Censorship doesn’t just happen with books and videos, it happens in a variety of ways when people in positions of power and authority attempt to control, influence and manipulate your behaviour.
Perhaps the most insidious way that they do this is when powerful people attempt to eliminate our fundamental democratic rights. Right now, a major scandal has erupted over allegations that the Conservative Party of Canada did exactly that by using mis-leading “robo-calls” to direct supporters of other parties to incorrect polling locations in the last federal election.
A classmate from library school lives Guelph which is one of the dozens of ridings that saw the use of these tactics. And, like a good librarian, he managed to get a recording of the robo-call he received for posterity’s sake.
I know that a lot of times people across all parts of the political spectrum go too far in trying to portray what the people on the other end of the spectrum as “scary” or “ruining the country” or whatever. I’ve been guilty of that myself on occasion.
Well-known atheist, Sam Harris, recently posted “The Fireplace Delusion” as an analogy to help atheists understand how theists see the world (and especially how they feel when their beliefs are criticized).
The point he makes is that a wood fire – in a home hearth or around a campfire – with its strong associations of community, comfort and tradition, is also well-documented by science to be extremely harmful to humans, the environment and so on.
And yet, even knowing the facts, many of us persist in enjoying our fires, theist or no. Just as many theists continue to enjoy their belief system in the face of all scientific evidence and facts.
(via Reddit which unfortunately, gets sidetracked into a side debate about eating meat as another thing we also all know is bad but do anyhow)
But in all seriousness, “Cum On Feel the Noize” plays a very big role in my early “education”.
A classmate was making a poster for a school dance in elementary school and I, being Mr. Brainiac Smart-pants, mentioned his obvious mis-spelling of the word “Come” on the poster.
So, with the patience one shows for a toddler or a nerdy future librarian who lacks the insights provided by an older metalhead brother like he had, my buddy took me to a quiet corner of the school gym and told me that no, he had actually spelled the word “cum” properly and went on to explain some of the deeper lyrical symbolism of Quiet Riot’s metal masterpiece.
I’m not sure if that lesson was why I went on to become an English major (okay, pretty sure “not”) but given Pace’s recent fascination with homonyms, I thought I’d share this anecdote that shows how he at least comes by it honestly! Er, no pun intended. 😉
No, not “Bring Your Own Doughnuts” (although that’s an idea I could support!) Instead, this article talks about BYOD – “Bring Your Own Device” – and how IT departments are (or aren’t) dealing with staff who are increasingly bringing and using their own personal devices in the workplace.
I don’t use my iPhone at work very often but, since it’s always on me, I do use it on occasion – to look up a call number when I’m in the stacks or to do a quick Google search over 3G if our Internet is down for some reason or even to check if our Wifi is working when a patron says they can’t connect with their own device (as happened to me just yesterday as a matter of fact.)
The idea behind this site is pretty good but I think it’d work better if it was opened up so anyone could contribute so the person running it would have lots of content.
At this point, I should probably add something cute that Pace has recently said or done but honestly, nothing pops immediately to mind. I guess the closest to a “cute” one is that he was talking to his mom the other day and pointing at the cat, he said “Koko has nails and we hammer nails too.” Then he looked at his toy gun and said “This has a spring and spring is a season.” After a quick call to her friendly neighbourhood reference librarian to make sure she had the right terminology, Shea told Pace these were homonyms.
Now he sees homonyms everywhere – although he pronounces them as “hominids” which I find hilarious – he’s found a near-homonym for “homonym”!
[2012-02-23 – Edit: He ran out of his bedroom tonight with a couple more…”Dad, there’s ‘wind’ like in the air and there’s ‘winned’ like a hockey game. And there’s ‘bread’ like bread and ‘bread’ like toast!” So we’ve got a bit of work to do yet! ;-)]
Is religion declining worldwide? That is definitely the trend and a recent discussion with a co-worker left us wondering whether religion as we know it would cease to exist completely at some point in the future (me) or morph into something similar but different (him)?
Full disclosure – I have never read the Bible from cover-to-cover so I couldn’t answer that first question. When I was a kid, I had a “Child’s Book of Bible Stories” that I read regularly and later, probably in my teens, I honestly tried to read the Bible. I even remember buying a copy at a remaindered bookstore in the States (how appropriate!) during a family trip but I just couldn’t get past all the begats and how boring it seemed – compared to my child’s book which at least focused on the stories which are, admittedly, quite powerful.
Have I posted this before? I feel like I have but I spent some time this weekend importing old Tragically Hip bootlegs into iTunes and it reminded me of how fully and completely (get it?) I used to be into the Hip – trading bootlegs, traveling around to attend different concerts, studying Gord’s lyrics like they contained some secret code to the universe.
I always loved how their mid-song jams would lead to future songs. In this case, an extremely risque ramble in the middle of “New Orleans Is Sinking” would later give birth to the very romantic “Ahead by A Century”.
I spent part of today chipping out the last of the ice on our driveway. In mid-February. In Saskatchewan.
Last winter was one of the most brutal I can remember – usually we get 1-2 really cold snaps through the whole winter (which usually lasts from October to oh, let’s say April). But last year, it felt like it was -40 EVERY FRIGGIN’ DAY.
Then, this year, the average temperature has hovered around -4 or something unreal like that and that’s only because we had two very brief cold snaps (one of which we were in Hawaii for – and yes, I’ll be honest and admit I was watching what the weather was doing and hoping like hell it would get bastard cold while we were gone!)
Two brief cold snaps and otherwise, we’ve probably had more days above zero than below it (okay, that’s a slight exaggeration but that’s what it feels like. I do know we’ve rarely gone below -10 for daytime temps all winter.)
Shea, Pace and I went skating at a nearby outdoor rink since it was +4 today and the ice was pretty soft. Did I mention it’s mid-February? In Saskatchewan?