– so what did you do today?
– I posed naked with a tiger.
– you get all the cool jobs!
Month: April 2014
Speak, brother Asimov
Tulip festival
Took the Bean to see the tulips today. Gallery pictures here
A real-life example of Poe’s law
I found out about Poe’s law, via Elf Sternberg’s Facebook feed, today. Poe’s law srates:
Without a blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of extremism or fundamentalism that someone won’t mistake for the real thing.
The core of Poe’s law is that a parody of something extreme by nature becomes impossible to differentiate from sincere extremism. A corollary of Poe’s law is the reverse phenomenon: sincere fundamentalist beliefs can be mistaken for a parody of those beliefs.
I just came across something that illustrates this spectacularly well. To quote the National Report:
Kansas to Black Out “Cosmos” Show Over Controversies
The Fox television show COSMOS: A Spacetime Odyssey has attracted its fair share of detractors since the docudrama first aired on March 9th. But soon, the controversy revolving around the show might reach climactic new heights, as several State senators in Kansas will propose a bill on Thursday that would force Fox affiliates in their state to black out the science show completely.The bill, which many are expecting will pass, would force local Kansas television stations affiliated with Fox to pay steep fines for airing the program. Should any network continue to air all thirteen episodes of the show’s first season, the State would move to revoke their broadcasting privileges completely, driving those networks off the air.
Conservative lawmakers in Kansas are, however, offering Fox a back door through which they could skirt the new law: they won’t press this law into effect if Fox will agree to immediately develop a new show, hosted by young-Earth creationist Ken Ham, which pushes the theories of so-called “intelligent design.” This new show would need to be aired on Sunday evenings, before Cosmos, in order for the small-time Fox affiliates to avoid Kansas’ legislative wrath.
The new bill is the brainchild of an ironically-named Kansas State Senator: Tom Edison (R). “Cosmos is a liberal brainwashing program, designed to force our children into questioning the existence of our lord and savior Jesus Christ,” Edison said during a recent interview on one of the Fox affiliates under the gun. “It’s a keystone of the liberal agenda that America’s youth be converted into following their so-called `logic,’ so conservatism dies out in a generation or two. Well, we aren’t going to stand for this. We aren’t going to let this TV show ruin our children.”
Edison went on to explain all the reasons why he “hates” the TV show. “This show has no basis in reality whatsoever. The host goes on and on about science and scientific method, but never once does he say anything positive about Jesus. He claims evolution and global warming are facts, not the opinions we all know them to really be. And he very proudly tells viewers that he wants our children to question authority, question religion and faith. This show won’t rest until all of our children are godless heathen liberals.”
His problems with Cosmos didn’t end there, either. “I’ve been watching this show since the first episode. They’ve gone to great lengths to claim Christianity has been terrible for science, and oppressive toward scientists. But then, last night [April 6th], the host goes on a huge tirade about how awesome Islam is and how the Arabs were all pro-science! So let me make sure I understand this… Christianity is evil, God doesn’t exist, and Muslims are the kindest people on Earth? This show is a scourge, and our black out bill is the cure.”
Opponents of the bill note that it’s a clear violation of the first amendment, and the federal government may intervene with legal actions of their own should the law pass. “This law clearly violates free speech, as well as the separation of church and state,” said a statement issued by the Justice Department. “If we need to take this fight all the way to the Supreme Court, we’re prepared to do so.”
But Edison claims he isn’t worried about any legal action taken against the bill by the Federal government. “Jesus will protect this bill and ensure its safe passage. These liberal science-lovers might question the power of the almighty, but real believers in Christ know that soon, these people are going to see real evidence of the existence of God, when he delivers us from this television show.”
So yes. I saw that and was all ready to get on my “God bless the land of the free” high horse until I decided to see if any more reputable news outlet was also covering this. That’s when I found out about the satire status of the NR.
Here, have some natural lewdness
Last night’s dinner
I made tartiflette. It’s horrendously bad for you, but tastes sooooo nice :-)
Feeling human again, finally!
I’ve been completely useless for the past 3 days. Between a cold and my seasonal allergies, I was a wreck. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t sleep, my nose was the Niagara Falls of snot. I’d wake up several times a night, wheezing and whistling (turns out, that’s asthma!) I went to the docs yesterday and got doped up to the gills with nose washes, nose sprays, cough syrup, asthma inhaler, but damn, everything works for now :)
I’m touched! (or rather, I’d like to be :)
Maybe the focus will shift to important things now
The moment it all started going downhill
The moment was designed to seal a PQ majority, but it derailed at least the first half of Leader Pauline Marois’ campaign and created negative momentum the party could never reverse. While Mr. Péladeau comfortably won his seat in St-Jérôme, the PQ lost the election. Badly.
Inside party circles, the feeling was that Mr. Péladeau’s recruitment as a star candidate would solidify the notion that the PQ was presenting the strongest roster of potential ministers to the electorate. But his arrival put the issue of Quebec independence at the centre of the campaign, to the delight of rivals who quickly raised the spectre of a third referendum on sovereignty.
The PQ campaign suddenly looked like it was distraught, making mistakes and improvising. At one point, a reporter addressed a question to Mr. Péladeau, who was standing behind Ms. Marois at a news conference. Mr. Péladeau could have stayed behind Ms. Marois, but he stepped forward. Then Ms. Marois decided to take the question. The image of her pushing Mr. Péladeau back became another defining moment.
Election outcome is not Couillard’s win as much as Marois’s crushing defeat
On the face of it, the Liberal Party’s clear-cut win looks like the political comeback of the year. Who would have bet, just 33 days ago, that Philippe Couillard would become the 31st premier of Quebec? But make no mistake. This is not Mr. Couillard’s win as much as Pauline Marois’s crushing defeat. In fact, things went so wrong for Ms. Marois that it was as if a Liberal strategist had wrapped himself in a Quebec flag and somehow infiltrated the PQ’s headquarters to reshape its game plan to Mr. Couillard’s advantage.
Pierre Karl Péladeau was a dream come true for the Liberals. Never could they have drummed up a more credible threat of a third referendum than the image of the Quebec media mogul with his fist raised high for an independent Quebec. The national question monopolized the campaign’s first two weeks.
The PQ clumsily attempted to bring its charter of values to the forefront. But the support of legendary television host Janette Bertrand backfired and the PQ leader failed to dissociate herself from Ms. Bertrand’s xenophobic remarks. Even some staunch charter supporters cringed when they heard Ms. Bertrand voice fears that Muslim men would have her turned away from her apartment building’s swimming pool.
Survey after survey showed Quebeckers were more preoccupied with jobs, Quebec’s sluggish economy, the province’s health-care network or its staggering debt – “les vraies affaires” or the real issues, as the Liberal slogan had it. This message will resonate loud when the PQ wakes up on Tuesday. It will not be pretty.
All Quebeckers wanted was a normal government. They got it
“Together, we will take care of real problems” was the Liberal slogan. The province that Philippe Couillard’s party has won the right to govern suffers from more than its fair share of real economic, social and budgetary problems – acutely real problems. Mr. Couillard and his team have no magic wand to make them go away, and the campaign was largely not a debate over how to deal with those issues. The Liberals did not win a battle over competing options on education policy, or health, or taxes. The Liberals won because they could promise that in office, they would spend all of their time thinking about those issues. They could credibly promise that they would try to do what normal governments do: govern.
The PQ promised the exact opposite. Yes, Pauline Marois’ PQ tried to insist that separatism was not its real agenda, and it went into the election assuming it could win by temporarily burying its sovereignty obsession. That illusion fell away the moment star candidate Pierre-Karl Péladeau opened his mouth, punched his fist in the air, and announced that he was running to make Quebec a country. Then and there, the wheels started coming off the PQ bus.
The PQ’s desperate attempts to regain the momentum by doubling down on what it saw as its trump card – the mean-spirited, small-minded, paranoiac and allegedly popular charter of values – only made things worse. One of the PQ’s celebrity backers defended it with a delusional rant in which she expressed her fear that rich, Muslim men from McGill would take over her apartment building’s swimming pool. Reasonable Quebeckers were embarrassed. And then a PQ candidate admitted that yes, a law making it illegal to wear a kippah, turban, hijab or other religious symbol while working in a government office, or a hospital, or a daycare, would mean that people exercising their consitutional right to freedom of religion would be fired. Reasonable Quebeckers were aghast.
The election result is not a great victory for federalism; in Quebec, things are never so simple as that. But it is a crushing defeat for separatism. Monday’s election was a referendum on whether Quebec should have a normal government – a government that sees governing as its job. Voters answered that question with an overwhelming “Yes.”
Pauline Marois quits as head of the PQ
Ejected from power, defeated in her constituency , Pauline Marois has decided to leave the helm of the PQ Monday night. The first woman elected at the head of the Government of Quebec is driven from power after a reign of a year and a half, the shortest in history since Confederation. It is also a historic collapse for the PQ which, with 25.4%, recorded the lowest score since his first participation in an election in 1970.
“You will understand that, in the circumstances, I will leave my job ,” said Pauline Marois, visibly moved. “Quebecers have spoken , and we must respect that result. The defeat of our party saddens me probably as much as you, if not more than you. We had so much to offer, so much to do for Quebec, ” she added.
In his victory speech in Saint-Félicien, Que., Mr. Couillard reached out to minorities who felt targeted by PQ policies. “We share the values of generosity, compassion, solidarity and equality of men and women with our anglophone fellow citizens who also built Quebec and with our fellow citizens who came from all over the world to write the next chapter in our history with us,” he said. “I want to tell them that the time of injury is over. Welcome, you are at home here.”
Um, fire?
I ran across our downstairs neighbours on my way in yesterday. They asked me if I’d heard about the fire in the ground floor flat. Nay, said I. Apparently, there was a small fire some time over the weekend and nobody knows what really happened, or when. From what I’ve seen, it looks like a bbq issue, but damn, part of the wall melted!
From talking to people here, it would seem that the Swiss have more relaxed attitudes to fire safety, if only because everything is built in solid concrete.