“I don’t watch TV” was my mantra for the last 10 years. I really didn’t. I found no interest in it nor did I see any benefit to it other than wasting my youth. But lately it has been something that I have been partaking in. The more I watch it the more I realize how much of a device for complacency and commercialism it is.

When I talk to people about the purpose of television, I frequently get the response that it’s “entertainment”. It’s almost to the point that I’m beginning not to notice that my mental environment is being polluted by plugs, advertisements, and product placements. This is where the complacency and commercialism come in. The next time you’re being advertised to, try to maintain a consciousness of it. I’m not sure if it has more or less of an effect if you’re conscious of it but for some reason I feel comfort in the thought that advertisers are not sneaking into my subconscious (they likely are anyways, damn you corporate branding).

Consider what you could be doing with the 21.4 hours, on average that Canadians spend watching T.V on a weekly basis¹ . The answer is… a lot. I’ve been spending about 15 hours a week watching television over the last 2 months. I notice a significant decline in my previous level of productivity. I no longer accomplish the same amount of learning or writing or working or whatever it is I planned to do that night because I’m distracted by moving pictures and sound. But what’s worse is that the desire to learn or write or work or whatever is being slowly drained. I feel as if I’m losing the ambition that I once had – and it’s pervasive.

A thought that I had when I was younger still pervades my opinion to this day. I feel that the amount of space you have in your brain to store information is finite – immeasurable and extremely large, surely, but finite. Television carries with it a considerable amount of information. Not only does it have an exuberance of sound and visual information, it also carries with it social information. Consider your favorite actor on television, I could guess that you know more factoids about their lives in the show then you do of some of your own family members, and likely with more certainty. You learn their personality, mannerisms, nuances, and colloquialisms. You know them, get it?

In fact, that was the argument behind my thought. Television, as I saw it, was a medium for replacing social interaction to some degree as well as being an evil machine for complacency and commercialism… but now I’m being fanatical.

Why do I notice it so acutely? Because it’s just barely entertaining yet somehow I still want to watch. Being absent from the whole “TV is pop culture” thing for the last 10 years has provided me with the ability to immediately identify shows that jump the shark². Take reality television for example, have you ever noticed how much dialogue there is? Is all that dialogue even somewhat close to entertaining? I’ve come to a conclusion here. It’s not entertaining – it’s engaging. When the dialogue comes through you don’t even care about what they said, the act of waiting for what they were going to say was what kept you hooked. Personally, I think the current set of charlatan reality television show hosts and hostesses use the same tactics to excite people as did those who sold sugared water in more, righteously, ignorant times. I’m not arguing semantics; it just seems that the situations that occur on shows like Survivor, The Mole, ad infinitum, are scripted to some degree. Perhaps, I shouldn’t say they are scripted but I would certainly say that there is a propensity for creative “guidance”. I mean, you don’t believe Jerry Springer is 100% real so why would you believe that Survivor is? In all things there is a certain amount of scripting. Be it dramatic filters, or what I would like to refer to as creative “guidance”. Not to be a conspiracy theorist, but there are certain things that push ratings up and certain things that push ratings down.

Anyways, it’s a disorganized mass of thought but those are some of the reasons that I hate TV. So… there!

¹ StatsCan

² Wikipedia – Jumping the Shark

Sometimes, after a solid night on the town the only thing that’s reasonable to do at 3am in the morning is to go for Chinese food on Spadina. It’s a ritual that helps neither my non-existent work out routine or my arteries… but it’s blissful nonetheless. Here’s a quick example of the “Excellent” Chinese food restaurant, aptly named more likely for its food than its spelling.

I simultaneously respect and appreciate cultural, sexual and religious diversity but sometimes it’s difficult to immediately understand or accept when it’s pushed on you.

I live in Toronto, an exceptionally diverse city. Without fail, on my way to work, I’m constantly harassed by Mormons. I want you to understand, I enjoy meeting new people and I appreciate random conversation. However, such conversations become tiresome when you know how the conversation will ensue. Idle chit chat followed by some pronouncement of the Church of Jesus Christ of Later Day Saint’s. It wouldn’t be so bad but for the fact that when they’ve started their sales pitch they have the same disposition and tone of a used car salesman. One can only say no, respectfully, to the same person so many times before there is a guarantee that the message falls on deaf ears.

Keep in mind here that I’m not criticizing their beliefs or the dogma associated with it. I’m complaining about the approach that they use in an attempt to proliferate their religion.

Imagine, it’s 7:45 am, you’ve had three hours of sleep and you have bags under your eyes that people sometimes confuse with baseballs. That’s when they, and I don’t use the term “they” in a derogatory sense, want to talk to me.

I attempt to look up at the ceiling of the bus and immerse myself in counting pixels on the advertisements around me… anything not to make eye contact, lest the sales pitch begins!

I’m going to make a really easy prediction: the referendum in Ontario is going to be nothing but another piece of paper that people have to fill out. It’s quite obvious that the electorate in Ontario considerably misunderstood or were completely uneducated about the purpose and benefits of the Mixed Member Proportional voting system (MMP).

Under the current First Past the Post (FPP) system the candidate with the most votes, in a district, wins the race and is elected as the Member of Provincial Parliament. The problem with this system is that it leaves a large proportion of voters considerably under-represented.

FPP (Current System):

One ballot. 107 seats, defined by electoral regions or districts individually decided by whoever has the most votes, even if it’s only 1 vote.

MMP:

Two ballots. The first ballot is for 90 seats, defined by electoral regions or districts individually decided by whoever has the most votes and an additional 39 seats decided by the proportion of votes for each political party on the 2nd ballot.

Projected Seat Distribution as at 10:47pm (source):

Download the Tables in Excel
Table Legend:

• Regional Seats: The distribution of seats by votes in a specific district
• % of Seats: The percentage of total seats won by a specific party
• % of Vote: The percentage of total votes obtained for each party across the province
• Difference: The absolute value of the difference between the % of Seats won subtracted from the % of the vote
• Proportional Seats: The number of seats obtained from the second ballot in the Mixed Member Proportional voting system.
• Distribution of Proportional Votes: The percentage of total second ballots in the Mixed Member Proportional voting system obtained for each party across the province.

Understanding Table 1:

Let’s take a detailed look at Table 1, above. Are you noticing something here? There is a large difference between the percentage of seats obtained by each party and the percentage of total votes that they received from their constituents. This is the primary problem with the current FPP system – a lack of representation. The greater the “Difference” the less representative the elected members of parliament are of the voting population.

The same is not true under the MMP system proposed by the Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform.

Let’s apply this logic to tonight’s’ results and see how the representation would have changed under a MMP system.

Understanding Table 2:

Now let’s just assume that the people who voted for their FPP candidate also voted for the same candidate’s party with their secondary vote.

One thing you will immediately notice is that the “Difference” is considerably less than in the FPP system. This suggests that the members of parliament elected are more representative of the populations’ vote. The 39 seats remaining are distributed by proportion of popular vote for all parties that are above 3% of the popular vote.

Understanding Table 3:

Just to give you an idea of how much proportional voting could change the political landscape, let’s look at Table 3. The only change here is that half of the people who voted Liberal, decided to vote for the conservatives with their proportional ballot.

Notice that the “Difference” goes down considerably.

The Caveats of MPP

There are pitfalls to all systems but I’ll let you decide if they outweigh the lack of representation:

• The list of candidates that benefit from the proportional vote are not elected by the people directly, they are appointed by the party
• It is likely to lead to Minority Governments (it’s up to you to decide if that’s a bad thing)
• It could allow special interest parties to infiltrate politics
• Lack of voter understanding

Why the Electorate Fails to Understand MMP:

Isn’t the purpose of a democratic state to be representative of the people who live there?

Would you agree that after reading this description that the lower the “Difference” the more your vote counts, especially in a situation where you are voting for a party that is the minority in your region?

If you knew that there was a system of voting that would make it such that your vote, and the vote of other constituents who voted for parties that were not of the elected Member of Parliament counted for something, wouldn’t you want to use it?

In any case, I’m considerably disappointed that the current Liberal government put such little care into promoting education of the MMP referendum. They do seem to have the most seats to lose, interestingly.

Awesome experience. Everything you would expect to see at a circus and a little more. The interludes were exceptionally comical. One scared patron had her chair lifted from the ground to her surprise. Many others had popcorn thrown at them and a few even more unsuspecting ones were even urinated on by a friendly police dog… awkward.

I’m not going to ruin the show for others by describing all of the acts I’ll just say that the contortionist put break dancers to shame with their skills.

My personal favourite was the two men in the rotating wheels, fairly difficult to explain but nevertheless exciting, dangerous and crowd pleasing.

All in all the acrobatics, in combination with the costumes and well thought out comedy made Kooza an incredibly worthwhile experience.

Break dancers… beware of contortionists who start making appearances on the urban dance scene.

Why does Walmart lobby for increasing the minimum wage?

It’s because they already pay at a rate that is above the minimum. Increasing the minimum wage reduces competition because it increases the “entry” cost to other new and existing retailers. This, if it happened, would produce a small oligopoly (minor monopoly) over the market and reduce competition further – to Walmart’s benefit. Once an oligopoly or a monopoly have taken their course, competition is null and the seller controls the pricing. Rather than in a purely competitive marketplace where the buyer and seller “agree” to some (the equilibrium) price. Effectively making it worse for the poor folk if Walmart had it’s way and was the only player on the block.

From the flip side though, Walmart creates a benefit to the poor by having ridiculously low prices that are well below the equilibrium level. In fact, the net benefit of them having such low prices is more than enough to make up for the lack-lustre labour benefits that they provide to their own employees (but that’s another argument entirely)

So, love it or hate it. Walmart is both a demon and a saint.

The duality is charming, actually.

Standing outside of Ryerson, smoking a cigarette and drinking a $5.08 starbucks coffee I see a man approach two young women and ask them for change. They quite easily reject him. He walks along trying the next person who just happens to be me. Knowing what’s coming next I feel the obvious pang of discomfort.

There he is standing in front of me, disheveled, slightly balding, visibly shaking and asking me for some change to get something to eat – staring at me with deep brown eyes filled with desperation. What else could I do but offer him something to eat? I beleive strongly in not giving homeless people a transferable form of exchange be it bus tickets, or money. The same was true for this gentlemen. I asked him what he wanted to eat and he specified that he wanted a sub. So I offered to buy it for him.

As we walked he described his life situation and his next problem – finding a place to sleep. He specified that his step parents had kicked him out of the house, and he no longer had a fixed address which, therefore, renders him ineligible for welfare. He spoke to me about a few of the places that he’s tried to seek shelter: Seaton House, Covenant House, MacMillan House and the list goes on. Apparently, some of these places are free and some of them are not. I felt helpless, listening to this man without being able to make one good recommendation as to where he could go or what he could do. He explained to me that all of the places that were free are full and he had no money to go to where you pay for it.

After I finished paying for his meal he stood in front of me, looking into my soul with those deep brown eyes filled with despair and now appreciation, asking if I could give him money for his night at the shelter. I looked hard at him and the money in my hand as I considered the decision. Yes I had the money – but he stood there in front of me, still visibly shaking almost certainly from some form of drugs. So I told him, honestly, that he’s standing in front of me shaking and that I am not willing to give him money directly. He told me that it’s been a while since he’s had his “medicine” and that was the cause of his shaking. When he said the word “medicine” I automatically came to the conclusion that giving this man money would mean supporting whatever habit this man has. Another factor in my decision was that I offered to walk over and pay directly yet he declined, explaining that he didn’t want to take up too much of my time.

But I wonder if I passed judgement. Did I impose some predispositioned thought or stereotype of homeless people on this man or did I do the right thing by declining to support his proposed shelter for the evening?

I don’t know the answer, but the thought that I chose paternalism over altruism bothers me because the decision was made with potentially asymettric information.

Would you have given him the money?

Here I am, with a little less than 20 minutes to go. The story has made me laugh, think, turn away in disgust and cry. It has given me momentous frustration but gratuitous enjoyment. I’m not going to sit here and attempt to wax eloquent about what it is and what it isn’t.

To me, a good book is one in which there is not a single character in which you completely identify yourself with. I read for the purpose of perspective. I read for the simple enjoyment of thinking about things from a completely different perspective than I otherwise would. War and Peace has accomplished this feat many times over.

Personally, Prince Andrew is by far my favourite character. His resolute and complete character shift from life to death is immaculate. It is an almost too perfect paradigm of life, love, and death in reciprocated orders. I’ve read many tragedies but nothing quite compares to the way in which Tolstoy handles a story. When I watch television or movies everything seems so predictable and therefore un-enjoyable – but with Tolstoy, the gripping thought of predictability is exactly what compels one to continue reading.

I challenge you all to read this novel. Here are a couple of my favourite quotations from this masterpiece of literature:

“Never, never marry, my dear fellow! That’s my advice: never marry till you can say to yourself that you have done all you are capable of, and until you have ceased to love the woman of your choice and have seen her plainly as she is, or else you will make a cruel and irrevocable mistake. Marry when you are old and good for nothing—or all that is good and noble in you will be lost. It will all be wasted on trifles. Yes! Yes! Yes! Don’t look at me with such surprise. If you marry expecting anything from yourself in the future, you will feel at every step that for you all is ended, all is closed except the drawing room, where you will be ranged side by side with a court lackey and an idiot!”

Prince Andrew on marriage, unfortunately, Pierre does not take his advice!

“Desire nothing, be not anxious or envious. Man’s future and thy own fate must remain hidden from thee, but live so that thou mayest be ready for anything. If it be God’s will to prove thee in the duties of marriage, be ready to fulfill His will”

Princess Mary in contemplation of her unhappiness

“A good chess player having lost a game is sincerely convinced that his loss resulted from a mistake he made and looks for that mistake in the opening, but forgets that at each stage of the game there were similar mistakes and that none of his moves were perfect. He only notices the mistake to which he pays attention, because his opponent took advantage of it. How much more complex than this is the game war”

Tolstoy

“Tout vient a point a celui qui sait attendre” – “Everything comes in time to him who knows how to wait”

General Kutozov on his success in the Turkish War

“Qui s’excuse s’accuse” – “Who excuses himself, accuses himself”

Julie Kuragin gossiping as usual

“Do you know, I really believe she is un petite peu amoureuse du jeune homme” – “A little bit in love with the young man”

Julie Kuragin gossiping as usual

“We play at magnanimity and sensibility and all that stuff. Such magnanimity and sensibility are like the magnanimity and sensibility of a lady who faints when she sees a calf being killed: she is so kind-hearted that she can’t look at the blood, but enjoys eating the calf served up with sauce. The talk to us of the rules of war, of chivalry, of flags of truce, of mercy to the unfortunate and so on. It’s all rubbish!”

Prince Andrew on War

“”If there was none of this magnanimity in war, we should go to war only when it was worth while going to certain death, as now.”

Prince Andrew on War

“He showed an interest in trifles, joked about de Beausset’s love of travel, and chatted carelessly, as a famous, self-confident surgeon who knows his job does when turning up his sleeves and putting on his apron while a patient is being strapped to the operating table.”

Tolstoy describing Napoleon, and perhaps his perspective of Napoleon’s morality.

“He sat, sunk deep in a folding armchair, and continually cleared his throat and pulled at the collar of his coat which, though it was unbuttoned, still seemed to pinch his neck”

Tolstoy describing General Kutozov’s countenance and composure after Moscow was lost to Napoleon

“The countess looks with timid horror at her son’s eager, excited face as he said this. She realized that if she said a word about his not going to the battle he would say something about men, honour, and the fatherland – something senseless, masculine and obstinate which there would be no contradicting…”

Countess Rostova pleading with her youngest child not to go to the war. This quote is fitting for almost all of Dubya’s Terrorism speeches.

“Toward the end of the evening, however, as the wife’s face grew more flushed and animated, the husband’s became more and more melancholy and solemn, as though there were but a given amount of animation between them and as the wife’s share increased the husband’s diminished”

Tolstoy describing how a woman reacts to being flirted with in public in the full view of her husband

“Man’s mind cannot grasp the causes of events in their completeness, but the desire to find those causes is implanted in man’s soul. And without considering the multiplicity and complexity of the conditions any one of which taken separately may seem to be the cause, he snatches at the first approximation to a cause that seems to him intelligible and says: ‘This is the cause!’”

Tolstoy dissing Historians (which he does a lot!)

“Now that he was telling it all to Natasha he experienced that pleasure which a man has when women listen to him – not a clever women who when listening either tries to remember what they hear to enrich their mind and when opportunity offers to retell it, or who wish to adopt it to some thought of their own and promptly contribute their own clever comments prepared in their little mental workshop – but the pleasure given by real women gifted with a capacity to select and absorb the very best a man shows of himself”

Tolstoy describing how Natasha listens to Pierre

“Natasha and Pierre, left alone, also began to talk as only a husband and wife can talk, that is, with extraordinary clearness and rapidity, understanding and expressing each other’s thoughts in ways contrary to all rules of logic, without premises, deductions, or conclusions, and in a quite peculiar way.”

Tolstoy describing how married couples communicate

“Every human action is inevitably conditioned by what surrounds him and by his own body. I life my arm and let it fall. My action seems to me free; but asking myself whether I could raise my arm in every direction, I see that I raised it in the direction in which there was least obstruction to that action either from things around me or from the construction of my own body. I chose one out of all the possible directions because in it there were fewest obstacles. For my action to be free it was necessary that it should encounter no obstacles. To conceive of a man being free we must imagine him outside space, which is evidently impossible”

Tolstoy on the idea of freedom and free will

That’s all I care to dig for. Now I’m off to finish this journey. Good Night!

I recently had the luxury of attending a Cooking Class at the Calphalon Culinary Center in Toronto, the class was specifically for Vietnamese food (yummy!) but they have many many more cooking classes. It was a fantastic experience and I would highly recommend it to anyone regardless of their level of cooking ability.

One of the things that I noticed first was how well organized the class environment was. Everything is prepared for you in advance: a booklet with your recipes, a shiny new pen, a white apron, wash cloths and an assortment of cooking tools straight from the shelves of Calphalon, which were a pleasure to work with. The moment you walk in you are presented with a treat, something wonderful to snack on as the rest of the students come into the class; the treats themselves are themed with the type of cooking lesson that you are attending and let me add – very tasty. The class environment is spacious and well thought out. Mirrors and television sets enable you to see the instructor from wherever you might be in the class. Although, considering that the size of the class is small it adds a wonderful element of closeness to the instructor that negates the need for the television sets and mirrors and allows for questions at a whim to be answered, more on that later though.

At first, I was rather nervous about entering the classroom as my level of cooking is rather amateur. The place itself is known Toronto-wide as a place of fine culinary arts and can create a feeling of anxiety in one’s own lack of skill. I can cook a rather mean box of Kraft Dinner or prepare a fabulous slice of WonderBread a la Ketchup – anything past that is just the luck of the draw. The teaching style is what made it comfortable and completely negated my anxiousness and allowed me to enjoy the experience. The lesson was taught from a perspective that the people in attendance are not experts and do not know what some of the finer things in cooking are. For example, cutting vegetables; I know it sounds simple, but there really is an art to it and the instructor taught us how with vigorous clarity.

The instructor himself was fantastic: a positive attitude, a great approach, with a very articulate and suitable humour. At some points he rambled on with questions from the rest of the class that I did not understand in the first place and seemed like affirmative filler, but for the connoisseurs in the class I’m certain it all made sense!

It was a fantastic experience and I am planning on doing the Mexican cooking class – so long as beans aren’t involved in any of the recipes.

“If you love something, let it go. If it comes back to you, its yours forever. If it doesn’t, then it was never meant to be.”

After three beautiful years, Diana has decided to part ways with me. I will always remember her as the innocent, caring individual that brought spark to my life and I pray that the next man she decides to love treats her with unconditional love, patience and respect. It’s so hard to let something so wonderful go. But, with faith alone, I will pull through the difficult task of letting my angel slip through my fingers. The angel of courage sits at my side and reminds me of the beauty of my time with Diana but also reminds me that I must move on. If nothing less, my time with her was bliss.

Diana, I loved you.

“One night a man had a
dream. He dreamed he was
walking along the beach with
the Lord. Across the sky
flashed scenes from his life.
Each scene, he noticed two sets
of footprints in the sand; one
belonging to him and the
other to the Lord.
When the last scene of his
life flashed before him, he
looked back at the footprints in
the sand. He noticed that many
times along the path of his life
there was only one set of
footprints. He also noticed that
it happened at the very lowest
and saddest times in his life.
This really bothered him and
he questioned the Lord about
it. “Lord, you said that once I
decided to follow you, you’d
walk with me all the way. But I
have noticed that during the
most troublesome times in my
life, there is only one set of
footprints. I don’t understand
why when I needed you most
you would leave me.
The Lord replied, “My
precious, precious child, I love
you and I would never leave
you. During your times of trial
and suffering, when you see
only one set of footprints, it
was then that I carried you.”