Have you ever met one of those control freaks that is too cool for school and doesn’t let himself get excited about things that other folk might? You know, one of those annoying people that meets a celebrity(and by celebrity, I mean whoever would be a celebrity to you; for me that might be an author, graphic artist, scientist or radical activist) at a public event and acts like he’s talking to a theatre usher because he can’t bear the vulnerability of excitement or (gasp) adulation. These guys stand at the back of a reading, aloof, and “don’t bother” the author with a request for an autograph. They resist, with affected noble aplomb, the urge to tell an artist “I love your work”, because that is what everyone else in the crowd is saying, and they themselves are dying to say it too.
OK, so that’s me. I am that big stick in the mud, trying desperately to ground free floating star-struck excitement. Everyone knows someone like me, it is the person who you are least apt to choose to tell the news that you got tickets to U2, because they just say, 'that's nice, I hear they play pretty good live'. Because they won't squeal loudly with you.
From time to time, I have scraped at breaching that code and usually managed not to learn anything from it.
When I was in my early twenties, I was scrounging through an enormous used book store located in a real live barn just outside of a little village on the St. Laurence. I was ecstatic to find an older out of print book by Al Purdy, an Ontarian poet who I was enthralled with. The proprietor noticed my trembly sweaty hands, eager with the treasure found. She told me, if I wanted more of his work, I should just write to him as he probably had lots of his own books lying around at home. She said it so matter-of-factly, like this elder statesman of Canadian Poetry was one of my neighbours or classmates, someone I might just approach. She even said, “it’s not like he’s a rockstar”. How could she not understand, that’s just what he was, he was my Bono. Only more than a rockstar, he was a mentor, an imam, a shaman. I didn’t know what to say, and chose the most mundane route. This was before the internet when you might easily look someone up so I told her I had no way of contacting him. She immediately wrote down his address, saying that he was a friend of hers and enjoyed getting letters from readers.
I returned home to Montreal with my star powered scrap of paper and typed out a letter. I did my best to disguise my appreciation of his work, or more accurately to hide the fact, that for me, this was equivalent to writing a letter to a movie star. Instead, I was somewhat inquisitive, and more than a little critical; to top it all off, I had the sheer youthful audacity to push some advice on him(about coping with being old, of all things). After I sent it, I cringed, ‘what have you done’.
Shortly thereafter, I received a reply, typed on the back of some hotel stationary. It was jovial and ripping, and tore mighty holes through my young bravado. And it included the delight(coming from him) of accusing me of sounding like an old man in my cups. His letter held the exact living and breathing words I might have imagined from this literary titan in my world. We exchanged a number of letters thereafter(read: inward backflips, outward nonchalance).
His replies were always on odd scraps of paper—diner placemats, torn faces of Christmas cards—he seemed to take a religious stance against clean paper. Sometimes they were handwritten and I will never know what these letters said as they were indecipherable. Every letter was encouraging and took seriously the things I had said in mine.
Eventually, he invited me to spend a weekend up at his farm where we could more properly face off on poetry, maybe over something pottable. It was the invite of one friend to another, only I was still that tightly wound fan-in-disguise. I was the little man behind the curtain who people were suddenly paying attention to. I made faux plans to go and then shyly faded out of communication. It is one of the great bleeding regrets in my life, and probably not unusual, as one of those experiences where in youth, we come up against the limits of our confidence.
I did have the opportunity years later to meet Mr. Purdy face-to-face. It was at a reading in Vancouver. As if in some kind of apologetic offering, I brought him a charcoal portrait I'd drawn of another of my hero-authors, a man recently passed away that Mr. Purdy had been a long close friend of. I felt ashamed of the assumed intimacy of it, and yet was compelled. You know what that lovely old bastard did? He made me autograph it to him in front of the crowd. So, I have ended up with great moments in my life and great regrets tied together with this irascible poet.
From this, I might have learned, if nothing else, a self-interested value in communicating praise with those one admires. Me? Nope, I have many great strengths, and one of them is to resist learning. I have since then had several experiences in a similar vein, where I balked when I felt to vulnerable to someone who had made an emotional or spiritual impact on my life, after engaging in communication with them.
One of the consequences of these anti-productive lessons, is I haven’t usually made the effort to communicate appreciation to those who influence my life from a distance. I’ve been trying to change that. And with almost two decades of the internet, it’s not usually hard to track someone down if they have any kind of public or promotional life.
Now, if the fan letter I wanted to write was addressed to Dan Brown or Johnny Depp, it would probably just end up in the slush pile of a publicist. But, as much as I love a Steven Spielberg movie, that’s not who I think of writing to. Instead it is often a musician who has a day job, a blogger who is trying to aggregate news items to make sense of the world, a professor slogging through mediocre student essays, an artist who is only on the regional circuit, or a writer, who despite being distributed on Amazon is simply another guy like you or me, toiling away alone in a room.
My experience has always been warm replies, and usually a dialogue can develop. If a person has managed to publish an article, or produce a CD, or get a book into print, I get this misimpression that the person has “made it” and has better things to do than hear someone say, “wow, I really liked this”. And it usually isn’t true. Not that a reply is the point here. The point is getting the message of appreciation through to someone who isn’t actually overwhelmed with appreciation.
More generally, there is little enough appreciation going around the universe, and that any time I can contact someone who has contributed meaning or pleasure to my life, that the least I can do is let them know. At best, sometimes, the benefits of interaction accrue: there are mutual blooms.
Anyway, in my ongoing bid to overcome my notable ability to resist learning, I am recommending to myself and to others, whenever the opportunity surfaces to offer appreciation where appreciation is due, offer it.
At the very least, I let someone know that their work has reached across the void and touched me. their work has breached seemingly impenetrable space and added to being. I may have never made it to the farm on Roblin Lake in Ameliasburg, but I can still learn from the letters of that old man.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Canuck Comics rule: Von Allan’s “The Road To God Knows. . .”
After the restorative magicks of a heatwave, the agitated ape is resurrected from winter hibernation. The gibbled gibbon, the crazed chimp, the silly simian, the mirthful monkey, the languid lemur, the grumpy gorilla, the almost humble hominid is sheepishly sidling back up to his blown-off blog. Please ignore the alliterative angwantibo.
Today I have an absolutely shameless and gushing plug for writer, artist and graphic novelist, Von Allan. Mr. Von Allan hails from the quaint and remote village of Ottawa Ontario. I mention this for two reasons. One, I live there, and two, I rarely have any bonobianly bountiful sentiments related to this blightful burg. Without further ado:
Aside from being a self-taught artist, Mr. Allan is a micro-publishing magnate, loosed unto the world with his debut graphic novel, “The Road To God Knows. . .”(available at Chapters, and Amazon, as well as Barnes and Noble—whatever that is).
It offers an understated but poignant tale of strained adolescence, depicting a young woman coping with the her mother’s schizophrenia. It’s as simple as that, nothing sensational, or self-helpy, no great revelations, just a series of painstaking and loving details of days in a girl’s life. The dialogue is character driven, lusciously breaking all kinds of narrative rules in order to draw you into the difficult moments of a person’s life, at an age when expression and disclosure are choked. And that is the beauty of the story—the empathic tension we feel watching from the camera eye, unable to reach out and help. You aren’t reading a graphic novel, you are viewing the highlights of a spy-cam; the frames and sequences seek to direct your psychological and heartfelt discovery of this tale.
I found Mr. Allan’s work on the internet before there was a paper edition, and it was the art that drew me in. Well, no, to be accurate, it was that damned perfect title that caught my attention. Breezing through some artwork hooked me. I mention this because I am not sure how to describe it. Everything that comes to mind sounds like backhanded compliment or criticism, and it isn’t. This black and white work is brilliant, emotive and evocative. And as someone who recognises the artist’s inspiration for settings and locales, the drawings are great on a purely technical level(I warmly recognise all manner of places).
It’s really worth a redundant gush, because I read an interview with the author in Ottawa’s newspaper, The Citizen, describing how Mr. Allan came to drawing later than most, and was constantly told to give it up, that “he sucked”. I can’t speak to his growth as an artist, just the power of his work in this story. The style is realistic, foregoing so many available graphic narrative techniques available for the medium, and so the challenge is, technical. For a self-taught artist, self-admittedly challenged, to choose direct representation, rather than cartooning, exaggeration, surrealism, etc. demonstrates a vision, discipline, dedication and vigour. I can see the occasional graphical flaws: flattened perspectives, unnatural feeling angles in bodies at times, and somehow magically they aren’t flaws.
I can’t say anything about intention. Some aspects of art are planned, some well up from the sub-conscious, and some are accidental bonuses. What I can say, is the level of detail, the grey-shading, the “cinematography” are all exquisite and create a beautiful sense of reality within the decadent pleasures of drawings. Allan’s choice of vista is profound and ambitious, with wide angles, camera depth, and no fear of full frames with entire figures and all the complications entailed in that. In fact Mr. Allan seems to revel in these full images. They are stark and vulnerable, like the tale they embody. I wish I had a verbal sensibility of graphics to describe it. His drawings scream to be witnessed, heard and understood, they command your attention, they implore your feeling.
The people and the story are potent, visceral, and drive home the fragility of our lives and the tenuous ways we reach out to each other, and I never would have read it without being seduced by the artwork. That really needs to be offered up to the critics of his art—I am as prose based as any person could be, a bodily divorced cerebral person, and it is the art that seduces me into the story, reaching into me and driving me to relate.
It’s a brave and personal story from the author, without being sentimental or maudlin. A mature work despite being a first work.
Anyways, check this one out. Buy it if you are a graphic novel fan, or go to his site for downloads or info.
We’re all on the road to god knows where.
p.s. despite the rock star kind of fame that we all know goes along with being a comic artist, Mr. Von Allan remains humble, not forgetting his roots, and will usually answer inquiries. at least he answered all of mine, and i was annoying.
Today I have an absolutely shameless and gushing plug for writer, artist and graphic novelist, Von Allan. Mr. Von Allan hails from the quaint and remote village of Ottawa Ontario. I mention this for two reasons. One, I live there, and two, I rarely have any bonobianly bountiful sentiments related to this blightful burg. Without further ado:
Aside from being a self-taught artist, Mr. Allan is a micro-publishing magnate, loosed unto the world with his debut graphic novel, “The Road To God Knows. . .”(available at Chapters, and Amazon, as well as Barnes and Noble—whatever that is).
It offers an understated but poignant tale of strained adolescence, depicting a young woman coping with the her mother’s schizophrenia. It’s as simple as that, nothing sensational, or self-helpy, no great revelations, just a series of painstaking and loving details of days in a girl’s life. The dialogue is character driven, lusciously breaking all kinds of narrative rules in order to draw you into the difficult moments of a person’s life, at an age when expression and disclosure are choked. And that is the beauty of the story—the empathic tension we feel watching from the camera eye, unable to reach out and help. You aren’t reading a graphic novel, you are viewing the highlights of a spy-cam; the frames and sequences seek to direct your psychological and heartfelt discovery of this tale.
I found Mr. Allan’s work on the internet before there was a paper edition, and it was the art that drew me in. Well, no, to be accurate, it was that damned perfect title that caught my attention. Breezing through some artwork hooked me. I mention this because I am not sure how to describe it. Everything that comes to mind sounds like backhanded compliment or criticism, and it isn’t. This black and white work is brilliant, emotive and evocative. And as someone who recognises the artist’s inspiration for settings and locales, the drawings are great on a purely technical level(I warmly recognise all manner of places).
It’s really worth a redundant gush, because I read an interview with the author in Ottawa’s newspaper, The Citizen, describing how Mr. Allan came to drawing later than most, and was constantly told to give it up, that “he sucked”. I can’t speak to his growth as an artist, just the power of his work in this story. The style is realistic, foregoing so many available graphic narrative techniques available for the medium, and so the challenge is, technical. For a self-taught artist, self-admittedly challenged, to choose direct representation, rather than cartooning, exaggeration, surrealism, etc. demonstrates a vision, discipline, dedication and vigour. I can see the occasional graphical flaws: flattened perspectives, unnatural feeling angles in bodies at times, and somehow magically they aren’t flaws.
I can’t say anything about intention. Some aspects of art are planned, some well up from the sub-conscious, and some are accidental bonuses. What I can say, is the level of detail, the grey-shading, the “cinematography” are all exquisite and create a beautiful sense of reality within the decadent pleasures of drawings. Allan’s choice of vista is profound and ambitious, with wide angles, camera depth, and no fear of full frames with entire figures and all the complications entailed in that. In fact Mr. Allan seems to revel in these full images. They are stark and vulnerable, like the tale they embody. I wish I had a verbal sensibility of graphics to describe it. His drawings scream to be witnessed, heard and understood, they command your attention, they implore your feeling.
The people and the story are potent, visceral, and drive home the fragility of our lives and the tenuous ways we reach out to each other, and I never would have read it without being seduced by the artwork. That really needs to be offered up to the critics of his art—I am as prose based as any person could be, a bodily divorced cerebral person, and it is the art that seduces me into the story, reaching into me and driving me to relate.
It’s a brave and personal story from the author, without being sentimental or maudlin. A mature work despite being a first work.
Anyways, check this one out. Buy it if you are a graphic novel fan, or go to his site for downloads or info.
We’re all on the road to god knows where.
p.s. despite the rock star kind of fame that we all know goes along with being a comic artist, Mr. Von Allan remains humble, not forgetting his roots, and will usually answer inquiries. at least he answered all of mine, and i was annoying.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics
I have recently been having a most godly experience. I have been going from a man who rubs two sticks together to make flame, to a man who strikes flint, to a man who has a microwave.
It’s not a bad metaphor. I have been studying the numbers game. The numbers game is the world behind the curtain that defines everything in our lives. Not surprisingly, it seems to be a big game, so I don’t think I will be off to Vegas anytime soon, but it feels like it. The priests have been training me in formulas and theorems and advanced mysticism like Excel and SPSS and soon I will be able to spin webs with numbers and prophesize anything I like. . .correct?
Soon, I will be able to make numbers sing. I will be able to make them say anything I want them to say. I too can become an arcane priest of the numbers and show how they demonstrate we are in an age of abundance or an age of apocalypse, depending on my political and ideological proclivities. I will be like those terrifying hooded figures from primitive societies who determined which souls were to be sacrificed and which to be saved. My decisions, now, like then, will be motivated not by facts but by political evils
Because we all know numbers are pliable, numbers are meaningless outside of their intended context, right?
Ok, so I am not a priest of empirical value. We have axioms that guide us in this realm. One of them is “Not everything that is countable is worth counting and not everything that counts is countable.” And I also believe in the kind of prudence that comes with the precautionary principle--staying our hand when we are unsure of the consequences of our actions. The consumptionary folks play with this idea and confound conservatory actions with the notion that if a lack of sound knowledge exists, ecologically minded actions are not required. I don’t always need numbers to tell me what a sane and good course of action is.
But, in the absence of good sense, numbers aren’t so bad to fall back on. we are the scientific, technological species, we should be able to rally behind the almighty number, don’t you think?
When it comes to the finite limits of our planet, or the physio-chemical laws of our biosphere, we call up our priests and ask them to cast arcane spells with our most potent weapons. . .numbers. But then, if those priests give us an accurate count, then we cast the most heinous aspersions on them, and accuse them of devious plots. We imagine them to be part of an intricate and unlikely hoax to fleece the public of tax dollars—though I am not sure how that would work.
Now, I am as big a fan as any of conspiracy theories, and anti-institution theories, but this wide scale skepticism in all the number priests is truly bizarre.
I have to weigh my thinking against my daily life.
Sometimes I step into an elevator. Every time I do, I trust architects, engineers and construction personnel to have crunched numbers and built me a safe device to propel me upward to the heavens.
I have occasionally stepped onto an airplane. An airplane is the epitome of human ingenuity—nothing should be lighter than air. But I never worry about the physics of a plane when I am on it. I am more consumed with my cramped seat, not designed for Nordic descended folk, and am seriously incensed at the terrible films they choose for me. In short, I trust an army of number crunchers to not only keep me safely alive, but to whisk me, magic fashion, around the globe.
Where else can I find scientists that I am not trying to lynch for weird conspiracy theories?
Sometimes I go to the grocery store and buy some food. Every time I do that, I purchase things from massive industrial farms, things preserved or processed or transported using really advanced scientific methods. Sure, we take many of these methods for granted, but they are there all the same, and they exist due to armies of folk crunching numbers.
During the winter, I often catch a cold, sometimes it turns out not to be a cold, but some nasty flu or even pneumonia—I don't know what it is, I just feel sick, that's all I know. Some doctor determines whether I am sick and need to rest or whether I need some antibiotic,. To tell the truth, I am happy when it is something that requires an antibiotic, because then I know beyond a shadow of a doubt, when I will feel like a normal human being again. When they tell me I have a bad cold, I just have to be sick until I am not sick. . .holy unscientific! But, when the right bug is in me, we zap it faster than Flash Gordon can kiss Dale Arden. I never question what the doctor prescribes, or the people who engineer the concoction. I don't even question the people who dispense it. I just pop my happy pills and watch my symptoms disappear. How did this supremely convenient magic coalesce? Numbers. Lots and lots of numbers. And little nameless people crunching numbers.
Ok, I will pocket my flog, and walk away from my dying horse. The modern world, as we experience it on a day to day basis is a scientific and technological wonderland. And we trust and believe in these scientists and technicians over and over again before noon on any given day.
I wonder then, why all these millions of lay people, when informed of threats like environmental degradation, energy depletion, climate change, suddenly take the reins and declare these number crunchers to be either wrong, ignorant, colluded or corrupt. Suddenly, our religious observance of the scientific world we inhabit is sundered. Suddenly we question our priests. Suddenly we refuse to make any decisions based on what they say.
I have a professor, who is trying desperately to teach me the basics of statistics. He is an epidemiologist, by trade, and he believes really fucking strongly in numbers, and at the same time, he is a clever and witty critic of number crunchers.
One of the things he tries to make clear to us is that well collected numbers are real. Sometimes we can derive lots of interesting information from them that wasn’t immediately apparent, sometimes we can twist them, but contrary to the most popular of sayings, the numbers don't lie.
I suffer this class at a most unhumane hour on Monday mornings and have come to cherish this professor and his class because he tries to stamp out post-modern fuckery and instill in us the novel concept that we can measure things.
The atmosphere can be measured. It’s contents can be measured. The number of trees can be counted. What lives in the ocean can be counted. We can add up the amount of arable land and compare it to the number of people on the whole frickin planet. These aren’t shell games, they are verifiable numbers.
And yet, when questions of sustainability come up, suddenly those sciencey number people are suggested to be hucksters, cons and bald-faced liars. Suddenly they must be greedy hateful criminals who are trying to pull one over on us. I recognise the efforts that corporate interests have gone to, to discredit science, but I still have to drop my jaw in awe at how easily a public so dependent on science and numbers is willing to relinquish its trust and faith when those number priests say slow down or stop. (the Monbiot quote comes to mind--"no one has ever rioted for austerity")
Suddenly, even the most uneducated person is ready to overrule the number crunchers. Oh, he’ll still buy vitamins, and mount an elevator, he’ll undergo chemo treatment for a cancer, drive a car, eat genetically modified corn and trust his whole personal life to a file on an I-phone, but he will gasp and sputter and cross his arms in defiance if those same number crunchers warn him that our collective actions harm the environment, commit chaos to the climate or barter momentary comforts for the future generations of all living beings.
I sometimes wonder what motivates scientists and number crunchers to seek the truth when no one is listening. I marvel at their faith in humanity. A strange faith that people will act on what they say.
What I find really disturbing is that they are beginning to give up.
Try and imagine a world where the smart people aren’t figuring shit out for us.
It’s not a bad metaphor. I have been studying the numbers game. The numbers game is the world behind the curtain that defines everything in our lives. Not surprisingly, it seems to be a big game, so I don’t think I will be off to Vegas anytime soon, but it feels like it. The priests have been training me in formulas and theorems and advanced mysticism like Excel and SPSS and soon I will be able to spin webs with numbers and prophesize anything I like. . .correct?
Soon, I will be able to make numbers sing. I will be able to make them say anything I want them to say. I too can become an arcane priest of the numbers and show how they demonstrate we are in an age of abundance or an age of apocalypse, depending on my political and ideological proclivities. I will be like those terrifying hooded figures from primitive societies who determined which souls were to be sacrificed and which to be saved. My decisions, now, like then, will be motivated not by facts but by political evils
Because we all know numbers are pliable, numbers are meaningless outside of their intended context, right?
Ok, so I am not a priest of empirical value. We have axioms that guide us in this realm. One of them is “Not everything that is countable is worth counting and not everything that counts is countable.” And I also believe in the kind of prudence that comes with the precautionary principle--staying our hand when we are unsure of the consequences of our actions. The consumptionary folks play with this idea and confound conservatory actions with the notion that if a lack of sound knowledge exists, ecologically minded actions are not required. I don’t always need numbers to tell me what a sane and good course of action is.
But, in the absence of good sense, numbers aren’t so bad to fall back on. we are the scientific, technological species, we should be able to rally behind the almighty number, don’t you think?
When it comes to the finite limits of our planet, or the physio-chemical laws of our biosphere, we call up our priests and ask them to cast arcane spells with our most potent weapons. . .numbers. But then, if those priests give us an accurate count, then we cast the most heinous aspersions on them, and accuse them of devious plots. We imagine them to be part of an intricate and unlikely hoax to fleece the public of tax dollars—though I am not sure how that would work.
Now, I am as big a fan as any of conspiracy theories, and anti-institution theories, but this wide scale skepticism in all the number priests is truly bizarre.
I have to weigh my thinking against my daily life.
Sometimes I step into an elevator. Every time I do, I trust architects, engineers and construction personnel to have crunched numbers and built me a safe device to propel me upward to the heavens.
I have occasionally stepped onto an airplane. An airplane is the epitome of human ingenuity—nothing should be lighter than air. But I never worry about the physics of a plane when I am on it. I am more consumed with my cramped seat, not designed for Nordic descended folk, and am seriously incensed at the terrible films they choose for me. In short, I trust an army of number crunchers to not only keep me safely alive, but to whisk me, magic fashion, around the globe.
Where else can I find scientists that I am not trying to lynch for weird conspiracy theories?
Sometimes I go to the grocery store and buy some food. Every time I do that, I purchase things from massive industrial farms, things preserved or processed or transported using really advanced scientific methods. Sure, we take many of these methods for granted, but they are there all the same, and they exist due to armies of folk crunching numbers.
During the winter, I often catch a cold, sometimes it turns out not to be a cold, but some nasty flu or even pneumonia—I don't know what it is, I just feel sick, that's all I know. Some doctor determines whether I am sick and need to rest or whether I need some antibiotic,. To tell the truth, I am happy when it is something that requires an antibiotic, because then I know beyond a shadow of a doubt, when I will feel like a normal human being again. When they tell me I have a bad cold, I just have to be sick until I am not sick. . .holy unscientific! But, when the right bug is in me, we zap it faster than Flash Gordon can kiss Dale Arden. I never question what the doctor prescribes, or the people who engineer the concoction. I don't even question the people who dispense it. I just pop my happy pills and watch my symptoms disappear. How did this supremely convenient magic coalesce? Numbers. Lots and lots of numbers. And little nameless people crunching numbers.
Ok, I will pocket my flog, and walk away from my dying horse. The modern world, as we experience it on a day to day basis is a scientific and technological wonderland. And we trust and believe in these scientists and technicians over and over again before noon on any given day.
I wonder then, why all these millions of lay people, when informed of threats like environmental degradation, energy depletion, climate change, suddenly take the reins and declare these number crunchers to be either wrong, ignorant, colluded or corrupt. Suddenly, our religious observance of the scientific world we inhabit is sundered. Suddenly we question our priests. Suddenly we refuse to make any decisions based on what they say.
I have a professor, who is trying desperately to teach me the basics of statistics. He is an epidemiologist, by trade, and he believes really fucking strongly in numbers, and at the same time, he is a clever and witty critic of number crunchers.
One of the things he tries to make clear to us is that well collected numbers are real. Sometimes we can derive lots of interesting information from them that wasn’t immediately apparent, sometimes we can twist them, but contrary to the most popular of sayings, the numbers don't lie.
I suffer this class at a most unhumane hour on Monday mornings and have come to cherish this professor and his class because he tries to stamp out post-modern fuckery and instill in us the novel concept that we can measure things.
The atmosphere can be measured. It’s contents can be measured. The number of trees can be counted. What lives in the ocean can be counted. We can add up the amount of arable land and compare it to the number of people on the whole frickin planet. These aren’t shell games, they are verifiable numbers.
And yet, when questions of sustainability come up, suddenly those sciencey number people are suggested to be hucksters, cons and bald-faced liars. Suddenly they must be greedy hateful criminals who are trying to pull one over on us. I recognise the efforts that corporate interests have gone to, to discredit science, but I still have to drop my jaw in awe at how easily a public so dependent on science and numbers is willing to relinquish its trust and faith when those number priests say slow down or stop. (the Monbiot quote comes to mind--"no one has ever rioted for austerity")
Suddenly, even the most uneducated person is ready to overrule the number crunchers. Oh, he’ll still buy vitamins, and mount an elevator, he’ll undergo chemo treatment for a cancer, drive a car, eat genetically modified corn and trust his whole personal life to a file on an I-phone, but he will gasp and sputter and cross his arms in defiance if those same number crunchers warn him that our collective actions harm the environment, commit chaos to the climate or barter momentary comforts for the future generations of all living beings.
I sometimes wonder what motivates scientists and number crunchers to seek the truth when no one is listening. I marvel at their faith in humanity. A strange faith that people will act on what they say.
What I find really disturbing is that they are beginning to give up.
Try and imagine a world where the smart people aren’t figuring shit out for us.
Monday, February 8, 2010
Nowhere To Hide
As it is winter, and as usual winter is doing its best to kill my soul, I have begun to avoid reading the news--it's just too maddening for a freezing ape to bear. I didn't quite escape this weekend though because reading the news is a good way to procrastinate on schoolwork.
In Ottawa, Federal stimulus spending has trickled down. Trickled into Ottawa. What I read about is increased spending in road expansions and extensions. In related news, public transit is being reduced in routes and frequencies. This is depressing all around, but especially depressing in the CAPITAL OF A G-7, G-8, G-20 NATION. Internationally, the world's nations have acknowledged and begun to accept the realities of peak oil, and are investing in light rail, renewables and public transit. But not Canada. We are Canadian, we build highways and subdivisions to drive to. Maybe its just a symptom of being an oil rich nation?
But it is winter, and I don't really want to think about frustrating things, so I turn to the entertainment section of the paper.
In the Globe and Mail, I read about an Australian dance troupe touring an intriguing sounding multimedia show. Ah so, when is it coming to Ottawa? Well, it isn't. The troupe is mainstream, and playing the biggest venues. In Canada it is going to Toronto, Montreal, and Calgary. yes, Calgary, with a smaller population than Ottawa.
I shouldn't be shocked. Living here for the last five years, I have watched as countless musical, theatrical and even film spectacles have bypassed Ottawa, sometimes stopping in tiny University towns, but not the nations capital. I've never understood how a nations capital could be such a cultural wasteland. Ottawa just isn't on the map. It's absurd to know that I might have a better time seeing a band I like in Sudbury than Ottawa.
I wonder if members of my federal government, who have closed up shop for the winter simply go to to other cities with their freed up time?
Sigh, where am I to escape to, if I cannot even read the entertainment section of the paper?
In Ottawa, Federal stimulus spending has trickled down. Trickled into Ottawa. What I read about is increased spending in road expansions and extensions. In related news, public transit is being reduced in routes and frequencies. This is depressing all around, but especially depressing in the CAPITAL OF A G-7, G-8, G-20 NATION. Internationally, the world's nations have acknowledged and begun to accept the realities of peak oil, and are investing in light rail, renewables and public transit. But not Canada. We are Canadian, we build highways and subdivisions to drive to. Maybe its just a symptom of being an oil rich nation?
But it is winter, and I don't really want to think about frustrating things, so I turn to the entertainment section of the paper.
In the Globe and Mail, I read about an Australian dance troupe touring an intriguing sounding multimedia show. Ah so, when is it coming to Ottawa? Well, it isn't. The troupe is mainstream, and playing the biggest venues. In Canada it is going to Toronto, Montreal, and Calgary. yes, Calgary, with a smaller population than Ottawa.
I shouldn't be shocked. Living here for the last five years, I have watched as countless musical, theatrical and even film spectacles have bypassed Ottawa, sometimes stopping in tiny University towns, but not the nations capital. I've never understood how a nations capital could be such a cultural wasteland. Ottawa just isn't on the map. It's absurd to know that I might have a better time seeing a band I like in Sudbury than Ottawa.
I wonder if members of my federal government, who have closed up shop for the winter simply go to to other cities with their freed up time?
Sigh, where am I to escape to, if I cannot even read the entertainment section of the paper?
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