September 4, 2010 · 9:00 am

Suggestion Saturday: September 4, 2010

Here is this week’s list of blog posts, comics, articles, photos, videos and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

Why Strong Female Characters are Bad for Women.

I think the major problem here is that women were clamoring for “strong female characters,” and male writers misunderstood.  They thought the feminists meant [Strong Female] Characters.  The feminists meant [Strong Characters], Female. So the feminists shouldn’t have said “we want more strong female characters.”  They should have said “we want more WEAK female characters.”  Not “weak” meaning “Damsel in Distress.”  “Weak” meaning “flawed.”

Regrets of the Dying. A must-read top 5 list. The last point was my favourite.

What Would a Nerd Wear? I’m one of the least fashion-conscious people in North America. If it fits by any stretch of the imagination I wear what I already own until it falls apart. The author of this blog also wears more dresses in a week than I’ve worn in the last five years. And yet there’s still something intriguing about this outfit.

Randy Travis – On the Other Hand. My Dad sent me a link to this country music song whose shares a title with this blog. I’d never heard the song before, but Randy Travis somehow reminds my ears of childhood. Maybe Dad played some of his other songs around the house?

Fear Not. What does Pascal’s Wager have to do with convincing a small, frightened child that there really isn’t a monster hiding beneath his or her bed? Even more importantly, is fear contagious?

This tickled my funny bone:

Cyanide and Happiness, a daily webcomic
Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

What have you been reading?

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September 2, 2010 · 9:00 am

Pet Your Dog, Not Your Date

There were many things that the school that I attended from the mid 90s to early 00s did well. Sex education was not one of them.  The midwestern community that I lived in was rural, religious and conservative and the powers that be had determined that the best thing they could teach teenagers about sex is how dangerous it was so we wouldn’t have anything to do with it. Even if the curriculum they chose for us had to lie to convince us to remain or to become abstinent.

A few highlights from my adventures in abstinence-only sex education as a young teen:

Pet Your Dog, Not Your Date

This is the workbook page that stands out the most in my memory. The point being, sublimate your erotic energy into strengthening your emotional bonds, not substitute your pet for your significant other. (er, I hope.)

I’ve never actually figured out why this phrase ever saw the light of day. It’s ripe for mis-interpretation and doesn’t address any practical methods for understanding or coming to accept one’s emerging sexuality.

Hole-y Condoms

Holes too tiny to see with the naked eye, they argued, but large enough for the AIDS virus and sperm to sneak through could be found in every condom available for sale. There was a drawing in our textbook of sperm swimming through holes in a condom. Other forms of birth control were mentioned briefly as well, but only to point out their failure rates and the potential side effects of each type of contraception. Even sterilization, we were warned, could fail to prevent a pregnancy. And no form of birth control could protect our hearts.

Men Want Sex, Women Want Romance

(un)Remarkably, at least for that time and place,  the exercises we were to consider virtually always involved the myriad of ways in which a teenage girl could say no to sex with her would-be (male) suitor. Rarely a teenage male protagonist would ponder how to preserve his manliness without having sex with his lady-friend. In either scenario, though, it was assumed that one member of the (always heterosexual) couple yearned for sex from the depths of their loins, the other member of the couple wasn’t ready and that each of them would always assume the same role in that aspect of their relationship.

Here’s the thing: I felt something was wrong from the very beginning of this class and the condom hole mythlead me to assume that everything they said about sex was a lie.Other than the basic physiology of the reproductive organs and a few other simple biological facts, I’ve rejected everything they taught us. Women are not responsible for the sexual urges of other people. Sex is not the only thing men think about. Not everyone grows up to be heterosexual. Having sex has nothing at all to do with whether you’re a decent human being.

I shudder whenever I hear about current middle or high school student being taught about abstinence even though I tend to agree that the majority of teenagers are not emotionally or socially prepared to handle the possibility of pregnancy or a sexually transmitted infection. (Of course, I’ve also known people who were 30, 40, 50 years old and still nowhere near being ready to accept the consequences of their actions, sexual or otherwise.)

To be fair, there are some valuable lessons I learned from my abstinence-only sex education.

  1. Don’t lie. It erodes the trust of others.
  2. Exaggerating, manipulating or massaging the truth is worse than lying because it is so easily passed down to the next generation. This is how urban legends and myths are created.
  3. Stereotypes are as destructive to the people who fit into them as they are to the people who do not.
  4. Prepare for the worst but never assume that it’s the only possible (or most likely) outcome.
  5. Ultimately, each one of us can only be held responsible for what we do or say as individuals. I’m not responsible for your actions or thoughts, you’re equally not responsible for mine.

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August 30, 2010 · 9:00 am

Living More With Less

A few weeks ago Teresa from Thoughtful Eating recommended that I read Living More with Less by Doris Janzen Longacre, a book about the connection between social justice and simple living from a Mennonite perspective. This book illustrates a few of the many reasons why if I was ever going to go back to church it would almost certainly be a Mennonite congregation.

Most of the books, articles and blogs I’ve read about simple living are focused on the benefits of those things for us as individuals. There’s nothing wrong with choosing a more frugal lifestyle for personal gain but Longacre’s focus on the often mindless waste of resources in the west and her description of how changing these habits can benefit others as much if not more than it helps us was a breath of fresh air.

My favourite section of the book involved a list of imaginary development problems that were commented upon by people who lived outside of the United States.  Topics ranged from building energy-efficient public transportation to connect small towns across the U.S. to living without disposable goods to using fewer kitchen appliances and less energy when cooking. Their suggestions for these problems showed how difficult it can be to offer realistic solutions for systemic problems in cultures that you know little or nothing about.  Yet people in the west often give similar well-meaning but misguided advice about which seeds to buy or irrigation systems to use when the people who actually live in that society already know that those items or ideas aren’t going to work for their community. I had never thought about this before and it was a section I re-read several times.

The second half of the book contains tips on getting the most out of what we do use whether it is the clothing we wear, the food we eat, the homes we live in or the celebrations we have for weddings and baby showers among other events. These tips ranged from how to use vinegar to get rid of soap scum to how to build your own home in the side of a hill or out of recycled materials.

One of the biggest drawbacks to many the techniques described in this book, though, is that they require a lot of time and skill. Maintaining a vegetable garden, preserving food safely, cooking every meal at home from scratch, sewing your own clothes, building or retrofitting an eco-friendly home out of recycled materials…none of these things are easy to do when one is already working a full-time job elsewhere. This is something that is feasible for families who live in a rural setting and can devote at least one adult to learning and doing all of these activities. It is more difficult, though, for the 79% of Americans who live in urban areas (80% in Canada) or the 61% of  women who work outside of the home. (59% in the US).

I recognize that this is partially a matter of cultural differences between 1980 and 2010 and (to a degree) cities and rural communities. To be fair, the introduction does say:

Approach this book as if it were an invitation to a treasure hunt rather than a summons to a final exam. Doris Longacre has no interest in legalism or works-righteousness.

One of the things I respect the most about Longacrue is that she isn’t dogmatic about the application of every suggestion in this book.  I don’t know if I’m romanticizing the Mennonite community or if I have just happened to continuously  meet people from that background who approach even their most strongly held convictions with humility and grace but this is something that I deeply admire about them.

I do wish, though, that one of Longacres descendants would write a sequel to this book that addresses the societal shifts of the last generation or two and offered more examples of simple living for the sake of others for everyone outside of the breadwinner dad, stay-at-home mom and several young children model of life. I can only imagine what sort of creative solutions have been hammered out over the last three decades.

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August 28, 2010 · 9:00 am

Suggestion Saturday: August 28, 2010

Here is this week’s list of blog posts, games, videos and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

One of These Kittens Is Not Like the Others. A short video about a cat who adopts an orphaned rabbit. I wonder if the breast milk of a carnivore has the right balance of nutrients for a growing herbivore?

The Queer Science Experiment; or, Too Much Information. Intrusive questions from strangers or near-strangers are not limited to one’s sexual orientation or gender identity, of course. This article strikes a fantastic balance between maintaining privacy and educating others about whatever it is they feel the need to have an opinion about in our lives.

The issue is not especially with asking questions; we’d never get anywhere in this world if curiosity were a morally objectionable character flaw. People can ask me whatever they want, but I in turn have the right to say “That’s none of your business.” [emphasis mine.]

Is It Safe to Burn Driftwood In a Stove? I don’t own a wood-burning stove but was still curious to read more. It’s better to have a little unnecessary knowledge floating around in one’s brain than to desperately need that information and have neither a clue about the correct answer nor a way of obtaining one.

Extinct! – Darwin Today. The object of this game: to successfully pass on genes to the next generation of plants. If you choose the wild plant the best strategy is to disperse as many seeds as possible. Domesticated plants should grow fewer, larger seeds in the hopes that the farmer will decide to plant them next year. These are the only hints I will share. Have fun figuring the rest of it out!

The Firm Grip of Christianity.  This is why I generally do not discuss my religious beliefs with Christians.

What have you been reading?

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August 26, 2010 · 9:00 am

How (Not) to Solicit Charitable Donations

More and more often I’ve noticed charities using fundraising techniques that leave a bad taste in my mouth. Part of this is probably due to confirmation bias – it’s easy to remember charities that use questionable techniques and to forget ones that don’t cross the line.

A few of the techniques I find most distasteful:

1) Street canvassers. I’d never come across this before moving to an urban area but in my city is very common for representatives from various foreign and domestic aid groups to stand on the busiest streets and ask for donations as you walk by. They are polite but persistant, only accept donations through credit cards and are somehow never have any pamphlets or business cards on them to help one contact the organization in question for more information. I suspect they may work on commission.

2) Fear mongering. This is a technique used by charities and non-profits across the political and social spectrum.  Even when I agree with their political position, and especially when I secretly wonder how long it will be until some of their less macabre prophesies come true, I despise this technique. Yes, there’s always a small chance that any country will systemically strip away certain (or all of the..) rights and freedoms that we currently enjoy. But I don’t think that my small donation will stop it. And I really don’t think that any good comes from scaring the hell out of your donors…especially when we all know the same stories will be dredged up at the next fundraising campaign or election cycle.

3) Requests for More Donations. These may arrive through flyers, email, phone calls, door-to-door canvassing or other methods that I luckily have yet to experience. I realize that these things are done because, well, they work. Enough people will give to make these drives worthwhile. I’m one of those donors who doesn’t like to be pestered, though. When I can afford it I will donate again.

4. Freebies. A few years ago, shortly after an emergency-room visit, the hospital that treated me mailed me a free reusable canvas bag and asked for a donation. I hadn’t asked for the bag but felt as strange about sending in a donation as I did keeping the free gift without “paying” for it. At the very least I wish they would have asked me up front if I wanted to be added to their mailing list. Medicine  should only be mixed with fundraising under the supervision of a physician…or something.

5. Selling/Renting Out Mailing Lists. I’ve stopped donating to more than one charity who shared my information with other groups. Yes, I may want to save the seals, but that doesn’t mean I have the funds or energy to also save the aardvarks, elephants, chimpanzees, and billy goats. I did not know until fairly recently that you can ask charities not to share your information with other groups. In the future I will be donating only to organizations who have a do not share my information list.

I like mailing lists that focus on solutions to the social issue/problem, don’t ask for donations in the body of the text (although a link to their website for more information about donating is ok) and are rare. As in, maybe I’ll hear from them once or twice a year.

While browsing http://www.charitynavigator.org/ I came across http://www1.networkforgood.org/, an organization that helps individuals fundraise for the charities of their choice. It also enables people to donate anonymously which would eliminate all of the things that annoy me about donating to nonprofit organizations. I haven’t tried it yet but when I do I’ll share my experiences with it here.

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August 23, 2010 · 9:00 am

On Not Celebrating Christmas

Growing up and into the first few years of adulthood I celebrated a more-or-less traditional form of Christmas with my family. I don’t observe it as a religious or secular holiday any longer for several reasons.

Christmas and Religion. I don’t celebrate Eid, Hanukkah or Yule because I’m not Muslim, Jewish or Neopagan. Why, then, continue to celebrate the religious aspects of Christmas when I no longer necessarily identify myself as a Christian?

Simple Living.  I’m content to live a fairly simple life, buying only what I genuinely need whenever it is that I need it.  A well thought out gift can mean the world to both the giver and to the receiver, of course, and I’m grateful when other people give gifts to me but it has been my experience that most gift exchanges are neither necessary nor discerning of what the receiver actually needs. There’s only so much clothing one can wear at one time, food one can eat, books one can read, gift certificates one can redeem and electronics one can enjoy in an hour or month or year. I’d rather wear out what I already own before I acquire more possessions that aren’t going to be put to good use.

Consumerism. I’m not ethically comfortable with the consumeristic and materialistic values often associated with this season. What should be a loving, joyful time of year often instead becomes busy, expensive and stressful. Showing love for family, friends and your significant other has somehow mutated into a social obligation to prove your feelings by buying them nice stuff. There’s something very wrong about that.

Giving and receiving are wonderful parts of being in a relationship or social group but neither of those things should be boxed into one event a year or limited to what is sold in stores. The best gifts I’ve ever given (and received) have been labours of time and love. Many people are comfortable both giving gifts over the winter holidays and throughout the year. This doesn’t have to be an either/or choice, of course, but giving spontaneous gifts of time, or attention, or advice, or help with a special project, or yes sometimes even actual physical objects throughout the year works better for me.

And then there are the exceptions to this rule. Technically I’m sure that my nephew doesn’t need any more stuff, but I also believe that Christmas is holiday for children. When I was little there was nothing more magical than opening up presents from the grown-ups who loved me on Christmas morning. Even the smallest gifts from them made me giddy. So I do make exceptions for young relatives. I’m slowly learning that I prefer to give special trips or other experiences over adding yet another toy or game for my brother and sister-in-law to trip over…but ultimately I’d give him almost anything that his parents approved of when Christmas or his birthday rolls around.

Occasionally I am able to spend Christmas with my family in the U.S. A few family members absolutely adore Christmas so I’m flexible when we get together during that time of year. So far we’ve had one surprisingly un-observant “Christmas” – we didn’t exchange presents or decorate but we did have home-cooked, sit-down meals together. Over that same trip I also attended a Sunday morning Christmas service at a local Mennonite church with the family. It was a gift of sorts for my grandparents and great-aunts to be surrounded by so many members of their family on one of the most family-oriented Sundays of the year.

Several years ago my grandparents organized donations from teens and adults in our extended family to send two or three care packages to a Mennonite charity in Africa that provides personal care items and some very basic medical supplies to adults who have been diagnosed with AIDS. Assembling those packages is one of my all-time favourite memories of them.  If my family wanted to exchange gifts the next time we’re all together over Christmas I might suggest that we do something charitable  again but would be willing to go along with the original plan if that was the majority decision. As much of a cliche as this is to type relationships are more important than my preference not to celebrate the commercial aspects of this holiday.

You may be wondering why I’m bringing this topic up in August, months before the average person begins to think about this sort of thing. I have two reasons for doing this. Number one: retail stores are just now or soon will be receiving their first shipments of winter-holiday-themedmerchandise which will so overflow their storage rooms that it will probably ooze onto store shelves within the next month or so. After working in that environment for so long I automatically begin thinking about these things at the end of summer. Only 125 days to go! Number two: If anyone reading decides to change their gift exchange preferences, now is the time to mention it to friends and family.

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August 21, 2010 · 9:00 am

Suggestion Saturday: August 21, 2010

Here is this week’s list of blog posts, comic strips, videos and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

Tree Toads, Truebella, Frostius…Oh, and Did I Mention the Communal Nests? Did you know that some species of bush toads build communal nests? I’d never heard of such a thing before reading this article.

What Should You Do When the Police Bang on Your Window at 10 PM and Scream For You to Open the Door? I knew the answer to this question before I read the post. It doesn’t seem to be common knowledge, though. What would you do?

A Factory in Every Home. The RepRap is an open source, self replicating printer that makes a dazzling variety of household goods. I hope it catches on!

Celebrating the Overturning of Prop 8 with the Body of Christ. The story Julie shares here about something she regrets not doing has tumbled around in the back of my mind all week. Coincidentally, recently I’ve been trying to reconnect with some old acquaintances. It’s easy to get so caught up in our own lives that we forget to reach out to others.

What have you been reading?

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August 19, 2010 · 9:00 am

Giving Up Cable TV

In a few weeks my significant other and I will be giving up cable TV for good. We are definitely not the first people to do this but for a couple that follows as many television shows as we do it is a big step. A few different factors led to us making this decision: the rising cost of even basic cable, the extra 10 to 20 minutes wasted on commercials for every show that we watch as it airs, and the low quality of entertainment for most channels on most nights of the week.

There’s also the internet factor: we can now download most if not all of our favourite shows online. iTunes sells individual episodes of a wide variety of programs for a few dollars per episode or an entire season of a television show for about the same amount of money one would pay for a movie on DVD. If we download the same number of shows that we watched last year we will be paying about the same amount a month as we did for cable. (We are planning to cut back on our must-see list, though.) On the other hand, we will never have to watch any commercials and once a new episode airs and we download it we can watch it whenever we both have the free time to do so.  Television will no longer rule our schedules.

In previous years we’ve used television most heavily over the winter. My husband has a fatigue disorder which becomes much worse during the winter. It often makes it difficult for him to do much else other than going to work from late December to the middle or end of March when the weather warms up, the snow melts and we have more hours of light again. If we have a particularly dark, cold autumn or spring he can go into what I think of as his hibernation as early as the beginning of November and not emerge again until April.

During this time watching our favourite TV shows is part of a rather short list of activities in which he is almost always able to do. Eventually I’d like to compress most or all of our television watching into those months so that we can spend more time during the rest of the year doing everything that isn’t easy for him to do while hibernating: going on road trips, camping, visiting friends and family members, and spending a fair amount of time outdoors. We will have to see how our habits change this winter and if this plan works for us!

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August 16, 2010 · 9:00 am

Lucid Dreaming

Once a month or so I have a lucid dream. It used to happen much less often, maybe only a few times a year.  Less often, I’m able to recognize that I’m dreaming and consciously move the storyline in any direction in which I want it to go. Eventually I’d like to lucid dream at least once or twice a week and learn some good techniques for changing the plot of a dream if I dislike where the story is headed.

I haven’t figured out how to have a lucid dream on command yet but I have discovered a few ways to determine if what is happening around me is a dream. Asking “does this make sense?” can sometimes focus my attention on any portions of the dream that couldn’t actually happen in real life: walls, doors and windows whose physical structure seems to change position each time I see it, everyday objects that don’t look, feel or behave like they typically have in the past or friends or family members whose appearance or demeanour is radically different from how they acted or looked the last time we saw one another.

Paying close attention to detail is another fairly reliable indicator of a probable dream-state. If the words in a book or the numbers on a clock are blurry or completely indecipherable, I’m either dreaming, trying to read something written in a language other than English (or, to a certain degree, Spanish) or have forgotten to wear my glasses.

By far the most reliable method I’ve found so far is to ask myself, “how did I get here?” I began by periodically asking myself this question during the day. I’d start with whatever activity I was busy with at the moment – exercising, grocery shopping, writing, talking to friends – and work my way back through the last 24 hours or so, especially when encountering a situation that seemed at-all out of the ordinary.  Eventually it became such a normal part of my thought-process that I started doing this in dreams that either didn’t make sense or were giving me with fuzzy clocks and unreadable blocks of text. Almost without fail, if I’m dreaming I will eventually come to a point where I can’t remember how I ended up at a particular location or involved in a certain activity . That blank period of time is often what triggers my mind to realize that I’m asleep.

Of course, some dreams are so deep that I don’t realize that they were dreams until after I wake up again. As I am slowly dreaming lucidly more often over time I hope that one day I’ll be able to recognize any dream that takes an alarming (or dreary, or commercial, or just-plain-tedious) turn as a dream and manoeuvre into something more pleasant.  Yes, that means that every now and then I have dream-commericials. The most recent one was either for a mop or for the cleaning solution that the mop was sloshing around on a linoleum floor. The jingle wasn’t particularly clear on that aspect of it.

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August 14, 2010 · 9:00 am

Suggestion Saturday: August 14, 2010

Here is this week’s list of blog posts, comic strips, videos and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

Playing Mom for a Baby Gorilla.  As I watched the video at the end of this link I was struck by the eerie similarities in body language and facial expressions there are between our species.

Teamplayermania. The dark side of being a team player. I understand the importance of cooperation but like the author am uncomfortable with the many ways in which this phrase is (mis)used to suppress polite dissent and creativity.

Mr. Deity and Evil. The first episode in a satirical web series about the Judeo-Christian God. I highly recommend the entire series for anyone comfortable with a tongue-in-cheek look at religion, ethics and interpersonal relationships.

Period Speech. A comic strip about the future of modern slang. If I believed in reincarnation I’d insist upon coming back to earth in a few hundred years if for no other reason than to participate in the Blogger Reenactment Festivals.

Life Has Never Been So Good For Our Species.  An article about all of the ways in which life has improved for many of us when compared to the lives of our recent and distant ancestors. The argument would have been much more compelling for me had the author not restricted himself to life in the U.S., but I do agree that life is better in general for those of us who live in first world countries than it was a few generations ago.

Mocking Men with Femininity. A short article about a doctored photo recently printed in the Chicago Tribune that showed a hockey player wearing a skirt. I cannot understand why it is still socially acceptable to infer that anything feminine is shameful or to reinforce the idea that the worst thing a man could ever be accused of is acting like a woman.

Frappucino to Flower Vase. Pictures of trash that has been recycled into works of art and practical household items. I prefer more a more industrial, modern look for my home but am so impressed by what can be created out of what most of us would throw in the trash or recycling bin without a second thought.

What have you been reading?

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