Posts By Crommunist

6 I’m going to Kelowna!

April 2, 2012
by Crommunist
· blog · Canada · CFI Vancouver · skepticism · skeptivism

I talk about CFI Vancouver often enough, since I am a volunteer (at least as much as my schedule will allow). What my Van-centricity may have obscured is the fact that there is an active CFI branch in the interior of British Columbia. Unlike Vancouver, which is besotted with a brand of woo-ishness that is more self-injurious than dangerous to others, CFI Okanagan’s umbra is spread over communities where religion (the aggressive, angry kind) runs more or less unchecked.

Thus, it is into this maelstrom of unrestrained non-skepticality that I find myself vaulting with abandon this coming April:

That’s right, I’m returning to my childhood stomping grounds, as I’ve been invited by CFI-Okanagan to act as “celebrity”* moderator for a panel of people who actually know what they’re talking about. My job titles will include “introducing the panelist” and “shutting up” and “pointing to people in the audience so they know when it’s their turn to ask a question”. Gruelling stuff!

If you live within easy driving distance of Kelowna and are interested in learning more about vaccines, or you just want to see my shutting up skills in person, come check it out! There are rumours of a party happening on the Saturday night – if you want details you should check out the CFI-Okanagan Facebook page.

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*Said with the rollingest eyes ever

33 Geraldo Rivera has a point

April 2, 2012
by Crommunist
· black history · blog · conservativism · crapitalism · critical thinking · crommunism · forces of stupid · race · racism

Right now you’re probably thinking “April Fool’s is over, dude”. I mean this in earnest: Geraldo Rivera was not completely wrong when he said that wearing a hooded sweatshirt contributed to Trayvon Martin’s murder. His thesis, that Trayvon therefore shares in some of the blame for choosing to wear a hoodie, is completely fucking wrong, but you really can’t expect someone who works for Fox News to make more than one cogent and/or accurate point in a single sitting.

I did my graduate degree at one of Canada’s most well-regarded institutions – whether or not it deserves its reputation is very much an open question, but we’ll let others delve into that. I mention it only to say that while I was there, I bought a zippered hoodie (the most versatile garment in the world, especially in spring/fall when dressing in layers is a life-saver) with the school logo emblazoned in large font on the front. The other day, I needed to run to the grocery store around the corner, so I threw on my hoodie. On my way out of the store, I noticed that it had begun to drizzle so I flipped up my hood to keep the rain off of my face.

As I bounded up the stairs to the front of my building, I caught my reflection in the glass doors and was caught momentarily off guard – I looked pretty intimidating. Despite the large block letters of the school on the front, and… y’know… the fact that it was my own reflection, even I was startled for a moment. I can certainly understand how someone might mistake my hands-in-pockets, hood-up stance as being reflective of some kind of ill intent, but I was just trying to stay dry. So was Trayvon. In fact, our missions were more or less the same. We are only separated by a few years, about 120 lbs, and a national border (and he’s quite a bit darker than I am, which is far from meaningless). … Continue Reading

11 Sad news – farewell to the Lousy Canuck

April 1, 2012
by Crommunist
· blog · Blogmeta

It pains me deeply to announce that, after nearly a year with Freethought Blogs, Jason Thibeault (a.k.a. The Lousy Canuck) will be leaving the site for greener pastures at the beginning of next week. Over the course of a long and protracted discussion in the back channel, Jason has expressed his feeling that his voice has been ‘crowded out’ by the addition of myself and Natalie Reed. Despite our repeated assurances that Jason’s voice was a vital and welcome contribution to the conversation here at FTB, he feels that we’re saturated the market for Canadian content, and that he’d rather put his efforts into speaking to a new audience.

Obviously we will miss Jason, but we also respect his decision to leave and pursue his own work.

Go get his take on his departure here. More below the fold. … Continue Reading

2 Movie Friday: PG Porn

March 30, 2012
by Crommunist
· blog · funny · movie · sex

To cap off what was a ‘good news week’ (minus Monday, perhaps), I thought I’d showcase a couple of videos that don’t have any message to them whatsoever, but are just lulz-worthy. Don’t be fooled – there is no nudity or sex in these clips, but you might not want to watch them at work because a passer-by might get the wrong idea. Consider yourself warned.

I guess, if I were to stretch it, the part about the ‘big tool’ being not the proper one for the job could be a veiled reference to yesterday’s post. But it’s not. Also, I think Sasha Grey is pretty cool.

This one cracks me up too:

Oh porn. You are so silly.

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19 My summation of my time at the Reason Rally

March 29, 2012
by Crommunist
· blog · Blogmeta

I didn’t go.

Like this article? Follow m…

Oh, did you want more than that? Um… yeah okay I think I can find a couple of things to say. … Continue Reading

23 Rhetorical questions: of rocks and Jell-O

March 29, 2012
by Crommunist
· blog · critical thinking · forces of stupid · liberalism · philosophy · religion

So this past weekend was the Reason Rally, where atheists from all over the United States gathered on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. to make a powerful political point: atheists exist and we are paying attention to politics. The kind of obsequious Jesus-based pandering that is the lifeblood of American democracy is at a particular peak, which makes more baffling the claims of Christians to be some kind of oppressed minority who is forbidden from practicing their faith by the evil secularist government forces headed by secular Muslim socialist Caliph Barack Obama (I am trying to distill a bunch of crazy into one sentence, so I am making this parenthetical thought extra-long in order to not overload the ratio of crazy:comprehensible… almost there… how are all of you doing?).

I didn’t go to the Reason Rally, but I was overjoyed to see a segment on MSNBC’s Up! With Chris Hayes where an all-atheist panel was assembled to discuss some of the rally’s major issues. I was quite impressed with the panel’s mere existence, because it stands in sharp contrast to the usual practice of having a lone atheist forced to contend with one or more idiots presenting “the other side” uncritically. The atheist’s time is then consumed almost entirely in distractions, forced to explain what atheism is, the difference between criticism of belief vs. believers, and in some cases having to explain grade 6 science to grown adults. This panel was different though; everyone (including the host) was an atheist, and thus could discuss the vagaries of the divergent viewpoints within organized atheism without having to stop every five seconds and explain why there are still monkeys.

I enjoyed watching the show, despite having a few objections (that are not really worth going into), and thought it was quite a coup for a nationally broadcast program to put that many atheists on camera at once. But then I read this: … Continue Reading

9 Liberalization of Canada’s sex work laws: a more informed perspective

March 28, 2012
by Crommunist
· blog · Blogmeta · Canada · crime · critical thinking · law · police · sex

One of the things I’ve learned in my years (ironically, from a friend of mine) is that nobody can possibly be an expert on everything – as such, it’s a good idea to have a lot of friends who are experts at different things. That way when I need advice on understanding physical sciences, politics, law, current events, philosophy… basically anything that I don’t understand well, I can “cloud-source” it to any number of buddies who will be able to give me a much more in-depth look at things than I could manage on my own.

One of these is my pal T, who has devoted a lot of time and energy to understanding issues surrounding sex work and sex workers. Ze found me through the blog (coolest thing about this job – awesome people find me rather than me having to put in the effort to make it work the other way ’round) and we started talking about stuff. Ze opened my eyes up to some viewpoints I’d never considered before, and so when I heard about the Ontario ruling I immediately asked hir for hir thoughts. Ze was kind enough to school me a bit on some of the details and implications of the ruling. Hir response is below the fold. … Continue Reading

6 A rare (and major) success for Canadian sex workers

March 28, 2012
by Crommunist
· blog · Canada · crime · good news · law · police · sex

So I have made my stance on sex work pretty clear – I see nothing inherently immoral about having sex with someone for money, provided both parties are reasonably informed of the risks inherent in any kind of casual sex and are capable of giving consent. That’s more or less the liberal boiler plate for sex work. I take it a step further than some do when I say that I also don’t see anything inherently tragic about sex work. Yeah, the most easily-retrievable meme about sex work is that of the street-walking hooker, desperate and starving and turning tricks to feed her smack habit. Rescue sex work exists, and drug addiction can be a serious problem in all low socio-economic status groups – the intersection of those two cannot be ignored or dismissed. However, that’s not a problem with sex work per se – there are a number of other factors, both personal and societal, that create those situations. They certainly do not comprise the entirety of the trade.

While I have expressed my reservations before about losing the focus of this blog, tilting at every windmill I come across, something happened this week that sort of blew the doors off that plan. I say ‘sort of’ because it involves Canada’s courts, and this is a ‘good news week’ (to try and balance out last week’s and Monday’s heaviness), and because fuck it, I want to. A few months ago, a group of sex workers and advocates challenged Canada’s laws on operating ‘a bawdy house’ – the language gives you a hint as to how old the law is. The law states that while prostitution is perfectly legal, it is illegal to make one’s living as a prostitute or to operate an indoor business for the purposes of prostitution. Which leaves… the street.

Scary shit happens out on the streets. When you have less control over your surroundings (and who your customers are), you are at greater risk of violence and/or exploitation. If sex work is how you pay your bills, then you’re trapped between a rock and a hard place when it comes to turning away customers or deciding to avoid the streets. One might argue that forcing prostitutes to the streets puts them in unnecessary danger that they wouldn’t face if they could practice their trade indoors. One in fact did argue that. One won: … Continue Reading

34 White Power-less

March 28, 2012
by Crommunist
· blog · Canada · free speech · good news · hate · racism

Okay, so sometimes my country is just friggin’ awesome:

A white supremacist rally in Edmonton’s downtown lasted only minutes when the demonstrators fled into a subway stairwell after they were greeted by over 100 anti-racist counter-protesters. Police then blocked subway platform entrances until the roughly two dozen self described white pride demonstrators, most of them masked, were able to leave on a train.

Police spokesman Scott Pattison said at one point as the racist group was nearing the site near Edmonton City Hall, both sides clashed briefly, but police separated them quickly.

So a bunch of cowardly neo-Nazi shitheads decided to put on a “white pride” rally. I have no issue at all with white people showing pride in their accomplishments – there’s a lot of them. “White pride” as a movement, however, has always meant (and continues to mean) overt expressions of antipathy toward other groups. White supremacy is a pathetic and risible philosophy, not only because it is demonstrably untrue (there is no scientific correlation between things that code for phenotypic race and any yardstick by which we could demonstrate the ‘supremacy’ of one vs. another), but because it is often most strongly espoused by those who simply have nothing else about which to feel superior. … Continue Reading

9 And you can bank on it

March 27, 2012
by Crommunist
· blog · Canada · good news · poverty

One of the things I am learning about poverty is how quickly and how easily you can get completely wiped out. I, for example, have a line of credit. If something happened to my job, I’d still have 8 or 9 months of rent that I could borrow (on top of Employment Insurance and the fact that I’m highly employable) to keep myself in my home and in groceries. That doesn’t happen by accident – I can borrow because I have a job based on my income. I have the job with my income because I was able to go to school, because my parents helped me, because they worked jobs with good income… and so it goes.

If I didn’t have all of those things – a personal history that puts me in this advantageous position – I’d be in major trouble if I lost my job. If I was living cheque to cheque, the slightest disruption to my income could result in me being out on the streets. I wouldn’t be able to borrow, except through credit cards with high fees that would put me deeper in debt the longer I relied on them. Trying to claw my way out of that debt would take an extraordinary and consistent string of good luck. Chances are, I’d end up bounced to the streets within 3 months.

Of course once I’m on the streets, things get rough. Without a permanent address, I can’t apply for a job. No job means no steady source of income which means my ass stays on the street. Then again, if there was some way for me to patch a small hole, cover the cost of a rent payment, a broken cell phone, any kind of financial emergency that might come up in the course of life, I’d be able to avoid losing my residence perhaps long enough to get something going for myself.

And that’s where the city comes in: … Continue Reading

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