must adapt; new Canadians should not expect handout from the government; new Canadians should not be a burden. When our colonizing forefathers never adapted, they didn't learn the language of the land nor the customs and beliefs of the people whose lands the emigrated to. Or when the government used to offer all sorts of incentives and bonuses to new settlers from cheap land to cash and food allowances. When it was their "burden" to come and settle and civilize the new world.
But lets think about the true implications of the person who we would all readily recognize as a new Canadian and how they behave in their new country. I'm talking about an infant born on Canadian soil. Infants don't speak the language of the land. It takes several years of immersion and constant education before they learn the language. There are numerous handouts and benefits and tax breaks for these non contributing new Canadians, and yet we never balk or brawn over paying for them, because we know they are an investment in the future of our country. Not only do these new Canadians not contribute economically often for 20 (even 30 in my generation) years (living off family and society), they are an enormous burden to the system requiring billions (probably 10s or 100s or billions) of dollars in education, childcare and social support. Yet, we have no problem making that investment for an infant, why? And why is it different for a new Canadian who experienced infancy elsewhere?
What more, who are these immigrants hurting? Are your taxes too high? You can't survive on what little the government leaves to you because of this hulking burden to our society? You can afford to surround yourself with pure luxury and stuff and stuff and more stuff. I don't understand this ongoing and ever growing aggression directed at the new guy. Get over it people. The fact that your grandfather established your family though hard work and sacrifice 50 years ago, doesn't give you any right to balk at this woman or that man who is working hard and sacrificing so that his grandchildren will be equally establish IN TIME!!!
And this is the greatest piss off about these opinions and voices that balk at the new guy. They don't even take the time to realize in the first generation their family was in Canada, their family too was a burden. Didn't know how to get education, work, food, money. Needed help from their neighbours and from yes even the government.
The group is called Let's Keep Canada Canadian. And is supports and propagates the idea that to be Canadian you must speak one of the two languages. You must not cost social security a nickle. You should not feel you can proudly display your religion unless it is of Christian roots. You should not proudly share your cultural heritage, unless its the food and its favourable to our Canadian palate. You should not expect the help of the government in settling, or of the community. You should not settle with others of similar culture/history/heritage unless you are a WASP (or former WASP), otherwise you are ghettoizing our country.
I am afraid of this growing community of Canadians who have this vision of Canada as an anglo-saxon pseudo christian nation that doesn't change. And yet if this is so, many of their complaints are actually cries for change.
Some of the complaints on this group: Canadians should speak the language of the land;immigrants must adapt; new Canadians should not expect handout from the government; new Canadians should not be a burden. When our colonizing forefathers never adapted, they didn't learn the language of the land nor the customs and beliefs of the people whose lands the emigrated to. Or when the government used to offer all sorts of incentives and bonuses to new settlers from cheap land to cash and food allowances. When it was their "burden" to come and settle and civilize the new world.
But lets think about the true implications of the person who we would all readily recognize as a new Canadian and how they behave in their new country. I'm talking about an infant born on Canadian soil. Infants don't speak the language of the land. It takes several years of immersion and constant education before they learn the language. There are numerous handouts and benefits and tax breaks for these non contributing new Canadians, and yet we never balk or brawn over paying for them, because we know they are an investment in the future of our country. Not only do these new Canadians not contribute economically often for 20 (even 30 in my generation) years (living off family and society), they are an enormous burden to the system requiring billions (probably 10s or 100s or billions) of dollars in education, childcare and social support. Yet, we have no problem making that investment for an infant, why? And why is it different for a new Canadian who experienced infancy elsewhere?
What more, who are these immigrants hurting? Are your taxes too high? You can't survive on what little the government leaves to you because of this hulking burden to our society? You can afford to surround yourself with pure luxury and stuff and stuff and more stuff. I don't understand this ongoing and ever growing aggression directed at the new guy. Get over it people. The fact that your grandfather established your family though hard work and sacrifice 50 years ago, doesn't give you any right to balk at this woman or that man who is working hard and sacrificing so that his grandchildren will be equally establish IN TIME!!!
And this is the greatest piss off about these opinions and voices that balk at the new guy. They don't even take the time to realize in the first generation their family was in Canada, their family too was a burden. Didn't know how to get education, work, food, money. Needed help from their neighbours and from yes even the government.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Self help
My supervisor gave me a book to read. Eek. It's a help your self help yourself book. Oh goodness. I have been trying to humour her, because she said she enjoyed it and thought I might like what the author has to say. But try as I might I cannot read more than a paragraph without the urge to launch the book across the room (Sadly it's not my book so I'm not allowed to trash it...its a good thing there are lots of pillows in my house). I'm not sure why she gave me the book to read (perhaps a favour returned as I lent her a Paulo Coelho book from my shelf). But i just don't think I can do it.
My problem with this book is not just that its a help your self help yourself but that the underlying message, the principle that drives the book is basically that old Lebeau adage that our spiritual satisfaction and our ego satisfaction are the same thing, and they are satisfied by the consumption of things. And, well, I guess I'm just too much of a communist or a socialist to believe that material things bring any sort of happiness. In fact, I'm quite certain it's the other way round: that the happier you are, the more happiness you will be able to elicit from material things (i.e. the more simple your needs for material things).
Material wealth does not equal Happiness.
Happiness equals Happiness.
At least my youthful optimism suggests to me that this is the case. Perhaps thats all it is. Youthful optimism. Perhaps my boss just doesn't know I'm not old enough to want things yet. People have never really believed I'm as young as I am. In fact lately the disparity between my assumed age and my actually age has been growing larger and larger. I try to console people "My Korean age is 25..." but this does little to cover embarrassment of people who assumed I was in my mid thirties. I don't mind, I'm a pretty serious person, not nearly as light hearted as those we assume are actually 23. And perhaps this is why I've been offered this book to read.
Still I hope that I will never benefit from this kind of help. God doesn't want you to have a bigger house. You want to have a bigger house. Learning to be honest about that sort of thing is a greater key to happiness than "just believe that God wants you to have it."
My problem with this book is not just that its a help your self help yourself but that the underlying message, the principle that drives the book is basically that old Lebeau adage that our spiritual satisfaction and our ego satisfaction are the same thing, and they are satisfied by the consumption of things. And, well, I guess I'm just too much of a communist or a socialist to believe that material things bring any sort of happiness. In fact, I'm quite certain it's the other way round: that the happier you are, the more happiness you will be able to elicit from material things (i.e. the more simple your needs for material things).
Material wealth does not equal Happiness.
Happiness equals Happiness.
At least my youthful optimism suggests to me that this is the case. Perhaps thats all it is. Youthful optimism. Perhaps my boss just doesn't know I'm not old enough to want things yet. People have never really believed I'm as young as I am. In fact lately the disparity between my assumed age and my actually age has been growing larger and larger. I try to console people "My Korean age is 25..." but this does little to cover embarrassment of people who assumed I was in my mid thirties. I don't mind, I'm a pretty serious person, not nearly as light hearted as those we assume are actually 23. And perhaps this is why I've been offered this book to read.
Still I hope that I will never benefit from this kind of help. God doesn't want you to have a bigger house. You want to have a bigger house. Learning to be honest about that sort of thing is a greater key to happiness than "just believe that God wants you to have it."
Thursday, February 21, 2008
A New View
I just read a remarkable story, that I want to share and send out to as many people as possible. This is the story of a young woman with autism. She is non-verbal, and displays many behaviours that would upset any who are faint of heart, and lack the patience to accept someone who is different in so many ways from themselves. Check out some of Carly's writing to get a sense of this remarkable young woman.
After reading.
I think one particular lesson that Carly highlights is the power written language has for so many people who are unable (for many reasons) to express themselves. It is a way in, and out, for many of us. It is a way to stradel all sorts of language barriers. Many of my students tell me they prefer reading English than listening to it. Verbal English is very difficult, but reading you can see words, and start sorting what are the important words and what ones are less important.
In Carly's case, to be apraxic (to understand a language without being able to speak it), writing is an amazing way to see the normal in that distorting and challenging word abnormal. It is another way to find our many stigmas, to be reminded even, are once again unfairly placed to burden those who are not the same, in everyway, as us.
After reading.
I think one particular lesson that Carly highlights is the power written language has for so many people who are unable (for many reasons) to express themselves. It is a way in, and out, for many of us. It is a way to stradel all sorts of language barriers. Many of my students tell me they prefer reading English than listening to it. Verbal English is very difficult, but reading you can see words, and start sorting what are the important words and what ones are less important.
In Carly's case, to be apraxic (to understand a language without being able to speak it), writing is an amazing way to see the normal in that distorting and challenging word abnormal. It is another way to find our many stigmas, to be reminded even, are once again unfairly placed to burden those who are not the same, in everyway, as us.
It took a law 2...
A month or two ago, I wrote about a Norwegian law requiring large corporations (200 employees +) to have a 50/50 gender divide on executive boards. I applauded the move discussing the belief that it takes a law to cause change, that it is in our interests and for our benefits that we create and attempt to follow laws. Further, that laws are one of our greatest tools for social change.
Today I popped into BBC hoping to find the Asian markets had picked up overnight, and instead I see several different stories making my earlier, very simplistic view explanation of the role of law in a society seems like nonsense. The first article is about a youtube I happened to have been sent, made by Saudi women protesting laws against women drivers in their country! This is brilliant, I think, and highlights what laws are, why we have them and how they work. Laws are temporary explanations about how we agree to behave. I.e. all laws must at all times be subject to change. As a woman of western/catholic socialization I cannot really understand how barring women from driving is for their benefit, to protect them and their families or any of that. But I can imagine in a volatile country it is possible that limiting the movement of people is of benefit to the society. But now as Saudi Arabia is far more stable, it is time to let go of that and allow for a new social order.
The next article was about the reaffirmation of mortal sin by the Vatican. A move that has been made perhaps as an attempt to demonstrate to people how to interpret words like avarice or sloth. As I read, I worried about the loftiness of these new interpretations though. There are surely no more than a million billionaires, and not more than a hundred million millionaires, but that leave 5.9-6.1 billion people on the planet who need moral guidance. Which is the problem for us when we create laws. They are often almost always to narrow in their scope, leaving more people without guidance than need it.
Then there was an article about 24 hour drinking in the UK. This seems to me to highlight the UKs endemic dependence on law to order their society. Guidelines are necessary, they help us understand and interpret ways to communicate with those around us. Particularly as we have less and less of a close common history with our neighbours as we move from country to country, it is important that we have ways to open communication, to network and build community.
Which brings me to the last article, which I haven't read and don't want to read, but which is titled "STDs rife among US teenage girls." I'm assuming there are going to be some horrible statistics about the big 4 (HPV, herpes, Chlamydia, tric) and talk about vaccinating them all against cervicle cancer. No talk about guidance, about a growing desire to talk about and think about giving our kids less information and more guidence in how to behave.
So we do like laws. They do help us figure out ways to behave, but we should also keep in mind Sir Thomas More's idea: In his Utopia there were no laws, and each time it seemed an injustice had occured, it was weighed and discussed. The society debated and thought about it, and even when they came to a decision, it was only about that one case. Laws must be flexible enough to act as real and useful tools in the greater functioning of society.
Today I popped into BBC hoping to find the Asian markets had picked up overnight, and instead I see several different stories making my earlier, very simplistic view explanation of the role of law in a society seems like nonsense. The first article is about a youtube I happened to have been sent, made by Saudi women protesting laws against women drivers in their country! This is brilliant, I think, and highlights what laws are, why we have them and how they work. Laws are temporary explanations about how we agree to behave. I.e. all laws must at all times be subject to change. As a woman of western/catholic socialization I cannot really understand how barring women from driving is for their benefit, to protect them and their families or any of that. But I can imagine in a volatile country it is possible that limiting the movement of people is of benefit to the society. But now as Saudi Arabia is far more stable, it is time to let go of that and allow for a new social order.
The next article was about the reaffirmation of mortal sin by the Vatican. A move that has been made perhaps as an attempt to demonstrate to people how to interpret words like avarice or sloth. As I read, I worried about the loftiness of these new interpretations though. There are surely no more than a million billionaires, and not more than a hundred million millionaires, but that leave 5.9-6.1 billion people on the planet who need moral guidance. Which is the problem for us when we create laws. They are often almost always to narrow in their scope, leaving more people without guidance than need it.
Then there was an article about 24 hour drinking in the UK. This seems to me to highlight the UKs endemic dependence on law to order their society. Guidelines are necessary, they help us understand and interpret ways to communicate with those around us. Particularly as we have less and less of a close common history with our neighbours as we move from country to country, it is important that we have ways to open communication, to network and build community.
Which brings me to the last article, which I haven't read and don't want to read, but which is titled "STDs rife among US teenage girls." I'm assuming there are going to be some horrible statistics about the big 4 (HPV, herpes, Chlamydia, tric) and talk about vaccinating them all against cervicle cancer. No talk about guidance, about a growing desire to talk about and think about giving our kids less information and more guidence in how to behave.
So we do like laws. They do help us figure out ways to behave, but we should also keep in mind Sir Thomas More's idea: In his Utopia there were no laws, and each time it seemed an injustice had occured, it was weighed and discussed. The society debated and thought about it, and even when they came to a decision, it was only about that one case. Laws must be flexible enough to act as real and useful tools in the greater functioning of society.
Monday, February 18, 2008
Missing conversations at What the Book? Used Books Shop, Itaewon, Seoul.
1.
"I mean, look at our fucking society!" Standing in front of the pop culture rack this late-twenty something exclaimed to his friend, "Fucking pregnant, pregnant, suspected pregnant, just had, broke up, broke down, broke out, got engaged, got divorced; this is our generation man and it sucks."
"Yea, i know what you mean. Look at this rubbish"
[Now, I suggest you take one step to your left, take a look at the alternative culture rack, Bitch, AdBusters; or two steps to the left for The New Yorker, Time, National Geographic. Or maybe turn around and se a tiny underground bookstore in the heart of Seoul packed with 20-30 something foreigners looking for something else to read on a Sunday afternoon. Yea, you're going to get a rather skewed and depressing perspective of our culture and generation if you judge it by the tabloid section. Open your eyes a little, delay judgement a moment, get a perspective from the girl behind you.]
2.
"I can't find the book I'm looking for, and its pissing me off," she claimed, her harsh south-central American accent grating against her sinus congestion.
"What book is that?" Her friend inquired, though I'm sure the question wasn't needed for the answer to come forth.
"The Kite Runner."
"Why do you want to read it, the film is coming out soon."
"Its just interesting the way things connect. Like the Russians in the 70s and now everyone in Afghanistan. Whatever. The computer says its here, but i can't see it. This is dumb. Let's go."
[Sigh. I thought, The Kite Runner tucked under my arm with a chuckle...I should give it to her, the film is coming out soon.]
3.
"Its supposed to be really good. Man Sherlock Holmes is brilliant. Do you know why?" No pause, "He sees the things that aren't there. He sees whats missing."
"Yea, maybe."
"Com'on you can tell its good! Look at it."
Look at the book in stunned silence.
"Thats how you find a good book at a used bookstore. If its all beat up, you know its been read lots."
[Other possibilities, it was written in 1986, published on crappy paper, with weak glue, and low grade ink, and it has moved from from some English speaking country to Korea, in someones carry-on. Or its been read by people like me, with a propensity for throwing books that are upsetting, crappy, uninteresting or full of plot holes. I'm sorry to say my copy of The Kite Runner now looks like a good book to read.]
4.
"I like to pick up a bunch of books then decide which one I want, I usually walk out of here with nothing, to be perfectly honest."
[So long as you put back those "bunch of books" where you found them, so those of us who usually walk out with a months supply can find them.]
If there is one thing I really miss about living in an country where I can understand what stranger are talking about, its listening to the nonsense that we strangers say everyday.
"I mean, look at our fucking society!" Standing in front of the pop culture rack this late-twenty something exclaimed to his friend, "Fucking pregnant, pregnant, suspected pregnant, just had, broke up, broke down, broke out, got engaged, got divorced; this is our generation man and it sucks."
"Yea, i know what you mean. Look at this rubbish"
[Now, I suggest you take one step to your left, take a look at the alternative culture rack, Bitch, AdBusters; or two steps to the left for The New Yorker, Time, National Geographic. Or maybe turn around and se a tiny underground bookstore in the heart of Seoul packed with 20-30 something foreigners looking for something else to read on a Sunday afternoon. Yea, you're going to get a rather skewed and depressing perspective of our culture and generation if you judge it by the tabloid section. Open your eyes a little, delay judgement a moment, get a perspective from the girl behind you.]
2.
"I can't find the book I'm looking for, and its pissing me off," she claimed, her harsh south-central American accent grating against her sinus congestion.
"What book is that?" Her friend inquired, though I'm sure the question wasn't needed for the answer to come forth.
"The Kite Runner."
"Why do you want to read it, the film is coming out soon."
"Its just interesting the way things connect. Like the Russians in the 70s and now everyone in Afghanistan. Whatever. The computer says its here, but i can't see it. This is dumb. Let's go."
[Sigh. I thought, The Kite Runner tucked under my arm with a chuckle...I should give it to her, the film is coming out soon.]
3.
"Its supposed to be really good. Man Sherlock Holmes is brilliant. Do you know why?" No pause, "He sees the things that aren't there. He sees whats missing."
"Yea, maybe."
"Com'on you can tell its good! Look at it."
Look at the book in stunned silence.
"Thats how you find a good book at a used bookstore. If its all beat up, you know its been read lots."
[Other possibilities, it was written in 1986, published on crappy paper, with weak glue, and low grade ink, and it has moved from from some English speaking country to Korea, in someones carry-on. Or its been read by people like me, with a propensity for throwing books that are upsetting, crappy, uninteresting or full of plot holes. I'm sorry to say my copy of The Kite Runner now looks like a good book to read.]
4.
"I like to pick up a bunch of books then decide which one I want, I usually walk out of here with nothing, to be perfectly honest."
[So long as you put back those "bunch of books" where you found them, so those of us who usually walk out with a months supply can find them.]
If there is one thing I really miss about living in an country where I can understand what stranger are talking about, its listening to the nonsense that we strangers say everyday.
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Smoking: I just don't get it.
A UK health advisory body "Health England" has proposed that smokers should require a permit in order to buy cigarettes. The permit could cost £10 and would need to be renewed annually. It would require completing an application form and supplying a photo. Health England suggests that the permit process would help deter first time smokers, and would aid those who want to quit smoking in quitting by making it that much more difficult to get cigarettes.
There are so many mind-boggling plot holes in this lovely idea its just wonderful. First, the people proposing it suggest the form will be highly complex, perhaps this could be seen as a form of discrimination against those of lower literacy levels. Second, you think tobacco taxation is bad in Canada, its batty in the UK. A pack of smoke that will cost $9 in Canada will cost £9 in the UK...ie $21 CDN. So on top of paying outrageous levels of tax their will be an additional annual fee, which HE claim will go to NHS, to help bolster the system, but surely the cost of developing and implementing the system, then of enforcing it will cost far more than the £10 surcharge. What about elderly people, like my grandmother, who barely can leave their houses, how will they register each year? At this time in her life, the negative health impacts of quitting might be more than her system could handle...is such a proposal discriminating against people in her situation. What about foreigners, who come for vacations in England for a week or two or three...will they have to pay ten-quid and get an id card, will their be exceptions...or will they be expected to give up smoking for the duration of their stay in England?
HE suggests that it is necessary to have tight controls on tobacco, but to be honest it seems absurd. I think many Muslim states have it right, just ban it...if its such a monstrous thing. I think a more logical step is much like the steps taken in Canada around alcohol. Take it out of stores. Don't cell cigarettes at every venue in the country. Have Tobacconists and thats the only place you can buy it, that makes it more difficult to get cigarettes, and enforces a tighter control to keep younger cohorts away from the drug. It also centralizes profits from tobacco sales, so only the government makes money from it, then the money can be appropriately directed towards NHS.
Or maybe, if we really believe that cigarettes are harmful to health, the energy should be put into putting pressure on cigarette companies, to produce less toxic products. Ban preservatives in cigarettes, ban the use of glue on the paper, enforce the use or organic locally grown tobacco, enforce the use of non-toxic filters, either cotton or recycled paper-fiber. If the government is really so concerned over the health impacts of cigarettes, then why not put effort and energy into reshaping how the drug is retailed, rather than continually punishing the consumer.
Personally, I agree there is more that can be done to help burn tobacco companies out of our lives, but i think that it has a lot to do with ignoring them. Rather than wasting money contriving new and exotic forms of punishment, create more real, tangible and realistic rewards for those who refrain. Scholarships for kids who have never had a smoke; discounts on food for people who don't buy cigarettes; taxbreaks for families that are committed to smoke free living. Why not?
There are so many mind-boggling plot holes in this lovely idea its just wonderful. First, the people proposing it suggest the form will be highly complex, perhaps this could be seen as a form of discrimination against those of lower literacy levels. Second, you think tobacco taxation is bad in Canada, its batty in the UK. A pack of smoke that will cost $9 in Canada will cost £9 in the UK...ie $21 CDN. So on top of paying outrageous levels of tax their will be an additional annual fee, which HE claim will go to NHS, to help bolster the system, but surely the cost of developing and implementing the system, then of enforcing it will cost far more than the £10 surcharge. What about elderly people, like my grandmother, who barely can leave their houses, how will they register each year? At this time in her life, the negative health impacts of quitting might be more than her system could handle...is such a proposal discriminating against people in her situation. What about foreigners, who come for vacations in England for a week or two or three...will they have to pay ten-quid and get an id card, will their be exceptions...or will they be expected to give up smoking for the duration of their stay in England?
HE suggests that it is necessary to have tight controls on tobacco, but to be honest it seems absurd. I think many Muslim states have it right, just ban it...if its such a monstrous thing. I think a more logical step is much like the steps taken in Canada around alcohol. Take it out of stores. Don't cell cigarettes at every venue in the country. Have Tobacconists and thats the only place you can buy it, that makes it more difficult to get cigarettes, and enforces a tighter control to keep younger cohorts away from the drug. It also centralizes profits from tobacco sales, so only the government makes money from it, then the money can be appropriately directed towards NHS.
Or maybe, if we really believe that cigarettes are harmful to health, the energy should be put into putting pressure on cigarette companies, to produce less toxic products. Ban preservatives in cigarettes, ban the use of glue on the paper, enforce the use or organic locally grown tobacco, enforce the use of non-toxic filters, either cotton or recycled paper-fiber. If the government is really so concerned over the health impacts of cigarettes, then why not put effort and energy into reshaping how the drug is retailed, rather than continually punishing the consumer.
Personally, I agree there is more that can be done to help burn tobacco companies out of our lives, but i think that it has a lot to do with ignoring them. Rather than wasting money contriving new and exotic forms of punishment, create more real, tangible and realistic rewards for those who refrain. Scholarships for kids who have never had a smoke; discounts on food for people who don't buy cigarettes; taxbreaks for families that are committed to smoke free living. Why not?
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Touchy Subject
The goal of the Olympic Movement is to contribute to building a peaceful and better world by educating youth through sport practised without discrimination of any kind and in the Olympic spirit, which requires mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play.
A difficult time we are in: has been so many years since the Olympics were held in a controversial location we are not entirely sure what to do about it? Maybe we should remember the mission of the games...I know some people are leary of China, mostly out of pure ignorance, having no clue what goes on in the "Far East." [Its scary to not know] But well, these games are filling with touchy debates about things that have little to do with the games.
England is currently working on the Team Members Agreement, in which they want athletes to agree not to make politically sensitive comments or gestures during the games. Supposedly this is either because England is afraid of tarnishing its business relationships with China, or perhaps a more sinister fear that something might happen to its athletes should they speak harshly of their hosts. Of course Human Rights activists are upset about such a move, as it is their intention to use the games as a time to highlight China's human rights violations, and lack of intervention in Darfur, and suggest that moves like the possible anti-political speeche clause in the TMA is not only a violation of the freedom of speech, but also shows cowardice on the part of the UK in facing the ongoing problems in China.
Now Steven Spielberg has pulled out as an artistic advisor (i guess that means no aliens in the show this year) citing his conscience can't allow him to participate, when their are global catastorphies and human rights violations going on. [There is a little known film with animated puppets called "Team America" that sheds some interesting light on the role of actors and movie types in politics]
I'm not sure why we think that on one hand we can award the games to a country, and then think that is excuse enough to chastise and criticize the country into changing to be more like US. Who are we anyway?
While it is clear that it is probably problematic to force athletes or anyone to agree to be a-political during the games, perhaps it is an unfounded fear. The amount of physical, mental, emotional focus that an athlete needs to put into competing at an Olympic Game, should be enough, why would a government want to deliberately add more pressure to athletes by giving them reason to fear their behaviour could have them booted off the team. It's understandable, many democratic governments are nervous about what will happen when China welcomes the world this summer, but let's not forget the spirit of the games, and the motivation for reviving and for participating in them. It is not the athletes who need to be signing agreements to just play their sport... really its a move that creates unnecessary tension for athletes without doing anything to either promote open political dialogue with China about its human rights record...Further, why are we suddenly so concerned and putting all this pressure on China? Because the games are going to be there? That's silly. Human rights are an ever present and ongoing concern, YOU DON'T NEED A REASON TO BULLY SOMEONE ABOUT HUMAN RIGHTS. They are on their own, sufficient reason.
I'm glad Mr. Spielberg has a conscience. But how does his pulling out from participating in the games in any way going to benefit those persecuted in China, or the outrage that rages on in Sudan? If anything his actions further alientate the West and close means of creating meaningful and productive paths of communication.
There was an interesting debate about Canada's business relationship with China, maybe a year ago. Canadians were up set that we were doing business with a country with human rights violations (which i think is a bit posh to begin...but anyway). In the debate, the minister said we cannot do anything about problems in another nation,if we have no relationship with that nation. If we are not friends or partners in some respect, how can we even begin to talk about a nations problems.
But then it is in the Olympic charter that the mission of the Olympic movement is to place sport at the service of humanity, and thereby promote peace, to act against discrimination. So i guess its difficult (my new favourite word). Perhaps it is right to tarnish the sport in favour of the other political agendas that are catching fire on all sides. Perhaps.
A difficult time we are in: has been so many years since the Olympics were held in a controversial location we are not entirely sure what to do about it? Maybe we should remember the mission of the games...I know some people are leary of China, mostly out of pure ignorance, having no clue what goes on in the "Far East." [Its scary to not know] But well, these games are filling with touchy debates about things that have little to do with the games.
England is currently working on the Team Members Agreement, in which they want athletes to agree not to make politically sensitive comments or gestures during the games. Supposedly this is either because England is afraid of tarnishing its business relationships with China, or perhaps a more sinister fear that something might happen to its athletes should they speak harshly of their hosts. Of course Human Rights activists are upset about such a move, as it is their intention to use the games as a time to highlight China's human rights violations, and lack of intervention in Darfur, and suggest that moves like the possible anti-political speeche clause in the TMA is not only a violation of the freedom of speech, but also shows cowardice on the part of the UK in facing the ongoing problems in China.
Now Steven Spielberg has pulled out as an artistic advisor (i guess that means no aliens in the show this year) citing his conscience can't allow him to participate, when their are global catastorphies and human rights violations going on. [There is a little known film with animated puppets called "Team America" that sheds some interesting light on the role of actors and movie types in politics]
I'm not sure why we think that on one hand we can award the games to a country, and then think that is excuse enough to chastise and criticize the country into changing to be more like US. Who are we anyway?
While it is clear that it is probably problematic to force athletes or anyone to agree to be a-political during the games, perhaps it is an unfounded fear. The amount of physical, mental, emotional focus that an athlete needs to put into competing at an Olympic Game, should be enough, why would a government want to deliberately add more pressure to athletes by giving them reason to fear their behaviour could have them booted off the team. It's understandable, many democratic governments are nervous about what will happen when China welcomes the world this summer, but let's not forget the spirit of the games, and the motivation for reviving and for participating in them. It is not the athletes who need to be signing agreements to just play their sport... really its a move that creates unnecessary tension for athletes without doing anything to either promote open political dialogue with China about its human rights record...Further, why are we suddenly so concerned and putting all this pressure on China? Because the games are going to be there? That's silly. Human rights are an ever present and ongoing concern, YOU DON'T NEED A REASON TO BULLY SOMEONE ABOUT HUMAN RIGHTS. They are on their own, sufficient reason.
I'm glad Mr. Spielberg has a conscience. But how does his pulling out from participating in the games in any way going to benefit those persecuted in China, or the outrage that rages on in Sudan? If anything his actions further alientate the West and close means of creating meaningful and productive paths of communication.
There was an interesting debate about Canada's business relationship with China, maybe a year ago. Canadians were up set that we were doing business with a country with human rights violations (which i think is a bit posh to begin...but anyway). In the debate, the minister said we cannot do anything about problems in another nation,if we have no relationship with that nation. If we are not friends or partners in some respect, how can we even begin to talk about a nations problems.
But then it is in the Olympic charter that the mission of the Olympic movement is to place sport at the service of humanity, and thereby promote peace, to act against discrimination. So i guess its difficult (my new favourite word). Perhaps it is right to tarnish the sport in favour of the other political agendas that are catching fire on all sides. Perhaps.
Monday, February 11, 2008
Home Sweet Homeish
Wow, what an adventure. So I'm back from Japan! Totally sweet and wicked. Way better than the trip in September. I guess the stress of trying to function without being able to speak the language or communicate directly is becoming more and more apparent to me, and I guess I'm learning about being the linguistic minority (weird for an English speaker, but I must say a life lesson in patience). It's an interesting position though, working on different ways to communicate. Through infinitive verbs and gestures. Writing things down, carrying maps all these secondary communicative tools become primary. Then learning to speak in a simplified English. Shorter sentences, simpler tenses, basic adjectives, slow down, emulate Japanese pronunciation.
Anyway. Here's a sense of where i was, in a quiet mountain town. It snowed like a bastard. about 45 cm my second day there. And how do they handle the snow...not with salt, as that would damage the rice fields, nope...they use water. Even though it snows like a bastard, the temperatures rarely go below 0 C. So they have sprinklers basically, that run water to melt the snow and wash it away.
But i went to visit Nate's host family. The father is a 5th generation vinegar maker. Amazing! The factory is attached to the house (although now he has a second factory for the fermenting and bottling processes). Really amazing tour. Then great temaki...i had temaki twice, and maki three times...now I'm super sad to be in Korea where sushi is usually with kimchi and not fish :(
Also listened to some killer jazz. Built a tobogganing hill, even though the village is surrounded by mountains on all sides, the mountains don't really have any good sled runs.
Even the lack of heating in the houses was a small trifle, it was cold...don't get me wrong, but somehow a pleasant cold. I know i couldn't stand it back in Canada, but i suppose that is the difference when temperatures don't go below 0, or maybe at night get down to -5. Anyway, anyone traveling in Japan, a strongly suggest you forgo the big cities, for little Fukui prefecture. It's just a lovely little hideaway in what I had always thought of as a country of metropolitan cities stretching across the expanses.
Anyway. Here's a sense of where i was, in a quiet mountain town. It snowed like a bastard. about 45 cm my second day there. And how do they handle the snow...not with salt, as that would damage the rice fields, nope...they use water. Even though it snows like a bastard, the temperatures rarely go below 0 C. So they have sprinklers basically, that run water to melt the snow and wash it away.
But i went to visit Nate's host family. The father is a 5th generation vinegar maker. Amazing! The factory is attached to the house (although now he has a second factory for the fermenting and bottling processes). Really amazing tour. Then great temaki...i had temaki twice, and maki three times...now I'm super sad to be in Korea where sushi is usually with kimchi and not fish :(Also listened to some killer jazz. Built a tobogganing hill, even though the village is surrounded by mountains on all sides, the mountains don't really have any good sled runs.
Even the lack of heating in the houses was a small trifle, it was cold...don't get me wrong, but somehow a pleasant cold. I know i couldn't stand it back in Canada, but i suppose that is the difference when temperatures don't go below 0, or maybe at night get down to -5. Anyway, anyone traveling in Japan, a strongly suggest you forgo the big cities, for little Fukui prefecture. It's just a lovely little hideaway in what I had always thought of as a country of metropolitan cities stretching across the expanses.
Friday, January 25, 2008
Now that's interesting
This morning when I arrived at work and did my regular peruse of different news agencies I frequent when bored at work, an startling article appeared. Now i don't really know anything about business. I wish I did (maybe i will have to learn now). Anyway, a French bank suffers from a rogue trader I suppose trading away 5bn euros of bank profits.
I didn't fully understand the article because 5bn euros seems like a lot of money, but the bank didn't seem to be too worried...at least not as it was reported. Well just now as I checked back to try and better understand the situation...one how does any one perhaps have the power to control 5bn euros, two why would someone do something like that, three what is the impact of such an act of fraud I read a headline "Bank uncovers $7bn fraud". I thought, oh the plot thickens. But no, the reporting agency (the same one I read the first article at) had just changed the original article so the amount was reported in American dollars instead of Euros. Press...that is not your job! It was Euros that were lost, report the lost Euros, don't try to inflate emotions by misleading readers. Grr it makes me upset. As a non-money type, a little help Media, would be nice. Perhaps explain what was this trader doing..."massive fraudulent directional positions in 2007 and 2008 beyond his limited authority"...what is a directional position...it sounds like a bet. but do banks bet...i guess, they must, even the weathermen bet to try and keep their inability to demonstrate and real predictive force of the weather afloat. How can you bet 5bn Euro...who would take that bet...im sure not the local bookers...
I'm worried about this, it seems like the cash system is more delicate than even i had imagined.But so what....what should we do.
Anyway, any of you businessy types, if you can suggest places to get laymans explanations on this story I would appreciate it.
I didn't fully understand the article because 5bn euros seems like a lot of money, but the bank didn't seem to be too worried...at least not as it was reported. Well just now as I checked back to try and better understand the situation...one how does any one perhaps have the power to control 5bn euros, two why would someone do something like that, three what is the impact of such an act of fraud I read a headline "Bank uncovers $7bn fraud". I thought, oh the plot thickens. But no, the reporting agency (the same one I read the first article at) had just changed the original article so the amount was reported in American dollars instead of Euros. Press...that is not your job! It was Euros that were lost, report the lost Euros, don't try to inflate emotions by misleading readers. Grr it makes me upset. As a non-money type, a little help Media, would be nice. Perhaps explain what was this trader doing..."massive fraudulent directional positions in 2007 and 2008 beyond his limited authority"...what is a directional position...it sounds like a bet. but do banks bet...i guess, they must, even the weathermen bet to try and keep their inability to demonstrate and real predictive force of the weather afloat. How can you bet 5bn Euro...who would take that bet...im sure not the local bookers...
I'm worried about this, it seems like the cash system is more delicate than even i had imagined.But so what....what should we do.
Anyway, any of you businessy types, if you can suggest places to get laymans explanations on this story I would appreciate it.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Gone with the wind on 'kite ship'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7205217.stm
Its as though, we forgot that ships used to be the greenest form of mass transport. I don't get it, check out the link for the full article, but look at the "kite" that is helping this ship...what happened to sails? Maybe i should do some research first. But I see this massive barge with a single kite to help if reduce fuel use.
I mean check out this barge from treasure planet, a remarkable ship that uses sails to catch galactic winds, the sails are made of a solar cell fabric, that catches solar radiation to supply a backup energy supply and uses a traditional furnace to keep transportation power consistent, supplying extra thrust when necessary.
And so far we have managed to add a kite.
Go team green. This is about as exciting as hydrogen cell fueled cars.
Its as though, we forgot that ships used to be the greenest form of mass transport. I don't get it, check out the link for the full article, but look at the "kite" that is helping this ship...what happened to sails? Maybe i should do some research first. But I see this massive barge with a single kite to help if reduce fuel use.
I mean check out this barge from treasure planet, a remarkable ship that uses sails to catch galactic winds, the sails are made of a solar cell fabric, that catches solar radiation to supply a backup energy supply and uses a traditional furnace to keep transportation power consistent, supplying extra thrust when necessary.
And so far we have managed to add a kite.
Go team green. This is about as exciting as hydrogen cell fueled cars.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Correctness
I received a very hurtful, but perhaps well intentioned forward today, and I'm not really sure what to do about it. Looking down the back links its been forwarded from friend to friend down a chain of born and bred Canadians. So perhaps as an immigrant I'm a bit touchy on the subject of what is and should be expected of people moving to countries like Canada, America and Australia. ie. English speaking colonies founded in the past 300 years largely by Christians and neo-Christian politicians looking to change and reshape European values. I had an easy time, having moved from and English speaking country with very close values to Canadian values, and having moved at a young age that I did most of my growing up in Canada.
The main belief supported by the forward (and alleged speech by John Howard, former Prime Minister of Australia...though a quick google will show it is a highly edited shoddy fabrication of sound bites and clipped together and given under the name J.H.) is that because the colonies were founded by WASPs that it is good and right that the main moral, legal and cultural code should be that of the former WASP. It lays claims such as "We speak mainly ENGLISH, not Spanish, Lebanese, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, or any other language. Therefore, if you wish to become part of our society. Learn the language!" and "It is immigrants, not Australians that need to adapt."
When did the rules change? Did the founding immigrants of our countries adapt? Did they learn the language of the land they came to? Did they even speak English? (in the case of Canada) Did those who wrote our constitutions and who continue to REVISE our constitutions adapt to their setting, or bring about and insist on change? Change is the most necessary and most exciting part of life. And especially for those of us who live in the new world--in countries whose cultural legacy can be remembered in its entirety, whose countries are a diverse fabric of people bringing to that table what they can--it is our identity.
As Canadian working in South Korea, helping students practice and learn to speak English, and as a Canadian who had to take those painful 10 years of French classes, I have a sence about learning a language. 1. it takes time. 2. its not easy. 3. Its not necessary to function in a society. Our three countries have the amazing benefits of having people from all countries in the world living in them, this means we may well have speakers of close to every language in the world. We have amazing knowledge in that, amazing power for communitcation and community. So how can we be so pig-headed as to insist all new immigrants be fluent in English? Especially when there are ways to function in a native language through family, friends and community. Granted, I'm only a migrant worker and not an immigrant here, but I've learned to function in a society that speaks mainly Korean, that there are many ways to function without being able to speak, or with only the most rudementary knowledge. Its a matter of support and networks.
And this question of adapting. If Australians don't want to adapt anymore thats for them to decided, I for one hope i never stop adapting, I hope that those adaptations are mostly for the better--for the improvement of my condition and of those around me--I hope Canadians and Americans and Australians and Saudi Arabians, and Sri Lankans and Koreans and Indians and Pakistanis and Mongolians and Brazillians and Europeans (as a whole and in their individual cultures) and Eritrians and Kenyans and all the rest of everyone continue to change and adapt to the many new and exciting posibilities that are presented to them.
Now the root of the problem. Sharia Law. And I agree here with the position Australia took, with the position Ontario took and with the position that you obey and follow that law of the land. WHATEVER that law is. If that means no pot in Korean, that is the law, and we must obey it. If that means I cannot enter Libya until I'm married or without my father, that is the law I must obey. If that means I must cover my body entirely in Saudi Arabia, that is the law and I must obey. If that means I can pay for sex in Amsterdam but not in Sweden, so be it. Those are the laws of that land, and I am obliged to follow them. That's what a law is, we agree to follow them, that is how they help all of us. Also that as a citizen of a country you have the right to challenge, ammend, rewrite the law, to introduce new law and to have old laws removed. A great example of this is the announcement today that women in Saudi Arabia can now stay at a hotel alone. Recognizing the great limits on women in this culture this is an exciting move towards recognizing the road to gender equity. It seems small but its how we go about making our countries better places. The government also allowed that it would consider allowing women to drive. Again, bit by bit we see who a government is moving to adapt to changing times, to better serve its citizens and to allow its citizens to better serve the government.
If there are laws in Sharia Law that can be used by all Canadians then it is for those citizens best versed in these laws to help bring them to legislation. Where we as a nation can decided if this is a law for our nation. But yes, in a country there is only one law and it applies in the same way to all citizens in that country. But that doesn't mean that we turn our backs on everything immigrants bring to their new homes.
Its scary how the rhetoric of things like this so easily sweeps us up, makes us forget to think for ourselves, to reflect on how much we owe our immigrant parents/grandparents who put up with the racist shit, so that we could have an easy life in these countries.
Which brings me to the title of this entry: correctness. Not political correctness. Political Correctness is not saying what you mean so as not to offend or exclude anyone. While its a practice that upsets many people because it reduces our ability to express our feelings and opinions, its a dangerous practice because it marrs the more important practice of correctness. That is speaking in ways that are considerate of the fact that we don't know everything, we can't take everything into account all the time, its also a way of speaking that is forgiving of difference, that helps us to recognize that we are all strangers trying to build this dream of a world that works, fully. I think it is blind, selfish and pig-headed to insist that the way things have been is the way things always will be. Instead of spending our energy writing and propegating hate speech, we should be working on solutions; rather than laying blame on the new guy, we should be working to recognize the problem; rather than engaging in empty rhetoric that affirms division of societies, that insists on the continued antagonism of different cultures, we should be opening our hearts and minds and affirming our beliefs while listening to new beliefs.
The main belief supported by the forward (and alleged speech by John Howard, former Prime Minister of Australia...though a quick google will show it is a highly edited shoddy fabrication of sound bites and clipped together and given under the name J.H.) is that because the colonies were founded by WASPs that it is good and right that the main moral, legal and cultural code should be that of the former WASP. It lays claims such as "We speak mainly ENGLISH, not Spanish, Lebanese, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, or any other language. Therefore, if you wish to become part of our society. Learn the language!" and "It is immigrants, not Australians that need to adapt."
When did the rules change? Did the founding immigrants of our countries adapt? Did they learn the language of the land they came to? Did they even speak English? (in the case of Canada) Did those who wrote our constitutions and who continue to REVISE our constitutions adapt to their setting, or bring about and insist on change? Change is the most necessary and most exciting part of life. And especially for those of us who live in the new world--in countries whose cultural legacy can be remembered in its entirety, whose countries are a diverse fabric of people bringing to that table what they can--it is our identity.
As Canadian working in South Korea, helping students practice and learn to speak English, and as a Canadian who had to take those painful 10 years of French classes, I have a sence about learning a language. 1. it takes time. 2. its not easy. 3. Its not necessary to function in a society. Our three countries have the amazing benefits of having people from all countries in the world living in them, this means we may well have speakers of close to every language in the world. We have amazing knowledge in that, amazing power for communitcation and community. So how can we be so pig-headed as to insist all new immigrants be fluent in English? Especially when there are ways to function in a native language through family, friends and community. Granted, I'm only a migrant worker and not an immigrant here, but I've learned to function in a society that speaks mainly Korean, that there are many ways to function without being able to speak, or with only the most rudementary knowledge. Its a matter of support and networks.
And this question of adapting. If Australians don't want to adapt anymore thats for them to decided, I for one hope i never stop adapting, I hope that those adaptations are mostly for the better--for the improvement of my condition and of those around me--I hope Canadians and Americans and Australians and Saudi Arabians, and Sri Lankans and Koreans and Indians and Pakistanis and Mongolians and Brazillians and Europeans (as a whole and in their individual cultures) and Eritrians and Kenyans and all the rest of everyone continue to change and adapt to the many new and exciting posibilities that are presented to them.
Now the root of the problem. Sharia Law. And I agree here with the position Australia took, with the position Ontario took and with the position that you obey and follow that law of the land. WHATEVER that law is. If that means no pot in Korean, that is the law, and we must obey it. If that means I cannot enter Libya until I'm married or without my father, that is the law I must obey. If that means I must cover my body entirely in Saudi Arabia, that is the law and I must obey. If that means I can pay for sex in Amsterdam but not in Sweden, so be it. Those are the laws of that land, and I am obliged to follow them. That's what a law is, we agree to follow them, that is how they help all of us. Also that as a citizen of a country you have the right to challenge, ammend, rewrite the law, to introduce new law and to have old laws removed. A great example of this is the announcement today that women in Saudi Arabia can now stay at a hotel alone. Recognizing the great limits on women in this culture this is an exciting move towards recognizing the road to gender equity. It seems small but its how we go about making our countries better places. The government also allowed that it would consider allowing women to drive. Again, bit by bit we see who a government is moving to adapt to changing times, to better serve its citizens and to allow its citizens to better serve the government.
If there are laws in Sharia Law that can be used by all Canadians then it is for those citizens best versed in these laws to help bring them to legislation. Where we as a nation can decided if this is a law for our nation. But yes, in a country there is only one law and it applies in the same way to all citizens in that country. But that doesn't mean that we turn our backs on everything immigrants bring to their new homes.
Its scary how the rhetoric of things like this so easily sweeps us up, makes us forget to think for ourselves, to reflect on how much we owe our immigrant parents/grandparents who put up with the racist shit, so that we could have an easy life in these countries.
Which brings me to the title of this entry: correctness. Not political correctness. Political Correctness is not saying what you mean so as not to offend or exclude anyone. While its a practice that upsets many people because it reduces our ability to express our feelings and opinions, its a dangerous practice because it marrs the more important practice of correctness. That is speaking in ways that are considerate of the fact that we don't know everything, we can't take everything into account all the time, its also a way of speaking that is forgiving of difference, that helps us to recognize that we are all strangers trying to build this dream of a world that works, fully. I think it is blind, selfish and pig-headed to insist that the way things have been is the way things always will be. Instead of spending our energy writing and propegating hate speech, we should be working on solutions; rather than laying blame on the new guy, we should be working to recognize the problem; rather than engaging in empty rhetoric that affirms division of societies, that insists on the continued antagonism of different cultures, we should be opening our hearts and minds and affirming our beliefs while listening to new beliefs.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
The Black Vote
I guess I'm late on this since the controversy broke days ago. But, I think my inclination to write comes from something lately inspired by the "race" issues in the Democratic campaign.
I don't understand how there is a black vote, but not a woman vote. Maybe because there are women ...well everywhere. We are innocuous even...but that doesn't change the fact. Why is Obama forced to run the campaign as a Black man relying on the Black vote, when Hilary doesn't have to run as a woman, or Edwards as a White man, relying on the White vote...its dumb. They are each running as a Democrat...that's all. Get over it America, Martin Luther King Jrs dream did come true when Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964. Accept it, the law is made, now get over it and move onward and upward. The only thing that has stopped this dream coming true is the US's ass backwardness about laws.
It seems in the US a law is not made to affirm the desire to change; its made to scapegoat, deny and avoid; its made to be a place where US citizens can claim their rights are being infringed (uhh...hello, without laws you wouldn't have anything to claim you have rights beyond an instinct inside yourself that somehow you deserve something for stumbling upon this planet); a law is a thing that someone off in some hidden place invents and magically appears one day and disappears the next as the people with money decide it will make making money more difficult, as it will raise the price of ink for fabricating bills.
I don't understand how there is a black vote, but not a woman vote. Maybe because there are women ...well everywhere. We are innocuous even...but that doesn't change the fact. Why is Obama forced to run the campaign as a Black man relying on the Black vote, when Hilary doesn't have to run as a woman, or Edwards as a White man, relying on the White vote...its dumb. They are each running as a Democrat...that's all. Get over it America, Martin Luther King Jrs dream did come true when Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964. Accept it, the law is made, now get over it and move onward and upward. The only thing that has stopped this dream coming true is the US's ass backwardness about laws.
It seems in the US a law is not made to affirm the desire to change; its made to scapegoat, deny and avoid; its made to be a place where US citizens can claim their rights are being infringed (uhh...hello, without laws you wouldn't have anything to claim you have rights beyond an instinct inside yourself that somehow you deserve something for stumbling upon this planet); a law is a thing that someone off in some hidden place invents and magically appears one day and disappears the next as the people with money decide it will make making money more difficult, as it will raise the price of ink for fabricating bills.
Monday, January 14, 2008
It took a law...
I was just thinking about this line from that film. "It took a law to get seat belts into cars. It took a law to get airbags too." I don't think we should doubt that. Particularly when you look at countries without those laws...are they going along...for the fun of it...no. They have seatbelt free air bag free cars. So lets not get to fussy about a law to force corporations to employ more women on their boards. It won't come about any other way, i think that it is almost wise too...it takes a law to instigate change...at least it does now. Lets hope we have the balls to stand by this law, to not let those with the money corrupt our desire to change. Okay maybe it isn't all of our desire, but its mine. and i think its also the desire of some of the norwegian law makers, which makes me think there are some norwegian taxpayers who agree. So some of us desire it. And feel its time has come. Let support this law...and not try to hack it down. It may, like seatbelts make us a little uncomfortable, maybe chaif our necks a bit...but its for our overall good...i think.
i wonder...want to reduce obesity...would a law with strict enforcement work? or stop alcohal abuse, or increase donations to those with less money than ourselves? Dunno...but its a brilliant move by norway to prove it true and possible. We like laws, we like to follow them, we like to have and to hold them in our hearts and minds...at least it keeps things orderly...
i wonder...want to reduce obesity...would a law with strict enforcement work? or stop alcohal abuse, or increase donations to those with less money than ourselves? Dunno...but its a brilliant move by norway to prove it true and possible. We like laws, we like to follow them, we like to have and to hold them in our hearts and minds...at least it keeps things orderly...
New virus, old tricks
I find it interesting, I made a silent note maybe three months ago, because i now work on two computers. It never occured to me before that all systems get the same updates at the same time, till I had to update at work, only to arrive home to find my laptop wanted some too. But having gone through the update twice, i guess it stuck in my mind maybe a week later when i first read "new virus warning" on BBC. I though smuggly to myself, i know im updated and patched; i had to do it last week...twice. Then again last month, patches came in, my two machines burbled, a week later i read "new virus warning" and again today, a week since the update warnings started here it is the Mebroot stealth virus that installs other programs on your comp and steals banking information.
I think its nice BBC is watching out for us, but it still makes me feel a bit spooky. Is there an agenda of reminds that the BBC has, don't forget we need to remind our readers to update, but we don't want to nag them, just keep them aware that patching is important. maybe.
Still, the culture of scaring us into action is getting a little old. And so i'm trying, perhaps a little resolution, not to act out of fear. I watched "Who killed the electric car last night" and while i usually have a fairly predictable knee jerk reaction to these sorts of docudramas, i found myself strangly calm. Not all excited about some new threat, some new possibility, some new project. Just, thanks for the information. I still prefer to travel in self propelled vehicles anyway.
Although, i must slithly say i do remember the ads for electric cars (i loved them, they were so stark and unusually, that was a time i considered advertising as a nice thing to do with my time) i do also remember the swing away from them, the sudden villanous turn on the poor machines as no better than the gas guzzler. I think i had a debat on it in highschool. i remember especially my indignation when the hummer came out. THinking, could we have gone any further in the other direction, even if the electric car is as bad as a regular car this monster is worse that 10 of them together. [i admit i was insulted by the tax breaks for the hummer, that is sick]
Two things the docudrama did highligh for me: More disappointment has come out of california than any other state. They have, it seems, always had the best brightest most progressive ideas, and they have also managed to mangel destroy and booby trap everyone of those ideas with extreme efficiency. Second, that Detroit is i think the most let down city in the world. I think infact as a place a collective of people Detroit has been cheated out of more than anyone (including younger siblings taken as a whole, the people of cambodia, very child who has ever been hungry, and people who expected X3 to live up to its prequels).
I don't think there is an american docudrama that doesn't highlight the every way Detroit has be given more false candy than any other city in the country. How it has time and again be forced to remain in its pseudo slum nearly big city way it was while i lived so close. (i'm now regretting not taking more advantage of the gifts that city has to offer...except that it is still part of America...a place im not to fond of...in the way lots of people just aren't to keen on visiting Pakistan)
If California has been the hub of great ideas, Detroit has been the home of the reality of their suppression.
how did i get into this film review...sorry. Anyway, this fear stuff is i don't know...is it getting old? It works clearly. or maybe it doesn't, maybe i had already updated my computer when i got the warning. Maybe i had already switched to self-propelled transport when the electric car died. Maybe i already had a deep skepticism for the US when two planes lost track of time in the side of two towers. Maybe no one tried to scare me into doing anything, the scare came after the fact...after the act...after the attack i was already prepared for...maybe.
I think its nice BBC is watching out for us, but it still makes me feel a bit spooky. Is there an agenda of reminds that the BBC has, don't forget we need to remind our readers to update, but we don't want to nag them, just keep them aware that patching is important. maybe.
Still, the culture of scaring us into action is getting a little old. And so i'm trying, perhaps a little resolution, not to act out of fear. I watched "Who killed the electric car last night" and while i usually have a fairly predictable knee jerk reaction to these sorts of docudramas, i found myself strangly calm. Not all excited about some new threat, some new possibility, some new project. Just, thanks for the information. I still prefer to travel in self propelled vehicles anyway.
Although, i must slithly say i do remember the ads for electric cars (i loved them, they were so stark and unusually, that was a time i considered advertising as a nice thing to do with my time) i do also remember the swing away from them, the sudden villanous turn on the poor machines as no better than the gas guzzler. I think i had a debat on it in highschool. i remember especially my indignation when the hummer came out. THinking, could we have gone any further in the other direction, even if the electric car is as bad as a regular car this monster is worse that 10 of them together. [i admit i was insulted by the tax breaks for the hummer, that is sick]
Two things the docudrama did highligh for me: More disappointment has come out of california than any other state. They have, it seems, always had the best brightest most progressive ideas, and they have also managed to mangel destroy and booby trap everyone of those ideas with extreme efficiency. Second, that Detroit is i think the most let down city in the world. I think infact as a place a collective of people Detroit has been cheated out of more than anyone (including younger siblings taken as a whole, the people of cambodia, very child who has ever been hungry, and people who expected X3 to live up to its prequels).
I don't think there is an american docudrama that doesn't highlight the every way Detroit has be given more false candy than any other city in the country. How it has time and again be forced to remain in its pseudo slum nearly big city way it was while i lived so close. (i'm now regretting not taking more advantage of the gifts that city has to offer...except that it is still part of America...a place im not to fond of...in the way lots of people just aren't to keen on visiting Pakistan)
If California has been the hub of great ideas, Detroit has been the home of the reality of their suppression.
how did i get into this film review...sorry. Anyway, this fear stuff is i don't know...is it getting old? It works clearly. or maybe it doesn't, maybe i had already updated my computer when i got the warning. Maybe i had already switched to self-propelled transport when the electric car died. Maybe i already had a deep skepticism for the US when two planes lost track of time in the side of two towers. Maybe no one tried to scare me into doing anything, the scare came after the fact...after the act...after the attack i was already prepared for...maybe.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Book Review
I guess I can write a book review. I like books. I read them, when I think i should be doing something better. I just read possible the most depressing book i will ever read in 2008. We need to talk about Kevin by Lionel Shriver. I can't really decide. I think i may have enjoyed it. But also i think it may have been a surreptitious waste of time. Though hiding out in my flat for a day and a bit to get through it before i committed suicide was fun.
I don't want to say "it was one of those books that makes you want to kill yourself." It was no Cam Jansen mystery, or SVH serial novel. It was horribly depressing, wholly traumatizing. But a bit like facing Jim Lahey's shit-void. "Yeh hear that boys, those are the shit winds. You are facing here, the shit-void.It's opened wide in front of you. I did think if i didn't finish it before bed i might just have to kill myself rather than face sleep with such a painful and possible un-resolution so fresh in my mind.
So i suppose it is with caution that i highly recommend this novel. Of course you probably aren't as prone as i am to nightmares. But i think those with the most well ordered dreams should be careful to give reading a sleeping a wide berth.
The story unfolds an amazing play with the temporal obsession of most people with being happy. The obsession with finding and filling our lives with things to "make us happy." Its not that it particular warns against, or challenges the practice. it skirts around and affirmation of anything really. A 400 page affirmation of "i don't like that."
For the protagonist her amazing writing of the average American, of what we hate about them and of what makes us fear to be them. Telling of the vast span between what we think we desire and what we have that fills that desire. Calling us out for projections, blaming, and complaining about...well ourselves in the third person.
It starts slow. And only gets slower until you are too deep in the shit pool to climb out, and must wade across to the other end. At which point you paddle fervently to escape the sense of drowning in the despair of being in the life you planned, exactly as you planned it (whether you want to admit it or not).
Though it is lovely to feel like shit before 2001. The book set entirely before April 9th 2001. When there was still life. Its so easy to forget, as though the great divide that failed to materialize when the computers all still worked on January 1st, 8 years ago, later manifested as something we actually had to care about (not that it effected me much. But others felt the shockwave, and im still stuck in the world where we can't remember what life felt like on April 9th 2001).
So read it, i guess. if you want. or don't. Now, i'm not really sure. not sure which.
I don't want to say "it was one of those books that makes you want to kill yourself." It was no Cam Jansen mystery, or SVH serial novel. It was horribly depressing, wholly traumatizing. But a bit like facing Jim Lahey's shit-void. "Yeh hear that boys, those are the shit winds. You are facing here, the shit-void.It's opened wide in front of you. I did think if i didn't finish it before bed i might just have to kill myself rather than face sleep with such a painful and possible un-resolution so fresh in my mind.
So i suppose it is with caution that i highly recommend this novel. Of course you probably aren't as prone as i am to nightmares. But i think those with the most well ordered dreams should be careful to give reading a sleeping a wide berth.
The story unfolds an amazing play with the temporal obsession of most people with being happy. The obsession with finding and filling our lives with things to "make us happy." Its not that it particular warns against, or challenges the practice. it skirts around and affirmation of anything really. A 400 page affirmation of "i don't like that."
For the protagonist her amazing writing of the average American, of what we hate about them and of what makes us fear to be them. Telling of the vast span between what we think we desire and what we have that fills that desire. Calling us out for projections, blaming, and complaining about...well ourselves in the third person.
It starts slow. And only gets slower until you are too deep in the shit pool to climb out, and must wade across to the other end. At which point you paddle fervently to escape the sense of drowning in the despair of being in the life you planned, exactly as you planned it (whether you want to admit it or not).
Though it is lovely to feel like shit before 2001. The book set entirely before April 9th 2001. When there was still life. Its so easy to forget, as though the great divide that failed to materialize when the computers all still worked on January 1st, 8 years ago, later manifested as something we actually had to care about (not that it effected me much. But others felt the shockwave, and im still stuck in the world where we can't remember what life felt like on April 9th 2001).
So read it, i guess. if you want. or don't. Now, i'm not really sure. not sure which.
Sunday, December 09, 2007
Temperance
Just give it some time. If it still seems important in five minutes of five hours or five days or the next time when the time folds in such a way that we are here again, the decided how to act. Take in the knowledge. Read. Breathe, in through my nose, into my belly, into my pelvis, into my thighs, into my knees, breathe. Out my physical self, out my spiritual self, out my intellectual and sexual and social and political and egotistical self. Go on and call me out, and face the reality. There is still a world. Until I die, I am still alive. Whether I am in or called out, I am in existance. You are. In love.
Just give it some time. It will still be important in five minutes or five hours or five days ot the next time the time folds in on itself and I find myself here...again. Its like a breath that travels in and is exchanged, it is different what comes in and what goes out. And I am still free. I am still important. Still alive. Still breathing. Still. The stillness of myself is the certainty that I can be on top again. I can get down again. I can. and time won't tell me anything.
But it is, still.
So here is a little gift of temperance. Let the worry be something else, let it turn into a plant, and water it, and give it love, and then the worry will be beautiful instead of troubling. And it can be part of my forest. There the boredom bush, my worry vine. This is my friendship flower, and my shyness shrub. Here i have just a plant, and that one is a power plant. This one is my frustration and this one beside it my hate plant. But i love them all, and care and nuture them because they are all ppaprt of my world. They are all real, they exist and i believe they exist, and besides...they are beautiful.
Just give it some time. It will still be important in five minutes or five hours or five days ot the next time the time folds in on itself and I find myself here...again. Its like a breath that travels in and is exchanged, it is different what comes in and what goes out. And I am still free. I am still important. Still alive. Still breathing. Still. The stillness of myself is the certainty that I can be on top again. I can get down again. I can. and time won't tell me anything.
But it is, still.
So here is a little gift of temperance. Let the worry be something else, let it turn into a plant, and water it, and give it love, and then the worry will be beautiful instead of troubling. And it can be part of my forest. There the boredom bush, my worry vine. This is my friendship flower, and my shyness shrub. Here i have just a plant, and that one is a power plant. This one is my frustration and this one beside it my hate plant. But i love them all, and care and nuture them because they are all ppaprt of my world. They are all real, they exist and i believe they exist, and besides...they are beautiful.
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
One fifth of Canadians Immigrants.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7128172.stm
That right...actually about 95% of Canadians are immigrants...in fact all Canadians are in some what immigrants as that possible margin is of our First Nations, who are only Canadian by merit of living on the land that has been named Canada.
But the article is interesting. It talks about the changing "traditional" face of the Anglo-European Canadian. Let's be honest, that was the traditional face in like the 16th or 17th century...and then Canada wasn't in existence. But anyway. I like the article because it expresses no surprise about the diversity of Canada, no frustrations about immigrants "over loading our system," no hard feelings that bilingualism is on the rise, but not in French and English, or worry that over 20% of Canadians have neither English or French as their first or second languages.
That's right! Feel the glory of diversity, of itchy stitching of diverse peoples together. I wish we could talk about it more. Nobody really cares though, I guess its just me, so proud of my status as a "New Canadian," to be an immigrant to such a great place.
England fears the lure of the 2012 games for human traffikers
And rightly they should be anxious. Maybe not fearful, but alert and aware of the reality. Here is some things that make me doubt that there is any awareness however, about what it means to traffik a person, what it means to force someone into prostitutions
"He [Mr Croaker] said prostitutes' clients could face prosecution for rape: "If we have got a situation where a man knowingly has sex with a woman he knows is not freely consenting to that, then I think that that could be considered as rape."
What does that man's knowing have to do with it. The woman is not freely concenting to sex. Therefore, SHE IS NOT FREELY CONCENTING TO SEX. I don't understand where the
possibility lies. That would be rape.
This is the same debate that happens when women "cry" rape against sexual partners who use drugs or alcohal. When stats came out in 1994 that 1 in 4 women have been raped, people balked at the statistic, because a flirtatious girls is "asking for it" evn if they are "technically" to drunk to say either way.
this is exhausting me. Which makes me think i need to reflect more on the topic of prostitution. sex. concent. immorality...and i probably shouldn't do it while knee deep in the SCUM manifesto.
"He [Mr Croaker] said prostitutes' clients could face prosecution for rape: "If we have got a situation where a man knowingly has sex with a woman he knows is not freely consenting to that, then I think that that could be considered as rape."
What does that man's knowing have to do with it. The woman is not freely concenting to sex. Therefore, SHE IS NOT FREELY CONCENTING TO SEX. I don't understand where the
possibility lies. That would be rape.
This is the same debate that happens when women "cry" rape against sexual partners who use drugs or alcohal. When stats came out in 1994 that 1 in 4 women have been raped, people balked at the statistic, because a flirtatious girls is "asking for it" evn if they are "technically" to drunk to say either way.
this is exhausting me. Which makes me think i need to reflect more on the topic of prostitution. sex. concent. immorality...and i probably shouldn't do it while knee deep in the SCUM manifesto.
Monday, November 26, 2007
Im loosing grip on my English
What is a "brizzial girl"? Im sure i was trying to write Brazilian... i dunno, but my ability to write in comprehensible english is rapidly eroding...i want to go back to school.
Friday, November 23, 2007
Assault, assualt a salt on a piece of toast
Okay, this is a weird thing to wonder, but I wonder anyway, do you think ...well first i should explain where the wonder came from. There is a nwes article today that says a 15 year old brazillian girl was left in a cell with 20-30 men for a month, and repeatedly raped for the duration of her time in the cell. I wonder though with that level of abuse if the body would reject any possibly conceived child. Of course it is possible this girl is still premenstrual. But i wonder because i recently read a very stupid article about a study that concluded women walk less sexily when they are fertile (ie ovulating); the researchers concluded that this may be to reduce likelihood of a sexual attack during the fertile period (further it may be a mechanism promoting monogamy because the signals of fertility are more subtle and could only be detected by a close regular partner...right).
I found the articles conclusion outrageous, but its got me thinking about the possibility that we have biological mechanisms that prevent unwanted pregnancies...or no thats not right... that prevent pregnancies as a result of a violence/sexual assault/ sexual act carried out without concent or from a non-commensal relationship.
The article about the brizzial girl made no comment about weather the girl was pregnant, although, judging by the severe emotional and physcial trauma she underwent coupled with the fact that she may not have been getting food (as the article stated the men would take her food and only return it for sex etc.
anyway. i wonder a bit about the world.
On a lighter note...well no its still pretty macarbre, if she is sentenced of a crime in the end im sure her lawyers can argue she has already more than served the prison time due for her original offence.
I found the articles conclusion outrageous, but its got me thinking about the possibility that we have biological mechanisms that prevent unwanted pregnancies...or no thats not right... that prevent pregnancies as a result of a violence/sexual assault/ sexual act carried out without concent or from a non-commensal relationship.
The article about the brizzial girl made no comment about weather the girl was pregnant, although, judging by the severe emotional and physcial trauma she underwent coupled with the fact that she may not have been getting food (as the article stated the men would take her food and only return it for sex etc.
anyway. i wonder a bit about the world.
On a lighter note...well no its still pretty macarbre, if she is sentenced of a crime in the end im sure her lawyers can argue she has already more than served the prison time due for her original offence.
Thursday, November 22, 2007
The challenge of being Canadian...we just don't get it.
"This is not a racist party. It is a German party. We want Germany to stay German and we do not want to be overwhelmed by invaders or intruders"
That quote comes from a troubling article on BBC today, and its funny how as a Canadian I think I am ill-prepared to face these sorts of issues. For me I don’t understand how any land, any area cannot be anyone’s area. It is almost as if the confusion/complexion by the Natives when the Europeans first arrived and tried to buy the land has become ingrained in my Canadian sentiment and understanding of the world. In Canada, everyone—except terrorists (and sometimes even terrorists)—is welcome. And they aren’t just welcome with certain conditions. They are welcome with open arms New Canadians aren't welcome to fill jobs old(er)-Canadians don’t want to do (as if there is such a thing); they aren't welcome to bolster some part of our economy; they aren’t welcome because our birthrate is low and we need someone to take care of us as we grow older; they are welcome to come be Canadian, to come join the quilt. If that is to be a factory worker, so be it; a cab driver, so be it; a doctor, so be it (I wish it were easier for them too); a carer for a family member...the world is welcome, with the only condition that you come and join us in what ever facet you are capable of. So when I read statements like the one above, made by a German MP, I just don't know how to understand, I am ill prepared to understand that some places I guess aren't open. As if new people will change what it inherently is. As if by living in Korea I somehow make this place less Korean. Or by living in Germany or Japan i some how dilute the history and traidition of the place. But i chuckle, because by living in Canada I, and everyone like me, make that place more Canadian.
A similar phenomenon is being reported about in Japan. That they see their birthrate is low so they want to bring in foreigners to fill low-wage, low-skill jobs. Korea as well, believes that foreigners can only come to fill an economic role in society, but not to really join in. It’s as if we are only welcome on a short term contract. So for example the only way I would really be welcome to stay in Korea would be to marry a Korean man. I couldn’t marry another foreigner and live here…it would just be too weird. I would be invading, intruding where I am not really that welcome.
So, how to face this? I’m not really sure. But I suppose recognizing it is a first step.
That quote comes from a troubling article on BBC today, and its funny how as a Canadian I think I am ill-prepared to face these sorts of issues. For me I don’t understand how any land, any area cannot be anyone’s area. It is almost as if the confusion/complexion by the Natives when the Europeans first arrived and tried to buy the land has become ingrained in my Canadian sentiment and understanding of the world. In Canada, everyone—except terrorists (and sometimes even terrorists)—is welcome. And they aren’t just welcome with certain conditions. They are welcome with open arms New Canadians aren't welcome to fill jobs old(er)-Canadians don’t want to do (as if there is such a thing); they aren't welcome to bolster some part of our economy; they aren’t welcome because our birthrate is low and we need someone to take care of us as we grow older; they are welcome to come be Canadian, to come join the quilt. If that is to be a factory worker, so be it; a cab driver, so be it; a doctor, so be it (I wish it were easier for them too); a carer for a family member...the world is welcome, with the only condition that you come and join us in what ever facet you are capable of. So when I read statements like the one above, made by a German MP, I just don't know how to understand, I am ill prepared to understand that some places I guess aren't open. As if new people will change what it inherently is. As if by living in Korea I somehow make this place less Korean. Or by living in Germany or Japan i some how dilute the history and traidition of the place. But i chuckle, because by living in Canada I, and everyone like me, make that place more Canadian.
A similar phenomenon is being reported about in Japan. That they see their birthrate is low so they want to bring in foreigners to fill low-wage, low-skill jobs. Korea as well, believes that foreigners can only come to fill an economic role in society, but not to really join in. It’s as if we are only welcome on a short term contract. So for example the only way I would really be welcome to stay in Korea would be to marry a Korean man. I couldn’t marry another foreigner and live here…it would just be too weird. I would be invading, intruding where I am not really that welcome.
So, how to face this? I’m not really sure. But I suppose recognizing it is a first step.
Friday, November 16, 2007
Erect; according to the OED
Im looking for a new word to replace vexatiously...any suggestions?
I. trans. To elevate in direction or position.
1. To direct upwards; to lift up (the eyes, hands, etc.). Also to erect up. Obs.
1609 Man in Moone (1849) 39 Erect thy countenance, like a man. 1635 E. PAGITT Christianogr. I. ii. (1636) 61 The Bishop..erecting his hands stood all the while with his face to the Altar. a1634 CHAPMAN Revenge Hon. Wks. 1873 III. 337 Good sir, erect your looks. 1704 SWIFT T. Tub Wks. 1760 I. Introd. 26 To stand with their mouths open, and erected.
fig. 1548 GEST Pr. Masse 117 Having our mindes erected up into heaven. 1629 H. BURTON Babel no Bethel 4 Wee erect our best attention to this motion. 1690 NORRIS Beatitudes (1694) I. 54 The Minds of Men began to be more generally erected towards Heaven.
b. To put up on high; to lift up (the head); also, to hoist up. Obs.
1552 ABP. HAMILTON Catech. (1884) 52 Moyses..made & ereckit a brassin ymage of a serpent. 1567 Trial Treas. in Hazl. Dodsley III. 273 That thou are nat erected, in faith, it is pity, As high as three trees and a halter will reach. 1611 CORYAT Crudities 9 A little chappell..wherein is erected the picture of Christ and the Virgin Mary. 1696 TATE & BRADY Ps. xxiv. 7 Erect your Heads, eternal Gates. 1767 Babler I. 224 However we may erect the crest upon the superior dignity of manhood.
2. To exalt in consideration or dignity; to raise to eminence or importance; elevate to office; in earlier use, to raise to (a kingdom); to set up for, to be (an emperor, king, etc.). Also to erect up.
1432-50 tr. Higden (Rolls) I. 283 Grete Charles..was erecte to the kyngedome of Fraunce after the dethe of his fader. 1549-62 STERNHOLD & H. Ps. lxxxix. 20 A man of might I have erect your king and guide to be. 1583 Exec. for Treason (1675) 27 Bishops, who in the Popes name had erected him up. a1592 GREENE Jas. IV, Wks. (1861) 198 He shall erect your state and wed you well. 1611 SPEED Hist. Gt. Brit. VI. xlii. 3 The Ægyptians erected one Saturninus a Captaine..for Emperour. a1631 DONNE in Select. fr. Donne (1840) 16 Thou shalt find..as many records of attainted families..as of families newly erected and presently celebrated. 1656 BRAMHALL Replic. vi. 238 Lawfull for the King and Church of England..to have erected a new Primate. 1709 STEELE Tatler No. 130 2 We have seen..Monarchs erected and deposed.
b. To elevate into or unto (a specified condition). Obs.
1508 FISHER Wks. 254 They were erecte vnto eternal lyfe. 1589 R. ROBINSON in Farr S.P. Eliz. (1845) II. 364 Erect my spirite into thy blisse.
II. To raise to an upright position.
3. To raise, set upright (the body, oneself, etc.); to rear (a standard). Also fig.
1573 TUSSER Husb. (1878) 5 Erecting one most like to fall. 1602 MARSTON Ant. & Mel. II. Wks. 1856 I. 25 Ladie, erect your gratious simmetry. 1646 SIR T. BROWNE Pseud. Ep. II. iii. 74 If unto the powder of Loadstone or Iron we admove the North pole of the Loadstone, the powders or small divisions will erect and conforme themselves thereto. 1730 A. GORDON Maffei's Amphith. 93 The Charioteers sometimes bowed to the Ground, then erected themselves on high. 1750 JOHNSON Rambler No. 6 3 The necessity of erecting our~selves to some degree of intellectual dignity. 1774 GOLDSM. Nat. Hist. (1776) VII. 49 The muscle..is capable of erecting itself on an edge. 1818 JAS. MILL Brit. India II. IV. iii. 97 Erected against Aliverdi the standard of revolt. 1877 MRS. OLIPHANT Makers Flor. xiii. 325 His weak frame erected itself.
b. Optics. To restore (an inverted optical image) to an upright position.
1831 BREWSTER Newton (1855) I. x. 245 Without using two glasses, the object may be erected.
c. intr. for refl. To straighten oneself, assume an upright position.
1626 BACON Sylva (1631) §827 By Wet, Stalkes doe erect, and Leaues bow downe.
4. To set upright (a member of the body); to prick up (the ears); also Phys. (chiefly in pass.), to render turgid and rigid any organ containing erectile tissue.
1626 BACON Sylva (1637) §266 You..erect your Eare, when you would heare attentiuely. 1718 ROWE tr. Lucan I. 540 At ev'ry Shout [the horse] erects his quiv'ring Ears. 1796 BURKE Regic. Peace Wks. VIII. 318 That this faction..does erect its crest upon the engagement, there can be little doubt.
5. fig. from 3, 4. To rouse, stir up, excite, embolden (the mind, oneself). Obs.
a1568 COVERDALE Treat. Death I. xvi, We ought to erect and comfort ourselves with the resurrection. 1605 BACON Adv. Learn. II. iv. §2 It doth raise and erect the mind. 1654 R. CODRINGTON tr. Hist. Ivstine 314 With this Victory the courages of the Sicilians were erected. 1665 J. SERGEANT Sure-footing 201 His Book coming forth..my Expectation was now erected. a1668 DENHAM (J.), Why should not hope As much erect our thoughts, as fear deject them? a1734 NORTH Lives (1826) II. 131 He found his spirits low, and thought to..erect them by a glass or two of sherry.
b. occas. To stimulate (in a physical sense).
1620 VENNER Via Recta (1650) 273 It..erecteth the digestive faculty of the stomack.
6. To elate with pride. Obs.
1631 R. H. Arraignm. Whole Creature 137 Least..the contemplation of their proud plumes and feathers too much erect them and puffe them up.
III. To set on a foundation, construct, establish.
7. To set up (a building, statue, framework, etc.); to rear, build. Also to erect up.
1417 in Ellis Orig. Lett. II. 19. I. 59 He hath erected a new tower upon the same for a warde. 1555 EDEN Decades W. Ind. I. IV. (Arb.) 80 The inhabitantes sawe newe buyldynges to bee dayly erected. 1570 ABP. PARKER Corr. (1853) 372 Intending..to erect up certain iron mills. 1593 SHAKES. 2 Hen. VI, III. ii. 80 Erect his Statue, and worship it. 1664 EVELYN Kal. Hort. (1729) 229 Erect on the out-side Wall your Stove..of Brick. 1692 O. WALKER History Illustrated 288 Gallus lamented much his death, and erected him a Sepulchre. 1701 DE FOE True-born Eng. I. 1 Where~ever God erects a House of Prayer The Devil always builds a Chappel there. 1796 H. HUNTER tr. St. Pierre's Stud. Nat. (1799) I. 446 He erects trophies. 1825 J. NICHOLSON Operat. Mechanic 190 An engine was erected in the vicinity of Bath..on this principle. 1848 MACAULAY Hist. Eng. II. 16 A more peaceful class erected silk manufactories in the eastern suburb of London. 1856 FROUDE Hist. Eng. (1858) II. ix. 382 The scaffold had been awkwardly erected.
¶To build (a vessel).
1650 SIR J. BURROUGHS in Wealth of Gt. Brit. (1749) 33 By erecting two hundred and fifty busses..there will be employment for one thousand ships.
b. fig. To build up (a theory, conclusion, etc.), set up (a pretension). Also absol.
1646 SIR T. BROWNE Pseud. Ep. I. vii. 25 Our advanced beliefs are not to be built upon dictates, but..[we] are to erect upon the surer base of reason. a1704 LOCKE (J.), Malebranche erects this proposition, of seeing all things in God, upon their ruin. 1818 JAS. MILL Brit. India II. V. ii. 350 The pretension erected by Mr. Hastings..would destroy one great source of the evidence. 1864 J. H. NEWMAN Apol. 195 It was necessary for us to have a positive Church theory erected on a definite basis.
8. a. Geom. To set up or draw (a perpendicular to a given line); to construct (a triangle, etc. upon a given base). b. Astrol. and Astron. To ‘set up’ (a figure of the heavens).
a1646 J. GREGORY Assyr. Mon. in Posth. (1650) 215 This was the figure of the Heavens..Astronomically calculated and erected according to Tycho's tables. 1660 BARROW Euclid I. x, Upon the line given AB erect an equilateral triangle. a1672 WOOD Life (1848) 73 After Lillie (the astronomer) had erected his figure, he told her, etc. 1715 KERSEY, To Erect a Figure, to divide the 12 Houses a-right. 1815 SCOTT Guy M. iv, He accordingly erected his scheme, or figure of heaven. 1828 J. H. MOORE Pract. Navig. 44 On B erect the perpendicular BA. 1887 T. B. REED O.E. Lett. Found 182 He [Moxon] professes to be able to erect in any other square..the same letter.
9. To set up, establish, found (an office, court of justice, corporation, institution, etc.); to initiate, set on foot (a project, scheme). Obs. or arch. exc. in Law.
1565 J. CALFHILL Answ. Treat. Crosse (1846) 24 A pilgrimage in Wales was straight erected. 1570 in Strype Ann. Ref. I. lvii. 626 The Divinity lecture, erected by the noble lady Margaret. 1602 WARNER Alb. Eng. X. lviii. (1612) 254 This League was halowed..gainst all That worke the gospell to erect. 1651 HOBBES Leviath. I. xv. 73 There is no Civill Power erected over the parties promising. 1663 MARVELL Corr. Wks. 1872-5 II. xl. 88 Courts of Merchants to be erected in some..ports of the nation. 1683 Royal Proclam. in Lond. Gaz. No. 1856/1 The Office of Post-Master General hath been Erected by Act of Parliament. 1743 TINDAL tr. Rapin's Hist. Eng. II. 151 note, This year Queen Elizabeth erected the East-India Company. 1761-2 HUME Hist. Eng. II. xli. 415 The Jesuits, a new order of regular priests erected in Europe. 1792 N. CHIPMAN Amer. Law Rep. (1871) 12 The statute has erected a summary jurisdiction. 1818 JAS. MILL Brit. India II. V. ix. 702 The ministerial board erected by Mr. Pitt. a1862 BUCKLE Civiliz. (1869) III. iii. 125 Two Courts of High Commission were erected. 1865 H. PHILLIPS Amer. Paper Curr. II. 56 Congress resolved to erect a lottery.
b. To raise (an armed force); to form (a nation). Obs.
1480 CAXTON Chron. Eng. III. (1520) 24/2 These two erected an hoost ayenst Hanyball. 1598 BARRET Theor. Warres II. i. 20 When a Companie is newly leuied and erected, etc. a1618 RALEIGH (J.), He suffers seventy-two distinct nations to be erected out of the first monarchy under distinct governours. 1680 HICKES Spir. Popery 71 The Cess..for erecting and maintaining the foresaid additional Forces. 1698 J. CRULL Muscovy 123 A new Body of Militia should be erected in their stead.
10. to erect into [cf. Fr. ériger en]: to constitute or form into (e.g. an organization, municipality, territorial division, etc.); to set up as (a rule or precedent); to invest with the rank or character of; to represent as.
1670-98 R. LASSELS Voy. Italy Pref. 1, I had not the least thought..of erecting myself into an Authour. 1710 STEELE Tatler No. 56 1 For the Sharpers..are by Custom erected into a real and venerable Body of Men. 1718 Col. Rec. Penn. III. 58 The sd. town might be Erected into a Borough by a Charter, etc. a1768 ERSKINE Inst. Law Scotl. (1773) 345 By secularizing, or, in our law-style, erecting most of the monasteries into temporal lordships. 1796 H. HUNTER tr. St. Pierre's Stud. Nat. (1799) III. 455 The Officers of an inferior order..erected themselves into seignorial proprietors. 1818 JAS. MILL Brit. India II. V. viii. 669 He could erect every interference in that sovereignty into an act of guilt. 1821 SCOTT Kenilw. vii, Her majesty was minded to erect the town into a staple for wool. 1822 M. A. KELTY Osmond I. 158 You..erect him into a standard of right and wrong. 1839 J. YEOWELL Anc. Brit. Ch. xi. (1847) 110 Valentia..was erected into a province. 1860 MILL Repr. Govt. (1865) 54/2 That portion..whom the institutions of the country have erected into a ruling class.
¶11. ? Used for ARRECT, DIRECT.
1526 SKELTON Magnyf. 2507 Unto me formest this processe is erectyd. 1655 M. CARTER Hon. Rediv. (1660) Ep. Ded., No more then the Subject of it [i.e. Honour] erects.
I. trans. To elevate in direction or position.
1. To direct upwards; to lift up (the eyes, hands, etc.). Also to erect up. Obs.
1609 Man in Moone (1849) 39 Erect thy countenance, like a man. 1635 E. PAGITT Christianogr. I. ii. (1636) 61 The Bishop..erecting his hands stood all the while with his face to the Altar. a1634 CHAPMAN Revenge Hon. Wks. 1873 III. 337 Good sir, erect your looks. 1704 SWIFT T. Tub Wks. 1760 I. Introd. 26 To stand with their mouths open, and erected.
fig. 1548 GEST Pr. Masse 117 Having our mindes erected up into heaven. 1629 H. BURTON Babel no Bethel 4 Wee erect our best attention to this motion. 1690 NORRIS Beatitudes (1694) I. 54 The Minds of Men began to be more generally erected towards Heaven.
b. To put up on high; to lift up (the head); also, to hoist up. Obs.
1552 ABP. HAMILTON Catech. (1884) 52 Moyses..made & ereckit a brassin ymage of a serpent. 1567 Trial Treas. in Hazl. Dodsley III. 273 That thou are nat erected, in faith, it is pity, As high as three trees and a halter will reach. 1611 CORYAT Crudities 9 A little chappell..wherein is erected the picture of Christ and the Virgin Mary. 1696 TATE & BRADY Ps. xxiv. 7 Erect your Heads, eternal Gates. 1767 Babler I. 224 However we may erect the crest upon the superior dignity of manhood.
2. To exalt in consideration or dignity; to raise to eminence or importance; elevate to office; in earlier use, to raise to (a kingdom); to set up for, to be (an emperor, king, etc.). Also to erect up.
1432-50 tr. Higden (Rolls) I. 283 Grete Charles..was erecte to the kyngedome of Fraunce after the dethe of his fader. 1549-62 STERNHOLD & H. Ps. lxxxix. 20 A man of might I have erect your king and guide to be. 1583 Exec. for Treason (1675) 27 Bishops, who in the Popes name had erected him up. a1592 GREENE Jas. IV, Wks. (1861) 198 He shall erect your state and wed you well. 1611 SPEED Hist. Gt. Brit. VI. xlii. 3 The Ægyptians erected one Saturninus a Captaine..for Emperour. a1631 DONNE in Select. fr. Donne (1840) 16 Thou shalt find..as many records of attainted families..as of families newly erected and presently celebrated. 1656 BRAMHALL Replic. vi. 238 Lawfull for the King and Church of England..to have erected a new Primate. 1709 STEELE Tatler No. 130 2 We have seen..Monarchs erected and deposed.
b. To elevate into or unto (a specified condition). Obs.
1508 FISHER Wks. 254 They were erecte vnto eternal lyfe. 1589 R. ROBINSON in Farr S.P. Eliz. (1845) II. 364 Erect my spirite into thy blisse.
II. To raise to an upright position.
3. To raise, set upright (the body, oneself, etc.); to rear (a standard). Also fig.
1573 TUSSER Husb. (1878) 5 Erecting one most like to fall. 1602 MARSTON Ant. & Mel. II. Wks. 1856 I. 25 Ladie, erect your gratious simmetry. 1646 SIR T. BROWNE Pseud. Ep. II. iii. 74 If unto the powder of Loadstone or Iron we admove the North pole of the Loadstone, the powders or small divisions will erect and conforme themselves thereto. 1730 A. GORDON Maffei's Amphith. 93 The Charioteers sometimes bowed to the Ground, then erected themselves on high. 1750 JOHNSON Rambler No. 6 3 The necessity of erecting our~selves to some degree of intellectual dignity. 1774 GOLDSM. Nat. Hist. (1776) VII. 49 The muscle..is capable of erecting itself on an edge. 1818 JAS. MILL Brit. India II. IV. iii. 97 Erected against Aliverdi the standard of revolt. 1877 MRS. OLIPHANT Makers Flor. xiii. 325 His weak frame erected itself.
b. Optics. To restore (an inverted optical image) to an upright position.
1831 BREWSTER Newton (1855) I. x. 245 Without using two glasses, the object may be erected.
c. intr. for refl. To straighten oneself, assume an upright position.
1626 BACON Sylva (1631) §827 By Wet, Stalkes doe erect, and Leaues bow downe.
4. To set upright (a member of the body); to prick up (the ears); also Phys. (chiefly in pass.), to render turgid and rigid any organ containing erectile tissue.
1626 BACON Sylva (1637) §266 You..erect your Eare, when you would heare attentiuely. 1718 ROWE tr. Lucan I. 540 At ev'ry Shout [the horse] erects his quiv'ring Ears. 1796 BURKE Regic. Peace Wks. VIII. 318 That this faction..does erect its crest upon the engagement, there can be little doubt.
5. fig. from 3, 4. To rouse, stir up, excite, embolden (the mind, oneself). Obs.
a1568 COVERDALE Treat. Death I. xvi, We ought to erect and comfort ourselves with the resurrection. 1605 BACON Adv. Learn. II. iv. §2 It doth raise and erect the mind. 1654 R. CODRINGTON tr. Hist. Ivstine 314 With this Victory the courages of the Sicilians were erected. 1665 J. SERGEANT Sure-footing 201 His Book coming forth..my Expectation was now erected. a1668 DENHAM (J.), Why should not hope As much erect our thoughts, as fear deject them? a1734 NORTH Lives (1826) II. 131 He found his spirits low, and thought to..erect them by a glass or two of sherry.
b. occas. To stimulate (in a physical sense).
1620 VENNER Via Recta (1650) 273 It..erecteth the digestive faculty of the stomack.
6. To elate with pride. Obs.
1631 R. H. Arraignm. Whole Creature 137 Least..the contemplation of their proud plumes and feathers too much erect them and puffe them up.
III. To set on a foundation, construct, establish.
7. To set up (a building, statue, framework, etc.); to rear, build. Also to erect up.
1417 in Ellis Orig. Lett. II. 19. I. 59 He hath erected a new tower upon the same for a warde. 1555 EDEN Decades W. Ind. I. IV. (Arb.) 80 The inhabitantes sawe newe buyldynges to bee dayly erected. 1570 ABP. PARKER Corr. (1853) 372 Intending..to erect up certain iron mills. 1593 SHAKES. 2 Hen. VI, III. ii. 80 Erect his Statue, and worship it. 1664 EVELYN Kal. Hort. (1729) 229 Erect on the out-side Wall your Stove..of Brick. 1692 O. WALKER History Illustrated 288 Gallus lamented much his death, and erected him a Sepulchre. 1701 DE FOE True-born Eng. I. 1 Where~ever God erects a House of Prayer The Devil always builds a Chappel there. 1796 H. HUNTER tr. St. Pierre's Stud. Nat. (1799) I. 446 He erects trophies. 1825 J. NICHOLSON Operat. Mechanic 190 An engine was erected in the vicinity of Bath..on this principle. 1848 MACAULAY Hist. Eng. II. 16 A more peaceful class erected silk manufactories in the eastern suburb of London. 1856 FROUDE Hist. Eng. (1858) II. ix. 382 The scaffold had been awkwardly erected.
¶To build (a vessel).
1650 SIR J. BURROUGHS in Wealth of Gt. Brit. (1749) 33 By erecting two hundred and fifty busses..there will be employment for one thousand ships.
b. fig. To build up (a theory, conclusion, etc.), set up (a pretension). Also absol.
1646 SIR T. BROWNE Pseud. Ep. I. vii. 25 Our advanced beliefs are not to be built upon dictates, but..[we] are to erect upon the surer base of reason. a1704 LOCKE (J.), Malebranche erects this proposition, of seeing all things in God, upon their ruin. 1818 JAS. MILL Brit. India II. V. ii. 350 The pretension erected by Mr. Hastings..would destroy one great source of the evidence. 1864 J. H. NEWMAN Apol. 195 It was necessary for us to have a positive Church theory erected on a definite basis.
8. a. Geom. To set up or draw (a perpendicular to a given line); to construct (a triangle, etc. upon a given base). b. Astrol. and Astron. To ‘set up’ (a figure of the heavens).
a1646 J. GREGORY Assyr. Mon. in Posth. (1650) 215 This was the figure of the Heavens..Astronomically calculated and erected according to Tycho's tables. 1660 BARROW Euclid I. x, Upon the line given AB erect an equilateral triangle. a1672 WOOD Life (1848) 73 After Lillie (the astronomer) had erected his figure, he told her, etc. 1715 KERSEY, To Erect a Figure, to divide the 12 Houses a-right. 1815 SCOTT Guy M. iv, He accordingly erected his scheme, or figure of heaven. 1828 J. H. MOORE Pract. Navig. 44 On B erect the perpendicular BA. 1887 T. B. REED O.E. Lett. Found 182 He [Moxon] professes to be able to erect in any other square..the same letter.
9. To set up, establish, found (an office, court of justice, corporation, institution, etc.); to initiate, set on foot (a project, scheme). Obs. or arch. exc. in Law.
1565 J. CALFHILL Answ. Treat. Crosse (1846) 24 A pilgrimage in Wales was straight erected. 1570 in Strype Ann. Ref. I. lvii. 626 The Divinity lecture, erected by the noble lady Margaret. 1602 WARNER Alb. Eng. X. lviii. (1612) 254 This League was halowed..gainst all That worke the gospell to erect. 1651 HOBBES Leviath. I. xv. 73 There is no Civill Power erected over the parties promising. 1663 MARVELL Corr. Wks. 1872-5 II. xl. 88 Courts of Merchants to be erected in some..ports of the nation. 1683 Royal Proclam. in Lond. Gaz. No. 1856/1 The Office of Post-Master General hath been Erected by Act of Parliament. 1743 TINDAL tr. Rapin's Hist. Eng. II. 151 note, This year Queen Elizabeth erected the East-India Company. 1761-2 HUME Hist. Eng. II. xli. 415 The Jesuits, a new order of regular priests erected in Europe. 1792 N. CHIPMAN Amer. Law Rep. (1871) 12 The statute has erected a summary jurisdiction. 1818 JAS. MILL Brit. India II. V. ix. 702 The ministerial board erected by Mr. Pitt. a1862 BUCKLE Civiliz. (1869) III. iii. 125 Two Courts of High Commission were erected. 1865 H. PHILLIPS Amer. Paper Curr. II. 56 Congress resolved to erect a lottery.
b. To raise (an armed force); to form (a nation). Obs.
1480 CAXTON Chron. Eng. III. (1520) 24/2 These two erected an hoost ayenst Hanyball. 1598 BARRET Theor. Warres II. i. 20 When a Companie is newly leuied and erected, etc. a1618 RALEIGH (J.), He suffers seventy-two distinct nations to be erected out of the first monarchy under distinct governours. 1680 HICKES Spir. Popery 71 The Cess..for erecting and maintaining the foresaid additional Forces. 1698 J. CRULL Muscovy 123 A new Body of Militia should be erected in their stead.
10. to erect into [cf. Fr. ériger en]: to constitute or form into (e.g. an organization, municipality, territorial division, etc.); to set up as (a rule or precedent); to invest with the rank or character of; to represent as.
1670-98 R. LASSELS Voy. Italy Pref. 1, I had not the least thought..of erecting myself into an Authour. 1710 STEELE Tatler No. 56 1 For the Sharpers..are by Custom erected into a real and venerable Body of Men. 1718 Col. Rec. Penn. III. 58 The sd. town might be Erected into a Borough by a Charter, etc. a1768 ERSKINE Inst. Law Scotl. (1773) 345 By secularizing, or, in our law-style, erecting most of the monasteries into temporal lordships. 1796 H. HUNTER tr. St. Pierre's Stud. Nat. (1799) III. 455 The Officers of an inferior order..erected themselves into seignorial proprietors. 1818 JAS. MILL Brit. India II. V. viii. 669 He could erect every interference in that sovereignty into an act of guilt. 1821 SCOTT Kenilw. vii, Her majesty was minded to erect the town into a staple for wool. 1822 M. A. KELTY Osmond I. 158 You..erect him into a standard of right and wrong. 1839 J. YEOWELL Anc. Brit. Ch. xi. (1847) 110 Valentia..was erected into a province. 1860 MILL Repr. Govt. (1865) 54/2 That portion..whom the institutions of the country have erected into a ruling class.
¶11. ? Used for ARRECT, DIRECT.
1526 SKELTON Magnyf. 2507 Unto me formest this processe is erectyd. 1655 M. CARTER Hon. Rediv. (1660) Ep. Ded., No more then the Subject of it [i.e. Honour] erects.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
I secretly want to punch English in the transitive verb
I am really troubled by the expression "I cannot forgive them for what they have done" or "We cannot forgive them" or "We can never forgive them."
What do you mean....never?
There is no possible situation that you could fathom forgiving the perceived harm that has been done? I find it particularly troubling when monks and priests say these sorts of things. Forgiveness is our greatest gift. We can always forgive someone...can't we?? Even those most heinous WWII criminal is eventually forgiven, we find the space in our hearts and minds to allow that they acted how they acted, that they were punished and repented (in some form or other), that you and i have survived, have found a better life since (and more often than not, because of) their actions.
Why not forgive these people?
Even the person who takes your life...merely sends you and those you loved (or who loved you since you are dead now) into a new place, a new world that you are not a part of, where your legacy for forgiveness love and human compassion lives on without you to practice it.
Even those who taunt and tease and hurt you in all sorts of imaginable and unimaginable ways are one day forgiven...it is difficult, but why not say so. "I find it really difficult to forgive this harm, this person, these deeds" or "It is hard for me to forgive them." At least this sort of language leaves space for humanity, leaves space for the possibility that through the hard work and determination of both parties forgiveness may come, and human peace for some time return.
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Marching
Here the sound only of renovation, growth and change, to mark this day. And children are giving chocolates as though st valintine were watching over the thousands who stand, bound looking out on their twenty four minutes of silence.
To seems always to be filled with a strange sort of confusion, if i look behind me i can see it spanning the years. The confusion of the silence, of the tears, of the colours and sounds. The gentle tap of the drum. The long breaths through pipes.
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
— John McCrae
To seems always to be filled with a strange sort of confusion, if i look behind me i can see it spanning the years. The confusion of the silence, of the tears, of the colours and sounds. The gentle tap of the drum. The long breaths through pipes.
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
— John McCrae
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Radio paradise
So my successes of the day...
1. had the craziest cycling dream with 7 kilometres of stairs...and escalators that both go up and down at the same time depending what you desire...
2. safely accepted the return of a pair of socks and scarf from different hostage situations.
3. did korean homework...im such a good student :|
4. walked 7 kilometers back and forth in my apartment
5. editing with the Custodian in anticipation of her presentation that isn't worth 20% of her life.
6. decided i needed freshair and went for a walk ending up at won mart to get food
7. bought pipecleaners...for no particular reason ;)
7b. did some secret stuff
8. made kickass chicken soup
9. made apple crumble...in a tinfoil dish, cooked in a toaster oven
10. ate chicken soup with apple crumble and vanilla icecream for dessert (although i ate dessert first cause i am allowed to)
11. cleaned out my hard drive...ie moved 6000 photos to my external drive and sorted them...wow that took some time
12. well there isnt really a 12, im just chilling listening to some killer music thinking about was paradisal thing to do next. All and all a very good november the 10th. Oh isnt that funny, i think it is Casey Maxwell's birthday today. Happy birthday, child from another life. Hope life is treating you well. But stil i managed to accomplish 11 things, and i slept till 11am...can you believe it!!! i know...i must have got up and forgot that i got up...but i did, or was awoke but a hostage taker at 11.
If i learn nothing in Korea it seems i will learn how to sleep. Maybe.
Mj
1. had the craziest cycling dream with 7 kilometres of stairs...and escalators that both go up and down at the same time depending what you desire...
2. safely accepted the return of a pair of socks and scarf from different hostage situations.
3. did korean homework...im such a good student :|
4. walked 7 kilometers back and forth in my apartment
5. editing with the Custodian in anticipation of her presentation that isn't worth 20% of her life.
6. decided i needed freshair and went for a walk ending up at won mart to get food
7. bought pipecleaners...for no particular reason ;)
7b. did some secret stuff
8. made kickass chicken soup
9. made apple crumble...in a tinfoil dish, cooked in a toaster oven
10. ate chicken soup with apple crumble and vanilla icecream for dessert (although i ate dessert first cause i am allowed to)
11. cleaned out my hard drive...ie moved 6000 photos to my external drive and sorted them...wow that took some time
12. well there isnt really a 12, im just chilling listening to some killer music thinking about was paradisal thing to do next. All and all a very good november the 10th. Oh isnt that funny, i think it is Casey Maxwell's birthday today. Happy birthday, child from another life. Hope life is treating you well. But stil i managed to accomplish 11 things, and i slept till 11am...can you believe it!!! i know...i must have got up and forgot that i got up...but i did, or was awoke but a hostage taker at 11.
If i learn nothing in Korea it seems i will learn how to sleep. Maybe.
Mj
Partners
It is a word with many meanings. But today i am thinking about the partnerships between people. The different types of agreements that we have with friends and looved ones with coworkers and collegues. The different connections and how the fuse and fizzel as they rub against each other.
Its kind of a lonely place out here in Asia. The temporariness of it (to make a word do what i want it to) makes it difficult to get into the business of partnering. Of making connections that have more use than someone who will split a cab back into the country with you. Though perhaps that has as much to do with my perpetual aluffness...who knows.
Its kind of a lonely place out here in Asia. The temporariness of it (to make a word do what i want it to) makes it difficult to get into the business of partnering. Of making connections that have more use than someone who will split a cab back into the country with you. Though perhaps that has as much to do with my perpetual aluffness...who knows.
Thursday, November 08, 2007
Partners
Its an intersting idea, to be a partner to something. the roles and changing roles of partnership. Particularly looking at some of the changing roles and partnerships currently occuring in the political world. Tony Blair is out of parliment and instead of finding anew George Brown BUsh partnership, Sarkozy has brought France back into a state of friendship, once again the US may eat French Fries...maybe. Russia as always a confusing political entity, especially for those of us who live and have been trained in the possibility of capitalism, are ever confused by their motives and their moves interntaionally. Are they past the Stalinist communist movements of the early 20th century, or the strange (for me in the wst) Cold War USSR? Is Putin's Russia still pursuing the same inhumane devotion to a great leader, a ruler to who you owe your life, who has every right to plague and annex not only his own people but the people of other nations.
I feel as though Russia is increasingly in the news as the underhand in the undermining of eastern european stability. Could it be they are seeking to sweep in and annex the whole area in hopes of expanding their empire? Im just not sure...i think Russia maybe an necessary stepping stool to understanding north Korea (a current fascination of mine)..
Anyway, im intrigued and will have to debate more about the possibilities and properties of partnership.
I feel as though Russia is increasingly in the news as the underhand in the undermining of eastern european stability. Could it be they are seeking to sweep in and annex the whole area in hopes of expanding their empire? Im just not sure...i think Russia maybe an necessary stepping stool to understanding north Korea (a current fascination of mine)..
Anyway, im intrigued and will have to debate more about the possibilities and properties of partnership.
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
Dont want to teach today
What an unday it is today. I just dont want to do any of this nonsense. i think i need a new strategy in class, cause im not going to last at this rate. think about that later. right now i want to go home and write and draw and not sit infront of a computer and not rest my arms on a desk, and not have this stupid mozzi bites.
Japan was lovely, for those who knew i went. 8 days of beautiful Japanese country-side surrounded by mountains on every front, no internet or phone so i had no excuses not to do things i wanted to do and not to send email and check in on blogs and books and nonsense that i dont want to maintain anymore. Loved all of it from the squat toilets to the public bedays and fancy toilets with "flushing sounds" buttons...for the timid trickler
I suppose its good that I'm low today cause tomorrow is my favourite day, so i can be high all day with my day off. we will see...
right another class to not prep for...sounds like fun.
mj
Japan was lovely, for those who knew i went. 8 days of beautiful Japanese country-side surrounded by mountains on every front, no internet or phone so i had no excuses not to do things i wanted to do and not to send email and check in on blogs and books and nonsense that i dont want to maintain anymore. Loved all of it from the squat toilets to the public bedays and fancy toilets with "flushing sounds" buttons...for the timid trickler
I suppose its good that I'm low today cause tomorrow is my favourite day, so i can be high all day with my day off. we will see...
right another class to not prep for...sounds like fun.
mj
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