Tomorrow is World Philosophy Day

According to UNESCO tomorrow is world philosophy day. In honour of that here are some philosophers:

Enjoy.

More Canadian Stereotypes for Steve Harper!

Since, as I mentioned in my previous post, Harper is lazily using movie stereotypes to tell us what's "central" to Canada's identity, here's some material for him courtesy of Monty Python:

Poetry

Here's some poetry, as it was meant to be enjoyed:

Why (Global) Villages Suck

Think about that term, "global village," it sounds warm and fuzzy, doesn't it? We all like villages, there's Santa's Village in Bracebridge, Value Village to buy your hipster skinny pants for $2, and the Village People who'll tell you where you can hang out with all the boys.

I think villages though are overrated. I think villages (and indeed all smaller centers, be they "hamlets," "corners," or "towns") are overrated for reasons that are now becoming apparent in the aforementioned global village. In a smaller center, everyone knows what everyone else is doing and what everyone else is saying. Harper (or at least his lackey, Stephen Taylor) is freaking out that his minions are saying things on Facebook that might somehow reflect badly on his government.

Until Facebook (which IDs everyone by their real name) the internet was far more akin to a metropolis than it was to a village. You could make up a name and commit the digital equivalent of flipping off another city-dweller in traffic. Your blog/myspace/whatever was the political/musical/cultural equivalent of yelling "nice turn-signal use, asshole!" out the car window on a crowded street. No one would know who you were or what you did.

Now your every Facebook utterance is traceable to you. It's a village, and now we are finding the idiots.

Really, really important discovery!

Jason Cherniak has claimed (in this blog's comments section no less) that Stephane Dion is a Monty Python fan. For a pop culture nerd like me this is fascinating. We the anarcho-syndicalist peasants demand to know!

Who is at "fault" if May does not win her seat?

I'm not a member of any political party (and I'm really not planning to change that) so I've sort of treated the Dion-May alliance/fiasco as a kind of spectator sport (albeit one with potential long-term consequences). Naturally all kinds of opinions have been flying, particularly between Grits and Dippers. My attention was caught today though by something that Jason Cherniak said:

"...if Jack [Layton] were smart he would agree to not run a candidate against Elizabeth May. Then Dion would gain much less from his deal and May would no longer be able to attack the NDP. As things now stand, if May loses and MacKay gets less than 50% of the vote, then Layton will be solely to blame. How many non-partisan progressive voters will like that one? I suspect May understands that she needs to take down #3 before she can even think about Green Party government."

I suppose, given Jason's roll in the Liberal party, he's just doing his job. That said, let me give a response to his rhetorical question about what "non-partisan progressive voters" (like me) would think about May losing Central Nova. First of all, it's one seat. I don't see how Layton would be "solely" to blame anyway. If May runs a mediocre campaign is that Layton's fault? What if the NDP candidate finishes ahead of May, is it then solely May's fault that the NDP lost? Moreover, the NDP never insisted that May run in Central Nova - a riding where the NDP was competitive (at least more so than either the Greens or the Liberals).

Now I don't want to sound like someone who's adopted NDP talking points or anything, so let me just reiterate: I don't think that anyone could point to a single individual and say that they are at fault for an undesirable outcome in an event as complex as a Canadian election.

This is starting to remind me of the bickering liberation fronts in Life of Brian, remember, what the "non-partisan progressive voter" (i.e.: me) wants is for Harper to go away.

Late Night

I'm off to bed, watch this. You wouldn't have much fun in Stalingrad either:

Historical Jesus, Hysterical Church

Much ink has been spilled (and many more pixels have been rearranged) over the chocolate Jesus sculpture. What's wrong with it? Zuzu explains:

"So. I looked at this photo, and I couldn’t see what was wrong. It’s not defaced. It’s not a caricature. It doesn’t have elephant dung on it, and it’s not immersed in urine. Chocolate is an unusual choice of materials, sure, but if God created the cacao bean, I don’t see the problem. In fact, it wouldn’t look out of place hanging above the altar of your average Catholic church.

Well, except for one little thing, which is apparently the thing that has Donohue in such a lather:

He’s naked."

Uh-oh. I was shocked! Shocked!

Then I remember what my friend Jam might call a minor detail: nudity was part of how the Romans did crucifixion. Romans, and if you read some of Terence you will know this, had a really, really crude streak. To crucify someone naked would be nothing for the Romans, they wanted to humiliate the criminals they were killing. In that regard, aside from a curious selection of materials, the artist who created this piece was more historically accurate than the church's now-sullied golden boy, Mel Gibson.

Of course instead of using this as a time to reflect on what the humiliation of crucifixion meant or - even better - simply get on with the work of helping the suffering, many church groups have instead chosen to react with hysteria to a piece of art they do not understand. In the meantime, cheer up: