“The cool thing about being famous is traveling. I have always wanted to travel across seas, like to Canada and stuff.”  -
Britney Spears

I do a little bit of what might be seen as America-bashing on this blog. In the interests of not coming off as just another bigot, I will turn the tables from time to time and set out a few little gems that make Canada the less-than-perfect place it is.

I believe that a major pain for Americans who travel and interact a lot with Canadians must be our smugness and superior airs when it comes to America. We bash America, its foreign policy and its internalized and, from our viewpoint, naive and ignorant people, and we do it with a haughtiness that can be insufferable. What must be particularly annoying to thinking Americans, the ones who know that our jibes are not entirely without foundation, is that while we are quick to criticize, we never seem to acknowledge that we, as neighbours, allies, and America's largest trading partner, are often a co-beneficiary of those very policies we look down our noses at. Add to that the self-conscious "We aren't really America-Lite; we're special - better." undercurrent, and our American cousins must sometimes have to fight back the urge to just smash our faces in. So, let's look at a few things that make me gripe as loudly about my homeland as I do about my southern neighbour.

Today - Democracy Canadian Style.

In Canada, unlike America with its flawed republican system, we inherited an abomination called the "parliamentary system." I do not use the word "abomination" thoughtlessy. If what one strives for is "democracy" and a government that fairly represents the will of its electors, then our parliamentary system must be seen as a total failure.

What makes it a failure? Several things, but I will point out just one. It is a multi-party system but it is a winner-take-all system. That is to say, whichever party's candidate gets the most votes in a given riding wins outright. Whichever party has the most outright winners forms the government. Unlike several other countries, in Canada there is no run-off or second or third ballots required until one candidate has received over 50% of the popular vote. Nor is there the corollary - proportional representation - that allows minority views to be represented in the legislature.

A clear example of the disastrous potential of this system is a particular election in Ontario that almost made me physically ill. There is a socialist party in Canada (and its provinces) called the NDP (New Democratic Party). Never in its history had it enjoyed greater than 10-15% support in the country. In an Ontario provincial election in 1990, the NDP  managed to more than double its customary support and received something on the order of 34% of the popular vote across most ridings. Mostly this increase could be seen not as popular conversion to their social-democrat philosophy, but rather a protest vote against the incumbent party and its major opposition. However, motivation does not matter. What matters is that a party viewed by the vast majority as being radical and dangerous was elected with an unassailable number of seats in the provincial parliament because of the preposterously inequitable electoral system. This was the same effect as would have been the case if 80% of the population adored them, rather than distrusted them, as was the actual case.

This was just an extreme example of what happens regularly in Canadian elections.The democratic idea of tyranny by the majority is bad enough, but hailing rule by the minority as the essence of egalitarian wisdom? As I said, it turns my stomach. How anyone can view a government elected by fewer than 50%+1 of the electorate to be "democratic" is beyond me. And that any politician, after receiving perhaps 3 or 4 votes out of 10 (and those 10 coming from only about half of the actual population being governed), can, with a straight, proud, face speak of "mandates" and doing the people's will is simply insulting.

I will leave for another post a couple of points about the actual operation of this parliamentary system that take a bad idea and, in my view, turn it into outright fraud.

See ya later, eh?  Have to go feed my sled dogs some french toast and pea soup then head off to meet with some Mountie friends for a game of football. We want revenge against our regular opponents who won the last game by just a rouge!

"He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither." - Benjamin Franklin

I, and perhaps you, have noticed that frequently in my posts I make direct or tangential references to freedom when discussing America. I will no doubt continue to do so, especially as the election year heats up. I am sure it is clear that I think freedom in America is illusory - a lovely word for use in a politician's sound bite, but no longer a defining characteristic of the greatest and most ambitious political experiment ever undertaken. It seems the 'land of the free and the home of the brave" is no longer either. No doubt that little statement will raise the hackles of several million of my American cousins and they'll wish to invade Canada and track me down (a la Panama and Noriega).

But consider:

Brave?
There are Americans brave to the point of foolhardiness, no doubt. But, Americans, as a populace, are now so brave that by and large they will not just sit tacitly watching as their rights are stripped from them if it provides the illusion of a modicum of assurance that no swarthy middle eastern type will plant a bomb in the local WalMart, they will actually encourage the rape.

Free? Sure.
America was free relative to most any nation preceding its birth and most that have been born since, but is it still? And the foundation of that freedom was what? The Bill of Rights, of course - a statement of principles ingrained as the essence of the nation and binding not people but governments. So how to measure that freedom now? Simply look at the Bill of Rights. I have, and here is how it appears to me:

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Peaceably assemble to petition one's government? Try that on the route of a Presidential motorcade and you are apt to be either herded into a wired compound or whisked away to jail toute de suite. The First Amendment has not yet been pronounced dead, but is definitely on life support.

Amendment II

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

This is obviously the most rigorously defended Amendment in the country, so it is still relatively healthy. (It is also one of the most vigorously attacked - and by people who would claim to be staunch supporters of the Constitution.) That said, there is one interesting thing about it that I have never heard or seen to be discussed. It is clear that the framers were meticulous in their choice of words throughout. So, read this one carefully. It does not say "…security of the state…", it plainly says "…security of a free state…". Can this mean anything other than that the framers recognized that a threat to a free state need not come only from foreign aggressors but can also be the government of that state itself? That is, the freedom, not just the state, is vulnerable if the citizenry is forcibly disarmed.

Amendment III

No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

No problems here that I am aware of.

Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

It seems almost silly and insulting to anyone reading this in the post 9/11, Patriot Act world to have to comment here. Dead dead dead dead. 100% dead and never to be revived.

Amendment V

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Ditto the 4th Amendment. Extinct as T-Rex and no Jurassic Park in sight.

Amendment VI

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

Ditto the 5th. Ditto the 4th. Long gone. Adios. Sayonara. A bientot. Hasta la vista, Habeas Corpus.

Amendment VII

In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

I don't know, frankly.

Amendment VIII

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

See above, numbers 4, 5 and 6. Requiescat in pace. Oops. wait a minute. Let me think. Silly me. Punishment comes after the conviction. So, if you torture a person in order to get a confession or information from them before you actually charge them with an offense and put them on trial and convict them - IF you actually ever charge them with an offense, put them on trial or convict them - then I suppose it cannot be considered cruel or unusual "punishment", could it? 

Amendment IX

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Dead, but was it not stillborn anyway? Rights retained by the people? Sure.

Amendment X

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

See number 9.

So there it is: a couple of healthy ones, a couple on the shakiest of ground and seemingly doomed, and the others - the important ones - long in the realm of fanciful fiction. Have the terrorists not already won if the nation has lost its soul? 

If I have misinterpreted anything here I'd be delighted to be corrected.

A final observation - relevant in the post 9/11, P.A. universe: I have reread the damned thing over and over and you know what? Nowhere can I find the word "citizen" or "American". I see "people" and "person" used throughout, but not a single "citizen", not a single "American". And, I have checked all the dictionaries I can find and have to conclude that Arabs, Pakistanis, Iraqis and pretty much every other homo sapien on earth qualifies as a "person". Apparently, unlike the current occupiers of the White House and the Hill, the framers were not restrictive in their interpretation of who has inalienable rights. 

“Capital punishment would be more effective as a preventive measure if it were administered prior to the crime.” - Woody Allen

In my last post I made the outrageous statement that, were it up to me, all violent crime would be capital crime. I also said I'd offer an alternative to capital punishment. As well, I discussed one of the main reasons given in opposition to the death penalty. I'll talk first here about the other main reason.

Alongside a perceived lack deterrent value, the main objection to capital punishment would seem to be moral. It is "wrong" for the state to kill people regardless of their acts. Two points strike me about this view:

Firstly, it perplexes me no end that people who hold this view rarely have any problem whatever with the state dropping bombs on or firing cruise missiles at defenseless children or, historically, incinerating hundreds of thousands in Dresden, Tokyo and hundreds of Japanese fishing and farming villages and vaporizing tens of thousands more hapless residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This is acceptable state behavior, but hanging someone who tortures, rapes and murders a child would somehow diminish us all. Go figure.

Secondly, the morality issue is simply not resolvable. Like abortion, there is no common ground and therefore no middle ground possible. Ever. There is no such thing as half-way death available here.

So what is one to do with this argument? Nothing. There is nothing to be done beyond trying to persuade the population one at a time that your particular viewpoint is the "right" one. Bon chance, mes freres.

Okay, on to my alternative. Bear in mind that anything I say is with respect to those who have been convicted not beyond a reasonable doubt but beyond all doubt. Self-confessed murderers or murderers caught in the act or witnessed by several people. As I said in my previous post, far too many people are executed in error. (Far too many meaning "one", if it came down to that.) So, my solution to perhaps satisfy those holding one or the other of these views:

1. Capital punishment is immoral and unacceptable under any circumstances. The state does not have the right to end a person's life.
2. Murderers, by their acts, have relinquished any claim to a right to their own lives and killing them is perfectly acceptable.

They are irreconcilable but perhaps the following might come close.

Incarcerate the guilty party in an unfurnished prison cell, the construction and dimensions of which are determined to be medically adequate for survival but no more. Allow the prisoner no contact or communications with other human beings and no opportunity to leave the cell (other than for medical treatment, if necessary). Lack of human contact includes with guards. Food - nutritionally adequate to sustain life but no more - would be provided through some transfer system preventing visual or verbal connection between the prisoner and the person delivering the food. No reading materials, no television, no nothing. Space, toilet/washing facilities and food. Accompanying each meal would be a cyanide capsule to be used or not as the prisoner wished. Financing of the system would be made through voluntary donation, not taxation. That's it.

Such a system would satisfy the mandate of the moralists that the state not take the prisoner's life. And, I cannot be sure, but imagine that even the most hardened, intransigent proponent of capital punishment would be satisfied that the prisoner's life would not be one worth getting upset over.

I can hear the words "cruel and unusual punishment" rattling around in some readers' brains as I type. Well, tough. That little phrase was a flat out boo-boo by the framers. If punishment is not cruel it is an irritant, not punishment. And a penitentiary in which one is locked in a cage for up to 23 hours a day and forced to co-habitate with a population of decidedly scary people is not "cruel and unusual"? Duh!

That's it. Preserve the biological life. Deny the meaningful life. 

(As I proofread the above a thought struck me: What about an induced coma? Hmmm….) 

“Capital punishment would be more effective as a preventive measure if it were administered prior to the crime.” - Woody Allen

For most of my life I was in favor of capital punishment for murder where there was no doubt about the guilt of the convicted. I had a few reasons for my view:

1. A simple urge for revenge. Not one of my more noble character traits, I'll grant you, but so be it.
2. I could not see any justification for the state (i.e.taxpayers) paying to house, feed, clothe, provide medical and dental care to, train and sometimes entertain someone who had taken a life illegally. Given that some people in society are literally starving, the thought of spending a penny of my money on murderers seemed like a twisted and sick policy and I resented it.
3. I found most arguments against capital punishment to be unpersuasive.

The main argument that always raised the hairs on my neck was that it was not a deterrent. This one I found specious because of two points.

Firstly, it assumes that the purpose of all legal punishment is deterrence to other potential perpetrators. That is simply not always true. Often people are incarcerated where their crime was entirely ad hoc and the circumstances giving rise to it cannot reasonably be expected to ever occur again.

Secondly, and more importantly, the statement itself - "Capital punishment does not deter murder." - falls squarely into that "meaningless" category of statement. That is, it is a negative statement that cannot be proven (though its positive might be).

Of course statistics show no correlation between capital punishment and a reduction in murder rates. So what? Statistics also show that smokers will die years earlier than non-smokers. But those statistics tell us nothing regarding a specific smoker; they only predict probabilities across an entire population. That's fine when calculating insurance premiums, but to apply the same reasoning to capital punishment and murder misses a critical point. If only ONE person anywhere, at any time, stopped and gave thought to the suicidal consequences of their contemplated act and as a result, they did not act and a potential victim's life was spared, then the execution of any number of guilty murderers is justified if deterrence is one's measure of justification.

If anything, I think this whole question of deterrence is one of my "wrong questions" items. There are only 3 possibilities:
1. Capital punishment encourages murder.
2. Capital punishment has no effect on murder rates.
3. Capital punishment deters murder.

Number 1 is provable simply by identifying one murderer who asserts convincingly that he or she was encouraged to their act by the execution of others. Number 2 is problematic, as I point out above, and simply cannot be proven or disproven other than in terms of general populations, not in terms of individual criminal/individual victim. Number 3 might be provable, again, simply by identifying a person who convincingly argues that they were dissuaded from murder through fear of being executed.

The question should not be "Will executing proven murderers deter other potential murders?"; it should be "Will executing proven murderers encourage other potential murders?". That is the only meaningful or consequential question. Unless the answer to that question is "Yes", then if there is only a one in a billion chance that a single murderer will be deterred by the execution of others are we not morally obliged to perform those executions? If we do not, is the murder of that single victim not on our hands because we failed to prevent it?

So, that's how I felt.

Recently though, I have changed my mind for two reasons, the first practical and the second philosophical:

1. DNA technology has brought to light just how widespread erroneous convictions are. There's no complex reasoning needed here. The state executes innocent people. That is unacceptable.

2. This one is more subtle. Consider: An armed man walks into a store to rob it but the store owner manages to disarm him and hold him until the police arrive. No problem here. Now, a man wielding a knife enters a store to rob it and the owner shoots the man? Well, in most jurisdictions there is a very high probability that the store owner will be charged with a crime. I might not agree with that but I do understand it. Clearly there is an underlying principle at work here and that principle is "One may only use force to the extent necessary to eliminate the threat." Once you have eliminated the threat or subdued a perpetrator you cannot go further. Or once you driven them off you cannot chase them out the door and shoot them in the back - unless they committed a murder. It's a debatable principle but it is objective and understandable.

So how does this relate to capital punishment? Simple. Once a murderer has been convicted and imprisoned, where's the threat? It's gone. To press on and execute him/her is not just shooting him in the back as he runs from the store; it is capturing him, tying him up then killing him. My point? The principles that limit action by a citizenry should apply equally to the state itself.

Now, the real truth about how I view the subject? If problem number 1 - the execution of innocents - were eliminated, I could live with problem number 2. In fact, I'd go much further and extend capital punishment to all crimes of violence. Wha!!!! Yup. Start a bar fight - head to the gallows. Smack your wife around - crank up the chair. Call me crazy ( I no doubt am) but from my view ALL acts of violence are inherently attacks on someone's life. We tolerate that or we don't.

I do have a slightly less Draconian alternative that would satisfy me, but I will save that for Part 2.

So, have I managed to offend your sensitivities yet?

(One more minor point about deterence: Executing a killer certainly deters one person from killing: that murderer. That is not necessarily the case when merely incarcerating him, as prison murders and recidivism make abundantly clear.)

"There is one word which may serve as a rule of practice for all one's life - reciprocity." - Confucius

This blog is still very new, obviously, and my readership is not about to threaten Myspace or Facebook, but is growing steadily every day. That's particularly gratifying, given that my subject matter is clearly rather eclectic (or 'all over the map' if you prefer) and my views admittedly a tad eccentric so I cannot depend on building up a core readership in a tightly defined area. That said, I have had a substantial number of hits and correspondence resulting from my posts related to science, evolution, agnosticism and atheism. And many of them have come from people having clicked on either my comment links or other links on sites referencing this blog. I want to acknowledge two such sites and recommend that if these subjects interest you as much as they do me, you perhaps pay both of these sites a visit.

The first is:  http://www.iamanatheist.com

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that I don't really need to explain the main theme of that site to you. Lots of correspondence; lots of give and take; lots of interesting ideas kicked about there in the blog section.

The other is: http://www.faithfullyliberal.com/?p=883

The writer here is definitely not an atheist, but, based on the book review this link takes you to, I think you will agree that he is the farthest thing from a fanatical, unthinking Christian. His critical examination of a Richard Dawkins book is excellent - a near perfect explanation of exactly the sorts of problems I have when reading scientists' "proofs" of the non-existence of god. This man knows a fallacy or a non sequitor when he sees one. Well worth a visit whatever your particular views on these subjects.

“Losing a game is heartbreaking. Losing your sense of excellence or worth is a tragedy.” -  Joe Paterno

The latest monthly global automobile sales figures are out and they mean one thing. Any minute now Toyota will overtake GM and become the largest car company on earth.

It's amazing. When I was a kid, GM was not just the largest automobile company, it was the largest company on earth, period. It was the symbol of America itself: proud, monolithic, innovative, bold and the envy of all. The suggestion that in the future it could be surpassed by, of all things, a Japanese company would have brought howls of laughter. If you are old enough you will remember, there was a time when "Made in Japan" meant cheap and shoddy imitations - the time when Japan renamed a city "USA" and another "Sheffield" and when Japanese companies adopted names like "Roberts" to hide the origins of their products. Then came SONY….

How things can change in a few decades when the stewards of wealth and power (and other desirable assets - such as freedom) are not the creators of them, but rather the inheritors of them. GM is, indeed, the perfect symbol of America.

So, how could this happen? I am no economist, historian or other kind of expert, but I do have an opinion. A few things that come to mind that I believe indicate the nature of the prevailing attitudes and cynicism that allowed the change. In the past few decades the following things have happened or have been ongoing conditions:

1. The ratio of engineers educated to lawyers educated in Japan is about the reciprocal of the figure for America - something like 3 lawyers for every 7 engineers in Japan and 7 lawyers for every 3 engineers in America.

2. A similar reciprocal is found in R&D. American companies spend the vast majority of their R&D budgets creating new products. Japanese companies spend theirs in perfecting existing products.

3. At some point (in the 60's, I believe) GM informed it's dealers that they would henceforth see lower profit margins on the sale of new cars but they would more than make up the loss with increased profits from service - i.e. the beginning of planned obsolescence and such reprehensible, customer-gouging practices as creating screws for headlamp fittings with odd heads that could only be serviced by a GM mechanic having the GM proprietary tool.

4. At another point (the 80's?) GM crossed a line: It began making most, if not all, of its profit not from manufacturing and selling vehicles, but from financing them (GMAC). Can GM legitimately even be called an auto company anymore? Is it not, in reality, a financial services company with a manufacturing division?

There are no doubt a million arcane economic reasons for GM's decline in the market and Toyota's rise (including the obviously non-esoteric one - Toyota makes good cars and GM, by comparison, doesn't), but those few notes above illustrate the atmosphere in which this monumental shift in power has taken place. GM lost sight of its founding principles; Toyota remained focused on its. Interesting.

There was a time when it could be said that America was far and away the most free nation on earth. Can that still be said, or is a Toyota or two about to slip into that position being gradually, but willingly, abandoned by Washington and its electors?

"This too shall pass." - King Solomon

When in high school a very well-read friend once told me of an author who postulated that "god" would be the end product of evolution. How elegantly poetic and ironic, I thought - God as an effect of the material universe rather than its cause. I am not quite ready to subscribe to that particular theory of course, being agnostic both about god and evolution by natural selection, but it has made me think about the subject from time to time. Where is evolution going? What's at then end of the road?

For the sake of considering the question you may take it that I am not agnostic about EBNS but that I am a card carrying devotee.

I do have an answer - speculative, to be sure, but possessing that simplicity that appeals to me and my "draw me a picture" mind. So here goes, evolution will have an end product, assuming:

1. There is enough time. By this I mean assuming the planet is not prematurely destroyed by a meteorite or other calamity and assuming that the "real" god doesn't finally recognize his experiment with this "life" business as being the catastrophic failure it is and decide to just put an end the whole thing once and for all.
2. Viruses remain as they are - unconquered, rapidly and endlessly mutating.
3. There is potentially at least one form of virus that would be lethal to each species.
4. Humans do not manage to build a gadget that allows us to travel faster than the speed of light so do not manage to get off this mudball when things begin to get dodgey.

If these assumptions prove true, methinks the final product of the evolution of life will be no life. Eventually viruses will mutate to forms that will be lethal to species after species until there are no species, and therefore no host cells, left in which the viruses themselves can replicate.

That's it. No lenghty exegesis with countless citations. No punch line. Just my notion in a nutshell.

This is the way the world ends; not with a bang but a sniffle.

"Because it's there."  - Sir Edmund Hillary 1919-2008

Three news stories made an impression on me as a very young boy: the Korean War, Roger Bannister running a sub-four minute mile, and Edmund Hillary climbing Mount Everest. They impressed me and stuck in my mind, though I had not the foggiest notion of their meaning. In retrospect it is interesting. These events illustrate three manifestations of a single defining characteristic of humans - the genetic imperative to exercise control / impose one's will. In Bannister's case, control of oneself. In Hillary's, control of the environment. And the third, that most odious of all human activities, the imposition of will on others.

Hillary's feat, though repeated, still astonishes me when I consider it carefully. I regard him as perhaps the last true adventurer. Since Everest, hundreds of people have accomplished hundreds of different unthinkable feats but none, to me, have that mystique of Everest - sans Kevlar, Thinsulate and GPS. Billionaires bounce around the globe in their multi-million dollar, space-age contraptions trying to achieve this or beat that record, and it all leaves me sighing and thinking "So what?"

It brings to mind the Guiness Book of Records. When originally published it was a dry but informative and entertaining listing of generally unintentional superlatives: the man with the longest hair or fingernails, the longest a person has ever gone without water, and so forth. Now, it is a contrived event. People invent activities and then get tested or scrutinized to establish that "Yes, by golly, you have kept your big toe in icy water longer than any other human ever recorded!" Similarly, it seems all human activities originally engaged in for the sheer exuberance and joy of the activity itself have to be quantified. We make contests of things that should simply be enjoyed or savored. Surfing, figure skating, sky diving. Bungee jumping contests!!!!

Another part of Sir Edmund's legacy is not so amusing as it is sad. Since Hillary and Tenzing-Norgay* first summited, there have been over 3500 expeditions, over 2000 deaths, summits by the blind and the handicapped and anyone else with the tens of thousands of dollars needed to obtain a permit. Now, the Mother God, Chomolungma is a carnival attraction - just a big rock, littered with dead bodies and refuse. A testament to hubris, irresponsibility and insensitivity. Where Hillary climbed it "Because it's there." it is now just an opportunity to say "How cool am I! Bet you can't do that!"

I cannot say much about Hillary the man because I just don't know much. It seems though that he could not be more different from today's "been there, done that", "where's the buzz" extreme action type. He devoted much of his life to the care of not just Everest but the people who lived near it and have come to depend on it. He was, like Jacques Cousteau, one of the original adventurers with a purpose and a conscience. A genuine national hero for New Zealand.

* True to his word, Hillary took to the grave his promise never to reveal whether it was the Kiwi or the Shirpa whose foot first alighted on the peak.

____________________________________

 I trust everyone appreciates the gargantuan self restraint it required to not title this post "Today They Laid to Rest the Wrong Hillary". Bad dog! Down boy!!!

“Luck is not something you can mention in the presence of self-made men.” - E. B. White

As everyone knows, for the past few years the most successful shows on television have been reality shows - much to the delight of producers and the chagrin of writers and actors. The first was Survivor and the most successful of late The Apprentice. Survivor has nothing to do with surviving unforgiving environments, of course, but is much more akin to an excercise in office politics. For it’s part, The Apprentice has nothing to do with apprenticeship but more resembles a freshman hazing. Nonetheless, comparing these two shows gave rise to a notion for a reality show I would watch faithfully. First, some background regarding my viewpoint here:

Rich people and entrepreneurs would have us believe that they are who they are because of a few essential character traits: imagination, determination and diligence probably being the key ones. In other words, they deserve their wealth and power. They earned it. Well, maybe. Sometimes. There certainly are those who have risen from nothing and against all odds accumulated vast wealth. On the other hand, there are the many who have simply inherited their wealth or have been, for want of a better word, lucky. Would Bill Gates, despite his obvious brain power, be Bill Gates had he been born to beggars in Calcutta or Nairobi, rather than to a wealthy family of American lawyers? Would The Donald be flying around in his private jets and pontificating to the masses on subjects about which he probably knows nothing if he were not blessed with a father there to bail him out when he screwed things up?

So, The Apprentice Survivor:

The players:

- 3 or 4 homeless, penniless people from any North American city who believe they can succeed if given an opportunity.
- 3 or 4 wealthy businessmen or entrepreneurs who believe their success has been entirely of their own making.

Each player is stripped of credit cards, Blackberries etc and given $500. They are all dropped in the downtown of a foreign city having a large number of Englilsh speakers. They may do whatever they like with the following prohibitions:

1. They may not make contact with anyone - business or personal - currently in their life or in their past life.
2. They may not engage in any business activity they have previously engaged in. (So that, say, someone in the textile industry could not say “Aha. I know where I can but $300 worth of material and where I can sell it for $450.”)

The playing field must be as level as it can be made to be. Assets: $500 and one’s brain. Period.

So, we follow them for 6 months - or whatever the length of a television season is.

At then end, we tally the assets. If the winnner is an entrepreneur, the show donates a million dollars to charity or sets up a business school scholarship in the winner’s name. If the winner is one of the indigent, the entrepreneur with the lowest total must pay the winner one million dollars and ALL the entrpreneurs must run full page ads in all major business papers and magazines carryng their picture, that of the winner (in indigent stage) and a bold caption ,“I, Joe Smarty Pants, was beaten in business by a bum.”

Think there’d be any takers amongst the Moet et Chandon set?

I don’t.

“False face must hide what the false heart doth know.” - Shakespeare

In a recent post I suggested that the incident in the Straits of Hormuz a week or so ago in which Iranian military speedboats allegedly harassed and threatened U.S. warships sounded suspicious (and conveniently timed) and was possibly just the latest stage in Dubbya’s attempts to foment a hot war with Iran. Since then the Iranians have released their own video version that paints the incident in a different light than the one originally seen and the Pentagon’s explanations change by the day. The latest, and thus far wackiest, account, involves some phantom of the airwaves disgustingly referred to as “The Filipino Monkey”, and is explained in some detail by Justin Raimondo over at AntiWar.com. Check it out.

More and more it seems that if one wishes to learn about local fires or road closures or bank robberies, the local television news will do nicely. But as the source and focus of the news is farther away it becomes less reliable and when it reaches the geo-political level it less resembles being given information than being handed an puzzle or riddle.

It amazes me that even when the members of the public are shown - over and over again - that their governments lie to them, by way of both real news (Gulf of Tonkin, Iraq’s WMD and Al Quaeda connection) and hyperbolic satirical fiction (e.g. Wag The Dog), it continues to accept that what is being said by that charming TV anchor has real meaning. I think a good first step to correcting this willful naivety might be for news outlets to adopt a policy whereby every item is introduced with the word “Maybe”.