Johnny Eleven

Ambrosian politics

2008-07-26T08:51:00.004-04:00

In an article at NEW IMPROVED HEAD I observed that we might be on the verge of a new era of magical thinking. Since then evidence keeps piling up that this speculation is true.

Northrop Frye distinguished three stages of speech. In the first stage, hieroglyphic speech, words are not used to assess beliefs, but to assert them. Assertions that Canada/America/Zimbabwe is the greatest nation on earth fall into this category. These statements are empirically meaningless (since no one agrees about what a great nation is) but pronounced with fierce pride.

Each linguistic stage has certain limitations. This stage's is that it doesn't describe reality very well, if at all. For example, Christians got suspicious about all those hieroglyphic claims that God answered their prayers, since God didn't answer them. They then moved to the next stage, hieratic language, in which they used syllogistic reasoning to draw conclusions about God.

The limitations of hieratic speech are that the validity of syllogistic reasoning is dependent on the validity of its premises, and that as a consequence any conclusion can be reached about anything by simply including the appropriate (even if incorrect) premise in one's reasoning.

When people discovered that flaw they moved on, according to Frye, to demotic discourse, in which we actually verify our ideas by examining objects outside ourselves. The limitation of this stage is that it gets disappointing. Many of those inspiring things we thought existed turn out on examination to be figments of our imagination. Many of our cherished beliefs turn out not to predict what's going on in the world. So it's back to hieroglyphic speech for us!

In the article I have linked to above I noted that the three stages of language may not develop cyclically, but that if they do, then George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and John McCain are the cutting edge. Mr. Bush's tenure as president has been characterized by unsubstantiated and invalid assertions about reality. For example, he asserted, incorrectly, that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and the capacity to create more. Consequently, he argued, Iraq should be invaded.

As I pointed out in the article, there is no logic in this argument. The Soviet Union had weapons of mass destruction up the wazoo, but George W. Bush was remarkably silent at the time about the necessity of invading the Soviet Union. The fact that someone else is dangerous does not logically imply that you should pick a fight with them.

Sen. McCain is restricted to hieroglyphic discourse, since he has no facility with the hieratic or demotic, chiefly because he can’t remember the facts that form the basis of discourse in these stages (such as which country has a border with which). And then there's Sen. Obama. He's in love with the hieroglyphic. Let's look at what he told that admiting crowd in Berlin a few days ago.

He started out by telling them that there are problems in these times, chiefly climate change and terrorism. That at least is a testable assertion. However, when he got round to describing what to do about these problems, he quickly went into hieroglyphic mode.

He told Berliners that we must tear down the walls "between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew." He didn't explain how that was going to stop terrorism and climate change; certainly there's plenty of intramural terrorism in the world, and tearing down the walls between groups that all have no will to do anything serious about climate change just might not be a great help. And then he didn't say how we were going to tear the walls down.

Instead, he gave us ringing hieroglyphics:

True partnership and true progress requires constant work and sustained sacrifice. They require sharing the burdens of development and diplomacy; of progress and peace. They require allies who will listen to each other, learn from each other and, most of all, trust each other.

And how, Senator, are we to do all those things? Before making this assertion Sen. Obama claimed that "history shows" that walls can be torn down. When you think about it, though, it chiefly shows that they can't, at least not to order. Telling me all I need to do to make the world a better place is to get Muslims and Jews to trust each other isn't giving me any ideas I can immediately act on.

Later Sen. Obama asserted:

This is the moment when we must build on the wealth that open markets have created, and share its benefits more equitably. Trade has been a cornerstone of our growth and global development. But we will not be able to sustain this growth if it favors the few, and not the many. Together, we must forge trade that truly rewards the work that creates wealth, with meaningful protections for our people and our planet. This is the moment for trade that is free and fair for all.

Maybe it is, but how do we accomplish these goals, Senator? And can we have trade that is both free and fair, especially when many of the countries engaging in free trade are founded on exploitation of the many? Let's face it, if China was part of the U. S. its leaders would be prosecuted under the RICO laws.

Well, I'm trying to write shorter pieces these days, and this is getting long. So I'll just note there was more of this stuff before Sen. Obama arrived at his conclusion:

What has always united us - what has always driven our people; what drew my father to America's shores - is a set of ideals that speak to aspirations shared by all people: that we can live free from fear and free from want; that we can speak our minds and assemble with whomever we choose and worship as we please.

These are the aspirations that joined the fates of all nations in this city. These aspirations are bigger than anything that drives us apart. It is because of these aspirations that the airlift began. It is because of these aspirations that all free people - everywhere - became citizens of Berlin. It is in pursuit of these aspirations that a new generation - our generation - must make our mark on the world.

People of Berlin - and people of the world - the scale of our challenge is great. The road ahead will be long. But I come before you to say that we are heirs to a struggle for freedom. We are a people of improbable hope. With an eye toward the future, with resolve in our hearts, let us remember this history, and answer our destiny, and remake the world once again.

We should be able to "worship as we please"? So, like, Mormon and Muslim men can have several wives apiece? And the United States has had democratic freedoms for hundreds of years, and its people are haunted by fear, in particular the fear of want. Large sections of its big cities look like the third world.

Freedom of speech and assembly are fundamental to an effective society. They don't cure cancer by themselves, though. We have to exploit these freedoms by debating suggestions for dealing with the problems Sen. Obama delineated. Sen. Obama had no suggestions.

But to Sen. Obama's fans, these observations are irrelevant. Werner Erhard persuaded many people that to end world hunger they only had to think that world hunger would end. With a lot more money than Mr. Erhard, Sen. Obama has persuaded enormous numbers of people that to solve world problems, all you have to do is hope to solve them.

Ambrose Bierce defined applause as the echo of a platitude. The applause for Sen. Obama is all the more ringing for his platitudes being hollow.

Your cell phone hates you

2008-07-24T18:04:00.007-04:00

I've just been looking up information about the warning that Ronald B. Herberman, director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, gave his staff about limiting their use of cell phones. The report from Associated Press about his warning is balanced and analytical. It notes that doubts have been raised about the study whose unpublished data Dr. Herberman says he is citing, and that published results from the same study have not shown any danger from using a cell phone.

What the AP report seems to have produced in newspapers and on television, though, is a slew of reports that mention only that Dr. Herberman has issued this warning, despite previous studies. The reports I've seen on CTV, for example, provide no idea of the reason Dr. Herberman has issued this warning to his staff.

So far we have the unattested opinion of one oncologist that cell phones may cause cancer. Dr. Herberman is almost certainly acting in what he considers his staff's best interest, but until we know what evidence he is basing his opinion on, and the size of the increase in risk that the evidence supposedly shows, his opinion is of no informational value whatever. If he had announced that Manchester United would win the next Super Bowl, we would have as much reason to believe him.

Of course, you may not agree with me. If that is true, send me $10 and I'll send you a detailed report about how to make your cellphone safe, using only inexpensive materials you have around the house.

You ought to be what you ought to eat

2008-07-23T17:15:00.002-04:00

Every day it seems I hear something new about good food and evil food. Eat the good food and you will live forever! Eat the evil food and you will die, shortly, in sin and despair!

The decline of organized religion has resulted in the ascendancy of morality. Without God around to save us, we must save ourselves.

Food is important. We have to eat to live, and we have to eat fairly frequently. So our new morality has a lot to say about food.

Of course, Christianity had nearly two millennia to perfect its act. The new mainstream religion is considerably more primitive. In recent Christian days evil was considered to be intangible; it was an inherent personal disposition against which one had to fight constantly. We sophisticated moderns, though, prefer to think that evil is tangible.

Specifically, we have embodied evil as taboo food, most notably fat. Fat is evil made flesh. Fat clogs your arteries! Fat makes you fat! Turn from fat and all its works so that you may be saved!

What is this salvation, though? It appears to consist of losing weight and having a greater chance of living into that period of life in which health problems get extremely serious. It doesn't quite measure up to the Christian idea of salvation.

On the other hand, salvation by food has the advantage that evidence of its existence can be found. People do indeed lose weight by changing their diet. They tend, though, to gain it back, and more.

Then once you fail in your attempt to gain earthly salvation you are open to the religious argument that you have been following a false god. You were eating the wrong food. And on you go in your spiritual quest.

To be fair, food cultism may on the whole promote healthy eating. It exaggerates the effects of diet, however, and of specific components of that diet. It holds, for example, that blood cholesterol can be easily controlled by diet, while the research is considerably more equivocal.

The main point of food cultism is not really good diet. Food cultism uses food to satisfy our hunger for evidence that we are not ordinary and that we have control over our lives. It tells us that if we only stop violating its food taboos we will live healthy, productive lives, unlike the sinners who do not share our knowledge of good and evil.

Believing that we are pure and everyone else is foul is of course the traditional conception of human dignity.

On apology

2008-07-22T21:18:00.004-04:00

The pope's been apologizing again. On Saturday he apologized for Australian clergy who sexually abused children. I gather he still hasn't got round to apologizing to the Duplessis orphans, but, you know, there have just been so many children abused by Roman Catholic priests, brothers, and nuns that everyone's going to have to wait their turn.

Apologizing gets easier the more apologies you make, and at the rate John Paul II and Benedict XVI have been making apologies the pope should be an apologizing machine in a few years. He has a lot of apologies to make, after all.

Apologizing has been working, too. Even though the Roman Catholic church has been protecting pedophiles for decades, and, by its silence, encouraging them to abuse more children, no government seems interested in making them the subject of an organized crime investigation.

People also take the Roman Catholic church seriously when, contrary to the teachings of its founder, it questions other people's morals. Its objections to the marriage of homosexuals were treated as serious moral observations, when they might have been dismissed as the ravings of an organization that has never met a pedophile it wouldn't help evade the law.

Speaking of the teachings of the church's founder, Jesus did have an opinion on this issue:

Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, "Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire." For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee? Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal. (Matthew 25:41-46)

Perhaps it means something different in Latin.

The weather conspiracy

2008-07-21T22:18:00.003-04:00

In an earlier post I questioned how informative the weather report actually is. Being told on the evening news that it rained all day is only informative if you were asleep all day.

In fact, weather reports these days are deliberately uninformative. They exaggerate the severity of the weather. For example, the last couple of days in Toronto have been cool. However, weather reporters have told us that because it's humid the temperature "feels like" the tropics. This morning, for example, I heard that although the high was only going to be 23, it would feel like 29.

The problem with that is that in Toronto it's always humid in the summer. So 23 with high humidity may feel like 29 with low humidity, but since we never have low humidity when it's 29, the comparison is misleading. In fact, today was a nice day compared to the typical Toronto day with a temperature of 29.

In the winter, of course, they try to impress us with the wind chill. The temperature is -1, they report, but it feels like -10. Here the comparison is entirely false. When the temperature is -10, the humidity is low; when it's -1 the humidity is high. It's at -1 that the cold gets into your bones. A temperature of -10 beats -1 any day.

The point of these exaggerations is not just to impress us but to scare us. For one thing, making humidity seem like a threat sells air conditioners. Now, there are regions which are so hot and humid that air conditioners actually produce legitimate health benefits. There are people who live in southern Ontario who are vulnerable enough to obtain real health benefits from air conditioning. Most Ontarians, though, don't need air conditioning. Humidity makes us uncomfortable, but it's not crippling. If we hadn't been taught to go into a panic every time the humidity is high, people wouldn't buy all those air conditioners and make the government give them warnings about how the electricity grid is going to crash when they use them.

Of course, in the winter in Toronto you need heat, for the simple reason that else you would die. However, the weather report seems to be contrived to make you want to stay at home. It's just too cold to go out. You should stay home and...watch the television station that is so kindly providing this weather report.

However, Torontonians know how to dress for the winter, and Toronto is not Winnipeg. A prudent, healthy Torontonian runs no risk of frostbite or hypothermia from going outside. The purpose of the weather report seems to be to encourage people to keep to themselves, isolated in their homes, watching commercials.

Sunday Bible study: the gospel according to Matthew

2008-07-20T14:11:00.006-04:00

Our review of the New Testament is being undertaken to acquaint people unfamiliar with it – that is, Christians – with what it tells us about Jesus. Now that we have finished Matthew, I thought I'd review what this gospel tells us about Jesus.

The first thing Matthew tells us, of course, is that you can't believe everything you read in the New Testament about Jesus. Matthew starts (1: 1-17) with the assertion that Jesus is descended from David through Joseph. The gospel then immediately tells us (1:18-20) that Jesus is not descended from Joseph. These assertions cannot both be true.

No matter how many Christians tell us that the Bible is inerrant, at least half the many contradictions in it must be false. That does not imply, of course, that the Bible is not the word of God. It does imply, though, that care must be taken in drawing conclusions from it.

The conclusion I draw from Matthew is that Jesus's followers thought He was the Messiah, in the sense they had of that term. That is, he was a human being destined to become king of Israel and begin 1,000 years of peace and prosperity. Jesus did not become king of Israel, but His followers then decided that He had been resurrected and would return to become king of Israel. Given Jesus's repeated pronouncements that the kingdom of heaven would arrive in the lifetime of people alive in His day, this idea was clearly invalid.

According to Matthew, Jesus died believing that he had been forsaken by God. Matthew's account of Christ's resurrection is simply not credible. Jesus promised to return in glory to institute the kingdom of heaven, and instead He returns in modest circumstances to encourage His followers to keep preaching his message.

None of my observations imply anything about the existence of God, of course. Matthew's observations, though, clearly imply that historical and contemporary Christian conceptions of Jesus have been wrong. Jesus was a man, and not a god in any sense – He made this point personally and clearly. He believed that the kingdom of heaven would arrive in the near future. He consequently believed that the Jews should repent their sins, and He encouraged them to repent. His belief in the imminence of the kingdom of heaven was mistaken.

Well, that's only what I think, but I have shown more respect for what Jesus said that most Christians have. For one thing, I haven't ignored the inconvenient sayings. If you haven't been following this series, the Sunday Bible study link below will take you to the entire set of articles so you can see what I'm talking about. Anyway, we have most of the new Testament still to study, so perhaps I'll turn out to be sadly mistaken myself. We begin the gospel according to Mark next Sunday.

The tragedy of Canadian history

2008-07-18T20:02:00.005-04:00

Louis Riel is a hero these days. That mainly says something about people's craving for heroes. Riel's failures after 1870 more than negated the accomplishments of his earlier years, and condemned the people he led to a century or more of oppression.

If Riel was a hero, he was a tragic hero. He was a man who by a bold stroke put the Métis people into a position from which they could have advanced to a prominent place in Canadian society. However, carried away by overweening pride, he ignored the opinions of the ministers of his provisional government and ordered the execution of Thomas Scott – for insubordination. That aroused the wrath of the Orange Order, and Riel fled to the United States. The Métis were then systematically robbed of the land that had been granted to them under the treaty negotiated by Riel, and condemned to decades of poverty.

In 1885, when the Northwest Rebellion/Resistance broke out, Riel returned to Canada. He rejected Gabriel Dumont's strategy of guerrilla warfare, and insisted on forcing a battle at Batoche. The North West Field Force under Frederick Middleton shelled Batoche for three days and then overran it, thereby crushing the rebellion. Riel surrendered three days later. The Saskatchewan Métis were dispossessed.

Riel was not a sterling figure we should try to emulate. Unlike most historical figures, though, he appears to us as a human being. Whether the execution of Scott was the result of overweening pride or merely of miscalculation, it is a consequence of human imperfection.

Louis Riel saw an opportunity to promote his people's interests, but the opportunity also involved great danger. To his credit, he grasped the nettle, but the nettle killed him. Louis Riel was not a hero, but he was a man. The difference between heroes and men is that men are real.

IndigNation

2008-07-17T13:41:00.003-04:00

Oil prices keep going up, most Canadians are upset about the increase in oil prices, and probably most of them don’t believe the official explanation and think some sort of subversive conspiracy is responsible. So what do they do about it? Apparently they’re willing to change their individual behaviour – driving less, for example, or easing up on the air conditioning – but so far there’s no sign of any concerted group effort by Canadians to do anything about the forces driving up gas prices (by pressuring government, for example).

The airlines do have a petition online about stopping the evil speculators who are supposedly driving oil prices up, but there’s no public outcry about the evil effects of speculation. The chief value of Canadian thinking about oil prices seem to be to make Canadians who don’t own oil companies feel morally superior to those who do. It’s only fair, of course. People with money in oil are richer, so the rest of us can restore the equilibrium by being more moral.

Well, Canadians' characteristic refusal to get excited about almost anything does have advantages. You don’t waste energy on things that aren’t worth getting upset about. In the end, the sum of all those individual efforts may end up solving the problem. Still, if ordinary Canadians don’t speak up, the government will only have the oil companies to listen to. The oil companies have lots of PR consultants and lawyers, and they like to employ those consultants and lawyers to make sure that governments continue to heel.

The rest of us seem content just to be virtuous. Virtue is its own reward, right? Its only reward, too.

Our two founding lies

2008-07-16T19:10:00.003-04:00

This article was originally published at NEW IMPROVED HEAD.

I recently came across my copy of an important Canadian book, Lament for a Nation: The Defeat of Canadian Nationalism. It was written in 1965 by George Grant, who is known reflexively to many Canadians as a distinguished historian. The theme of this book is the supposed loss of Canadian sovereignty resulting from the election of the evil Pearson in 1963.

I could summon up no memory of earlier readings of the book, but the many notes in my copy suggested I had been interested in it at the time. I therefore decided to give this distinguished historian a second chance. What I discovered on re-reading the book was a distinguished load of twaddle.

I found, to be exact, a spurious argument for the myth of the two founding peoples. Grant argues that Canada was founded when "the two original peoples, French and Catholic, British and Protestant, united precariously in their desire not to be part of the great Republic." His evidence for this assertion is – wait for it – the Constitutional Act of 1791! He writes:

The constitutional arrangements of 1791, and the wider arrangements of the next century, were only possible because of a widespread determination not to become part of the great Republic. Among both the French and the British, this negative intention sprang from widely divergent traditions. What both people had in common was the fact they both recognized that they could only be preserved outside the United States of America.

Well, let's review exactly what those constitutional
arrangements of 1791 were. What happened was that Quebec lost its western half, which became Upper Canada. This was done so that the Loyalist settlers in Upper Canada could have English laws and institutions, especially the English system of land tenure (Quebec still had seigneurial tenure).

So what Grant represents as a union was in fact a division. What he represents as an accommodation was in fact a repudiation. The Loyalists rejected French law and institutions and the British government removed them from Quebec's rule.

Upper and Lower Canada shared the same Governor General that all the British North American colonies did, but were otherwise separate. They remained separate till the establishment of the United Province of Canada (one of those "wider arrangements of
the next century") in 1841, when the British out them back together with the idea of creating unity by overwhelming the French and assimilating them to English culture.

So Grant represents the divisive act of a colonial power as the voluntary union of two peoples, and he represents a union imposed by a foreign power for the purpose of eradicating French culture as a voluntary partnership between French and English. The obvious nonsensicality of Grant's ideas of course did not keep the Progressive Conservatives from adopting them as policy almost immediately. The Tories' promotion of these ideas culminated in the Meech Lake and Charlottetown agreements, so Grant shares the blame for the collapse of the Progressive Conservative party following the referendum on the Charlottetown agreement.

The myth of the two founding peoples also undermined Canadian sovereignty, although Grant thought that preserving the supposed union of the two founding peoples was what Canadian sovereignty was for. However, once you believe that the essence of Canada is that it is a union of two founding peoples, you really don't need sovereignty.

The Tories, for example, could promote free trade as enthusiastically as they promoted Meech Lake and Charlottetown. Free trade, after all, wasn't going to imperil the union of the two founding peoples, especially when Quebec was keen for it. Free trade was going to cost the two founding peoples considerable freedom to act as they wanted, but those valuable British and French traditions were not going to be endangered.

Of course, the loss of Canadian sovereignty through free trade and the WTO was also facilitated by the other myth which competed with the myth of the two founding peoples. This competing myth was the idea of multicultural Canada, or of Canada, the community of communities. Canada's mission, according to this myth, is to furnish a place for ethnic groups to co-exist in harmony.

I call this a myth for the simple reason that, like the myth of the two founding peoples, it fails to describe reality. Most members of most ethnic groups consider that the interests of Canadians as a whole are superior to those of their own ethnic
group. The one ethnic group where this is most likely not true has also firmly rejected the idea of a multicultural society, and many of its members long to separate from a country in which individual rights take priority over group rights.

As Grant notes, the idea of multicultural Canada was a favourite of the Cité Libre crowd, and when they took over the Liberal Party, the Liberal party took over the idea of multicultural Canada. It became the party of multiculturalism.

Of course a multicultural Canada is not threatened by loss of sovereignty, either, and the Liberals have enthusiastically supported the WTO's depredations on Canadian sovereignty. The members of Canada's ethnic communities have lost sovereignty, but Canada still has a ministry of multiculturalism.

Interestingly, Canadians are increasingly coming to think that Canadianism is synonymous with anti-Americanism. We don't want to be like those vulgar Americans whose national myth is one of self-reliance and liberty. While the two myths of Canada fail to describe Canadian reality, they have at least succeeded in persuading Canadians that the autonomous life is not worth living.

No, we will stick with the Two Founding Lies of contemporary Canada. Although they have cost us sovereignty and the occasional problem like the country nearly falling apart, they both allow us to remain smug and self-righteous about the wonderful union of two peoples/community of communities that Canada supposedly is, and if being smug and self-righteous isn't Canadian, I don't know what is.

Are YOU Canadian?

2008-07-15T16:44:00.004-04:00

You may be Canadian if:

you think there should be a maximum prize in the lottery so that more people can share the wealth.
you'd really like to do something to make Quebeckers feel more at home in Canada, as long as it doesn't involve learning French.
you're proud that the best thing in your country in any category is among the ten best things in that category in North America.
you hate Americans but get upset whenever a new Canadian channel bumps an American one off the cable.
you hate Brian Mulroney, even if you voted for him both times.
you know what an in-turn draw is.
you think Toronto is a big city.
you hate Americans, even though most of your relatives are Americans.
you don't think Wayne Gretzky was the greatest hockey player ever.
you own a Tom Connors record or CD.
you hate Americans but worry that the high dollar will keep them from visiting your town.
you don't understand why they don't have Robertson screwdrivers anywhere else. [and why don't they, eh? – ed.]
you know where you were when Paul Henderson scored The Goal.
you hate Americans but vacation in Florida.
you still think the Rogers Centre was a good idea.
you've never held a handgun.
you hate Americans, but glow with pride whenever one of them mentions Canada on television.

If as few as six of these statements are true of you, you may be a Canadian. To overcome this impediment, you must take action immediately! That's all you have to do – take some bloody action. The essence of Canadianism is inaction. Canadians are currently outraged by the high price of gas, but they keep buying the stuff. They hate the GST, but they keep paying it. They'd like either to get tough with Quebec or to give it a better deal, but concerted effort to accomplish either goal is beyond them. What kind of country would you end up with if you behaved like that?

The irrelevance of the mainstream media

2008-07-14T10:18:00.005-04:00

This week the world's most important "newsmagazine" has as its feature article "The Dangerous Mind of Mark Twain." Now, when was Twain's mind dangerous? 1895? The latest possible date is 1910, which is 98 years ago.

Let's see – they could have written about the imbroglio in Iraq, they could have written about the imbroglio in Afghanistan, they could have written about the economic crisis facing the United States (and the rest of the world), they could have written about how the corporate world is now more powerful than ever thanks to the legislative steroids dished out to it by the Reagan and Bush administrations. "No, wait," I can hear someone saying at the editorial meeting, "let's do a piece about a social critic who died 98 years ago."

And just how dangerous was Twain, anyway? For all his railing against the robber barons, they still got to do pretty much whatever they wanted. For all his railing against American imperialism, the American empire just kept getting bigger. For all his support of labour, the United States has never even had a Labour Party.

The mainstream media are media of entertainment rather than of information. They keep people diverted from the world's problems rather than focus people's attention on them. The mainstream media are still treated as if they had something to say, though. I am sure the White House is even now telling the FBI to organize surveillance of this dangerous Twain guy.

Sunday Bible study (Matthew 27 and 28)

2008-07-13T08:42:00.004-04:00

Chapters 27 and 28 complete the gospel according to Matthew. In them we learn that Pilate crucified Jesus even though he (Pilate) thought Jesus was innocent, then blamed the Jews for his decision (27:24). We also learn that on the cross Jesus cried out "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?" (27:46). Again this quotation contradicts the orthodox Christian belief that while God the Father and Jesus are different persons, they are the same god – that is, that they are one god manifested in three persons. If Jesus was God, He could not forsake Himself.

Chapter 28 is an account of Jesus's resurrection. Mary Magdalene and "the other Mary" (28:1) visit Jesus's tomb, and an angel appears to tell them Jesus has risen from the dead (28:6-7). But why does the angel reserve this announcement for the two women? Why not let everyone know? Similarly, Jesus appears after death only to His disciples, although He has promised in earlier chapters that He would return in glory.

According to Christians, Christ's crucifixion and resurrection are the central events of history. However, according to chapter 28 of Matthew, Jesus considered them to be only an encouragement to His small band of disciples to teach His commandments (28:19-20). When He gives His disciples this instruction Jesus has just announced that He has been given all power in heaven and earth (28:18), so it seems He did not consider His death to constitute a redemption of all souls, as orthodox Christian doctrine asserts. He has chosen to use His new power not to announce the redemption, but merely to encourage His followers to preach.

We are also entitled to conclude that Matthew 28:18 implies that Jesus has been transformed into a god. Again, this contradicts orthodox Christian doctrine. As the reader who takes the gospel according to Matthew seriously finishes reading it, he or she might reasonably conclude that orthodox Christian doctrine has been imposed on the gospels rather than inferred from them.

On conspiracy theory

2008-07-11T10:25:00.003-04:00

Today I just want to make it clear that yesterday I was not making fun of conspiracy theorists. I have no reason to make fun of them. They are often right. The Watergate scandal was about a conspiracy by a group of powerful people. The Reichstag fire was the result of a conspiracy by a group of powerful people. We've even learned that the United States government once conspired to assassinate Fidel Castro with a booby-trapped cigar. The cigar contained a bullet with a magnesium charge. The idea was that when Castro lit the cigar, the magnesium would explode, driving the bullet into his head.

These days the usual reaction by authorities to a story like that would be "America wanted to kill Castro with an exploding cigar? Ha ha ha ha ha." However, the story is confirmed by sworn testimony to a Congressional committee.

Another thing people in authority want you to overlook is that they like to promote some pretty wacky conspiracy theories themselves. Do you remember the claim that Saddam Hussein was in league with al-Qaeda?

In the verificationist account of scientific discourse, we explain things by investigating how well competing theories explain them. The idea that the earth circles the sun provides a better explanation than does the theory that the sun circles the earth of the phenomenon that when the sun is rising in Toronto, people in Marseilles are getting ready for lunch.

Of course, if theories are going to compete, some of them have to be wrong. Usually all the competing theories are wrong to some degree, but one is less wrong than others.

We have conspiracy theories because people often conspire. We would be intellectually deficient if we refused to speculate about conspiracies. The value of a theory is not determined by its content, but by its effectiveness. The theory that Iraq supported al-Qaeda led to the catastrophic invasion of Iraq. On the other hand, the theory that the American cabinet and American media corporations conspired to conceal the truth about Iraq from the American people is looking pretty good.

The Horton conspiracy

2008-07-10T19:24:00.004-04:00

Today I was at Bay and Wellesley here in Toronto and discovered that the restaurant that used to be Ruchiro's and then the Indian Flavour is now a Tim Hortons. According to my current calculations, on April 17, 2014 every retail outlet of any kind in Canada will have been turned into a Tim Hortons.

Tim's is like black mould. Once it gets in somewhere, it doesn't go away unless it's torn out. And ain't nobody tearing it out.

If you're not familiar with Canadian institutions, Tim Hortons is a chain of donut shops. It is distinguished from the other donut shops by:

serving warm brown water instead of coffee,
leaden donuts and muffins made with frozen dough,
atrocious service,
wild popularity.

My brother, Rob Eleven, explains Tim's popularity as the result of so many Tim's having drive-throughs. People get used to buying coffee at the drive-through, then start going even when they're not driving.

He also points out that Tim's marketing is superlative. They always have a promotion going on, and their commercials for it are usually exemplary. Their competitors rarely advertise, and rarely have promotions. Come to think of it, the coffee at their major competitors has been going downhill lately, too, although it is still recognizable as coffee.

A third factor is simply that Canadians have no taste. But, as Day Odato pointed out in an earlier post here, the development of taste is an obstacle to happiness. Obviously, the more refined your taste becomes, the fewer things there are in the world that can make you happy. I have the problem that the only two places in Toronto where I can get what I consider good coffee are Bulldog and my kitchen.

Other Canadians appear not to have this problem. Many of them, for example, think the Toronto Maple Leafs are a hockey team. I mean, I rate Tims higher than the Leafs. Tims can make a good sandwich.

Another consideration is that Canadians are highly likely to be wasted. A recent international survey showed them out-toking Jamaicans, which is some smoking. If you live on the border, compare Canadian commercials to American ones for the same product or the same type of product. The Canadian commercials are way freakier, especially the food commercials. The current Subway ads, for example, aren't intended for people whose mental functioning is normal. They're for wasted people who've got the munchies.

Anyway, when you're wasted you'll eat anything. I know someone – no names, no pack drill – who once ate an entire tube of Pringle's when he was wasted, and has never been able to look himself in the face again.

I imagine (since I don't do false drugs, any more) that when you're wasted the bright primary colours of Tims stores and the bright interiors are particularly attractive, and you don't notice you're eating and drinking rubbish.

So there you are. Tim Hortons is a conspiracy to promote drug use. And I should point out to those of you who scoff at conspiracy theories that Tim Hortons is clearly a conspiracy. It is actively marketing its franchises. And they're everywhere. Where there used to be banks there now are Tim Hortons. Where there used to be gas stations there now are Tim Hortons. Where used to be restaurants that served tasty food and real coffee, there now are Tim Hortons.

About the only institution Tims hasn't been able to subvert is religion. If you see a St. Tim Hortons going up, though, sell your Catholicism stocks.

What – ballplayers have a lot of sex?

2008-07-09T19:32:00.005-04:00

Me, I don't care if Alex Rodriguez is having sex with Derek Jeter. As long as it's not during a game, anyway. If they were doing it during a game the Yankee announcers would be even more insufferable than usual, raving on about A-Rod and Derek's superlative technique, tremendous endurance, etc.

Ballplayers get a lot of women – who knew? Geez, what's Alex got going for him that I don't, apart from a toned muscular body, stardom, and a weekly paycheque of more than 500 grand? Women go for that?

Now if most people have a friend or relative who's involved in a nasty break-up, they either try to be unavailable whenever the friend or relative's around or they try to commiserate. They certainly don't go round telling everyone the details. When a movie star or athlete is involved in one, though, anything goes. I suppose it's people's way of telling themselves that, despite all his talent and money, A-Rod is still not quite their equal. After all, no one's accused them of sleeping with Madonna.

I said earlier that I don't care who A-Rod sleeps with. Of course, his wife has no reason to adopt my attitude. She has a contract with the man, after all.

As for the rest of the world, though, why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye? Who among you has not thought about sleeping with Madonna? Actually, I can rest easy on that score, too (no pun intended).

Better living through cynicism!

2008-07-08T19:12:00.002-04:00

According to a passage in The Picture of Dorian Gray, a cynic is someone who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.

Since being published in 1890, that little statement has enjoyed an attractiveness longer-lived than even Dorian's. It is approvingly quoted any time someone wants to castigate someone else for being a cynic.

Somehow the people who use this quotation seem not to have noticed that it's one of Wilde's characteristic paradoxes. It's a cynical remark about cynicism. So by quoting it to castigate cynics you become a cynic yourself. As Lord Alfred Douglas would have said, way cool.

So if it's contradictory to be cynical about cynicism, let's be consistent and be upbeat and positive about it! Wow! What a great idea! I can think of all sorts of wonderful things that the cynical community has given to the world!

First of all, there's contemporary television! Cynical television executives realized that if they took the value, or quality, out of television programs they could reduce the price! When they reduced the value and price of television programs, they ended up with shows like Survivor and The Bachelor! And that's a good thing! How do I know? Because everybody likes them as much as those expensive "quality" shows they replaced! Wow! High ratings, low cost! I guess sometimes it helps not to know anything about value!
Then there's contemporary fashion! Cynical marketers suspected that what people wanted in fashion was nothing more than a trademark that certified they'd spent a lot of money on a garment or accessory. How could they find out? Why, they marketed expensive clothes that were identical in every way to cheaper garments except that they prominently displayed the designer's trademark! That's how we got the $100 T-shirt! And you know what! Everybody bought them! Lower costs for designers, but higher revenues – who needs to know about value!
And of course there's contemporary politics! Neo-conservative and neo-liberal politicians just couldn't see the value in democracy. For them, democratic values could be reduced to one question – how much did they have to pay? So they embarked on campaigns to cut social programs and to cut taxes. And you know what? Everybody loved the idea! They voted the slash and burn cynics into office, where they slashed and burnt! Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Brian Mulroney, Mike Harris, they all slashed and burnt! And after they slashed and burnt they all got voted in again!

And you know what else – the possibilities are endless! What if...we combined all three of these things! What if we selected ordinary citizens at random to run for the Calvin Klein party on a platform of eliminating government service and reducing taxes to nothing! Now there you have absolutely no value at all! And everyone'd love it!

Instead of having to fork out to pay for the pet projects of a bunch of fat old ugly politicians, you'd have the discretion to purchase any service you wanted from any giant transnational corporation that was supplying it! You wouldn't have to put up with clunky old government health care, government police services, or government electricity, you could buy designer health care, designer police, and designer electricity!

And once Parliament was eliminated the parliamentary channel would be freed up for reruns of Survivor!

So what are you waiting for! Those old outmoded bleeding-heart do-gooder attitudes are yesterday's news! For a better society, for a better country, for a new improved, more confident YOU, let's all get cynical!

Out of order

2008-07-07T12:37:00.004-04:00

I've been thinking about what I could say about the issue of Henry Morgenthaler's appointment to the Order of Canada, and decided to re-publish my article of a couple of years ago about the Order. I have modified it slightly to make it sound as if I just wrote it. I like to be helpful.

Let be be finale of seem,
The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream.

– Wallace Stevens

“Canadians think of their country as an empty vessel, and are always searching outside Canada for people and things to put in it” – so said an article published at NEW IMPROVED HEAD seven years ago. That seems perfectly appropriate for a country which, in an article published at NEW IMPROVED HEAD two years ago, I compared to a cargo cult.

As the latter article has it, “We have provided [Canada] with what seem to us to be all the characteristics of a nation, but on closer examination these characteristics turn out to be in large part primitive imitations of the real thing.” Today we’ll be looking at how the Order of Canada fills that bill.

The Order of Canada, according to the Governor General’s website, is “the centrepiece of Canada’s Honours System and recognizes a lifetime of outstanding achievement, dedication to the community and service to the nation.” The Order was a brainchild of Lester Pearson’s, who already had a Nobel and so can’t be accused of creating an honour for himself to get.

The Order was established in 1967, and its Chancellor is the Governor General. Members of the Order of Canada are selected by a shadowy group called the Advisory Council of the Order of Canada, which is currently chaired by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Any Canadian may nominate someone for membership, but nominations are not publicized, deliberations about the selection of new members are secret, and decisions not to select someone are not explained.

I must admit that I have never been impartial about the Order of Canada, which I have always considered to be profoundly elitist and consequently un-Canadian. What sociological and anthropological evidence there is suggests that Canadian culture – or, at least, the culture of the great majority of Canadians – is egalitarian.

For decades before the establishment of the Order of Canada, Canadians had been forbidden to accept honours in the higher ranks of the Commonwealth orders of merit, such as the Order of the British Empire, and few had complained about being denied the opportunity to lord it over other Canadians (of course, Conrad Black was young then).

But then separatism put in an appearance. All of a sudden people started thinking that perhaps Canada was a bit too decentralized and sectionalist for its own good. Furthermore, the separatists were arguing that Canada was not a real country. National institutions like those of real countries were needed, and Centennial year offered a golden opportunity to create some.

And so we got the Order of Canada. Unfortunately, in importing the idea of the order of merit, Canada didn’t look closely enough at foreign models. As a result, like cargo cult reproductions of airport control towers which omit important components of real airport control towers, such as radar systems, Canada’s order of merit ended up a feeble imitation of real orders of merit.

Our two mother countries provided models that we could have followed. France has four orders of merit and the United Kingdom sixteen, each intended to honour achievement in different fields. In France and the United Kingdom honours are also widely distributed; for example the Légion d’Honneur alone has over 110,000 members, or one for every 550 French citizens of all ages. Consequently, French citizens have a reasonable chance of being acquainted with a member of an order of merit, and a reasonable chance of success if they aspire to become members of one themselves.

But Canada decided to do the exact opposite. The Order of Canada is an omnibus order, intended to honour people in all fields. Consequently the goals which members are supposed to have achieved are only stated vaguely. The Order's motto is Desiderantes meliorem patriam (those desiring a better fatherland), which the Governor General's website makes even vaguer by translating it sloppily, as They desire a better country. That translation could as easily describe people who hate Canada and leave it.

Even a good translation doesn't exclude many people. We all desire a better Canada, don't we? Those young fellows who supposedly wanted to behead Stephen Harper probably thought that would make Canada better.

The Order of Canada is also highly exclusive. Currently there are about 3,000 members of the Order of Canada, or one for every 10,000 Canadians of all ages. Consequently, its members tend to be important people. In fact, they consist largely of:

people of the type that politicians hang around with, and
people of the type politicians would like to hang around with.

So the members include a lot of rich people, retired politicians, journalists, sporting figures, and TV stars.

The members do appear to be highly worthy. When you exclude 9,999 of every 10,000 Canadians from the Order, you're going to end up with a highly worthy membership. However, you are going to exclude a large number of worthy people, and your membership will not be drawn from the great mass of the people. The members of the order of Canada are largely:

distinguished people in the professions, sciences, culture, education, social service, sport, and journalism,
philanthropists (a category which includes a large proportion of the entertainers), and
big shots (including a fair number of provincial cabinet ministers of varying degrees of distinction).

I’m not saying that the Order of Canada is a private club for politicians and their friends, but that to a large extent it represents the limited perspective and experience of the ruling classes of this country. It includes chiefly people from their exalted and exclusive circles, and the chances of an ordinary Canadian being inducted are less than his or her chances of winning the lottery. In other words, the vast majority of Canadians have no reason either to be interested in the Order or to aspire to belong to it, and overwhelmingly they are not interested in it and do not aspire to join it.

If we must have orders of merit, they should have as their goals the provision of good examples, the encouragement of achievement, and the provision of outward and visible signs of important national ideals. A small, elitist Order of Canada cannot accomplish these goals.

Canada could easily accomplish these goals, however, by following the Légion d’Honneur and having more grades of membership. The Order of Canada has three grades, while the Légion d’Honneur has five. The lowest two grades of the Légion d’Honneur contain over 95% of the members of the order. The Governor General would have to rub shoulders with people who wear ready-made clothes, but at least she would have contact for once with people who attended public schools and do their own housework.

We could also at least have subdivisions within the Order of Canada designating fields in which accomplishment is rewarded, with clear standards for membership in each division. That would also help eliminate the impression that many members got in because they know a politician.

Well, we could have a post office that delivered the mail, too, as well as armed forces that actually could exert armed force, and a health care system that actually cared for people. We could. Really. To do that, though, we would have to realize that institutions do not make a country, but rather that a real country creates institutions which arise from its culture.

I don’t know that Canadian culture needs an order of merit at all. There are other ways to honour distinguished Canadians without establishing an exalted caste. If we must have orders of merit, let’s carefully adapt the best foreign models to the requirements of Canadian culture instead of cobbling together a slapdash impersonation whose underlying assumption is that only one Canadian in 10,000 is really accomplishing anything for the country.

Sunday Bible study (Matthew 25 and 26)

2008-07-06T07:55:00.002-04:00

In chapters 25 and 26 of Matthew Jeus confirms that, contrary to "Christian" trafition, He is not God, and clarifies just what He believes His role in the divine scheme to be.

In verse 39 of chapter 26 we read of Jesus praying to God: "And he went a little farther, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt." If Jesus was God, He would not pray to Himself. Neither would He believe that His will was different from God's.

In verse 31 to 46 of chapter 25 Jesus does state, though, that "the Son of man shall come in his glory" and decide who will go to heaven and who to hell. Althouh He does not use the first person, Jesus has used the phrase Son of man to describe himself before. As we saw early in this series, this phrase also implies that Jesus is not divine. At any rate, according to Matthew's account Jesus clearly thought He had been chosen by God for an exalted position, but just as clearly He did not consider Himself to be part of any divine Trinity.

Forbidden proverbs

2008-07-04T20:40:00.004-04:00

Guest column by E. McIoran.

One man's meat is another man's marshmallow.
You catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar, but really, you catch the most flies with shit.
Violence: A form of authority which leaves marks.
The world does not so much reward incompetence as worship it.
Mindless tedium is better than mindless terror.
Moral indignation: Denial of responsibility.
One's self-control is greater the less self one has to control.
A good reputation is worth having if not deserving.
Never do anything stupid out of desperation. Only do something stupid after careful deliberation.
We have the choice of living in a moral wasteland or a moral wonderland.
To understand someone, find out who their enemies are.
Noble enterprises are appropriate for the noble.
Those who can't remember last week are condemned to repeat it.
We believe we are cunning when we are merely nasty.
In the country of the idiots, the biggest fucking idiot is king.

Canada vs the U. K.

2008-07-03T11:40:00.003-04:00

I have to agree with much of what Philip Delves Broughton had to say about Canada in a recent article in the Daily Mail (click here to read it).

It is true, for example, that Canada is culturally impoverished in comparison with Britain, although Mr. Delves Broughton ignores another relevant fact, that the average Canadian is more cultured than the average Briton. And yes, our leaders do confuse cowardice with wisdom, and contempt for the weak with moral indignation. And yes, no one ever moved here for the climate.

On the other hand, our climate does allow Britons the opportunity to experience a weather phenomenon that is unfamiliar to them – the sun. The chief flaw in Mr. Delves Broughton's analysis, however, is in his assertion that Canadian politics is as bad as the British version.

He counts it a point in our favour that we have a Conservative prime minister, but seems not to have noted that our Conservative prime minister is to the left of Britain's "socialist" prime minister. Britons today have a political choice between the very right and the extreme right. In other words, the range of policy options that are likely to get implemented by British governments is extremely narrow, and that restricts the ability of British governments to respond effectively to problems.

To be fair, though, I must admit that perhaps Canadian governments rely too much on the tactic of dealing with problems by ignoring them. That's usually effective, but often it's not.

As for Siberia being preferable to Canada, I know people from Siberia. From what they tell me, Siberia isn't even preferable to Britain.

I got experience for you right here

2008-07-02T17:28:00.004-04:00

People's noses are getting out of joint in the States because Gen. Wesley Clark said in reply to an interviewer's question that he didn't believe Sen. John McCain's military experience as commander of a training squadron made him more qualified than Sen. Barack Obama to be president.

Well, duh. Obviously it doesn't. For the love of all that's holy, even being president has failed to qualify George W. Bush to be president. Just to get these issues out of the way, I'll mention a couple of other things that don't qualify Sen. McCain to be president: a) cheating on his wife because she'd put on weight after being in a car accident, and b) having lobbyists as five of his top aides. So don't go trying to peddle that booshwah to me.

Looking at the question from a more solemn perspective, wouldn't you think Sen. McCain's performance as a legislator is the relevant consideration here? And isn't that one of his few real advantages in comparison with Sen. Obama?

At least Sen. McCain hasn't announced a Green Shift, whatever that may be.

Who knew?

2008-07-01T13:26:00.004-04:00

The top story on the local news telecasts at noon today was that it's Canada Day. I hope that relieved Torontonians of the doubt that must have been plaguing them. Here it is a work day, and they're not at work. What's going on, eh? Now they know, thanks to the crack news departments of Toronto's television stations.

Some of the Canada Day coverage was news of a sort – where to find the fireworks and things like that. However, there's a whole world outside Canada where news is still going on. If there's a shortage of news in Canada, why not draw on the vast reserves of news outside Canada?

But perhaps I am being too harsh. If people actually were informed by news broadcasts and newspapers, they'd acquire interests in serious topics. And if they acquired interests in serious topics they'd expect the news to tell them something useful about the topics they were interested in. Then the news media would have to hire people who knew how to think about serious topics.

Since few people already in the news media know how to think about any topic other than how they want their hair to look on camera, they wouldn't know who to hire. So they'd just continue to hire pretty people to do the job of reading a teleprompter and telling us about lost kitty cats and car crashes in distant regions. So we'd be back where we started.

In other words, the news industry has put itself in a position where it can only be a mindless purveyor of press releases and traffic reports. So now we know why the news industry spends so much time disparaging the internet. Some of the people behind those websites are quite, quite plain.

Sex lives of the great philosophers

2008-06-30T17:25:00.005-04:00

I apologize for failing to post an instalment yesterday of our Sunday biographical series about Jesus. Sheer forgetfulness, I'm afraid; the series will return next Sunday. In partial atonement to you biography fans, here's a fascinating firsthand glimpse into the lives of great men, provided by Mavis W.:

That Karl Popper – oh, he was a lively one, he was! "Whoops! – that was an unintended consequence," he'd say, and oh, how we'd laugh!

I said to that Gilbert Ryle once, I did, "There's no doubt about what's on your mind, is there, dear?" and he got the funniest look on his face, he did. He always paid me extra after that, too.

That Bertrand Russell, he'd had most of the women in Cambridge and Oxford. Well, you know that, you've read his autobigraphy, haven't you? And probably more than once. Still, "Mavis," he'd say to me, he would, he'd say "Mavis, it wouldn't be St. Swithin's Day without I give you a right doing over." Which he did. Do me over, I mean, every St. Swithin's Day.

And don't believe everything you read about that John Stuart Mill. Qualitative happiness, my eye. All he wanted was quantity, dearie, if you get my drift. Me and the other girls, we used to have to work shifts to keep him happy, we did.

Now that Artie Schopenhauer, once he had the idea he had the will, you can believe me. He brought that Hegel along once but I wouldn't want to tell you some of the things he wanted to do, I wouldn't.

That Kierkegaard was a rum one. He never really did anything. He'd just sit and talk to me in Danish. He said it was English, but it sounded like Danish to me. His little joke, I reckon. As I say, he was a rum one, he was.

Oh, but that René Descartes! He had them French ways about him. He was ever so suave and debonair. "Cogito ergo sum," he'd say and I'd say "Futuo ergo pecuniam habeo." Oh, how we'd laugh!

That William of Occam was a handful, I can tell you. He was what you call a submissive. I'd flog him and flog him until finally he'd gasp and say "I have avoided multiplying entities," and then he'd leave as quiet and polite as you please.

My friend Gladys didn't want me to have nothing to do with that Averroes but "Glad," I said to her, I said "Glad, I don't care where he's from or if he's an Arab or an Hottentot or whatever it is that he is, as long as he pays me in good English money that's all I ask." I used to get a groat in those days, dear.

As it turned out my agent had misunderstood his English and he was looking for a tour guide! Oh, how we laughed about that! So as not to disappoint I got Mr. Bloggs to show him and his wife around Cambridge; it was a lot smaller then – stands to reason, doesn't it? after all – so it didn't take long, but they paid him a groat and a half! They sent Mr. Bloggs a postcard, too, from Bognor, they did.

Well, dear, I'll have to tell you about the Greek gentlemen next week. This nice Lacanian gentleman is coming over and I have to put the plastic slipcovers on all the furniture, so I'll do that while you're having the nice bath that Auntie's going to draw for you. Oh – ta ever so much!

Health secrets physicians won't tell you

2008-06-27T15:15:00.004-04:00

This week the so-called mainstream press was full of another of the seemingly endless stream of reports of "research" on nutrition. This time it turns out that fatty food shortens memory in diabetics. Yeah, yeah.

Isn't it amazing how physicians' recommendations of good and bad food coincide exactly with the dietary preferences of the upper middle classes from which physicians tend to be drawn? French fries are bad, potato chips are bad, but wine – hey, drink up!

The coincidence is just a little too striking. I think the good doctors' interpretation of their results has been distorted by their own class prejudices. Therefore we here at the Eleven Institute/Institut Onze have been sponsoring several unbiased research studies into the effects not only of different types of food but also of other choices we make in our daily lives. Here's what our researchers have found so far.

The following are hazardous:

Bottled water: Carrying a bottle of water around to avoid dehydration proves to be unhealthy. The typical bottled-water carrier in our sample spent 7.4% longer urinating than someone who did not carry bottled water. Prolonged urination is often a sign of Prolonged Urination Syndrome (PUS). Plus carrying a little plastic bottle of water around with you ain't exactly calculated to maximize your dignity.
Golf shirts as business wear: Research shows that the fibres in golf shirts contain dangerous materials whose deleterious effects, however, are negated by the chemicals present in grass, ball washers, sand, and golf club grips. The office environment, however, does not contain these natural safeguards. The members of our sample who wore golf shirts at the office were more likely than those who did not to show such signs of abnormality as facility in computer languages or fondness for meetings. These symptoms often persist even when the unhealthy attire is abandoned.
Sports fanaticism: Perhaps paradoxically, the sports fans in our sample tended to have poorer health than the non-fans. This difference seemed to have two causes – long hours spent on the couch watching televised games while the non-fan sample was getting exercise, and the diversion of money which could have been spent on healthful purchases to purchases of sports "souvenirs" ("Oh, let's spend $120 on a genuine replica team shirt so we'll always remember spending five yards and change tonight to watch a bunch of grown men in funny outfits hit a ball with a stick!").
Exercising in gyms or health clubs: Exercising in gyms or health clubs was also found to be counterproductive: it is actually harmful to health. The gym environment promotes obsessive exercising which in turn leads to injury. The boring routines (sic) also turn your mind to mush so that you become less alert and more likely to fall victim to an "accident." And you get way more athlete's foot.
Gum chewing: A large percentage of gum chewers really can't walk and chew gum at the same time (just think how many championships Colleen Jones would have won if she'd never taken up the habit!). Gum chewers' resulting locomotor problems make it difficult for them to avoid hazards.
Referring to vegetables as "veggies": Not only is this disgusting habit associated with negative health consequences, it is also dangerous to others. For example, it makes us gag.

Well, that's the bad news. Our research, though, has also discovered several factors which promote health:

Listening to Etta James and Jackie McLean: The members of our sample who listened to the recorded and live performances of these two great artists tended to use fewer stimulants, sedatives, and tranquillizers. Multiple linear regression analysis discovered that appreciable benefits to health were obtained by participants who listened to one or more hours a week each of Ms James and Mr. McLean. Ms James' live show will set you up for life. Our research also found that Freddie Hubbard's Blues for Duane CD is better for you than a slap in the head with a shovel.
Eating at Indian restaurants: All the food is fresh at Indian restaurants. Participants who ate at Indian restaurants not only had better physical and psychological health in general, but man, were they regular.
Coffee, coffee, coffee: Coffee makes you alert and happy. They sell a lot of Second Cup Royal Blend in hospitals. Mere coincidence? We think not.
Scratching: Participants who scratched themselves frequently, often in public, were significantly healthier than those who never did. They also made more money, since scratching oneself frequently seems to be a prerequisite for making those big salaries in professional baseball.

So there you see how completely unbiased research paints a far different picture of the healthy way of life than the stuff churned out by the medical establishment. Now you can feel confident that you have made the right choices for your life! Here's to better health, and better living!

The harmonious life

2008-06-26T13:12:00.005-04:00

From recent observations on my walks around Toronto I have inferred the following law: the probability that a dog’s owner will apologize when it molests or harasses you is inversely proportional to the dog's size.

This is an example of cognitive dissonance reduction. Since this technical term is widely misused in popular discourse (hey, could I have started this post more stiff-arsedly?), I will explain what I mean.

You are in a state of cognitive dissonance when you hold two beliefs which contradict each other – that is, which are metaphorically dissonant. So perhaps you hold the beliefs “I am a responsible person” and “The dog I’m supposed to be responsible for is molesting that person over there.” Evidence, it seems, is contradicting your belief in how responsible you are.

You can resolve this dissonance in a number of ways. For example, you could modify the first belief to “I’m usually a responsible person, but I seem to be experiencing a momentary lapse of responsibility,” or you could modify the second to

“That bastard must have been bothering my dog,” or
“Oh, look, Towser and that stranger are playing together,” or
“It’s lucky that Towser is such a gentle animal or that playful nip he just gave that fellow could be quite serious, especially as he seems to have already been bleeding in the same spot.”

My theory about dog-walkers is that as the possibility of serious injury increases, the greater is the tendency to modify the second belief. You don’t want to think that you have unnecessarily exposed a stranger to danger, so you interpret the stranger’s interaction with your dog in the rosiest way possible.

If you only have a little tiny mutt, though, you know buddy’s in no danger so you apologize for not controlling the dog. This has another advantage as both you and buddy know that the apology is uncalled for, so you appear to be quite the lady/gent (I think I’ve conquered that stiff arse problem, eh?).

Of course, this process can be seen in the resolution of more serious issues as well. I’m sure that not so long ago many Americans had to choose between the belief that their president was right when he claimed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and the fact that there was no evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Apparently, it was more important to most of them to retain their belief in presidential infallibility than to avoid a war in which tens of thousands would be killed and the Middle East destabilized for generations.

Closer to home, I’m sure many Canadians have resolved the dissonance between the belief that they are intelligent people and the fact that they voted for the Mulroney Conservatives by forgetting that they ever voted for the Mulroney conservatives.

Racism is a classic example of this phenomenon. For example, we may believe that Canadians like us are good people while recognizing at the same time that the institutionalized apartheid of the Indian Act has led to large numbers of Indians living in squalor. The usual Canadian way of resolving this issue is to conclude that the Indians deserve it.

Hen there’s Mike Harris, former premier of Ontario. Having done his utmost to damage the Ontario economy, and in particular Toronto’s economy, during his stint as premier, he managed to resolve any troubling conflict he may have experienced about his performance by issuing a report yesterday blaming Toronto’s city government for the city’s problems. I guess he thinks they should have seceded when he started downloading costs onto Toronto.

These days politics consists to a large extent of the provision of ways to resolve cognitive dissonance. A large section of the populace feels guilty about that system of apartheid we have created for Indians? Chill out, eh? – we apologized. That’s a load off your minds. Welfare costs are up? Blame it on welfare bums. Our armed forces are failing to achieve our goals in Afghanistan? Blame the other countries in NATO.

And that's how we live in harmony.