Dion unveils plan for a new $3,000,000,000 ‘slush fund’

September 23, 2008 — xanthippa

Would you believe it?

During an interview with Mike Duffy last night, Liberal leader Stephane Dion alleys the fears of advertizing companies in Quebec:  if he is elected, things will go back to the ‘Chretien gravy-train’ days!

See for your self…. About 50 seconds into the interview, he promises to set aside THREE BILLION DOLLAR ‘CONTINGENCY FUND’ – to be used for unsupervised  ‘unforseen boosts’ to the economy.

(Sorry, for not embedding the video – I could not find it on YouTube yet.  If I do, I’ll edit the post to add it.)

Ah, the New and Improved Liberal Spending Party of Canada!

What is the difference?  Under Chretien, the slush funds were kept on the quiet.  Under Dion, they are the centerpiece of their newly unveiled election platform.

I guess Mr. Dion’s communication skills are improving!

Posted in language, politics, society. Tags: , , . Leave a Comment »

Jumping junipers!

September 22, 2008 — xanthippa

There are several types of blogs.  Some, much like ‘old-style newspaper’ editorials, present views and thoughts.  Others, much like ‘old-style newspapers’ themselves, bring you a collection of posts from other places by giving a little intro with a link.  There are other types of blogs, but this combination is usually quite effective in spreading news and ideas through the blogosphere. 

I like to think of the two types I described above as ‘articles’ and ‘newspapers’ – in the old fashioned ‘way’.  (In my own mind, I call the blogs who specialize in providing links to interesting places ‘blinks’ – ‘blogs+links’.)  And people learn which is which, and come to these sites with specific expectations.

Usually, I leave the ‘blinking’ to others much better at it than I….but when I came across this at Dime-a-Dozen, I didn’t quite know what to think…..

Robert writes:

Some random photos found on Flickr from a protest in 2006 – recognize the woman at the top?   Elizabeth May, leader of the Green Party.  This is from the notorious anti-Israel/pro-Hezbollah rally in Toronto during the Lebanon War.  Scroll below to see why that rally was notorious.

This appearance of hers likely slipped under the radar as no one knew who she was back then.  We know who she is now, so doesn’t she have some explaining to do?

The sign reads: ‘Down with Zionism, USA, UK’

The fellow in the turban is Hassan Nasrallah, head of Hezbollah.  The flag of Hezbollah is obscured by the kid with the keffiyah headband.

The t-shirts read “Hezbollah”

 

I still don’t know what to think:  Elisabeth May, the leader of a ‘national party’ in Canada – and who had gained herself a spot at the ‘nationla leaders’ debate’ as such – featured speaking at a pro-Hezbollah rally??? 

By the way – did you know that green is the sacred colour of Islam?  Talk about a ‘hidden agenda’….

Holy junipers!

Posted in freedoms, opression, politics, society. Tags: , , , . Leave a Comment »

Which way does the insult go?

September 20, 2008 — xanthippa

I love Canada.  I am a proud Canadain.  However, nothing is perfect – not even Canada.  And it has made me ache to see my beloved country destroyed from the inside by the ‘tyrrany of the nice’.  Of course, there is nothing ‘nice’ about this tyranny.  It corresponds to ‘nice’ about as much as shadenfreude does to ‘pleasure’.

I speak of nothing else than the encroaching ‘fascism with a smile’.  The thought police.  And before most of us noticed, they have rotted the core of several of our legal institutions here in Canada – and are having a go in the USA, too.  But, like a wart – the infection gets deeply sunk into the flesh before the outward signs are visible.

More and more Canadians have begun to wake up and smell the poison in our cups.  Mostly regular people, who don’t understand why a person is not allowed to smoke a perfectly legal cigarette where a ‘privileged’ one can openly smoke marijuana.  Or why a priest must never express his views – for the rest of his life – on issues like gay marriage.  (Don’t get me wrong, I think it idiotic and immoral to oppose same-sex marriage.  But somehow, I expect that many priests might have a different take on this – and that is their right.)

And since the calm, laid-back Canadians that we are actually began to discuss this at the watercoolers, coffe-shops and medical clinic waiting rooms (lots of people to talk to there), you know the winds of change are not far behind.  So, how do our social engineers respond?

By sicking their ‘calming sqad’ at us. 

I have trouble reading most ‘mainstream media’ print, because I love the English language and it pains me to see the abuse of grammar so routinely commited there.  But, on occassion, people bring articles to my attention… as Blazing Catfur and FiveFeetOfFury have done here.

It is stories like these that make me question whether there is such a thing as ‘media bias’.  That seems a singularly inappropriate concept – which implies that ‘bias’ is something that ‘could’ be a property of today’s journalism.  Considering the ‘social engineering’ tone of ‘calming the populace’ this article takes, I think its aim is to educate us on what we ought to be thinking.  How could that be referred to as bias?  

It is not a ‘fluff piece’, as some seem to suggest.  To the contrary.  It is a well crafted educational piece, loaded with all the ‘proper’ buzzwords to ‘show us’ what we ‘ought to think’.  To coddle us back into our woolly-headed sleepiness.  Herd the sheep into the corale…   That is the aim of the article – at least, in my never-humble-opinion.

Yet, it seems to have backfired.  Perhaps it went too far in its tone of condescention, or perhaps it came too late.  People were too awake to simply sink back into their slumber.  The comments section reflects this, and is the most interesting part of this article.  I, too, would have left a comment – but there is no way I’m giving my address to any organization that prints drivel like this! 

Ah, yes.  The comments section.  Many of the comments point out that Mr. Warman, the much-admired subject of this article who often sues on behalf of others who – in his mind – ‘ought to’ have been offended but were not (and who is one of the worst offenders the thought police has to offer) is suing ‘some bloggers’ (including FiveFeetOfFury and BlazingCatfur) because, somebody commenting on their site called Warman a ‘Nazi’ (I think). 

What I am not entirely clear about is this:  is he suing because he thinks that calling him a ‘Nazi’ is an insult to himself, or to ‘Nazis’???

It could go either way, you know….

Correction:  Blazing Catfur is not, in fact, being sued by Warman (though she had been threatened with other suits).  This was my misunderstanding.  However, many pro-free speech bloggers are.  I apologize for my mistake.

UPDATE:  The Globe and Mail has not closed the ‘Comment’ section on the article I wrote about in this post.  However, Blazing Catfur has taken some screenshots and these can be accessed HERE!  I wonder if this is simply frustration on thier part, because their ‘education’ had backfired, or if someone had threatened them….

Posted in freedoms, opression, politics, society. Tags: , , , , . 7 Comments »

Aspergers: not just ‘extreme male brain’ syndrome

September 20, 2008 — xanthippa

If you have done some reading up on Aspergers, you have likely come across the description of it as ‘an extreme male brain’ syndrome.  It is a ‘quick and easy’, one-phrase explanation that ‘makes sense’ to some people.  I’ve often wondered if this theory is based more on the ‘men are bad at social skills, women are bad at math’ stereotype than on anything actually particular to Aspergers itself. 

It seems I am not alone in being a little uncomfortable describing aspergers as ‘extreme male brain’…to the contrary, many suggest that this description of Aspergers arose because it was only studied in males.  And only in a particular type of males, to boot!

Here is an extremely good rebuttal of that idea, written by Felinophile, a young woman who also happens to be an Aspie:

 

This theory that people with Aspergers have an extreme male brain is sexually-discriminatory, as it is based on studies of Aspergers males and people who fit the Asperger-male sterotype. It completely ignores the way Aspergers manifests in women, which is part of the reason it is seen as controversial.

…

Like a lot of Aspergers girls, though, I don’t fit the Asperger-male stereotype; while I have difficulty interpreting and expressing body language and facial expressions I have learnt over time to mimic others behaviour and responses, and to form a rough checklist for interpreting other people’s behaviour. While I have good spatial abilities, and do better than non-Aspergers girls in some areas of maths, I never had a gift for mathematics; instead, it was for language, as it is for some other Asperger girls

 

Read the rest here.

Posted in Aspergers, education, language. Tags: , , . 12 Comments »

‘The Truth about big government’

September 16, 2008 — xanthippa

As the political debates rage on both sides of the 45th parallel, it might be timely as well as interesting viewing:

The Truth About Big Government (part 1 of 2)

The Truth About Big Government (part 2 of 2)

Posted in freedoms, opression, politics, society. Tags: , , , . 3 Comments »

‘Tax cut’ vs. ‘tax rebate’

September 15, 2008 — xanthippa

What exactly is the difference between a ‘tax cut’ and a ‘tax rebate’?  There are several very fundamental differences.

First, let us look at ‘taxes’: 

Taxes are the money we pay to our government.  This money is supposed to be used for something people need to get together for in order to achieve, such as ‘policing’ and ‘national defence’.  Other ‘common goods’, such as education, road construction, and so on,  are among the things we contract our governments to do.  Paying taxes is the way we ‘pool our pennies’ to do this. 

We pay taxes in many ways.  It can be through income taxes, where an employer has to take a part of a worker’s earnings and send it to the government – only the remnant goes to the worker.  Or, it can be through consumption taxes, where part of the price of each product or service is raised by some amount which is then paid (remitted) by the merchant or service provider to the government.  There is more, but – you get the picture.

The government has lots of wonderful, highly trained (and higly paid) civil servants who keep meticulous records of every penny that comes in:  whom it comes from and where it is going.  They also keep meticulous records making sure everybody has paid what they are supposed to.

Tax Cut

In a tax cut, the amount of money the government asks for is reduced.  Fewer pennies are coming into the government coffers, so more of them stay in your pocket – either because less of your wages gets sent to the government so that more can go to you, or because the price you pay for something is closer to its cost, since the price is less artificially raised by taxes. 

It also means that fewer pennies are entering the government coffers.  And (in an ideal world) fewer pennies coming in means fewer people who need to keep meticulous records of the pennies.  As in, fewer highly skilled, well paid professionals whose salaries are paid from all these pennies coming in.

Tax Rebate

A tax rebate works very differently.  The government is asking for the same amount of money to be sent into the government coffers, so the same amount of money is taken from a worker’s paycheque as before and sent to the government.  Buying ‘stuff’ is still expensive, because the price of everything still includes the same amount of of taxes – which are sent to the government coffers. 

The legions of highly trained (and highly paid) civil servants still keep meticulous track of all of this.  Then, at the end of the year, after the civil servants have done all the figuring out and balancing of things, they decide how much more you have paid than you should have.  So, they issue a cheque for this amount and send it to you. 

All this time, these pennies were in the government coffers, not in your pockets – so it was much harder to make the ends meet during the whole year….but now, you get a little bit back.

These are the ‘mechanics’, if you will, of the difference between a ‘tax cut’ and a ‘tax rebate’.  But there is another very important difference between these two – a difference I have not really heard people discussing. 

It is the difference in who is dominant in the government-taxpayer relationship.

When we pay taxes to our government, we are, in effect, contracting the government to act on our behalf in certain areas.  We, the taxpayers, are the boss.  Yes, the government has means to coerce us to pay, but the psychological and philosophical principle holds for how the relationship is set up.  The individual is the one who is employing the government, the individual is the empowering partner in the relationship.

When the government sends us rebates, it is the government who is the decisionmaker and the dominant partner in the relationship.  The taxpayer is reduced to the grateful recipient while the government is the power which decides who deserves to get money, and how much.

To make it easier to understand the relationship, let’s reduce the scale to the level of a family.  One partner works and earns a paycheque, the other looks after the household. 

If the earner controls the money, then the earner decides how much to hand over to the one who looks after the household and how much to keep.  The house-keeper may ask for extra when needed, but it is the earner who is in control.  If, on the other hand, the earner hands over the full paycheque to the house-keeper, and perhaps gets a little allowance for personal expenses, it is the house-keeper who is in control…  as in the first minute or so of the clip below:

To sum up, the idea behind a tax rebate in Oscar’s words:   ‘Holy hell!  The government has us on an allowance!’

Posted in opression, perceptions, politics, society. Tags: , , , , . 2 Comments »

Aspergers and memory – part 2: rote memory vs. reasoning

September 14, 2008 — xanthippa

In yesterday’s post, I explained that while I have not been writing about Aspergers, I have been reading up on it.  While I am interested in this topic (being an Aspie myself – and living with other Aspies), I am not an expert in this field in any way whatsoever.  What I write are personal observations and should not be taken as anything other than that.

So, in Aspergers and memory – part 1: ‘sequencing’, I described that some ‘memory’ studies found that Aspies had difficulty recalling the order in which words were placed on a list they were given to read/memorize, which lead me to wonder if the frequent occurrence of dyslexia and ‘hearing dyslexia’ (APD) might be related to some memory or brain proccessing bit that messes up ‘sequencing’. 

Other studies I looked at would also have a list of words (10, 20, or more) to read/memorize in a short period of time, then the person would be presented with a whole page of words. The goal was to identify the words from the original list – Aspie results were compared to those of their ‘neurotypical’ peers.  The Aspies also did not do as well on this test as others did.  Yet, there was something that more than one researcher found quite intriguing:  for every ‘list’ word the Aspie missed, he or she was very likely to identify another word with similar meaning!  As in, they replaced some ‘list’ words with their synonyms…

Now, that opens a whole new way of looking at things!

I even read one very interesting study (only one, but I am looking for more) which concluded that Aspies of similar IQ as their peers were much, much worse at ‘rote memory’, but much, much better than their peers at remembering things they had reasoned out. 

This study found that ‘rote learning’ was absolute torture for Aspies, and they, frankly, sucked at it.  Not that they were incapable of it – they could improve it with practice.  Yet, it was not one of those things that came easily to Aspies.   Most Aspies had better recall of things which were ‘explained’ to them, rather than simply memorized.  They slightly outscored their peers, while other Aspies were just as dismal at this as they were at rote learning.  Where all Aspies excelled far above their peers was in remembering things they had reasoned out for themselves. 

Consider the implications of this:  some Aspies will be dismal in ‘rote learning’ or even ‘comprehensive learning’ (not proper term, I mean things they were taught through ‘comprehension’), but they are extremely good at remembering things they had figured out on their own!

And I must admit, this makes sooooo much sense to me!!!

The things I remember best from school are the ones where the teacher would introduce the topic, set up what he was going to use to explain it, and – before he would even say the first sentence – I would ‘see’ the pattern and understand exactly what he was about to explain.  As in, if I reasoned it out by myself – I still remember it without any ‘time degradation’, while if I understood the teacher’s explanation, the whole things gets ‘fuzzy’ with time and I have to strain to remember it, even if at one time I understood it and knew it perfectly.

Please, consider what is seen as one ‘typical’ Aspie trait:  they acquire ‘ecyclopedic’ knowledge about some obscure subject which they become absorbed in.  Could this be related?  Perhaps not ‘an explanation’, but could this be another manifestation of the same, or very related, phenomena?  After all, their ‘encyclopedic knowledge’ is to a large degree ‘self-taught’….

What are the implications of this?

First, I think it means we have to approach teaching Aspie kids very differently.  Take spelling, for example.  Instead of teaching Aspie kids simply the sound of the letters, what letters make up the word, and so on….what if we started teaching them from a broader linguistic background?  It is what I did with my kids – and it really worked…but I did it because to me, it seemed ‘the only’ way to approach it….  It would go something like this:

“See this word?  Well, look here – this is the Latin word for …”

“Hey, they have a bunch of similar letters in them!”

“Why do you think that is?”

“Ah, this bit of the meaning is the same!  They just took a Latin word bit and stuck it to …!”

Spelling that word would never be a problem in the future!  (There would still remain the often difficult task to actually motivate and Aspie kid to look at the words in the first place…but that is a whole different topic!)

Mind you, I took this approach to teaching grammar to my older son, too.  Our school system is operating on the ‘whole language’ method, where kids are expected to ‘absorb’ the language from their surroundings.  This simply is torture for Aspies, who like very specific rules they can apply – especially with English, where the linguistic ‘rules’ of a sentence are extremely well masked!

So, I turned to Latin – no we did not memorize the vocabulary, but the words in Latin are ‘flexed’ very specifically based on the role they play in a sentence.  It is therefore easy to see the patterns of how sentences are constructed.  Just showing the rules to my older son and letting him figure out for himself how to then build a sentence with latin words ‘flexed’ properly had an incredibly positive impact on his ability to write in English. 

Perhaps this is only one example, and perhaps this may not work with other Aspies, because there are soooo many individual differences between us.  Yet, I would be curious to know if others’ experiences and observations are similar to mine…so, please, let me know!

Posted in Aspergers, education, language, perceptions, science, society. Tags: , , , . 6 Comments »

Aspergers and memory – part 1: ‘sequencing’

September 13, 2008 — xanthippa

During the past few months, I have not been writing about Aspergers because I have been doing a bit of reading up about it – there is so much ‘food for thought’ in the feedback to my earlier posts on Aspergers (thank you all) that I just had to check some things out.  Of course, not all my curiosity has been satisfied – but I think that I have learned things that have helped me make a little bit of sense of some ‘Aspie patterns’.

The one thing I have read about the most is memory.  And if you Google it, there actually are quite a few studies about Aspergers and Memory out there – so I, an Aspie (and definitely NOT an expert) am not the only one to suspect that one of the ways Aspies differ is in the way our memory works.

The conclusions of the studies were unsurprising:  Aspie memory works slightly differently. 

Yes, there were IQ tests as part of many of these studies to ensure that Aspies and ‘others’ of ‘similar’ intelligence were compared.  Some looked at adults, others at kids or teens.  (Many studies I read looked at Aspies vs. Autistics, but  that is a different story.)  (Frank admission:  while I read some studies completely, others I only read the ‘hypothesis’, the ‘methodology’ and ‘conclusions’ sections.  This was not from slacking or taking shortcuts, but because I really wanted to read many different studies, from different areas, looking at different age groups, run with different goals, so as to get a glimpse of the ‘big picture’ and the patterns within it. )

Here is where I must warn you:  the scientific studies I read made observations and conclusions.  Various studies, various observations and conclusions.  What follows here is my interpretation of the conclusions of several of these studies.  It is NOT any opinion (as far as I know) of a professional in this field.  These are my higly subjective ideas, so, please, treat them as nothing more than such.

Several of the studies had (with variations) presented a list of words which the people had a chance to read several times (or, variously, study for a given time period), and then had to repeat in the same (or reverse) order.  The Aspies usually remembered fewer of the words from the list than their peers.  Now, here is the intereseting bit:  they were absolutely terrible at putting the words into the proper order!

This immediately made me think of the very high incidence of dyslexia and ‘hearing dyslexia’ (Auditory Processing Disorder (APD)) in Aspies.  I may have it backwards, but it sounds to me like this difficulty in ‘putting things into order’ is a pattern:  sounds, letters and words cannot be ‘remembered’ in the ‘right order’….  But with APD, the science tells us it is a problem in ‘perception’. 

So, I reasoned, perhaps this is a general ‘processing’ difference of the brain itself.  Perhaps this is not a simple ‘memory’ function.  Perhaps this is telling us something about the overall processing that the brain does – and how an Aspie brain does it differently.

Or it could be a memory function – but the memory fails very, very early on. 

Let’s consider hearing:  our ears sense vibrations, which are translated into a neural impulse.  This impulse travels into the bit of the brain which makes sense of the sound, and sends the ‘translated’ information to other bits of the brain, as required.  For example, if it determines a sound to be ‘words’, it might send the message to the ‘language’ section of the brain.  But, is all of this instantaneous?

In many people it is.  But I don’t think this is in any way universal.  For example, I know several people who can hear me say something and completely fail to react to it.  When I ask them what I said, they look thoughtful and then repeat word for word what I had said.  Yet, until they were requested to repeat the words, they were completely unaware that they had even heard them.

It’s as if the phrase were held in some sort of a ‘buffer’, completely preserved and perfectly remembered, but not deciphered by the brain.  Only when this ‘buffer’ was consciously accessed did the brain actually get access to the information in it.  This suggests to me that in-between the different ‘processing’ stages, the brain must hold the information in some sort of a memory slot. 

And if the Aspie memory has a predisposition to ‘jumbling up’ the order of sounds (or pictures) it is holding on to, it could explain all of these.  Jumbled up sounds, pictures, order of words.  All of it.

Or, it could be something completely different.  Yet, I have received so many messages from people, asking for more of my observations about Aspergers – as well as offering me their perspectives about what I wrote – that I thought that even though I really am not sure what it all means, putting this observation ‘out there’ might be a good idea.

This way, I hope, many of you will share your own experiences in this and together, perhaps, we can make more sense of this!

Posted in Aspergers, education, language, perceptions, society. Tags: , , , . 2 Comments »

Another person could be jailed for telling jokes!

September 12, 2008 — xanthippa

This time, in Italy:

The Christian world may have been dismayed, even outraged, at the Muslim reaction in 2005 to Danish cartoons satirising the Prophet Muhammed, but Italian law enforcement appears to have had its own sense of humour failure. Giovanni Ferrara, the Rome prosecutor, is invoking the 1929 Lateran Treaty between Italy and the Vatican, which stipulates that an insult to the Pope carries the same penalty as an insult to the Italian President.

…

Even certain sections of the Church are unimpressed. Father Bartolomeo Sorge, a Jesuit scholar, told La Repubblica the move to prosecute Ms Guzzanzi was incomprehensible. “We Christians put up with many insults, it is part of being a Christian, as is forgiveness. I feel sure the Pope has already forgiven those who insulted him on Piazza Navona.”

So, let’s recap this:

  1. Ms. Guzzani told rude jokes about the Pope
  2. She is charged under a law that limits free speech and dates back to fascist times and could face 5 years in jail
  3. the Church does not think she did anything for which she ought to be charged (as in, no victim)
  4. Secular laws are used to persecute her ANYWAY

Does this sound familiar?

Why are there segments of our society which think that people who are not hurt, are not offended, still need legislation to protect their feelings?  Do they REALLY care about the ‘victim’ who claims NOT to be a victim?

Or is this a pretext to manipulate the populace, to exercise power over us and censor any opinions that do not advance the censor’s power?

How much clearer could this be?

(Thanks to FiveFeetOfFury for the tip)

Posted in freedoms, Humour, opression, politics, religion, society. Tags: , , , . Leave a Comment »

Let’s Roll

September 11, 2008 — xanthippa

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6Mfq7z_vHc

 

Despite the horrible things that happened that day, this fills me with hope.  Why?  Because when these people – whom I imagene to be ‘like you and I’ – were in that unthinkably horrible situation, they chose to do the right thing.  It fills me with hope that ‘you and I’ really are like they were.

Posted in freedoms, human nature, opression, society. Tags: , , , . Leave a Comment »
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