A British MP has caused some con­tro­versy by pub­licly stating that pro­filing of Muslims is to be expected in the light of recent events:

He said: “I think most people would rather be pro­filed than blown up. It wouldn’t be vic­tim­i­sa­tion of an entire community.

What I like is that Muslim orga­ni­za­tions and Muslims with influ­ence are starting to finally speak up in main­stream society, bringing up impor­tant issues like the fact that many of the ter­rorist attacks hap­pening in the world today are being com­mitted by Muslims, and in the name of Islam.

What I don’t like is firstly that things have actu­ally come to this, and sec­ondly that pro­filing based on race or reli­gion could really back­fire. First of all, this opens a whole can of worms in terms of who is Muslim and who isn’t. Is it based on name? On one’s par­ents’ reli­gion? What’s next? Requiring people to put their reli­gion or reli­gious back­ground on their pass­ports? Like what was done to Jews in Soviet Russia? And how hard would it be for someone to bypass such a super­fi­cial system of checks: a change of name, a change of outfit?

I do think that people of cer­tain names, back­grounds, looks and ages will, and it could be easily argued, should, be scru­ti­nized more than the mostly super­fi­cial checks that air­line pas­sen­gers are sub­ject to. However, I think the issue needs to be approached intel­li­gently, to find effi­cient solu­tions (and there have to be many com­ple­men­tary solu­tions, there really is no one simple magic answer), that pre­cisely and suc­cess­fully help iden­tify and quar­an­tine those who intend to use public spaces as per­sonal, fatal soap boxes. We could start by hiring people of higher and more sophis­ti­cated edu­ca­tional back­grounds to screen pas­sen­gers, and we could invest in pro­viding training to air­port per­sonnel to better under­stand things like body sig­nals, psy­chology, etc.

All of which leads me to wonder if per­haps we’re headed for this.

Your thoughts?

Have you ever said, “I’m not gay, but…” or “I’m not bisexual, but…” as a dis­claimer before expressing how much you are attracted to someone of the same gender as you?

If you are pro­gres­sive, lib­eral, and you stand for LGBT rights, have you ever won­dered why you need to give a dis­claimer like that before expressing feel­ings that might qualify you as being bisexual?

I have.

First of all, as a bisexual woman (I prefer the term queer) who has been in rela­tion­ships with both men and women, and who is in a happy, long-term rela­tion­ship with a woman, I find it hurtful when some of my friends still qualify their own sexual desires for people of the same gender by first sep­a­rating them­selves from people like me. There’s nothing wrong with being het­ero­sexual, but there is some­thing very wrong with being het­ero­sexist, which is the idea that het­ero­sex­u­ality is the default, nat­ural, normal thing to be, and that it’s a black or white area with no variations.

If you are telling someone how you sup­port gay rights, you don’t need to keep qual­i­fying that with “I’m not gay or nothing, but…”. Similarly, if you are telling people that you are bi-curious, or attracted to someone of the same gender, then those of us who have put our lives on the line to be honest about sex­u­ality, would appre­ciate it if you could stop talking about this matter like it’s a hot potato that you are willing to sup­port in passing, but not willing to own, even when you your­self have feel­ings that would qualify you as bisexual.

Continue reading ‘(I’m not a queer or nothing, but…)’»

From CBC’s Ideas radio show, I am lis­tening to the pod­cast with Nick Maxwell on the ideas about sci­ence pre­sented in his book From Knowledge to Wisdom: A Revolution for Science and the Humanities.

A long but highly insightful con­ver­sa­tion between acclaimed authors Salman Rushdie and Irshad Manji on the nature of belief, Islamism, the his­tory of Islam and Quran, and what to do in a world full of cra­zies on both the Islamist side and the racist west­erner side. Rational, thinking people of all vari­eties will enjoy this video… please watch in full, it’s worth it. Intelligent com­ments are welcome.

So many things to occupy time, so little time for them to occupy.

Here’s an inter­esting inter­view I came across with author Salman Rushdie

For the other geeks among us, you might find PC World’s list of the Top 50 Tech Visionaries inspiring.

Here, you can listen to an audio ver­sion of a Q&A between Stephen Colbert, Steve Carrell and Ann Hathaway (listen to the audio online by clicking on the link in the middle there).

Lastly, but def­i­nitely not leastly, here’s a tribute to the fun­niest guy who ever lived who died this past weekend, George Carlin. The world was fun­nier with ya, George, we’ll miss your sick, twisted, bril­liant brain. Here he is, in his own words…

Battlestar Galactica‘s Tricia Helfer’s
‘Angel for Animals’ PETA PSA

Click on the poster to read more about Tricia and to enter a con­test to win Battlestar Galactica DVD’s!

“Since we began nego­ti­a­tions in July, we’ve been saying, ‘If they get paid, we get paid.’ This con­tract makes that a reality. It’s the best deal this Guild has bar­gained for in 30 years after the most suc­cessful strike this Guild has waged in 35 years. It was arguably the most suc­cessful strike in the American labor move­ment in a decade, clearly the most impor­tant of this young cen­tury. It is not all that we hoped for, and not all that we deserved. But as I told our mem­bers, this strike was about the future, and this deal assures for us and for future gen­er­a­tions of writers a share in the future…”

This is from Nikki Finke’s blog that has been a con­stant source of strike news and updates.

The show-runners (writers/producers) return to work on Monday, the show writers are to return on Wednesday after a mem­ber­ship vote on the terms of the deal. This is great! This means The Office, and Dexter and Battlestar Galactica and everyone else will be back in action soon! Yay!

Here’s an awe­some parody of the “Leave Britney Alone!” video. hehehe….

Eat less meat

Not only are meat and dairy pro­duc­tion & pro­cessing immensely energy-inefficient and pol­luting, the ani­mals we eat are sat­u­rated with hor­mones and genetic mod­i­fi­ca­tions.

My partner and I decided on my last birthday (August 2007) to go veggie . It’s been at times incon­ve­nient and at times very easy to keep it up, espe­cially because we chose to not go too mil­i­tant about it and so we keep our minds open for when prac­ti­cality must win out over our ideals (like when we’re stuck some­where and the only non-meat option out there is pizza with no meat but with cheese), it’s still very sat­is­fying. We are both more ener­getic, we feel calmer inside in gen­eral and we are saving loads of money. And the food options are enor­mous! We both love Indian food which has count­less veg­e­tarian options, and we have dis­cov­ered and redis­cov­ered so many deli­cious foods from spicy and filling falafel to Licks’ juicy veggie burgers, rich vegan brownies, hot and soothing soups, exotic veg­e­tarian pasta and so much more. The one thing I still love is eggs, and so we choose to buy only Free-Run (cru­elty free), organic eggs raised on local farms .

We also try and buy prod­ucts which are not tested on ani­mals, prod­ucts from rel­a­tively enlight­ened com­pa­nies like Revlon, The Body Shop, Jamieson, Estee Lauder, M.A.C. cos­metics, Whole Foods Markets, Victoria’s Secrets and many more.  And we try to avoid buying prod­ucts from com­pa­nies that still per­form unnec­es­sary and cruel animal testing, like Clairol, Arm & Hammer, Cover Girl, Johnson & Johnson, Pantene, Pfizer, L’Oreal, Suave, Sally Hansen and others like them.

For most of my life I thought I didn’t have it in me to give up eating meat. But it’s been easier than I had imag­ined. Yes there are some changes we’ve had to make, but it’s been a lot less of a hassle than I had thought. Now, the thought of eating meat the way I used to is actu­ally repul­sive to me. Knowing the kinds of cru­el­ties that fac­tory farms put their ani­mals through, and how„ at the grocer’s the meat is packed with arti­fi­cial hor­mones, has made me cringe at the thought of con­suming such poi­soned flesh .

Something to think about… the pow­erful meat and dairy indus­tries put a LOT of money in trying to con­vince you oth­er­wise, but the truth is cut­ting back on meat and dairy is good for both your body’s and your planet’s health.

If you’re reading this, I dare you to check out the sites linked here and others, and try to become more veggie-focused and be the cause/consumer of lesser and lesser cru­elty on other sen­tient beings in the world. Just try it for 1 month… I dare ya!

Related links:
Veg.ca
Vegetarian Resource Group
Caring Consumers
How to Avoid Genetically Modified (GM) Foods
Why is American Beef banned in Europe?

A couple of excel­lent arti­cles from Business Week: 1 about how ads push your but­tons, and another about how ads are changing in the face of the new media evolving in front of us:

This Is Your Brain On Ads

Advertising: Now a Conversation