In a news conference soon after the release of the corral, Staff Superintendent Jeff McGuire said of the detainees, “To those people, I cannot apologize to them, and I won’t.” He called the situation “unfortunate,” but said officers had the right to detain the group.

Wait, what? Let’s hear that again.

officers had the right to detain the group.

I wonder where this right came from? I’m sure that some of us might recall that we learned at some point in our lives that the people being kettled also had a couple of rights. Let’s see, what were they again?

DETENTION OR IMPRISONMENT.

9. Everyone has the right not to be arbitrarily detained or imprisoned.

---

ARREST OR DETENTION.

10. Everyone has the right on arrest or detention

(a) to be informed promptly of the reasons therefor;

(b) to retain and instruct counsel without delay and to be informed of that right; and

(c) to have the validity of the detention determined by way of habeas corpus and to be released if the detention is not lawful.

Now, we all know that law is written in code and that words don’t always mean what they seem to, so let’s be a bit clearer:

arbitrary
adj

1. Determined or founded on individual discretion, especially when based on one’s opinion, judgment, or prejudice, rather than on fixed rules, procedures, or law. See also abuse of discretion.
2. Absolute; despotic; completely unreasonable; lacking any rational basis. This type of decision is often called arbitrary and capricious.

So, by definition 1, which is clearly the relevant one (definition two is for “arbitrary and capricious”), section 9 of the charter reads:

9. Everyone has the right not to be detained or imprisoned based on individual discretion especially when based on opinion, judgment or prejudice, rather than on fixed rules, procedures or law.

And if we go back to that article, it tells why they decided to kettle people in the first place:

Chief Blair maintained on Thursday that the decision to box in the crowd of 250 was appropriate, claiming that major incident commanders were concerned for the public’s safety after 60 armed “black-bloc tactic” protesters were apprehended heading to the area.

Well, if I’m reading this properly, this means that, in their opinion, people were in danger, and they used their judgment and chose to kettle everyone. Whether police judgment about public safety was correct or not, they violated the charter rights of everyone in the kettle (and a few thousand others over the whole weekend), because they didn’t have a warrant and they obviously didn’t catch most of them breaking any law. There’s not much room to argue this. It’s straight definition.

For example, the police had every right to arrest and maybe lightly pummel the vandals on Saturday, when they were smashing windows and igniting cop cruisers. It wouldn’t have been tricky, because they outnumbered the black bloc at least 10:1¹. There was an established, lawful procedure in place for arresting people who were actively breaking the law, and nobody would have argued. Everything else was a lot less clear.

Also, does it matter that the police violated any one’s rights? In terms of enforcement, the charter gives everyone the right to take their complaints to court, “to obtain such remedy as the court considers appropriate and just in the circumstances.” If it’s any indication as to what the court considers appropriate, some G20 detainees were released on bail conditions that violate their section 2 charter rights (expression, peaceful assembly, and association, specifically). So maybe don’t get your hopes up.

As Tim Garland from the Integrated Security Unit puts it, “If it’s serving the public good, yeah, it’s a violation of the Charter, but it’s a necessary violation. That’s the beauty of the charter, it’s a living document.”²

1. Apparently they still didn’t feel safe sending small groups of armed and armoured police against comparatively unarmed civilians in black T-shirts. As one Canadian Armed Forces member put it, “if you don’t want to get injured on the job… be a yoga instructor.”
2. “Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.” –William Pitt the younger

This sort of thing has happened before. Here’s the shape of it: some strange people start doing something. It’s misunderstood, except by a handful of people. That handful of people just happen to be “cool,” and so the whole thing draws more people, understand it or not. Eventually the strange people that started it get tired of it or the stuff that’s grown up around it, and they leave. The subculture stops evolving and turns into a historical edifice or parody maintained by people who mostly never understood it in the first place.

Everyone likes a bandwagon, and that’s why after the punks we have Punks¹, after raves we have Ravers, after hippies we have Hippies, after hipsters we have Hipsters. In all of these we have (occasionally very convincing) vestiges of the original philosophy, politics and attitudes that started the movements, but really, they’re just party scenes.

And hey, what is it that everyone hates about the Hipsters? The almost complete conformity under the banner of rebellion? The self-mockery? The shitty fashion? Wait, which party scene am I talking about again?

But to return to my original point: everyone accepts that it’s poor form to make fun of Punks, Ravers, and Hippies. They’re all adorable in a way, like lost puppies with strange hair. Hipsters are really no different, and if you leave them alone then all those negative attention seekers will move on and this mess will wind down to a niche just like every other dead party scene.

1)Yes, this is the same capitalization scheme used to discuss political philosophies, to distinguish followers a philosophy (like conservatives) from the party that forms around it (like Conservatives). It’s vaguely surprising how perfectly the distinction holds when talking about subcultures instead of political philosophy, until you grant that all of these movements had sound and subtle philosophical plumbing underneath them at the start.

I’m a new driver, and I’ve heard that being passed by cyclists can strike you gay.  I’m scared, what should I do?

Well, Ben, you heard correctly.  Being passed by a cyclist while driving can strike you gay.  It’s only natural, as you sit there powerless in your car or truck, to imagine those powerful legs and glutes pounding your fleshy bottom (with prosthetics as required) for hours on end.

Researchers in the field call it queeralysis, and if you drive a large truck or sports car, you may be especially vulnerable.  And we’re sure you are aware of the downsides of being struck queer: constant discrimination, no longer being able to call everyone a fag, possibly dramatic changes in hygiene and style, and an enjoyment of TV shows that are only aired on expensive premium channels.

Fortunately, you can protect yourself. There are several tactics that you can use to delay or even avoid being struck queer.

1) Pass the cyclist as quickly as possible, even if it means speeding. It is very important that you also rev your engine as you pass, to signal to the cyclist that you meant to let them by, and that you could have overtaken them at any time with your powerful machine, and that you didn’t just spend the last thirty seconds imagining them filling every inch of you.

2) Shout at the cyclist. This technique has been used since the time of your ancient, lemur-like ancestors to reclaim dominance and heterosexuality.  ”Get off the road!” is one suggested line, since it gives an impression of authority, wisdom and straightness, but if you feel the strike coming and you can say it without a quaver in your voice, try shouting “Fag!” or “Dyke!”  Since this technique might lead to eye contact with the cyclist, we suggest that you clench your anus before shouting, in case they use witchcraft to teleport inside you.

3) Endanger the cyclist. Remember, the goal here isn’t to kill, only to prove that you’re not queer.  If they don’t survive the encounter, they will never know.  Passing them as closely as possible and then cutting them off is a classic; try stepping on your brake afterwards for a more powerful effect.  Again, we suggest clenching your anus to protect against witchcraft.

So there you go, Ben.  With the appropriate use of these techniques, you will be as well equipped as possible to resist queeralysis.  Good luck, and happy driving!

I have always held that neither evidence, logic, reason, observation, math, nor any other liberal socialist propaganda technique constitutes a rebuttal of anything I believe based on supposition, gossip, superstition, illiteracy, or incomprehension.  Believing things that are verifiable has never helped anyone make good decisions, and there are studies that prove this [1, 2, 3]. It follows naturally that nobody should ever try to teach me anything unless I already agree with it or know it, and that goes doubly for any children I might have (because they’re chattel until they turn 18). It makes me so happy to see that the government agrees with me:

“This government supports a very, very fundamental right and that is parental rights with respect to education,” said Premier Ed Stelmach.

Awesome!

Now that we’re finally making some progress on denying the existence of evolution and homosexuality, there’s another issue that I’d like to raise again, because it’s lain dormant for too long. That, friends, is heliocentrism.

I’ve thought this for a long time, and had merchandise for it even.  But I think that the time to act has finally arrived.

We geocentrists have mountains of evidence to support the truth of our statements.  Even the scientamists will admit there’s nothing wrong with our view of solar mechanics: those lovely elliptical orbital equations of theirs still work if you make Earth the origin, they just get really huge and ugly.  And hey, you know what?  So’s your liberal heliocentrist face.

So let’s get out there and spread the word.  I want to make it as difficult as possible to teach that the Earth moves around the sun.  Write letters to your overpaid conservative wankjob bureaucrat!  March in the streets!  Spin fire poi while shouting, “This is the way the universe works, bitches!  Deal with it!”

1. Kiss
2. My
3. Ass

But what came to mind earlier today—thanks to this lies.com link (courtesy of blunt object)—is that print media, even with most of it on the verge of collapse, is probably the last actual home of investigative journalism.

Think about it: in a newspaper, a story can be 300-500 words, easily.  If it’s a big deal, it could break 1000.  That’s room to present a few things in some reasonable detail.  Print magazines can go even further.  For example, Rolling Stone recently did a detailed article about AIG and the wall street collapse.  It’s a really good one, and it’s long.  Some research and digging went into this.  Matt Taibbi had more access to the relevant information than your standard blogosphere hack.  He was also paid to do his research, which is something else that most bloggers don’t have going for them.

On the other hand, TV news and the blogosphere both suffer from an alarming flood of populism, because they have tremendous flexibility in their structure and what they cover in response to what’s popular.  Newspapers would secretly love to be in the same boat, because it’s great for advertising revenue.  But it has a price.  Check out the face of the new media:

Top WordPress.com blogs today

1. CNN Political Ticker
2. FAIL Blog: Pictures and Videos of Owned, Pwnd and Fail Moments
3. Celebrity Baby Blog – People.com
4. PEOPLE TV Watch

So we have a condensed version of a TV news network that uses almost exclusively wire-service material and sucks even more when it doesn’t, and then we have embarrassing pictures, babies and celebrities.

And hey, this publication already exists.

Jon Henley’s contribution is a pretty straightforward if timid-sounding look at our views and expectations of work and how they change in a recession.  I suppose the timidity is honest, and he seems to express how a lot of people feel.  It feels very superficial and fearmongering to me.

But then the voice changes dramatically, into de Botton’s unmistakable lulling pastel tone, and the article disconnects from reality, dropping into absurdly pastoral descriptions of office life that drip irony so thick and pure that Jonathan Swift would gasp.

Coming off of the tone of the first half, de Botton says the most ludicrous things without setting off many alarm bells. He talks of business cards as convenient definitions of identity, rather than having to discover one through contemplation.  He talks about the reversal of civility at work and at home: “How politely we tend to behave at work, next to the insults we throw at one another at home, where there is no HR department to coax us into being more civilised.”  He talks about employers’ concern for their employees’ well-being, and how they demand contentment from them, instead of simply beating them into line like they used to.  He talks about the bureaucratic passive-aggressive organization, the attempts to obscure the workplace hierarchy… it goes on.  At the climax, he even claims that offices are sexy.  Right. It’s probably the most brilliant piece of satire I’ve read in years.

Reading this makes me remember the feeling of unemployment.  Yes, there was worrying about money and making rent, but more significantly there was a feeling of freedom, that the day was mine to seize or waste as I saw fit.  And it reminds me how many of them I wasted.

Office jobs are a tradeoff: your life for steady money.  Yes, there’s talk of people pursuing their passions in evenings and on their weekends, but how many people actually do that?  You come home from an office, drained, and once you’ve dealt with dinner and cleaned up a bit, you have one or two exhausted hours to attack your passions.  Let’s admit that it’s pretty much impossible.  No non-trivial pursuit can thrive on such slender resources.

It becomes a matter of what you want out of your life, and what you want to do with it.  If you can measure it monitarily, as houses, cars, TVs, vacations, fancy clothes, then an office job might suit you perfectly.  The last few years have taught me that I can’t do this, and they did it in a way that leaves no room for argument.  I’ve worked for jack all, I’ve worked for mad cash.  I’ve had the big TV and leather couch, lived in the posh urban condos and a beautiful house in one of the nicest neighbourhoods in the world, and I’ve lived in a small basement bedroom.  My ceilings have been between 7 and 20 feet.  It turns out that it made very little difference. If I’m not engaged, I won’t be happy. Repetition doesn’t promote engagement.

I think my office days are numbered, and the number is rather small. I don’t know what will come next, but I’ll be stronger, because the memory of office work will motivate me.

To begin with, the pope is certainly right about at least one thing: Condoms have been disappointingly ineffective in the fight against AIDS in Africa. In Cameroon, for example, the country the pope was flying to when he made his notorious remark, condom sales more than doubled from 6 million in 1992 to 15 million in 2001. Meanwhile, HIV prevalence tripled from three per cent to nine per cent. Botswana, one of the best-governed countries in Africa, was quick to jump on the condom bandwagon in the early 1990s. Its reward: about a quarter of its adults are infected with HIV.

It’s hard to even know where to begin here.  Condom sales in Cameroon more than doubled to 15 million in 2001 and the infection rate is increasing: the country had 16 million people in 2003, meaning that people were using about 1.88 condoms per year (two people use one at once, technically).  Botswana, a country of just under two million in 2003, bought about three million condoms in 2001.  That’s about 3 condoms per year¹.  I don’t know, maybe they sell reusable ones.  Maybe I’m just a huge slut and my idea of how often people have sex is hyperinflated.  Maybe priests are more in touch.  But clearly, condoms are a failure, and we should stop promoting their use.

Well, I wound up showing these numbers are stupid and misleading even before getting to the fact that they’re bad statistics, but they are: does promoting condom use cause an increase in infection rates, or does an increase in infection rates cause promotion of condom use?  Gee, that’s a hard one.

But wait, there’s more!  And “better”!

A shift in sexual norms? Partner-reduction? Hmmm, isn’t that what Pope Benedict is promoting? With, by the way, much enthusiastic support from African women who find the notion of faithful husbands rather endearing. And with some success. Uganda, for example, which has long emphasized abstinence and fidelity over condoms, has seen its HIV prevalence rate drop from more than 15 per cent to less than six per cent in 10 years. And campaigns to discourage multiple partnerships have also had encouraging results in Kenya and Swaziland, with corresponding drops in HIV rates.

Wow!

First of all, a “prevalence” rate is the percentage of infected adults.  Having the prevalence rate drop from 15% to 6% over a decade doesn’t mean you’ve stopped the spread of AIDS, it means one of two things:

1. 9% of your population has keeled over dead.
2. Your uninfected population has more than doubled.

I don’t know about you, but I’m leaning towards number two.

Also, over the period in question, Uganda heavily promoted the use of condoms.  And to boot, since they jumped on the abstinence-based bandwagon, the infection rate has risen again.

So seriously, for Chist’s sake (literally), learn some statistics.  Or, you know, go on deliberately misleading the general public at the expense of millions of Africans.

1) For amusement’s sake, looking for the numbers in Botswana brought up this article, which calls 3 condoms per couple-year “condom-flooded.”

I don’t know too much of the native history for the area, but from what I recall they were at least semi-nomadic large game hunters, so they were here because the things they killed were here.  That’s fine.  That’s sane, there’s a logic to it.  But what about the settlers?  What was up with them?

Just imagine this: you live in Europe, in a “developed country” with “civilization,” and it sucks so hard that getting on a long, uncomfortable boat ride to a different continent so you can trek across thousands of kilometres of wilderness to do some subsistence farming on a few hundred acres of frozen birch forest in the middle of nowhere was a step up.

So the fact that this area is even inhabited is sort of a telling proof of the scale of the inequality European society at the time.  While we had people living in lovely countryside estates exchanging repartée and poncy English poets dying of syphilis and the leisure class enjoying their tea, we had a lot more people thinking, “man, digging into the frozen earth in the middle of nowhere would be such a great opportunity.”

And the big deal was land ownership.  Yup, it might be a chunk of forest.  It might be a hundred miles from the nearest store, where an unbathed man with a raccoon on his head would sell you salt and medium-sized sharp rocks.  But it was your chunk of forest, and if anyone—even raccoon man—tried to take it you’d fuck them up.  And probably eat them, because it’d be a pleasant change from birch bark and turnips.

Strangely, everything around here related to settlers glosses over winter.  The Ukranian village has some stuff like a burdei, and in the summer there are costumed actors living in these places, but that’s only during the summer.  Once fall hits, they’re done, and seriously: look at that photo.  Imagine spending a winter snowed into that.  Yes, this was a step up.  Crazy.

The crux of it seems to reduce to one question: “What do you mean by ‘meaningful’?”  Purposeful?  Satisfying?  Does it need to benefit society?  Would actually doing meaningful work benefit it anyway, by default?  I decided to settle for “satisfying,” which seems like it would be close enough, since if I was satisfied with my work, by definition I wouldn’t care too much about the rest of it.  And when I tried to think of what kind of work could be satisfying, I couldn’t think of anything.

So I thought I’d try consulting the blogosphere.  What else are people thinking about the idea of “meaningful work?”  Well, it turns out that most of what Technorati finds are management blogs.  “How can we increase employee engagement?  Make them feel like their work is meaningful.”

The only place that really touched on the question I was thinking of was the ever-excellent 37signals blog.  To quote their quote:

Meaningful work is work that is autonomous. Work that is complex, that occupies your mind. And work where there is a relationship between effort and reward — for everything you put in, you get something out…

This actually injects a touch of humour into the material from the management blogs, because if we go back and look at the history of management, the trend since at least Wealth of Nations has been to ever more rigorously remove these elements from all jobs.  In that masterful bit of work, Adam Smith described how to take the incredibly rewarding job of making pins and make it twenty times as productive by making it one twentieth as interesting: instead of making entire pins, workers would make pin heads, or pin shafts, or they’d sharpen the pins, or they’d attach the heads to the shafts.  In the years following that, management developed into a “scientific discipline,” eventually hitting Taylorism where people were deliberately confused with machines.  Since this is giving me flashbacks of a wonderful Sociology class, and since it’s directly relevant, I’d suggest reading Harry Braverman’s Labour and Monopoly Capital: The Degredation of Work in the Twentieth Century, if you haven’t and are interested in the history of jobs getting shittier.

That practice continues to this day, with performance reviews purely in terms of work units per time period, with workflows broken down to the tiniest tasks, and even “knowledge workers” reduced to doing short, repetitive tasks.  Interestingly, the job of management—extracting as much as you can from the people under you without getting caught breaking the law—hasn’t changed much at all, and they still get to do this rewarding task from beginning to end without any division whatsoever.

This really leaves me no closer to an idea of what would constitute meaningful or satisfying work, but at least it was interesting to think about why it’s so hard to find.

(For historical reasons, this article refers to the first global collapse of civilization on Earth in 2018.  For subsequent collapses, or for the 2416 implosion of Mars from overmining, refer to “Great Global Collapse (disambiguation).”)

By the turn of the twenty-first century, most of the Earth had developed primitive, post-tribal civilizations¹.  These civilizations were oligarchical, with hereditary ruling castes that distinguished themselves with claims of wealth, or divine or popular mandate². These civilizations were primarily guided by mysticism; at the time of the first collapse, the two predominant forms were bibliomancy³ and economics⁴.

The Economists in particular supported and fought for increasingly opulent acts of worship, which resulted in a sharp rise in the consumption of natural resources and the emission of pollutants.  It also caused a worldwide reduction in well-being, which the clergy excused with claims that those who traded piously, in the name of  Growth and Profit, would be provided for after death⁵.

Some evidence survives that suggests a small but significant number of dissenters argued that this worship would cause the destruction of the earth, the destruction of the biosphere, the end of human civilization, among other things⁶.  Evidence also survives suggesting that many of these dissenters were followers of a cult of “Scientists” who worshipped observation, statistics⁷ and repeatability.  We also know that their religion was heavily ridiculed by both the bibliomancers and the economists⁸, who waged a decades-long propaganda war against it⁹ (it is noteworthy that, at the time, the average human lifespan was less than one century) on a scale not seen for several hundred years after the collapse¹⁰. It eventually erupted into violence, leading to the burning at the stake of several thousands of Scientists in “witch trials,” most famously at Salem, where Albert Einstein¹¹ was executed.

Records show that the collapse began in earnest in 2012. By this point, its inevitability was widely known and even admitted by the leading mystics, who suggested only renewed faith in their ideals would solve their problems. For reasons that are not now understood, they refused to expand their ability to generate electricity, and the power distribution system in north America failed completely after a July hurricane forced several power stations offline¹². As an emergency measure, the grid was broken into smaller regional sections and hundreds of dirty coal generating stations were brought to account for the shortfall of local supply.

The resulting rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide is attributed to the unexpected collapse of the Greenland ice shelf later that fall, which spilled into the northern Atlantic ocean and stopped the mid-Atlantic conveyor current. Without the temperature balancing influence of the current, Europe suffered the coldest winter since the previous ice age¹³, leading to energy rationing and thousands of deaths, and the equatorial regions and southern hemisphere faced record heat. Previously fertile regions were flooded by savage tropical storms or seared with drought, resulting in massive crop failures in South America, and Asia.

In the resulting famine, the North American meat farming industry struggled to feed their stock, and decided to feed it to itself, mixed with effluent from the deforestation industry¹⁴. This, combined with widespread misuse of medicines and bizarre farming methods are widely attributed to the appearance of the Delinquent Bovine Pellucidum Influenza. Marked by visible symptoms similar to leprosy and causing extreme aggression in the week prior to death, this highly contagious disease would claim an estimated five billion victims by 2050.

The reactions to these combined crises are difficult to ascertain, as the information surviving this period was largely stored on delicate wafers of magnetic material or on reflective discs that were vulnerable to oxidation¹⁵.  The bibliomancers suggested inaction and prayer, in the belief that the arrival of a saviour was imminent.  Excavations in the 25th century¹⁶ discovered recordings of hymns that identify this saviour as the “Funk Soul Brother.”  Accounts of what the Funk Soul Brother was supposed to do are not clear, but the belief in his timely arrival was widespread.  The Economists suggested that the ruling parties “continue to aggressively infuse capital to promote growth in key industries.”  No records clarifying the meaning of this phrase survive.  In the meantime, surviving evidence suggests that the ruling elite in north America staged fights between donkeys and elephants for the distraction of the public¹⁷.  Exactly why this happened before any preventative action is unknown.  Other responses are even more inexplicable: one group called “The Church of the Black Star” suggested that plenty would be restored directly from the lower digestive tract of the north American emperor, Hope Obama.

After the collapse, there are no surviving records except for those kept by a group who referred to themselves as “The Foundation.”¹⁸ After nearly a century of violence, most of the population had reverted to subsistence farming.  At this point, the Foundation spread out from its headquarters in the Nelson valley in the former state of Canada in an attempt to restore technological civilization.

1. See “Neolithic Cultures”.
2. See “Divine Right of Presidents”.
3. A belief that books—especially old, long and boring ones written by schizophrenics and edited by sociopaths—could reveal all truth. See “Neolithic Mysticism”.
4. A school of mysticism which claimed to conjure things by exchanging them back and forth until they got bigger. See “Neolithic Mysticism”.
5. This seems to be a recurring theme in neolithic religions.  For a more detailed discussion, see “Neolithic Cultures”.
6. For example, the return of a supernatural extraterrestrial named Elvis.  For more detail, see “Neolithic Scientism.”
7. For the branch of mathematics involving probability, see “Probabilistic Mathematics”.  For the practice generating numbers to support unfounded claims of causality, see “Pseudoscientism.”
8. Both schools wanted to know why Scientism didn’t explain the existence of their gods.
9. Most famously, the “Never Trust Something That Leads To Cellular Phones” campaign of 2011.
10. The campaign to create a chimpanzee nation on the asteroid 243 Ida was considerably larger and lengthier, lasting a full century and covering four planets.  See “The Chimpish Question”.
11. His “General Relativity” was wrong, but impressive for its time.  He is also believed to be responsible for discovering a method of creating beer with bubbles.
12. See “Hurricane Edison”.
13. Some people were proud that humanity finally made one of its own.  See “Recent Ice Ages”.
14. Many people made a living from cutting down trees so they could be cut into uniform blocks and left to rot in yards.  The parts that could not be cut into appropriately sized pieces were often ground to a powder and used to absorb sewage as well as feed animals and poor people.
15. See “Neolithic Tools”.
16. See “Excavation of Ancient New York”.
17. This was the most popular arena event since the Roman Empire fed Christians to large cats.  For more detail, see “United States Congress”.
18. This organization was deliberately formed in the  years before the collapse to preserve knowledge and speed the return of civilization.  For more information, see “Foundation, The (Post-Neolithic)”.