Contracts, Cash, and Gold

Good evening!

You know, at first I thought I'd do something nice and light-hearted.  Some music, some laughs, and so on, but then I said nah.    Instead tonight we here at Raccoon Inc. will embark on some more pontification.  There are a few things that I'd like to comment on tonight.  So I will.  So there.


MADE TO BE BROKEN

Man!  Everywhere you look lately this asshole's back in the news.

There's a good, flattering picture of the silver fox.

Yeah...  I gotta say.  I'm not a real fan of the guy.  I mean, I respect my fellow Commonwealth brethren and all, and shedding light on government shenanigans is boffo stuff, but yeah...  Not a fan.  Oh, and before I go any further, please take a listen to this here track while you read.  It should add a little tone to the following.

So, he's stewing in the Ecuadorian embassy (of all places!) and he's been granted asylum by the nation, but he has to leave London first some how.  If only there was a way...

If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them....maybe you can hire The A-Team.

No, nothing comes to mind.  He's screwed.  Well, but, here's what really irritates me.  I remember seeing this poster on the news.  Something about "don't shoot the messenger" or something like that.

That picture is actually in full colour.

Yes, that's the one!  Well, that sounds nice, but give me a break.  We're talking about Julian Assange here.  Mr. Wikileaks.  He knew what he was getting into when he got into the business of procuring state secrets and broadcasting them here, there, and everywhere.  True, he's airing everyone else's dirty laundry, but there is a price to be paid - and that's not what I'm upset with.  What I'm upset with is that they make him look like some sort of hero...

My favourite Disney movie of all time.

...when the fact of the matter is that he took a trip to Sweden and couldn't keep it in his pants.  So he's not really so much this...

Better call the Mad Hatter.

...as he is this...

Really, though, living in France is its own punishment.

There is this... thing where people with lots of fame that do bad things seem to have the gravity of their misgivings obfuscated by their fame.  You know, never mind that he allegedly sexually assaulted someone in Sweden.  Oh no, this is just an American plot to bring the treasonous coward to the gallows.

American lawmakers as seen through the eyes of Assange.

What a load of crap!  And then there's this other asshole over here!

Arrrrgh!

This Paul Watson (CanCon!) asshole thinks he's some sort of cross between Pamela Anderson (and more CanCon!) and Hayreddin Barbarossa.  So, like, what?  A renegade environmentalist... pirate?  That skips bail in Germany?  To... somewhere?  Like, Tortuga, or something?  Because..?  Sharkfinning is so bad that I can do whatever I want to stop it?  This is such crap!  Let me spell it all out for you in one word: Crito.

If Paul Watson grew a full beard and removed his hairpiece...

So, for all of his famous (or infamous) discourses around Athens, Socrates was charged with "corrupting the youth and impiety", sent to trial, found guilty, and sentenced to death.  The night before his death, his wealthy friend Crito visits him in his cell and says "Don't you worry none, Socrates old friend, I've got everything figured out.  I have every guard bribed from here to Memphis and we can high tail it outta here and head straight to Thessaly where they'll be happy to have you there, so quit moping around in there and let's go, ok?"  And what does Socrates say?  He says no.  He's not going anywhere.  He's going to face his judgement with dignity.  "What?  Are you crazy?" Crito asks.  "Enough clowning around!  They're gonna pour hemlock in your ear come sunrise, so we really gotta get moving here.  Let's go!"  But Socrates stayed put and explained to Crito that that's not the point.  The point is that because Socrates lived in Athens, he had to live by Athens' rules.  He couldn't just pick and choose which rules he lived with and which ones he didn't.  No one is above the law.  When you choose to live in a city, you are a party to the social contract which binds society together in a civilized fashion and to flee the sentence that was brought about fairly by the people of the city would be to breach that contract.  Eventually Crito gave up and Socrates was put to death in the morning.

Now, the purpose of this story is the illustrate this social contract.  If we want to be a member of a society we must live by that society's rules; otherwise there is chaos.  By not facing his accusers in Sweden, Assange is breaking his social contract, and by evading justice once again Watson is breaking his social contract, as well.  Though both men have laudable causes (at least laudable by some), when this contract is broken, so therefore is the trust that one may have with their cause.  Let me use another current example to illustrate.

In the Jailhouse Now, indeed.

So when Pussy Riot violated their nation's laws standing up for what they believed in, did they flee justice and, I dunno, sneak across the border into Latvia?  No, they stayed put, stood trial, were convicted and sentenced to two years.  This is what makes their message so much more powerful.  The social contract that was violated for Assange and Watson remains intact for Samutsevitch, Alyokhina, and Tolokonnikova (yes!  more CanCon!  sorta...).  While Pussy Riot violated the laws of the state, they faced the full weight of justice (and then some) which makes them and their cause all the more palpable, sincere, and relatable.

Breaking the law is fine.  Breaking the social contract is the real crime.


MO MONEY, MO PROBLEMS

I have to say this story took me completely by surprise this week.  Surprise and dismay, honestly.

GENTLEMEN, BEHOLD!  THE NEW CANADIAN $100 BILL!

Good heavens Miss Sakamoto - you're beautiful!

Neat, huh?  There's some insulin there and a heart thing and a DNA thing.  And a woman (that looks A LOT like Helen Hunt) looking into a microscope.  Well, the woman has been a source of... acrimony?  Is that a good word for this?  Nonsense?  Hand wringing?  I'm at a bit of a loss as to how to frame this.  Because it's so weird, you see.  It's very odd!

Here's what happened.  The above pictured new $100.00 isn't the original version of the banknote.  An earlier version of the note had the woman at the microscope appearing more... Asian and less Helen Hunt-ish.  The reason for the change was because of the results of a focus group...

...in Montréal...

 ...which found that the suggested image of the Asian woman didn't appear to represent Canada, while another focus group...

...in Fredericton...

...stated that  “the inclusion of an Asian without representing any other ethnicities was seen to be contentious".

Before I get into the meat and potatoes of my argument here, I would like to highlight a valid point that has come about as a result of this: if you are putting a bottle of insulin on the note, why not just slap on a picture of Banting and Best?  On one hand, duh!  On the other hand, I think that what they're trying to get across is more than just the invention of insulin, but the legacy of medical research as a whole that Canada has produced as a nation, and so in that case I see their point.

Now, this is where it gets silly.  I'd like to refute the idea that an Asian woman does not represent Canada, because...

The 26th Governor General of Canada since Confederation.

...not only is it wrong, it's farcical.  What the hell do you mean "an Asian woman does not represent Canada"!?  That is absurd!  This is 2012 we're in right now.  Is there still an idea in this country that just because the first, I dunno, two... three... seventeen prime ministers were (often drunken) Scotsmen that to be "Canadian" is to be a WASP?  For goodness sake, we're not too afraid to have Adrienne Clarkson and Michaëlle Jean as Governor General, but put an Asian looking woman on the banknote and all of a sudden the sky is falling?  I see comments people are making saying "Well, multiculturalism is a failed project in Europe, so it's about time we faced facts here in Canada."

So, once they decided to axe the "Asian" woman on the $100 bill, in their place they placed a woman with a more "neutral" ethnicity.

REVENGE OF THE $100 WOMAN!

Hey!  Wait a minute!  She's not ethnically neutral...  She's not ethnically neutral at all!  She's pretty transparently Caucasian!  What the hell?  Is the argument that "Caucasian" is to "Neutral" as "Vanilla" is to "Neutral"?  Because it's not.  Vanilla is vanilla.  It's a flavour!  It's a type of something.  It's not a blank pallatte.  Good grief!

This isn't just racist pandering, this is disheartening.  We as a nation are better than this.  I'll put this simply.  Canada is the result of a British and French colonization and forcible annexation of lands that belonged to the native people.  Since the colonial days it has become a safe haven for refugees from around there world where people can go to enjoy a better life.  My family, like many others, ended up in Canada as guests because Canada was nice enough to take us in when Europe was busy trying to annihilate itself.  The idea of a multicultural Canada was just fine for them then when Germany was trying to take over the world, but now that things are comfortable here we are saying that there are refugees and then there are refugees, if you know what I mean.  Or put another way, there are Canadians, and then there are foreigners that live in Canada.  This type of thinking isn't just incorrect, it's (as much as I like Helen Hunt) shameful and should prove to be a very serious lesson that even in this day and age with the melting pot that our society has become, some groups are still way out of focus.


WE ARE THE .5%

Now that the Olympics in London are over and done with, I've been hearing a lot of analysis of Canada's placing at the Olympics.  To be sure, Canada ended up with one gold medal, five silver, and twelve bronze for a total of eighteen.  Personally, I don't have a problem with it whether they rack up 100 medals or none.  Our athletes did their best, win or lose.  Hey, I didn't spend unimaginable hours on a trampoline to become the best in the world, so who am I to be critical in any way of our athletes' performances?  However, there are some that are quite critical.

Dave Feschuk of the Toronto Star writes:

"Congratulations, Canada’s Olympic team! You just followed up your country’s greatest sporting moment, the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, by finishing tied with Uganda, Uzbekistan and Grenada in the gold-medal count at the 2012 London Games!"

...and goes on to say...

"...any way you spin it, the mission has not been accomplished."

Nicholas Cotsonika of Yahoo Sports has a little bit of a patronizing article stating:

"By one measure, these Games were a disappointment for Canada. One gold? That's the lowest total since 1976, when Canada was shut out on home soil in Montreal, and that's a poor return on millions of dollars of real money that was spent to develop these athletes -- some of it government money. The Own the Podium program is missing something -- the "w." Canadians were on the podium, but they didn't own it. With five silvers and 12 bronzes, you might call this the Bronze Age."

Ah yes!  The Bronze Age!  Back when the javelin was serious business!

More patronizing still is Matthew Fisher's article in the Windsor Star:

"Worse than Canada's disappointing result is that fact that these results do not appear to have perturbed the federal government, the COC or a congenitally forgiving media and public. Meanwhile, in Australia - with 40-per-cent fewer people than Canada - it is a national scandal that its team only won seven gold and 35 medals."

There's more negative stuff out there and it's easy enough to find, so I'll leave it at this.

Now, let's see here.  The population of the earth is currently estimated to be 7,034,000,000.  The population of Canada is estimated to be 34,892,000.  Rounding up that's .5% of the world's population.  The total number of all medals handed out at the 2012 Summer Games in London was 300.  If you take Canada's proportionate share of the earth's population and round up to the nearest medal, we're due to win two.  Two (2).  1.488 to be precise.

Pretend that these lemons are Olympic medals!  Why lemons?  We were all out of sour grapes.

You know, you can spin all this "wealthy industrialized nation" lines you want, all the money and science and training in the world would not make me medal in triple jump.  I was born with a bad ankle.  I just can't do it.  It takes a certain type of human, a certain biomechanical set of conditions to be able to do something "the best".

For example, Rosannagh MacLennan...

...has proven herself to be the greatest trampolinist in the world because she has the right conditioning, agility and physical structure to be a great in her sport.  However, I highly doubt that she could ever lift 255 kg. over her head.  No amount of science or funding in the world could help with that because she just wasn't built that way and she just simply can't do it.

Now, Holley Mangold...

...can lift 255 kg. over her head (aka. five Rosannagh MacLennans), but I doubt that any amount of money or training would make her competitive in the 100 m. dash because that's just not the way that she is designed, either.  She was just plain not built to be a sprinter.  Get what I'm saying here?

So money and facilities, while they help, still need elite athletes to utilize them and we have approximately .5% of the earth's supply.  Winning zero to one medal I could see being a disappointment in the grand scheme of things, but winning two or more (or 18!) is a great success for our great nation.  So stop complaining that we don't have all the marbles and say thank you to all of our athletes that have given up their lives for their sport and, win or lose, have made us all proud.

And that about does it for tonight.  Thank you very much for reading and have a good night!