Our first loan(s)

Cromrades,

We have done a great thing today. We have stood in the face of great economic disparity, and unflinchingly taken a tiny step toward reducing it. The cry went up, Cromrades, and we answered it to the tune of 2 Kiva loans.

The first, to Gulshan Mammadova in Azerbaijan:

Gulshan needs 2000 AZN to purchase new merchandise (cleaning solutions) for sale. She sold only food products at her store, but now wants to also sell cleaning solutions because these goods are in demand among customers. Gulshan is married and has three children. She is an IDP (Internally Displaced Person) from the city of Fuzuli and now lives with her husband and children in the Fuzuli region. Gulshan is 32 years old. She has had this food store for six years.

And the second, to Godeffroy Edgar in Benin:

Godeffroy is married and has three children. He specializes in making and selling soap in Cocotomey. To distribute the soap, he takes it to pharmacies, supermarkets and sales outlets. In order to meet client demand, he is asking Finadev for a loan so he can increase his working capital and contribute to household expenses.

Two loans of $25 each were made on behalf of the Crommunist Manifesto. The loans are scheduled to be repaid in 20 and 12 months respectively.

Thanks to everyone who helped pick these loans. I’m looking forward to doing this again next month.

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Movie Friday: No One’s Gonna Love You…

So I’ve been having this stupid fight all week in various places, and facing the same ridiculous accusation at each turn. My objection to Cee-Lo Green’s adaptation of John Lennon’s Imagine is absolutely not me saying that nobody should ever change songs. That’s stupid. Artists are supposed to put their own spin on musical expression – it’s the whole point. There is, however, an ethos among musicians that has a lot to do with artistic integrity. If you are going to use someone else’s artistic creation, you have to either remain faithful to the original in terms of intent, or find a radical new way of presenting the same material.

To wit, Cee-Lo does an absolutely outstanding cover of a tune by Band of Horses:

This is one of my favourite covers of all time, which is saying a lot because I listen to a lot of music. Some say it’s better than the original – I think that’s a tough call to make (unless the original is no good – every cover of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah is better than the original because Cohen, genius that he is, can’t sing for beans). Regardless of which one is better, this cover does not take liberties with lyrics, does not invert the intended expression, doesn’t fuck with the song. Cee-lo fucked with Imagine. In a conversation on Reddit I likened what he did to re-writing Bohemian Rhapsody to give it a happy ending, or adding a verse about how totally acceptable it is to be white to James Brown’s anthemic Say It Loud (I’m Black and Proud). While the intention may be noble, it violates the creator’s expression and is inherently disrespectful, regardless of intent.

Now it is entirely permissible to violate any and all of those things if it is the service of repurposing the work of art to give an entirely new message. One of the most brilliant examples I can think of in recent history is when Alanis Morissette did a cover of My Humps by the Black Eyed Peas: [Read more…]

Server hiccups

Hey all,

So we do the best we can, but technology is a fickle pickle. We had a major server problem this morning, but if you’re reading this, it’s fixed. On behalf of all of us at FreeThought Blogs, I sincerely apologize for the downtime. To make recompense, here’s a silly comic:

In the future, if this kind of thing happens again, you should look to Twitter, as I usually lead the chorus of random cognitive utterances under the hashtag #FreeThoughts.

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Becoming Canadian

As the child of an immigrant father, I am conflicted about what it means to be “a Canadian”. I spent my childhood living in a white community, surrounded by kids whose parents had been born in-country, if not in-city. I didn’t really start encountering immigrant families until I was in my adolescent years, by which time I had a fairly firm grasp on what I thought it meant to be ‘Canadian’.

As the years have passed and I’ve become more intimately acquainted with the varieties of Canadian experience, it’s become more and more difficult to justify my belief that Canadians ought to share a set of values. I think that everyone should always agree with me about everything, but I am willing to accept dissent within tolerance margins. Canada’s values are, for the most part, in concert with my own values – there is a certain amount of chicken/egg questioning that one must engage in, but I can defend most of my values beyond simply stating “because that’s what I believe.”

The question, though, becomes whether or not it is reasonable to expect newcomers to this country (like my father) to adopt “our” values. After all, as I have argued before, one of Canada’s strengths is that it doesn’t have a monocultural or monoethnic heritage: [Read more…]

My pick for Republican nominee – Buddy Roemer

I’m kicking myself for not doing this earlier.

Those of you who follow my Twitter feed may have already guessed this, but I do wish to endorse a candidate for the Republican nomination. Former Louisiana governor, economist, and unabashed #OWS supporter (the latter, I reckon, is the reason many people haven’t heard of him). I don’t agree with all of his policies, particularly his stance on immigration, and he’s a Republican so he’s about reducing expenditure rather than increasing revenue (taxes), but he’s an incredibly funny and engaged candidate. His signature policy issue is getting money out of politics. To demonstrate his commitment to the idea, he funds his campaigns through donations capped at $100. He returns cheques in excess of that amount. He’s also friends with Colbert, so that counts for a lot in my book.

If you live in the United States, please consider donating to his campaign (I would, but foreign contributions must be funneled through PACs, and Roemer has a no-PAC pledge). If you are on Twitter, consider following him. Either way, read his platform and see what you think of him. Or, send him a tweet. He will write back to you. He’s like that.

My dream ticket, incidentally, is Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, with Buddy Roemer getting a sweet cabinet position (and one for Barack Obama too, so long as it has nothing to do with national security or civil liberties – he’s already shown himself to be untrustworthy). But so long as I’m picking fantasy candidates, I’d like to see Jed Bartlet in office.

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When in doubt, Mockus

I guess it was a bit pie-in-the-sky to expect that some new story would come along to pair with this piece I’ve been sitting on for a few weeks now. Sadly, the serendipitous news gods are not inclined to grace me in this way, so I will present it without context. This is just a really really cool thing to do:

Antanas Mockus had just resigned from the top job of Colombian National University. A mathematician and philosopher, Mockus looked around for another big challenge and found it: to be in charge of, as he describes it, “a 6.5 million person classroom.”

Mockus, who had no political experience, ran for mayor of Bogotá; he was successful mainly because people in Colombia’s capital city saw him as an honest guy. With an educator’s inventiveness, Mockus turned Bogotá into a social experiment just as the city was choked with violence, lawless traffic, corruption, and gangs of street children who mugged and stole. It was a city perceived by some to be on the verge of chaos.

People were desperate for a change, for a moral leader of some sort. The eccentric Mockus, who communicates through symbols, humor, and metaphors, filled the role. When many hated the disordered and disorderly city of Bogotá, he wore a Superman costume and acted as a superhero called “Supercitizen.” People laughed at Mockus’ antics, but the laughter began to break the ice of their extreme skepticism.

Basically, this guy trolled his whole city for their own benefit. By instituting weird policies, he actually achieved some pretty impressive results. I am a big proponent of “trying stuff out” when facing an intractable problem like crime or poverty. No apparent solutions? Everything you’ve tried has failed? Try something else. Try something ridiculous. Try something really cool:

The fact that he was seen as an unusual leader gave the new mayor the opportunity to try extraordinary things, such as hiring 420 mimes to control traffic in Bogotá’s chaotic and dangerous streets. He launched a “Night for Women” and asked the city’s men to stay home in the evening and care for the children; 700,000 women went out on the first of three nights that Mockus dedicated to them.

(snip)

When there was a water shortage, Mockus appeared on TV programs taking a shower and turning off the water as he soaped, asking his fellow citizens to do the same. In just two months people were using 14 percent less water, a savings that increased when people realized how much money they were also saving because of economic incentives approved by Mockus; water use is now 40 percent less than before the shortage.

(snip)

He also asked people to pay 10 percent extra in voluntary taxes. To the surprise of many, 63,000 people voluntarily paid the extra taxes. A dramatic indicator of the shift in the attitude of “Bogotanos” during Mockus’ tenure is that, in 2002, the city collected more than three times the revenues it had garnered in 1990.

Voluntary taxes? Televised showers? City-wide ‘ladies nights’? I love this guy’s brain, and wish to set up a hammock in it.

Anyway, read the whole thing. I am sadly unable to put it to work in the service of a larger point, but it’s a really cool story.

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Two sides to national superstition

Religious adherents seem to particularly resent having their deeply-held beliefs described by the word “superstition”. After all, superstition is the belief in things that are totally illogical, that have no foundation in science, that are based on old wives’ tales and pre-scientific nonsense. Religion isn’t based on superstition. Perish the thought! Religion is based on faith!

Of course, atheists have long known that faith is just superstition’s Tyler Durden. Faith looks the way superstition wants to look, talks like it wants to talk, and fucks like it wants to fuck. This may be the reason why religious folks get all bent out of shape whenever this comparison is made – they see the uncanny resemblance and don’t want to admit the truth of the charge. Well, maybe they’ll start paying attention when it starts blowing up skyscrapers. Oh… never mind.

Faith, or religion, or superstition, or whatever synonym you prefer can motivate people to do impressive things. Mozart wrote some of the most beautiful music the world has ever known, and devoted it to God. One can argue about painters like Michaelangelo and Raphael (and the other turtles as well), but the fact is that there is a lot of art created in the service of superstition. But for every example of artistic inspiration, there’s an example of something else entirely: [Read more…]

‘Couv team… ASSEMBLE! (Jan 3rd, 2012)

Tomorrow night, we are once again having our monthly gathering of skeptic folks in Kitsilano. I’m looking forward to the evening, which is always a lot of fun. I should point out that Vancouver Skeptics in the Pub hosts other events – one downtown Vancouver and another in Richmond. Check out the schedule for more info, and if you can make it to Kitilsano tomorrow, come by and say hi!

I am also excited to help promote the new Vancouver Skeptics page. Vancouver has a very active skeptical community, including associations with the UBC and SFU skeptic/atheist groups, and a number of other affiliated groups like CFI Vancouver. If you live in the Vancouver area and want to know what your fellow freethinkers are up to, check out the page!

See you tomorrow night.

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Love letters to the status quo

“If your jokes or teasing manner offend some people, so the fuck what? Someone will always be offended by jokes, never let them make you believe that you are guilty of something worse simply because of your gender. If you want to make boob jokes thats fine by me, you have after all been making dick jokes since you were old enough to make jokes.”

“With all of my heart I beg you: Do not change. Do not change for me, do not change for someone else. You’re wonderful, just the way you are.”

These excerpts from an insipid, fulsome love letter to the skeptic/atheist community were enough to inspire a bout of epic eye-rolling when I read them last night. They were enough to motivate me to wrangle with Penn Jillette via Twitter for his promotion and support of the message contained therein. They were enough to push me to forward the letter along to the rest of the FTBorg, as a sort of “hey take a look at this dummy” thing. They were not enough to spark an entire blog post. After all, if I swung at every pitch, I’d burn out too quickly to fight the battles where I thought my participation could make a positive difference. I was happy to let those with stronger feminist street cred take the lead on this particular one.

It’s distressing, obviously, to see someone completely dismiss the experiences of others simply because that person has had a nice experience. The argument from myopia is a common one in discussions of privilege – “I haven’t seen it, therefore it’s not a problem”. Considering the sheer number and variety of examples of the marginalization of women in skeptical communities, it seems particularly tone-deaf to simply wave it away because you like dick jokes. I like dick jokes too. But there’s a way to craft sexual humour without being sexist, and this line is often crossed at the continued expense of female skeptics. We’re getting better, but work still has to be done. But again, I figured I could rely on my confreres at FTB to make the necessary arguments, and I could focus on getting my stride back after vacation.

Then I received this: [Read more…]