As a goofy, bookworm outsider I somehow ended up joining the local Cadet troop, where I had the precise opposite experience of many here. I loved it and found a tribe that got the through the teen years in a very rough town. I didn't much care about the spit and polish or marching and stomping about - I learned it and it became rote, then didn't worry about it. What I enjoyed was spending at least 2 weekends a month in the woods learning endless things and having fun. I also enjoyed the summer camps, though YMMV for sure.
That said, cadets was not mandatory in any way. And there was some danger of joining the military on reaching the age of majority.
]]>In my last (as in final) office job (doing policy work on contracts for local governments) I had multiple experiences where I poured my time, energy and health into producing the best output I could. I sacrificed weekends, family time and far too much else in service of my own idea of quality, combined with high pressure deadlines in the context of a 'for profit' consulting firm.
Eventually I got burned out and ended up turning in an under-edited stack of what I thought was trash. I spent months feeling guilty, expecting an outraged client and various recriminations - which never manifested. It wasn't long until I realized that few, if any, people ever read anything I had produced at such a great personal cost.
That 'epiphany' was the beginning of the end for me and that sort of work. A commitment to quality with some hope of communication with future readers is one thing. A commitment to quality with zero hope of any readership or engagement was just too much for me.
Mandalas are beautiful, but I suspect I am not quite ready to spend my life writing literate mandalas for no purpose beyond churning revenue.
]]>Our current idea of 'work' and the value of a person based on the source of their income will need to change. Consider the current differentiation between 'unemployed' and 'retired'. One category is widely despised, while the other is much respected and coveted. To lose one's job at 40 and go on the dole is seen as failure, to retire (from the need to work) at 40 is seen as tremendous success.
If we see work disappear in non-replaceable amounts I can see it going a couple of directions.
Standard dystopian SF story - ultrarich elites and vast masses of unemployed peons living nasty, brutish and short lives. Possible, but unlikely in the context of rapid information sharing etc. This isn't the Dark Ages, and the peons have communication and knowledge. Suppression is a lot harder - see how hard it was for the most powerful military in the world to impose basic order in a place that didn't want them there (Iraq).
Guaranteed Income. A long time hobby horse of leftists and libertarians, currently popular with Silicon valley types who see the automation coming. Nice, but our current cultural predispositions make handing out a living wage to all and sundry unlikely barring revolution.
Dramatically reduced pension age. Maybe everyone needs to work until (handwave) 30, following which they 'retire' from paid employment and settle into their pensioned life (which provides a basic income + perks relating to savings rate while working). We all keep the option to start businesses or otherwise be creative (write books, Etsy, selling baseball cards etc), but 'pensioned' age people working in the few remaining jobs are frowned upon culturally.
Concurrently I can see major increases in life expectancy causing complications - think of Real Estate when old owners might hold onto a place for 200 years rather than 40-50, leaving little option for young people.
]]>I honestly have no idea if my high vis clothing gathers the notice of cars. I spend most of my time riding quiet streets and in odd, non high traffic hours. But the only time I've had an incident with a car was at least 1/2 my fault.
]]>And how many bikes are carrying cameras?
]]>With 25 years of urban cycling and (almost) no incidents, my hypothesis is so far a winner (n=1, sadly). Around here that means bright yellow reflective jackets and black pants with white stripes.
That said, I am a very cautious rider and tend to avoid main thoroughfares except in dire need.
]]>A couple thoughts on possible ways forward for those of us who lack direct influence or power (i.e. all of us).
Bannon:
Refugees:
Climate Change:
I refuse to give in to despair. These bastards are mendacious, greedy and dangerous, but they are not omnipotent. We can save ourselves.
]]>I don't know the answer, and I suspect any 'answer' is highly specific to each group, and will take a long time to resolve. It is time worth taking (and money well spent).
]]>I am inclined to agree with the relative hazard presented by religion in general. But the particular acquaintances I am referring to have settled on that religion and its adherents specifically as the prime menace to our culture and way of life - recycling the most absurd of generalizations ad nauseum.
]]>Well, I grew up in a small town in Alberta and have no recollection of freezing any gravel roads for hockey. Road hockey is its own thing - one wears shoes (or winter boots) and uses a ball or a plastic puck. You move the nets when a car comes through. Gravel would almost instantly dull the blades, as would almost any kind of road skating.
There may have been some very rural communities that did such a thing, but immigration rates to dying rural towns are vanishingly small, so your anecdote is probably a sample size of 1 and quite rare.
Outdoor hockey happens on rinks, cleared ponds and lakes, and sometimes on roads or parking lots that are sufficiently icy. Deliberately icing a road sounds like colossal stupidity to me - going off the road in a snowstorm is no minor inconvenience and a fine way to die young.
6. Well, you don't hear it generally. The speech goes something like this.
"Canada has a lower crime rate and poverty rate than the US because we are better in integrating immigrants from the right countries". Perhaps I'm imagining things, but the phrase "from the right countries" sounds like a dog whistle? Please let me know if I'm wrong?,/i>
It can be a dogwhistle, certainly. 'The right countries' sounds a bit like a whistle, but I haven't heard that part as much as the rest. Simply put, we have double the immigration rates of most (or possibly all?) Western countries and yet have lower violent crime rates than most as well. (nonviolent crime and organized crime are big here in BC - the marijuana export business is huge, at least until recently).
I don't wish to sound like an blinkered patriot, Canada is rife with issues. But there is something to the 'multicultural' meme that has helped with integration and diversity - perhaps why the conservatives hate the concept of multiculturalism so much.
]]>I wonder if there is an engineering-feasible version of the Norwegian submerged tunnel that could be run as an unmanned (handwavy) pneumatic tube for containers?
Submerged deep enough and otherwise long shipping routes could be dramatically shortened or rethought. And predictability would be a significant cost reducer.
]]>Fair enough, though every election since 1993 has been more or less won or lost inside that 10% range. An issue with our antiquated electoral system (but that's for another day).
There's certainly a lot of racism around. Not expressed the same as the US, but it's here. Nip-tipping in Simcoe, carding in Toronto (and Peel*)… just because our cops aren't shooting people solely on skin colour doesn't mean we're clean. And it's being used as the basis for successful election campaigns in Toronto.
Absolutely it is a part of the electoral landscape. I'm not super familiar with Toronto, but can speak more accurately to the West. Nonetheless, the (very popular) mayor of Calgary is a Muslim, and we have seen a lot of electoral breakthroughs in various unlikely parts of the country for minorities and others. There is plenty of racism and hostility to immigrants, but so far it is almost entirely in the dogwhistle zone - overt racism or 'too loud' dogwhistles tend to backfire.
First Nations situation is complicated. Among other points, how many generations residence on a piece of land makes it your's? Do you allow archaeological evidence, or are legends and stories enough to establish rights? Is being a First Nations person a matter of genetics or culture, and how much admixture is allowed before you aren't anymore? Are immigrants liable for events that happened before they arrived in the country? How do we handle movements of First Nations before settlement?
All somewhat of a side issue in most of the country outside of BC (which was basically taken over without treaty). The Royal Proclamaation of 1763 was very clear that all land was indigenous unless ceded by a treaty. The whole country was built on that, it is actually something to be quite proud of overall.
Where the non-indigenous Canadians get snippy is when we forget that we are exercising our treaty rights every day - living on ceded treaty land, and benefiting from all the other aspects of the treaties. Where things fall apart is in keeping up 'our' end of the bargain - which is to say the deal between the government of Canada and the various 'governments' with which it made the deals. Of course things change over time and it is more complicated than that. Also BC did not make treaties (mostly) so out here we have an entirely different and disastrous process to muddle with.
We have made treaties with other governments over the years (and before many of our ancestors arrived also) and we expect them to be respected (49th parallel etc). We should also respect our treaties, especially the ones from which we gain such immense benefit
What worries me is that Canada tends to follow the US with about a decade lag. And I don't think we're immune to a US-style Tea Party movement. (We already have lots of people who uncritically pass around Tea Party emails etc — just with "Mexican" changed to "immigrant".**)
Absolutely. I've gotten myself mired into arguments with old acquaintances online who are convinced that Islam is a global menace based on what they heard down at Timmies (and no actual personal experience). Every population has a 20% who are ready to get fitted for their black shirts and jump on the next angry bandwagon.
Funny - the ten year lag would make Trudeau our Obama, and (god forbid) Kevin O'Leary our Trump.
**I've been sent these depressingly often. And been told "but you don't look like an immigrant" enough to realize that "immigrant" is code for "non-white".
And I have a somewhat uncommon but very Hungarian name with an excess of consonants, and am routinely asked where I am from (the answer being Alberta, of course, and the Hungarian part being over 100 years in-country).
/Probably enough about Canada for this thread
]]>The only effect his idiotic war on the niqab had was to obliterate the NDP in Quebec and clear a path for the middle party. Hoist on his own petard, so to speak.
I do not mean to imply or suggest that racism is somehow not an issue in Canada. Far from it. Anti-immigrant resentment is substantial, but the number of people immigrating each year (and the percentage of current citizens who were foreign born - >20%) would cause most European polities to lose their minds - for comparison France is 11% foreign born (with many of those being from elsewhere in Europe) and the UK is 13%.
Of course, for the racist mind there are different kinds of immigrants - mostly based on skin color more than point of origin.
Where Canada really breaks down is in the systemic, historical and ongoing racism towards First Nations. It is incredibly hard, apparently, for most of us 'white' people to grasp the truly shite history from which our current complacent circumstances have arisen.
]]>Sadly, in Canada the racists tend to be focused on First Nations and, often, South Asians, with some hostility to Asians in general. In Toronto and Montreal there is also some hostility to dark skinned people from the Caribbean and Africa.
All that said, the racist element doesn't have a lot of traction, so far, in Canadian politics. It's hard to resent immigrants when almost all of us have at least one parent or grandparent who was born abroad. In my own case there are some Asian families that have been in country for much longer than most of my ancestors. And white skinned caucasians resenting immigrants in North America is an absurdity in itself.
]]>