Ladies and gentlemen (and any other label you may prefer), I am home after a long trip that took me to Kamloops for Imagine No Religion 2, Toronto for work, and Montreal for vacation (and more work). I stupidly left my laptop in my apartment, so I have been unable to blog. This has been (by far) the longest I have been away from the site since I started it over 2 years ago, and I can’t imagine such an absence happening again.
Anyway, I’ve got lots to talk about: the conference, the protests in Montreal, the things I saw and did while on the road, and apparently there’s some talk about hooking up at conferences and flirting, so I might weigh in to that mess as well. I won’t be back to normal (and neither will the blog) until the weekend, so I hope you will bear with me as I try to get back into my groove.
Glad to be back!
You were gone?
Two weeks. Two. WEEKS. I was actually beginning to worry about you! Glad you’re home safe and had fun.
I suppose that joke would be funnier if it wasn’t the FIRST comment, written less than a half hour after this post went live.
Huh
So that’s what the back of Crommunist’s hand looks like.
Yay! We missed you.
Sweet!
I’m sorry. Next time I’ll wait at least 45 minutes before making that joke.
I was worried. Glad to see you’re alive and kicking. I have a motto—“an empty blog means a full life”. It’s always funny that when someone looks like they must be dead or something in internet land they are quite likely actually living quite fully in “real life”. Looking forward to hearing of your lively adventures while we stared at the same old post on the main page and tried to find hidden meaning in older posts out of desperation.
Clearly you weren’t following my Twitter feed or my Facebook page. I was non-stop with that shit.
Welcome home. Sure the band missed you. I really am going to go see y’all one of these days – probably before LAW SCHOOL starts in the fall!!!
Where on campus is the public health program located anyway?
ooops, when I was saying the band missed you, I didn’t mean to say I/we didn’t!
And there must be many others as well. Sorry if that sounded, well, less than appreciative.
Also, I’m dying to hear your account of the Casserole.
The Casserole? What?
I am wondering if you will give a write up about that Montreal protest in question…which I understand is still ongoing. I am having a disagreement with regulars at this coffee shop I frequent about it. Who their positon is that since the tutition is many times higher in every other province (they claim), the students should just roll over and accept it (despite it being a planned 100% increase). And thus the protestors should cease and desist altogether protesting…as it is (their claim again), an excuse for hooliganism and youth rebellion as depicted by some media outlets.
Now I know how I already feel about this, and it’s certainly not favorable to my coffee shop aquaintances’..um…views. But since you where there, and likely far more of an enlightened individual…so I wonder if you can give your take on this at some point on this if don’t mind. At least for the exercise of having a well rounded second opinion. I hope you don’t mind. Thanks in advance!
…and I am glad you are back again! <3
Rest assured that I absolutely will be talking about that exact issue when I talk about my experiences in Montreal.
Yes, your absence was… noted.
(just imagine I’m doing that thing with my hands like Mr burns does)
Welcome back 🙂
Welcome back!
If I was away from a computer, unless I was roughing it in the actual wilderness, I would be starting to get crazy in about two days. I think I’d forget to pack socks and underwear before I’d forget my computer.
Thanks very much. I really apprecite this! Looking forward to what you have to say. 🙂
Which is the same appeal to the masses as saying that you should drink cyanide-laced Flavor Aid because those fifty corpses next to you did.
Said media outlets are doing the following:
1. using false balance by portraying the ‘protester’ violence and police violence equally, even though the violent ‘protesters’ are decidedly in the minority yet the police are indiscriminate in their application of violence and arrests
2. not expressing any skepticism towards the motivations or affiliations of the violent/’hooligans’, instead lazily lumping them into the greater protest group.
3. effectively not acknowledging that the greater protest groups have denounced the violence by constantly harping on the violence
These three tactics are not unique to the Montreal student protest, either. They were used against Occupy. Also, from what I have read about “black blocs” I am very, very suspicious of their motivations. There are some well-documented cases where “black bloc” actors have been positively identified as provocateurs, or seen exiting police vehicles; furthermore, black blocs appear to show up exclusively at leftist protests, and for that matter tend to lump themselves/get lumped in with the Anarchist movement.
They also conveniently popped up in the late 1970s, after Lewis F. Powell, Jr. authored The Crisis of Democracy — which was basically an extended rant bemoaning all of the 60s-era leftist protesters questioning the glorious capitalist system and warning that Armageddon would ensue if these exercises of democracy continued — for the Trilateral Commission.
I maintain that since the 1970s there has been a concentrated effort to discredit leftists, and that this effort has succeeded to the point where most “leftist” parties are barely distinguishable from their rightist “opposition”.
(On a slightly-related note, System of a Down makes an interesting point in Prison Song:
Following the rights movements you clamp down with your iron fists
Drugs became conveniently available for all the kids…)
Hey, I live in Texas, so Wisconsin can just eat it since we can’t have unions here due to right-to-work. I will not rest until everyone lives in a hellhole like mine…? I guess? Also, no abortion for anyone, and no gays settling down. IT’S GOOD ENOUGH FOR TEXAS.
Does this mean we get apple and banana Thursdays again?
What do you do with a computer in the actual wilderness?
I think I’d forget to pack socks and underwear before I’d forget my computer.
I got to a conference with a computer but no socks (except the ones on my feet) once. The socks are easier to replace.
Welcome back!
Still learning,
Robert
Yep. Pretty much my memories G20 protests in Toronto 2 years ago as well.
This is one my main irritations about my coffee shop acquaintances’ arguements as well. One could extrapolate that further by declaraing because they don’t allow women to drive in Saudi Arabia our country might as well go down that route too. There’s lots of things we could do because some other entity does them and gets away with it.