The Guns Below

I suppose that in a day where most of the warzone casualties we hear about are the result of things like drone strikes, air-deployed munitions, or improvised explosive devices, that a 105mm howitzer probably does seem a bit anachronistic. But it is a poignant reminder of the noise and fury of war, both past and present.

This year our rotating Remembrance Day observances took us back to the Legislature Grounds. The artillery battery for the 21 gun salute had moved from the west side of the building to lower down on the south side. There were a few people in attendance when we arrived, some availing themselves of the disposable earplugs being handed out by the military personnel in attendance.

An officer from the reserve artillery regiment running the event came around a few times to tell us that safety regulations required him to ask us to stay 50m away from the three guns.  He was also careful to add that he couldn't actually make us do that. The table and microphone were perhaps 25m away from the emplacement, and we ended up a short ways away from the table, so we could better hear the address.

Looking at the spades on the stanchions of the big guns, meant to dig into the ground to brace against recoil, Audrey asked, "How far back do those things go when they fire?"

"I'm not sure," I confessed, "Not too far, because they aren't actually throwing any mass, right? I mean, it's not like they are shelling Old Strathcona or the University..."

"How far could they reach?" she asked.

I squinted. "Across the river pretty easy," I mused, "Certainly to Whyte Avenue...after that I couldn't say."

A gentleman standing next to me handed me his smartphone. "I was wondering the same thing," he said, "There's the specs, if you want."

"Thanks," I said, looking at the display. The Wikipedia page for the M101 Howitzer listed the maximum firing range of over 11km. I handed the phone back, thinking about the scales in play.

This meant that these guns could conceivably throw a shell from the Leg grounds in the heart of the city to out past the Anthony Henday ring road. It's daunting to think about your city in such terms, but it does make one grateful for the privilege of living in peace.

The red dot is about where the Legislature grounds are.

There are a few reasons I appreciate the outdoor services on Remembrance Day. I like that they are a little less comfortable, and the speeches and addresses are often shorter as a result.  The proceedings feel a little less perfunctory than they sometimes do inside. It was gratifying to see a good-sized crowd turn out- in fact, they ran out of earplugs, forcing some attendees to use their fingers or cup their hands over their children's ears.

This year we got a really good address as well.  The regiment's chaplain spoke at length about the joy of service as well as the pain of loss; unapologetically referring to the military as a profession of arms, but without glorifying war. He closed off with an emotional recounting of a veteran's widow trying to pay him for officiating at a funeral, to which he said, "How can I possibly take your money when I owe so much to your husband, and to you?"

One of the big guns was fired to mark the start of the two minutes of silence, another to mark the end. During the 21 gun salute, poems were read; In Flanders Fields, of course, then a couple of unfamiliar ones. A verse or two, then a pause, followed by a barked command, and the next gun was fired. Once the smoke had drifted away and the ringing had fallen from the crisp autumn air, the reading would resume.

It took nearly half an hour to complete the salute, but amid the noise of these guns below, that meant time for reflection. In reflection come gratitude; gratitude for peace, at least where we are, and gratitude for those willing to give up their own safety to preserve it.

I pray for a future where olive drab trucks are even more out of place in the city centre, where howitzers such as these are only more dated, and where the only time my daughters hear them fired is in salutes on November 11th.

A Long Way to Zihuatenejo

SPOILER ALERT:

This post contains details from a 21-year-old movie which is based on a 33-year-old novella; 

kindly consider this fair warning!

Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather (Parts I and II), will probably always be my favourite film, but Frank Darabont's The Shawshank Redemption is likely to be the silver medal contender for years to come.

I saw it in 1994 in the theatre, with Audrey, possibly as one of the '4 movies in a single day' marathons we did occasionally on $2.50 Tuesdays (that's right. sissies: 4 movies for $10! sigh).  I loved it immediately, and I've seen it a few times since, having owned a copy on VHS, but probably not since it was released on DVD.  I've had a copy in that medium for years, but, seemingly, without an opportunity to view it.

With Glory away babysitting tonight, it seemed an ideal opportunity to round out my eldest daughter's film canon, and she chose it from a set of three immediately, without even glancing at the competitors (which, for the record, were Sergio Leone's The God, The Bad and the Ugly and John Woo's The Killer). I chided Fenya for the swiftness of her decision, then praised her for the wisdom of her choice - such is the oblique and counter-intuitive way of my parenting style.

The Shawshank Redemption is as good a movie as we all remember; I believe Empire magazine called it "The Best Movie to Never Win An Oscar" based on a reader's poll they did years afterward.  Considered a box office failure, Shawshank had the misfortune of being released the same year as not only Forrest Gump (which had a very good night at the Oscars) but also Pulp Fiction, as well as Four Weddings and a Funeral, and Quiz Show.

I was gratified how much Fenya appreciated the film, sharing my fear for Tim Robbin's Andy Dufresne in his early years at Shawshank, the joy of seeing his perseverance rewarded, the morally ambivalent satisfaction of watching a sadistic guard beat his tormentor.

Shawshank has always been a profoundly moving film for me, but I was astonished at how differently it affects me now that it has been nearly two decades since I last saw it. Part of this is no doubt due to Thomas Newman's tremendous score, particularly the cello-based "Shawshank Prison (Stolic Theme)", which lost out to Hans Zimmer's Lion King soundtrack, which is awfully good company.  A greater part of it has to do with the intervening passage of years, a major focus of the movie.

I would be willing to bet that the last time I saw it I was not a parent, nor a homeowner; as a younger man, my emotional highwater-mark is a tie between Andy's actual escape and the comeuppance of the warden, once he realizes that he has been duped.  In later years, my joy is greatest at the reunion between Andy and Red (Morgan Freeman) in Zihuatanejo, a Mexican town I had never heard of prior to viewing this movie, and a place which now holds as much significance to me as Casablanca or Mos Eisley.

Tonight, after so many years, two other scenes stood out for me; starkly, insistently.

The first is when Andy breaks away from a work party tarring a roof to offer tax advice to brutal corrections captain, played with brilliantly charismatic menace by Clancy Brown. He literally risks his life for no greater reward than three beers apiece for his fellow inmates, who he refers to as his 'co-workers', to the amusement of the guards.

Red: [narrating] And that's how it came to pass that on the second-to-last day of the job, the convict crew that tarred the plate factory roof in the spring of forty-nine wound up sitting in a row at ten o'clock in the morning drinking icy cold, Bohemia-style beer, courtesy of the hardest screw that ever walked a turn at Shawshank State Prison.
Captain Hadley: Drink up while it's cold, ladies.
Red: [narrating] The colossal prick even managed to sound magnanimous.
Red: [narrating] We sat and drank with the sun on our shoulders and felt like free men. Hell, we could have been tarring the roof of one of our own houses. We were the lords of all creation. As for Andy - he spent that break hunkered in the shade, a strange little smile on his face, watching us drink his beer.

It is difficult to say with any surety, but if we respond to art because of resonance to our own lives, my mind is brought back to this past May, when my friends came over and spent a few hard days building a second bathroom in our basement, for about as much reward as those convicts.  Our family only stopped renting nine years ago, and I often find myself coming up short with the skills, gumption and willingness to experiment that make basic home improvements possible, qualities I am very lucky that many of my friends have in spades, and those that don't share my willingness to work hard and well when given direction.  My humility and gratitude at the thought of this simple grace and the incredible generosity of my friends, and the simple sentiment I share with Red, are almost enough to unman me.

The second is less of a scene and more of a theme underlined with a scene, and the theme is hope.

When Andy defies Warden Norton by not only continuing to play opera music over the prison p.a. system (a scene that did not appear in the Stephen King novella the movie was adapted from) but wistfully smiling and willfully turning up the volume in full view of him, he later tries to explain to the other inmates why his time in solitary went so easily, and why he did it:

Andy Dufresne: That's the beauty of music. They can't get that from you... Haven't you ever felt that way about music?
Red: I played a mean harmonica as a younger man. Lost interest in it though. Didn't make much sense in here.
Andy Dufresne: Here's where it makes the most sense. You need it so you don't forget.
Red: Forget?
Andy Dufresne: Forget that... there are places in this world that aren't made out of stone. That there's something inside... that they can't get to, that they can't touch. That's yours.
Red: What're you talking about?
Andy Dufresne: Hope.

Red, who at this point considers himself institutionalized, is resistant to Andy's message of hope, as heard in their final conversation in Shawshank: "Let me tell you something my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane."

Are these statements true? Can most of us attest to their fundamental veracity? Does anyone care to contest their validity?

And yet...

Even those of guys who have lived, for a time, without hope, have clung to the memory of it, less like a man clutching a life preserver and more like someone following a rope through a blizzard. Even if they should discover a frayed end sliding through their mitt, the knowledge that hope was once there and might possibly be found again is enough to forego despair, if only we can remember.

Things are a bit tough where I work, presently.  A major technological update has proven to have significant shortcomings, and instead of simplifying our lives, as we were assured, it is actually adding complexity to them, which is incredibly frustrating.  Combined with an extremely adversarial approach to our current contract negotiations and a number of other vexations, morale is about as low as I have ever seen it in what will be seven years next month.

And yet, surprisingly, hardly anyone is heading directly for the exits.  Sure, there is talk - isn't there always? But although turnover is probably a little higher than it was a year ago at this time, the number of people actually filing notice to depart are surprisingly few and far between.

Life, and work, continues. Even though people struggle sometimes to reconcile contradictory objectives and impossible timeframes, they continue to struggle, in hope for something better to come along.  A cynical part of me hears the response to the Beatle's "It's getting better all the time (it couldn't get much worse)", but another part of me, a better part (I hope!) believes that with this many decent and hardworking people pulling together, things can't help but improve.  And maybe that's what hope is supposed to do: like faith, it gives you enough resolve to stick things out another day, a week, a month. Enough perspective to realize that things always appear differently from the inside than when you have exited out the other side, like Andy Dufresne, who crawls through 500 yards or confined pipe filled with human sewage.

It is probably not by accident that Red refers to Andy's hope as "a shitty pipe dream", is it?

Is hope what gets us through these things? Probably.  Maybe that's why, on this viewing, I was less moved by Red and Andy's reunion on the beach then I was by Red embracing hope at last, after 40 years imprisonment, beginning when he reads the note Andy has left for him under a stone wall in a farmer's field:

Andy Dufresne: [in a letter to Red] Dear Red. If you're reading this, you've gotten out. And if you've come this far, maybe you're willing to come a little further. You remember the name of the town, don't you?
Red: Zihuatanejo.
Andy Dufresne: I could use a good man to help me get my project on wheels. I'll keep an eye out for you and the chessboard ready. Remember, Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies. I will be hoping that this letter finds you, and finds you well. Your friend. Andy.

But most of all, in Red's final narration:

Red: [narrating] I find I'm so excited, I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think it's the excitement only a free man can feel, a free man at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain. I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope.

In Darabont's original screenplay, that dialogue was supposed to end the movie as Red travels south on a vintage Trailways bus, in search for Andy, not having found him. Darabont agreed to the studios insistence on the reunion scene, but shot it from a distance to deemphasize it. My heart leapt to see two old friends embrace on the shores of the Pacific, the ocean which Mexicans, we are told, believe has no memory.

But Darabont's more ambiguous ending really does underline the importance and significance of hope, and now I am not entirely sure which ending I would have preferred. Thankfully, knowing the director's intent, I can take my pick, and hope for the best.

In Good Faith?

Negotiations give me a gut-ache.

The inability, perceived or otherwise, of honestly disclosing or discussing an acceptable endstate in order to reach a compromise can be incredibly frustrating, whether you are buying a car or watching a billionaire psych out a municipality in order to get a better arena deal.  The fear of ending up with less than one might have had, or with nothing at all, forces most involved to overstate their positions so they can back away from the precipice later.

Don't get me wrong, I understand the necessity of it, I just don't like it, on a very visceral level.

Let me give you an example: Audrey's union is still on strike, having rejected the $200 overture they were offered last week.  Last Friday, the union made an offer to the school district, since the district didn't appear to be forthcoming with one.  They asked for time to look it over before responding.

When no response came on Monday, no one was really surprised.  Honestly, if there is not too much pressure from the public or parents about the missing staff, there is not much impetus for the district to resolve things quickly, unlike the way they would if, oh, say, the teachers were on strike and all the students had to stay home, not just those with special needs.  And it was unlikely the district's negotiating team would get together over the weekend, for many of the same reasons.

Tuesday came and went without an announcement as well.

When the same thing (i.e. nothing) happened on Wednesday, I was pretty disappointed.  The back and forth of negotiations prior to this point had transpired in days if not hours, but now it was going to take a week?  The union had scheduled a negotiation update meeting for Friday morning, were they going to have anything to talk about?

At the same time, some staff said they had received requests from their administrators to return to work, to cross the picket lines; that they had been told the union couldn't really do anything about it.  Some of them did.  Maybe they were opposed to the strike in principal, maybe they desperately needed the money, maybe they thought they were helping the children who couldn't attend without teaching assistants present.  At least one of them changed their minds and went back to the picket lines, perhaps out of principle, perhaps out of the practical realization that when the strike inevitably ends those who stayed away will once again be their co-workers.  It's hard to believe that the negotiators, many of whom were school principals and ATA members, would put their staff in such a position, but there you are.

Today, the district announced that they would meet with the union negotiators, at 2:00 Friday afternoon.  I saw this on the ECSSA website , and immediately texted Audrey, asking her to keep her fingers crossed, but the more I thought about it, the more disheartened I became.

If I was trying to demoralize strikers in a context like this, I would hold off on rejecting their offer right away.  I would wait until Friday afternoon, so there would be little chance of the result making the evening news.  I would let the end of the month come and go, so that the looming bills of month end, and the realization that September is gone could really sink in.  I would put these generally overworked, underpaid individuals, who see their hours shortened with increasing regularity, in a position where they are begging for a break on their rent, or some relief from their mortgage payments, or borrowing money from their own parents in order to pay for their children's school fees.

I'm really hoping that I'm wrong about this. but my aching gut tells me I'm probably not.

In the meantime, I hope the strikers don't buckle.  Yes, it is a hardship with Audrey being out of work, and the loss of her benefits would be even worse, if the union hadn't stepped in to cover the Blue Cross bills for the striking workers, but if it becomes a matter of principle, I am more than willing to go to the mattresses over it. On the ECSSA website, there is a fascinating article about the importance of trade unions and the right to associate, and the right to strike, not just to 'the West' or Christianity, but within a specifically Catholic context.  It's called Laborem Exercens, and it is a bit dry, but makes just as much sense now as when Pope John Paul II delivered it back in 1981, you know, back in the Solidarnosc, Lech Walesa days.  My guess is that the Catholic School District's negotiators either haven't read it, or question its applicability to current standards, which, given the reluctance of The Church to progress, would be ironic if it weren't so tragic.

Now, as then, it is encouraging to see others willing to take a stand. Here is a note from today's strike update:

Today a young man went to deliver food to the downtown school board office. When he got to the picket line he stopped. He put the food tray down on the ground and waited. When asked, he said that he was a former student and if it wasn’t for us and our help in the RAP program he would not be working right now and he would not cross our picket line. He phoned his boss. Boss said, “Deliver.” This former student said, “No, these people supported me, now I can support them.” Then he waited, proudly standing with us, because of us.

Eventually someone from inside the building came out and picked up the food. 

Our influence does not end at the end of our increasingly shorter shifts. With our patient guidance we are able to support our students to becoming principled members of society. We are continually a living model of social justice. We are not alone.

On Friday, the picketers are being encouraged to wear jerseys to the ECSD headquarters and St. Joseph's High School, in an effort to steer conversation away from the NHL lockout and the arena deal and onto the people who look after our city's children.  It's been suggested they customize their jerseys to make them more relevant.

If you find yourself driving down 109th Street on Friday, and see some people in jerseys, carrying placards that talk about ideals like 'fairness' and 'security' and 'dignity', I hope you will give them a honk.

It can get lonely and depressing out there, and no one seems to know how much longer it might go on.

Or if they do know, they certainly aren't telling.

This Christian Will Miss Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens passed away this week after a battle with esophageal cancer.  A gifted essayist and prominent atheist, it might seem odd that some of us had a discussion after church this morning as to whether he should have been mentioned in the 'prayers of the people', where we ask for grace and peace for those in need, including the friends and families of the recently departed.

I opened the discussion by saying that a couple of obituaries had included some variation on the idea that the writer would ask that Christopher Hitchens rest in peace, but that a) he didn't believe in any sort of afterlife, b) given his predilection to effectively argue unpopular positions, he probably wouldn't like to rest in peace anyhow.  Do you undermine the man's opposition to organized religion by asking for peace and grace for his loved ones at a time of grief, or do you compromise your own professed values by not doing so?  Do you risk alienating attending the service those who felt Hitchens was unnecessarily provocative and combative?  Later on I asked our minster, James, if it would have been appropriate to mention Hitchens' passing, and he certainly thought so, but hadn't considered it while putting the prayer together.  Others have struggled with the best way to recognize his passing, and none have expressed it so eloquently as fake newspaper The Onion with their headline, "Fumbling, Inarticulate Obituary Writer Somehow Losing Debate to Christopher Hitchens."

For my two cents worth, I was grateful to Christopher Hitchens for forcing people like myself to examine their faith critically, and from the perspective of an insightful outsider.  In his book God is Not Great, he suggests that Christians in particular have nothing to support their beliefs but faith itself, and calls on them to be brave enough to admit it.  Despite being diametrically opposed on the question of spiritual faith, we both shared an opposition to superstition, persecution and intolerance.  Even when I disagreed with his viewpoint, there was no denying the articulation and conviction of his arguments.

More important to me than his potentially ironic standing as an atheist icon was his dedication to the values my faith group tries to share, such as truth, and justice, and most importantly his fearlessness in doing so. He walked in lock step with the Bush administration's actions in the Middle East following 9/11, including the invasion of Iraq, and debated that act with British M.P. George Galloway, asserting his position despite the boos from the audience.  Despite supporting the invasion, he allowed himself to be waterboarded, dismissing that same administration's assertions that this was an 'enhanced interrogation technique' in a Vanity Fair article famously entitled, "Believe Me, It's Torture".

There are people of faith who believe Hitchens is perhaps now surprised to find himself experiencing the afterlife he did not believe in.  Perhaps he is, but this 'eternal reward' is not the pole I build my tent of belief around.  The only assertion I can make is that the world we live in can use more articulate, passionate and rational people who are dedicated to that most elusive of goals, the truth, regardless of their beliefs.

The Benatar Effect

Welcome to Punditry in Motion; I'm your host, Mike Arrears-Dunn.  My guest today is random blogger and unnoted political commentator Stephen Fitzpatrick.  

Thanks Mike, good to be here.

Alison Redford's dramatic come-from-behind victory at last night's Alberta Progressive Conservative leadership race has stunned an awful lot of people; would this include yourself?

Oh, definitely, but perhaps not as much as some other people.

And why is that?

Well, it probably stems from the role that media, public apathy and group psychology play in our democratic institutions.  Take political polls for example, which I have a certain amount of antipathy for.It seems that a great deal of what is referred to as 'momentum' and the like is generated by these polls, and people begin treating them as de facto results.  In a province like Alberta, where only 36% of those eligible to vote actually bothered to leave their homes last time around to mark some X's on a piece of paper, the very last thing we need is less incentive to come out and participate because we feel the result is a foregone conclusion.  Almost no one gave either Alison Redford or third place finisher Doug Horner a credible chance of defeating Gary Mar in this run-off vote. His lead was repeatedly described as 'practically insurmountable'.  I firmly believe that these kinds of upsets actually restores people's faith in the democratic process, and I am not just saying that as a guy who minored in psychology at a small college more than two decades ago and hasn't touched a textbook or an abstract since.

That may be so, but others are saying that this tradition of bumping off the front-runner almost every single time points to a selection process that may be fundamentally broken.

Our entire process for electing provincial officials should be so broken!  I appreciate not having to wait another two weeks to find out who the party faithful have selected to lead Alberta's government, and there is no better way to do that than the preferential ballot.  In fact, Graham Thomson of the Journal wrote a great piece describing how the Tory leader selection process is actually more democratic than our regular elections.

Be that as it may, how do you explain this stunning comeback by Premier-Designate Redford?

Well, I think that a number of factors came together to produce a textbook example of the Benatar Effect.

I beg your pardon?

E-mail, the web and now social media have given us whole new ways to argue about a variety of subjective topics, like music, for example.  But back in the pre-internet days, our primary means of proving which song was 'the best' was through radio call in shows.  The producers would take a number of classic songs, say, 64, and randomly assign them as opponents to each other on a bracket system very similar to what they use in college basketball's Final Four championship.  Each song is played in turn and listeners are asked to call in and vote for whichever one they consider to be the best.  The loser is eliminated, and the winner goes on the next round to face an opponent that also won its bracket.  This continues until the two most popular songs face each other, and an overall winner emerges from that terrible conflagration.

I see...and what role does Pat Benatar play in all this?

At the time when these sorts of competitions were popular, Benatar was a very successful artist, and rightfully so, but was not typically seen as having the same sort of gravitas as more established or influential artists like The Rolling Stones or The Beatles.  But what would sometimes transpire is that after knocking off another contemporary colleague, she might find herself facing off against a more legendary opponent like Led Zeppelin, fresh from from the rock battlefields where they managed to edge out "You Really got Me Goin'" by the Kinks.

On the face of it, "Stairway to Heaven" shouldn't have much to fear from "We Belong", but you may have a situation where a number of people call in less to support Pat Benatar and more to vote against Led Zeppelin because perhaps they dislike time signature changes in their Album Oriented Rock hits, or don't believe a rock classic should have so much flute in it.  Maybe they are young males who mistakenly expressed attraction to Robert Plant before seeing the concert footage from "The Song Remains the Same" and realized he is indisputably male; perhaps they are just vengeful Kinks fans.  Whatever the reason, there is a swell of support for Pat Benatar.

Meanwhile, many of the people who voted for Led Zeppelin in the previous round think it is a foregone conclusion that Pat Benatar is in over her head on this one and that Zeppelin will take it in a walk, and don't bother to phone in.  The end result is that suddenly Pat Benatar is moving on to the next round,while Led Zeppelin finds themselves clambering out of a pile of flaming bus wreckage in the ditch, eliminated in the second round by the woman who sang "Hit Me With Your Best Shot."  In a nutshell, that's the Benatar Effect.

And you think this is what happened to Gary Mar?

I think the combination of low turnout combined with the complete and utter shock of the Mar team as the results came in sort of bears the theory out, don't you?

True, there were much fewer votes placed in this contest compared to the one that brought Ed Stelmach to power...

Sure, another case where an established front-runner lost out to a dark horse...

But as you yourself have observed, Gary Mar was an established, well connected centrist candidate with a very well-funded and well organized campaign.  Isn't it natural for the tiny sliver of Alberta's population that actually voted in this leadership race to be attracted to him?

Absolutely, but that same attraction galvanized a number of people opposed to 'business-as-usual' politics, including numerous teachers and nurses tired of the endless cycle of job cuts followed by the exodus to other provinces, to being short staffed and beginning to (finally) hire them back.  The $5 cost of a Tory membership is a small price to pay for, say, a teacher, compared to the $100 million Redford said she would return to the Education budget.  With the current government cutting school budgets left and right while  simultaneously building new schools, it's easy to make people crave change.

Marr on the other hand, took a right kicking in the last debate at the boots of Redford and Horner, who repeatedly grilled him on the hefty MLA severance package he took when he headed down to Washington.  Sure it was all legal and above board, except where he clearly created an expectation he wouldn't take the money, and then did, but later, which apparently makes it okay.

Who were you hoping for last night as the votes were being tabulated, certified, re-tallied and audited into the wee hours?

Honestly, it was a win-win for me; I was either going to get a savvy, compassionate and smart woman premier with no big debts to the establishment and a clear desire to shake things up, or I was going to get another smooth talking fat cat who is a charter of the very old boys club that was desperate to keep Alison Redford on the sidelines.  With an election coming next year, competition on the right from the Wild Rose Party and a charismatic new leader for the provincial Liberals, that promised for an exciting election in its own right!

Oh, and the additional bonus of watching hubris being publicly punished is pretty tasty as well.

Were you pulling for Redford from the start?

No, I was actually hoping for Ted Morton initially.

That seems like an unusual choice for you.

It totally is, but my thinking was that getting a slash-happy fiscal hawk who is also such a religious social conservative that he counts as an honorary Republican south of the 49th parallel would have been just the kick in the tuchus that the two-thirds of this province who didn't vote needed to get them off their couch and into the polling stations.  I wouldn't be surprised to find similarly inclined Democrats secretly funding Sarah Palin's 'will she or won't she?' campaign in the U.S.  It's like The West Wing crossed with Twin Peaks!

But you are happy seeing Alison Redford step into the Premier's seat?

Sure, she seems like a very good choice as far as our single party system can take us, but I'm no less confused as to what happens next.

And why is that?

With a small-l liberal now in charge of the Progressive Conservatives and a former big-C conservative now running the Alberta Liberals, it really is getting hard to tell the players without a program.

Well, that's all the time we have today.  I would like to thank Stephen Fitzpatrick of Confessions of a Middle-Aged Adolescent for being with us today; please join us next week on Punditry in Motion when we ask Doug Horner, "Dude, what happened?"  I'm Mike Arrears-Dunn, wishing you a pleasant evening.

Lies from the Top

Perhaps it's a bit sad, but given the scope of their responsibilities and the scale of the bureaucracy needed to run a country as big and diverse as Canada, I don't really expect a whole lot from our Federally elected officials, and most of them don't disappoint in this regard.  They balance their duties to the electorate with their desire to get re-elected and rise in power, and if they overextend themselves or overstay their welcome, hopefully another election will sweep them out.

It is fully expected that politicians are going to massage, manage, and manipulate the truth in a manner favourable to their position, and so most of us take information coming from places like Parliament Hill with a grain of salt; sometimes table salt, sometimes road salt, and sometimes those big blue blocks used for deer and cattle. 

I can take salted truth just fine, despite being keenly aware of excessive sodium in my diet, but I draw the line at deliberate, pernicious misinformation and lies coming from the mouths of MPs.  Two recent examples leap to mind:

International Cooperation Minister Bev Oda initially denied altering a document that initially supported but afterwards denied funding to international aid group Kairos.  Instead of rejecting CIDA's recommendation, or ignoring it, or just using ministerial fiat to pretty much do what she wanted to, she ordered the word 'not' inserted into the document, twisting the words and intents of others to suit her own political needs.  When the insertion was detected, Oda initially denied knowing who was responsible, before coming clean a few days later and admitting it was done at her direction.

She is not likely to face any discipline over this, and is, in fact, being applauded by other caucus members for doing a great job with her portfolio, despite having deliberately misled, or in other words, lied, to the House and the public, not once but twice.  That kind of bullshit is going to take a lot more than salt to choke down.

The second one is not quite as topical or as clear cut, but still reprehensible.

Bill C-389 is a private member's bill designed to include gender identity and gender expression to the list of identifiable groups protected by the Human Rights Act, and protecting them from hate crimes.  If this bill is passed, it means that a landlord who evicts a female tenant after discovering she began life chromosonally as a male would be in violation of that individual's rights, the same way he would be for evicting her because she's black, or Chinese, or Muslim, or gay.  A person who beats up someone because they find the idea of them being a post-operative trans-sexual personally repugnant would not just be charged with assault, but also potentially with a hate crime.

There are those who think hate crime legislation is redundant, ineffective or frighteningly close to 1984's concept of 'thoughtcrime', and that is understandable; after all, it can be difficult to prove intent in a lot of these cases.  That said, I still believe that there should be a difference in crime between someone who punches a guy in the face because he spat on his shoes and someone one who does it just because the victim is black.  Anyone who wants to argue the bill's merits in that regard should be encouraged, even if I think they are out to lunch.

The ship has pretty much sailed on hate crime legislation though, and despite occasional difficulties in applying it, most Canadians seem to think it worthwhile, and it appears it is here to stay.  This means that those opposed to Bill C-389 have to seek other means to defeat it, and disinformation is once again the weapon of choice.

Among (small c) conservative pundits (and some big-C Conservative ones as well), Bill C-389 is being presented as 'The Bathroom Bill', and the Marthas and Henrys of the country are having their indignation button pushed via the notion that sexual predators will be able to cross-dress and legally lurk in bathrooms of the opposite gender.  This letter, forwarded by Saskatoon MP Maurice Vellacott to his colleagues in Parliament asks the reader to

"Imagine a young girl - your daughter or granddaughter - goes into a washroom and finds a man there. How is the young girl to determine whether or not the man in the bathroom is a "peeping tom," a rapist or a pedophile? It is unconscionable for any legislator to purposefully place her in such a compromising position. Furthermore, if the young girl reacts negatively to the man's presence and he turns out to be a transsexual, she could potentially be charged with a "hate crime". "

I also like the author's helpful definition of trans-genderism as the "belief" that "one can be a man on the outside, but a woman on the inside, or vice versa," implying that there is some dispute over its legitimacy.  In fact, trans-genderism is a recognized psychological condition appearing on the DSM-IV since 1994.

This kind of boogeyman argument is both disappointing and infuriating.  First of all, there is nothing preventing predators from cross-dressing now and lurking in these bathrooms.  Secondly, there is nothing preventing male predators from going into male bathrooms even as we speak and preying on children there!  Thirdly, the implication that trans-gendered people are potentially more dangerous to children than other groups is not only wrong, it's offensive; check the statistics and worry more about straight people who are not strangers to their victims.

Before a person can be considered for gender re-assignment surgery, they have to spend a year or more living as the gender they wish to become, identifying and dressing in a way potentially very different from how they grew up.  Killing this bill tells these individuals, 'well, I guess you can use our bathrooms, but you'd better not let us catch you.'  If we all kept the cubicle doors closed, would this even be an issue?

Why is this such a burr under my saddle?  I don't know any tran-gendered people personally, so it's not like I have a dog in this fight.  I know a lot of people find the topic a little, you know, discomfiting.  Icky even, and you know what?  Fine.  Feel awkward.  Be icky.  Own it.  Admit it.  But don't treat people differently because of it. 

When some jackhole lets that icky feeling turn to anger and beats up a stranger because of it, don't pretend that that it's not a hate crime.  Don't let people tell lies linking the trans-gendered to pedophilia without some kind of evidence to back it up.  If you hear people talking this kind of harmful nonsense, call them out on it, right then and there.  Don't allow hurtful lies to be spread in your presence if you are able to help it.

I want to live in a Canada that is free, tolerant and inclusive, a country that works harder to protect those who need protecting.  Tran-gendered teens are worse off than gay or lesbian teens, even more at risk of bullying, assaults and suicide.  How is protecting a disempowered group like this not a Canadian value?

It's kind of funny; I only know about Bill C-389 because James, my church's minister, brought it up at last night's council meeting.  Like me, he thinks Christians should called to challenge comfortable assumptions, and to fight against injustice and untruth wherever we find it.  Maurice Vellacott is a former pastor who obviously feels called to a different sort of action, which I find disappointing, but hardly surprising.  That's a whole different kind of 'lie from the top' that I'll not get into now; suffice to say, I can't picture a lot of other denominations lobbying their representatives to support this bill.

Speaking of surprising, it's kind of amazing that Bill C-389 passed its first reading (143-135, with 6 Conservatives supporting it!), but it is generally expected to die in the Conservative-heavy Senate, if it even gets addressed before the next election is called.  (By the way, has anyone heard the PM talk about Senate reform lately, or do you think he wants to get a little more Tory Blue in that chamber first?)  Still, that stalwart body of sober second thought has a tradition of following the wishes of the House, and there are a handful of statesmen in there who still love debating principles and values and ideals.  And, hey, it's not as though they have to worry about getting re-elected, right?

If you care about things like justice, and equality, and fairness, you could do worse than to let your MP and the Senate know that you would like them to support Bill C-389.  Me, I like all those things, but the main reason I will do it is because liars, especially elected liars, just piss me off something fierce.

Tough Choices

On February 6, the Edmonton Journal ran a story about a 17-year-old boy who had been shot and killed by a police officer.  The gist of the article was that a robbery suspect fleeing a crime scene had charged an officer while armed with both a bat and a knife.  At a distance of 6-8 feet, the officer shot the teen three times, and despite emergency surgery, the young man died later in the hospital.

It is heartless and unreasonable to expect the boy's mother to look at the situation objectively, so when she was quoted a couple of days later as saying the situation was "unfair" and that her son Cyrus may actually have been the victim of an earlier robbery, it was easy to be sympathetic.  Clearly, a fatal shooting is not how any of those affected would have liked to have seen the situation resolved; not Cyrus, not his mother, and certainly not the officer forced to make a split-second decision that ended a life.

Obviously there are a number of investigations now underway to determine not only whether or not the officer's actions were justified, but also trying to collate the events that lead up to the shooting.  While I am grateful that these oversight measures exist, the amount of armchair quarterbacking, second guessing and ascribing of nefarious motives to this tragedy have made me angry.   It began with this letter published in the Journal February 7th:

Another day, another police shooting. It seems the Edmonton Police Service has itchy trigger fingers these days, as this past weekend we witnessed the third fatality in as many months by our uniformed officers.  Was this a bank robbery in progress? A drug cartel deal gone bad? A hostage situation?

No, just some troublemaking kids armed with blunt and sharp objects, clearly more lethal than the pistols our officers carry. We all know a knife can be thrown much faster than the projectile speed of a ninemillimetre round.

So of course it was an appropriate response to fire three rounds centre mass and bring this suspect down (as police are trained to do). After all, getting hit with a bat and slashed with a knife is always fatal, correct?

If the police insist on killing anyone who remotely threatens them, they will further erode public confidence in their ability to use sound judgment. If it is their mandate to use firearms in this manner, then why do we have both police and military?

If the use of lethal force is taught and condoned, then wouldn't it be much more effective to have one branch of law enforcement and defence? In fact, why don't we skip due process altogether, and dispense justice at the street level? No need for the court system.

It turns out we don't need a debate on capital punishment, it's already dispensed at the hands of EPS.

Cole Losey, Edmonton

From its sarcastic tone to the idea that the size of the knife the youth carried is somehow relevant, this letter hit practically every hot-button I have, so I wrote a response the following day, and it was published yesterday (albeit with a typo):

Cole Losey's letter (Teen death shakes faith in police, The Journal, Feb 7) is long on indignation and sarcasm, but very short on sense.  While it is tragic when any young person dies from a gunshot, if an armed person chooses to charge a police officer, using their service weapon to defend themselves (and the public at large) is not an unreasonable response.  Growing up next door to a police officer, I remember asking him how he dealt with the responsibility of going to work with a firearm, knowing he might have to use it in the course of his work.  While he agreed that it was daunting, he also said, "I would rather be tried by twelve than carried by six."

This weekend I had an opportunity to talk about the incident with a friend who serves on a police commission outside of Edmonton, and he spoke at length about the 'continuum of force' model that Canadian police services use.  I recalled how the inventor of the taser found it discouraging that a hundred years later, today's law enforcement personnel had pretty much the same options as Wyatt Earp when it came time to subdue a violent suspect: club them or shoot them.

I think is is not only fair but necessary to ask if there was any other action that could have been taken instead of shooting, but if the situation went down as initially described, and a person armed with a club and a blade made a threatening move towards an officer trying to arrest him, then the shooting was simply the natural unfolding of tragic circumstance.

The notion that the officer could have tasered Cyrus instead of using his service weapon is disregardable as the officer was not equipped with such a device.  The idea that perhaps he could have disarmed Cyrus by shooting the weapons out of his hands is utterly ridiculous, a holdover from romanticized western movies.  Mr. Losey's suggestion that an officer should be willing to risk injury or death by grappling with someone armed with a knife capable of removing an eye, slitting their throat, or puncturing their heart, as well as a baseball bat capable of breaking a limb or crushing a skull, is absolutely ludicrious. 

Somewhat more plausible is the questioning of the number of shots, with some critics saying that had Cyrus been shot only once, he would have promptly sat down and become compliant.  We have no way of knowing if this would have been the case in this instance, but it doesn't seem like an unreasonable course of inquiry.  What is unreasonable is asking an officer to take this into consideration in the fraction of a second he has in which to decide whether or not to use potentially lethal force.  The fact is, when a police officer decides to open fire, concern for their target's well-being is not a consideration; they are acting to save their own life or someone else's from someone intent on doing them harm.  Three shots is not an unreasonable amount of force to be used on someone advancing with a weapon less than three paces away; it's not as though the shooter has time to assess the effect of the preceding shots.

Now, it is certainly possible that the situation unfolded in a manner different, either subtly or significantly, from what the original article describes, but if I have to make a snap judgement based on what I have available to me, and I have to choose between a weaponized teenage alcoholic with a criminal record who, according to his mom,  "couldn't stand the police", and another person who has chosen an increasingly thankless career defending the public interest with both his time and his body, well, I'm afraid I am not going to find that nearly as tough a choice as the one that officer had to make.  And to suggest that the shooting was racially motivated, and that police officers are laying out death sentences wherever they can without any kind of corroboration is simply offensive.

My hope is that if the shooting turns out be 'in policy' and that the officer is determined to have acted appropriately, the people making these accusations can turn their energies to some very tough questions that we all have a part in answering, like what drives someone to alcoholism at 17?  Even if police officers are imperfect, being human, why is it societally acceptable for people to say they hate the police?  Was there anyone around to tell Cyrus that regardless of provocation, hitting the streets angry with a bat and a knife looking for payback was most likely to end in tragedy, like it did?  If Cyrus had spent the evening in a nightclub, as his friend asserts, did he get in with a fake i.d., or did the doorman just not care enough to check?  Are we doing enough to make sure kids like Cyrus Green have options on a Saturday night that don't involve drinking and weapons?

Adolescence is a chaotic time when a lot of us do stupid things we often end up having cause to regret.  I'm saddened that Cyrus won't get that opportunity, but in the end, he made a rotten choice in approaching a police officer while armed.  That officer made a choice to defend himself, and now the young man in question has had all his future choices taken away from him.

The worst part for me in all of this is that despite the best intentions of everyone involved, Cyrus Green stands a very good likelihood of becoming "a statistic" like his mom feared, or just "one less aboriginal".


There could be someone in your life setting themselves up for a bad decision, maybe with fatal results like Cyrus, or maybe with economic or health or social repercussions.  If there is one lesson we can perhaps take away from this tragedy, maybe it's our responsibility to speak up, to let the people in our lives know that we care about them, that what happens to them matters to us, and that there is always another choice.

STS-51-L

Today marks the 25th anniversary of the ill-fated Challenger space shuttle mission.  I remember watching the Enterprise take its test flight off the back of a modified 747 nine years earlier while visiting my aunt in Kitimat, an event momentous enough to merit interrupting normal broadcast service to carry live coverage of it.  By 1986, the two dozen previous shuttle launches meant they were barely news any more, and certainly not an event, until the explosion occurred, killing everyone on board.

STS-51-L was the official name given to this mission, and the mission patch above features a prominent comet, as part of the mission was to deploy an orbital observatory for the coming of Comet Halley.  Smaller but almost more eye-catching due to its colour and placement is the apple next to the name "McAuliffe".

Christa McAuliffe was a schoolteacher from New Hampshire who was one of 11,000 applicants who vied to become the first teacher in space.  The fact that the first civilian in space was to be a woman as well as an educator painted a vivid picture of the peaceful, inclusive and knowledge-driven future that those of us who grew up watching Star Trek on television yearned for.

Even in death, her dream of being the first teacher in space was never realized; the shuttle exploded less than two minutes after launch, at a height of 48,000 feet.  To this day, the footage of the children in her classroom watching as tragedy unfolded before their eyes, their proud, gleeful shrieks replaced first by stunned silence, and then sobbing, is still my benchmark for heartbreak.  Barbara Morgan, McAuliffe's backup, became the first teacher in space, but not until 21 years had passed.

After the explosion, the shuttle program was grounded for almost three years while a commission discovered that an O-ring made by Morton Thiokol was the most likely cause of the explosion.  In 2003, the shuttle Columbia broke apart during re-entry, again killing everyone on board and although many initially speculated on terrorists being responsible, it appears a damaged hull tile was probably the real reason.

These two accidents have had a profound effect on the American space program; NASA's glory days are long past, and they have to fight for every funding dollar they receive.  They have made admirable efforts to engage public interest by sharing feeds for the Mars Rover directly to the internet and the like, but there are probably more people concerned about Jersey Shore going to Italy than NASA trying to get to Mars.

Some of their efforts seem to smack of desperation, like the recent press conference called to announce a stunning discovery in the field of exo-biology, which turned out to be not nearly as dramatic as anticipated, but has also had its scientific credibility called into question.  I've never believed in the axiom 'there is no such thing as bad publicity', and I hope NASA doesn't either, but as an ever more introverted and cocooning society turns more and more inward in its interests, it may become hard to argue against them.

On the other hand, the super-rich are still funding the Russian space program in exchange for rocket rides, and Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic stands to be an early leader in space tourism at $200,000 a ticket, and hopes to begin their sub-orbital flights in the next year or two.  Meanwhile, Chinese taikonauts are being lauded as heroic explorers like American astronauts once were, before we apparently forgot that space is intrinsically dangerous.

There was a time when the deep ocean was a dangerous unknown, and before that, the sea with a barely visible shore, and prior to that, the land across the mountains, and before that, the area outside our cave.  I hope humans never lose their desire to explore these unknowns, and that more of us return to space, and soon.  And not just billionaires and those who do it for national pride, but engineers and chemists and teachers, and eventually accountants and miners and cooks.  I hope they go to see just what is out there, and to serve a need or to find something useful, or to help support those who are going further and further out.

25 years after STS-51-L, let us not focus on the tears, loss and horror of its aftermath, but on what drove brave individuals like Christa McAuliffe to go into space in the first place.  Let's continue to look outward, and see what's out there, and continue to go, boldly, where no one has gone before.

Here's To Ye, Pale Horseman

Excuse me, are you...  Ha!  I thought so!  You only look a little like the pictures I've seen, but the hollow eyesockets were a dea- I mean, a giveaway.  Do you mind if I join you?  Cheers.

Well, this is a privilege!  There's a lot of folks who know lots of folks, but you are the only one who is going to meet everyone, right?  Boy, the stories I bet you could tell...  I imagine you have a heck of a non-disclosure agreement though, huh?  If Houdini can't even get enough of a furlough to float a feather, that has got to indicate some fairly stringent security measures.

Personally?  Well, I guess I'm just a little intrigued.  At the darkest parts of my life, there's probably even been a part of me that wondered what it would be like to get you know you, you know, on a personal level, but rushing the inevitable just feels a little foolish to me, so, there it is.

But I guess even that inevitability isn't as sure a thing as it once was, eh?  You must see the same articles that I do; the ones where they talk about 'turning off the death gene' or whatever.  They are already predicting far greater lifespans just a generation or two down the road.  And that's before you even start looking at human cloning for either replacement parts, or even transfer of consciousness.  It's no longer completely irresponsible or crazy to suggest that dying of old age could be an outmoded notion by the next century.  And the strangest thing about it, is that talk like that pushes me into your corner!

Oh, that surprised you, did it?  It's kind of hard to tell, honestly, what with you not having any eyebrows or anything.  But it's true; I don't look at the post-mortality future with optimism.

How can you even ask why?  In the last century, we lined up most of your business for you, didn't we?  What was it, 40 million people in less than one decade right in the middle?  Forty million!  And we step back and say, 'whoa, hey, we can't let things get out of control like that again!' and others say 'Never again!', and I'm sure they mean well, but then the rest of us just sit back and let things slide in places like Kampuchea and Rwanda.  And for what? A little more turf, a little more gold for our portion of a century drawing breath?

What on Earth will we be capable of once we get it into our heads that we can have it forever?  Once you throw out that whole "you can't take it with you" mentality, man, I am pretty sure that everything else goes up for grabs.

It's so easy to rationalize, right?  I mean, there's already speculation as to how this planet is going to sustain all of us, and that's with every one of us popping our clogs after a while.  If some people are never going to vacate the premises, well, that's a problem.

I figure if they ever discover a cure for death or a fountain of youth or whatever, it is not going to be a case of first come first served.  And if cancer drugs can cost thousands of dollars a dose, I figure an immortality serum is going to go for whatever the market can bear.  And I don't remember the exact numbers, but with 2% of the people holding 50% of the world's wealth, it can probably bear a fair old amount.

And once those fat-cats know they are going to live forever as long as they can eat, brother, I think the gloves are really going to come off.  I mean, if the other 98% don't just overwhelm them first.  Either way, I kind of hope I don't live to see it.

There's a whole philosophical angle as well.  Even if benevolent aliens from Proxima Centauri showed up tomorrow and just added Mortalinox or whatever to our water supply so that everyone on the planet could halt the aging process at middle age, it's still a resource distribution nightmare, unless Mortalinox doubles as a contraceptive.

And even if it did, what then?  We have a closed system, a species incapable of reproduction, incapable of infusing itself with new blood and shuffling the deck.  Where do the bold new ideas come from?  There's this guy, a writer, named Andrew Vachss who says children are "another chance for our flawed species to get it right."  I know, right?  It's even cooler when you consider the guy has never had any kids himself.  But the point is, things change for the better when a fresh face encounters something and says "why is it that way?" and someone else says, "I dunno, that's how it's always been," and the first person figures "This sucks," and starts changing things.  Where is the incentive to change when you are going to live forever?  I mean, if you think we are a bunch of hide-bound sticks-in-the-mud now, wait until you see how good people are at playing it safe when they anticipate living forever!  It's a stagnant pond that-

Oh, hey, that's my flight they're calling.

Listen, I have to go, and I don't want to sound like a fanboy or anything, but as much as you've given me cause to hate and fear you, I've come to respect you.   You've always been even-handed; rich or poor, black or white, capitalist or communist, Jew, gentile or atheist, you've come for us all.  You're the great equalizer, one of those rare things every human has in common.  I mean, when something like SIDS comes along, sure, your poll numbers are going to take a hit; who doesn't like babies?  But on the other hand, there's this whole movement where people are saying they should be able to decide exactly when they are going to meet you, do it on their own terms as it were, so maybe there's more understanding out there than you think. 

All I know is, it's hard to imagine a world without you, and God willing, I won't have to experience it.

You take care, big guy.  I guess I'll be seeing you around.

Not too soon though, right?

Games People Play (Or Not)

I am both familiar and comfortable with the notion that most bloggers write for an 'audience of one'.  The main reason for my keeping a blog is because I like to write, but could never be bothered to keep a diary.  Also, because I thrive on pats-on-the-head, I am extremely gratified when someone tells me they enjoyed a particular post, or leaves a comment.  While I may sometimes address serious topics, Confessions of a Middle-Aged Adolescent is largely a long-winded justification of my refusal to adopt the norms of maturity, hence the high proportion of posts devoted to divertimentos like movies and games.

Games are a big part of my life, and I guess they always have been.  From games of tag and hide-and-go-seek of early childhood, through Go Fish, Operation and Monopoly, to party games like Balderdash or Cranium or pursuits like poker or chess with their infinite opportunities for competition, you can probably mark a lot of the milestones of your life with the games you played at the time. 

 

In addition to games like the ones above, starting in junior-high I also got involved with things like wargames played on boards featuring hexagonal spaces instead of the more familiar grids (courtesy of my friend Brent), and role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons.  Right around the time Audrey and I got married, Island Mike (who was still Edmonton Mike at the time) and I got into miniatures wargaming with Warhammer 40,000,  and while we both still play two decades later, I have added quite a few other ones as well.  In fact, I was even fortunate enough to spend 11 years working for Games Workshop, the British company that produces Warhammer 40K (as it's known) as well as the fantasy counterpart it derives from, Warhammer.

Having parted ways from the company in 2007 after a re-structuring, and having established myself now in what will hopefully be a fulfilling (if somewhat more mundane) career, I still couldn't really tell you if I should have left years before, or if I wished I could have stayed working with the company in a different capacity.  A number of changes have occurred since I lasted worked for GW, not all of them for the better, and they do not even have a Canadian office any more, so staying would have meant either more travel, or moving, neither of which have any appeal for me at this point in my life.  Still, I met and got to work with a number of truly excellent people from diverse backgrounds with similar interests, who were passionate about what they did, so I still count my time there as a privilege.

When GW first established a Canadian office in Mississauga and called me for an interview, I was pretty thrilled.  None of the jobs I'd had up to that point had any appeal as a career, so I had made a real effort to get one with even their American office in Baltimore, surveying retailers who carried their products and sending them a report with my thoughts and suggestions.  Being flown out to Ontario for a job interview was a very big deal to me, and I had no idea what to expect, but I was a little surprised when they outlined the day for me.

There were currently two managers sharing the responsibilities of running the Canadian operation.  They said they were both going to 'have a go at me' individually, and in between, I was going to play a game with some of the other staff.  They had a new game, Necromunda, and wanted to get my impressions of it.

It's possible there were other people there that I don't remember, but know Bill from Mail Order was there and so was Aaron, one of the warehouse supervisors.  It was my first time playing a skirmish type game, where the figures moved independently instead of as part of a unit, and the game came with a number of multi-level terrain features with catwalks spanning between them, so it was a real departure from what I was used to.  We all had a pretty good time, and I figured it was a good way to see if I actually played miniature games or just read the books, as well as seeing how quickly I could pick up on things like new rules.

About six months later Audrey and I had moved to Etobicoke, and I was adapting to life with the new company.  Pretty much everyone I worked with was excellent, but as in all work places, there were a couple of exceptions.  One evening, I saw one of the exceptions get called into Ed's office, along with Aaron.  A short while later, he left, red-faced and wordlessly, and it was obvious to the handful of us around that he had been sacked.  Ed came out and told us that this was, in fact, exactly what had happened, without going into the hows and whys of it, but then shocked me by saying it never would have come to this if they had simply played a game with him first.

"Seriously?" I gaped.

Ed nodded.  "You can tell a lot about people from the way they play games, even ones where no money's at stake.  Are they fair, are they sporting, are they greedy, all that sort of thing.  The first time we had a big staff game, that one," cocking his head to the door the sackee had left from, "made a complete arse out of himself."

"But that's not why you sacked him," I asserted nervously.

"Of course not!" Ed laughed.  "But everyone treated him differently after that, and it became obvious pretty quickly that these were not little quirks any gamer might have, or maybe an off night, but telltales about flaws in his character.  We're big on character here, so after that game, it was really only a matter of time."

"That makes sense," I agreed, and then I finally twigged.  "Wait, is that the reason you had me play with Bill and Aaron?"

Ed looked at me with a puzzled expression.  "Of course."

While I wouldn't want to judge a person solely on the manner in which they play a game ("So, you always play a thief in D&D?  Are you naturally inclined to deceit and backstabbery, or are you just greedy?"), I know that there are many people in the world who I get along with just fine that I would not want to play games with.  Some are morose, others too distracted, still others way to intense.  Some people are way too competitive, and others are just not competitive enough.  It can be very subjective, but games can often provide us these insights into what other people consider important.  It's also a great way to express what is important to you.

Now that I am a parent, games are an incredibly valuable tool for Audrey and I, and not just for developmental benefits like fine motor control or literacy or numeracy (although these are all good things), but also as a way of developing character.

Games are one of the best ways to learn about things like:

• Taking care of things
• Waiting your turn
• Sharing
• Thinking ahead
• Being a good loser
• Being a gracious winner
• Not giving up
• How to play fair
• How to play to win
• When winning isn't important

The adults I know who don't enjoy playing games have often had a bad experience with them, sometimes at the hands of a family member, often dealing with a mis-application of something from the list above. Even these folks can enjoy the right game in the right context, especially if you make it clear that your goal of having fun is not intrinsically linked to your winning the game.  (Although, let's admit it; it is awfully nice, eh?)


Sadly, these things get overlooked regularly in the school curricula, so it is up to parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles and mentors and friends of the family to come to the kitchen table (or the basement or the rumpus room television) and show them how.  We'll all have some fun, and some of us alleged grownups might even learn something.

The best thing of all is when children model those lessons back to you.  After missing an easy dice roll in a game with the girls, I let out a dramatic "Arrgh!" and brought my fist down on the table in mock fury.  Glory reached for the dice with one hand while patting my shoulder with the other.  "It's okay, Daddy," she said in the serious tones that only an eight-year old can muster.  "After all, it's only a game."

Third-Hand Information

In the novel "The Mote in God's Eye" by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, we are introduced to an alien race with three arms.  In the sequel, some people explain alternate perspectives or choices with the familiar adage, "on the other hand," but often continue with a third option, saying, "on the gripping hand, however...".  This just about sums up my feelings on WikiLeaks.

I'm a strong believer in confidentiality as well as freedom of information, at least generally.  On the one hand, I believe that those who work in sensitive areas like security or diplomacy should be able to speak openly with their colleagues, especially when that colleague has signed a non-disclosure agreement or taken an oath to respect that confidence.

On the other hand, there are whistles that need to be blown, and the people blowing them should be entitled to protection from reprisal.   Unscrupulous types cannot be allowed to abuse confidentiality in order to do something illegal, immoral, or contrary to stated policy.

On the gripping hand , however, is the murky question of motivation.  Am I wrong to feel that someone who exposes classified diplomatic communiques solely to embarrass their superiors should not be entitled to the same protection as the individual who exposes something widely regarded as a war crime?  And what if they are the same person?

The city of Berkeley, California, is considering a motion that would proclaim WikiLeaker Pfc. Bradley Manning a hero.  Berkeley is probably the most overtly and proudly liberal community in North America, and their opposition to most military ventures is a matter of public record (they recently tried to ban recruiters for the U.S. Marine Corps as "unwanted intruders"), so their support of a soldier exposing a cover-up of a Reuters photographer being shot along with 10 others by an Apache helicopter is both predictable and laudable.  But Pfc. Manning did a lot more than this; he uploaded more than 260,000 diplomatic cables and 90,000 intelligence reports on the war in Afghanistan.

Manning's rationale appears to portray someone more interested in spite than altruism; he says the leaks explain "how “how the first world exploits the third, in detail, from an internal perspective,”  and expresses how he wanted to change things.  However, he also writes:

“Hillary Clinton and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack when they wake up one morning and find an entire repository of classified foreign policy is available, in searchable format, to the public.”


“Everywhere there’s a U.S. post, there’s a diplomatic scandal that will be revealed. Worldwide anarchy in CSV format. It’s beautiful and horrifying.”

To be fair, it's easy to be sympathetic to this guy; being gay could make for a brutal adolescence in rural Oklahoma, and the army's "don't ask, don't tell" policy regarding sexual orientation is certainly no picnic either, but his personal situation doesn't preclude him from the consequences of his actions.  Exposing covered-up deaths with a leaked video is one thing, and even without taking WikiLeaks into consideration, he should be protected from reprisals for pursuing justice, but what was the purpose behind leaking the diplomatic material, other than creating chaos and embarrassment for his own government, as well as those of other countries?  Frustration? Idealism? Vanity?

Pfc. Manning has been quoted as saying "“Information should be free … It belongs in the public domain.”  Clearly not all of it does, but exactly where the line gets drawn is subject to much debate and discourse.  I think we can all agree that operational information that could jeopardize the lives of those in the field, whether they are soldiers or undercover police officers, is better off being held close to the vest, but even that demarcation is subjective, especially to the U.S. armed forces.

Look at it through the lens of another sci-fi concept: telepathy.  It's easy to assume that the ability to read the minds of others would be the cat's pyjamas, and in old comic books and children's stories, it often is.  But more mature perspectives talk about the horror of facing the unfiltered thoughts and emotions of others, or how there can be no privacy when your thoughts are not your own.  I know I wouldn't want my thought bubbles being read by people who ask me, "Which parent do you love more?" , or "What do you think of the boss's new plan?" or even, "Do these pants make me look fat?"  Living in a glass house while wearing the Emperor's new clothes is a bad combination for all but the most forthright and confident individuals, and besides, you can play poker with everyone's cards face-up on the table, but it isn't much of a game, is it?

WikiLeaks has released quite a bit of 'sensitive' diplomatic information over the past few weeks, and the net effect appears to be a global epidemic of noses being put out of joint.  Regardless of the validity or source of this information, what greater purpose does it serve?  Are we really better off knowing how this leader personally feels about this diplomat or that head of state?  If they made those statements in confidence, shouldn't that confidence be upheld unless there is compelling reason to do otherwise?  Don't people have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the workplace, even if they are politicians and diplomats?



http://www.xkcd.com/

 The sad truth of the matter is this: no matter what the promises are of anonymity or protection, whistleblowers need to consider the very real possibility that they may end up called to account for their actions, and that their motivations will affect how their actions are perceived.  Judgment is going to come into play at several junctures, beginning with the decision of the leaker to forward the information, and then again for the broadcaster.  With a traditional news outlet like a newspaper or television station, we might ask an editor, "what makes it newsworthy?', but in the case of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange appears to be the one making that call, and a lot of what is being released is pretty much gossip.

I am not ready to call the founder of WikiLeaks a devil; we owe him too much but I am not ready to call him a folk hero either, and the same goes for the troubled Pfc. Manning, who now faces a court martial and the possibility of up to 52 years in jail.  So, on the one hand, more information can be a good thing.  On the other hand, too much of any good thing is usually a bad thing.  And on the gripping hand, I hope the people making these decisions regarding confidential information that they have the power to disseminate, are taking their own motivations and goals into consideration.

Here Comes the Cavalry

Despite painting tanks for the past few months,  cavalry has been much on my mind of late. I have found the strong WWII Russian theme of my Valhallan 40K army to have been a real inspiration and motivator in terms of actually getting my painting done, and suggested to my comrade Island Mike that he should find a similar theme for his side of our mighty Imperial Guard army.

In the first episode of AMC's zombie series "The Walking Dead", the main character awakens from a coma in a hospital, and after making his way outdoors, climbs a small berm to see precisely how the world has gone to serious hell. He views a post-apocalyptic tableau of shattered buildings, burned out cars and tanks, sandbagged emplacements, and a helicopter. The helicopter's nose bears the crossed sabres emblematic of the U.S. Cavalry and adopted by various 'air-cavalry' regiments, and also appropriated by Alberta musician Corb Lund to promote his album "Horse Soldier! Horse Soldier!"  I think this is the first time I have seen them on a non-Vietnam era helicopter.

I know Mike to be fan of both Corb Lund and the logo, as he bought the t-shirt shortly after I introduced him to the album. He had also talked a couple of times about making his force airmobile using the new Valkyrie Assault Carrier model, so I e-mailed him and suggested he consider doing an Air Cav themed army. Using Catachan Jungle Fighters for troops and decorating his vehicles with those crossed sabres (or perhaps crossed chainswords would be more fitting for 40K). He thought the idea had merit, and I look forward to seeing the results once he claws some time back from his various responsibilities.

With its reputation for gallantry and guarantee of arriving in time to save the day in countless western movies, the cavalry have always been an evocative branch of the military, from the original horse soldiers, through the helicopter troops in Vietnam, to Edmonton's own Lord Strathcona's Light Horse tank regiment.

The U.S. Cavalry's distinctive yellow scarf often reminds me of Robert Duvall's character Col. Kilgore from Apocalypse Now and his "Charlie don't surf!" bravado, but I'll always have a soft spot for the men in John Ford's great 'Cavalry Trilogy' of Fort Apache, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and Rio Grande. Even though I count myself a fan of John Wayne, I can't really call him a great actor, but no one got better stuff out of Duke than John Ford, even when he is really playing second fiddle to Henry Fonda and character actor Victor McLaglen in this scene from Fort Apache:



It guts me that they cut this scene just before McLaglen, having been ordered to get rid of the whiskey, finds two more cups, hands them to the other sergeants and says, "It's a man's work ahead of us lads, and no mistake," but it's still wonderful stuff, and 'pour me some scripture' is definitely going into my lexicon. Fonda's Colonel Thursday epitomizes both the best and the worst of the cavalry of this period: forthright, responsible and brave, but also inflexible, closed-minded and bigoted. John Wayne's Capt.York, with his appreciation for the skill and courage of the Apache, makes a great counterpoint to his commanding officer.

Ward Bond (the village priest from The Quiet Man, another Ford classic), also gets some great material, as this dialogue reveals:

Lt. Col. Thursday: This Lt. O'Rourke - are you by chance related?
RSM Michael O'Rourke: Not by chance, sir, by blood. He's my son.
Lt. Col. Thursday: I see. How did he happen to get into West Point?
RSM Michael O'Rourke: It happened by presidential appointment, sir
Lt. Col. Thursday: Are you a former officer, O'Rourke?
RSM Michael O'Rourke: During the war, I was a major in the 69th New York regiment... The Irish Brigade, sir.
Lt. Col. Thursday: Still, it's been my impression that presidential appointments were restricted to sons of holders of the Medal of Honor.
RSM Michael O'Rourke: That is my impression, too, sir. Will that be all, sir?

It's one thing to ride in a helicopter or to crew a tank, but not everyone who does so gets to call themselves cavalry. Cavalry units carry a connotation of speed both tactical and strategic, as well as tremendous striking power; being 'fastest with the mostest' as Nathan Bedford Forrest put it. Thousands of years have passed since mounted soldiers first appeared, (possibly creating the legend of centaurs as they rode against infantry and chariots), and the word cavalry still holds allure, and is protected by those who bear it. Cavalry never rests, never secures, never defends; cavalry charges, with or without bugles.

I hope Mike gets an opportunity to putty some yellow scarves on his Ogryn squad if he gets the chance, and I am trying trying to figure out how to fake up a 28mm stetson like Col. Kilgore's for his platoon commander. I wouldn't go so far as to say I'm jealous of Mike's theme, even if it does have cooler modeling potential, but, yeah, I wanna be in the cavalry...who doesn't?