Time

Chantal Kreviazuk is one of my favourite singers.

This is so much a song for New Years’… or the singer’s birthday.

Sequel of the random stuff

In no particular order:

• Same–sex marriage was illegal in North Carolina, but the people there voted to ban it again.
  • The last time North Carolina amended their constitution to concern marriage was to ban interracial marriage (via).
• If it was legalized, same–sex marriage could provide a one billion dollar boost to the American budget each year for a decade. Marriage equality, it’s good for the economy!
• Teh cute.
• Yet another misogynistic fundamentalist pastor. He’s against women voting and blames them for everything. No surprise there.
• I’ve often said that complementarianism is really hierarchicalism. And now (via) Rachel Held Evans reports that complementarianism is losing ground. Good.
  • Evans also quotes someone who writes that (my emphasis) “For millennia, followers of God have practiced what used to be called patriarchy and is now called complementarianism.” Well, at least he’s honest.

Obama officially supports marriage equality

Barack Obama has officially come out in favour of marriage equality.

Credit’s due where credit’s due, but frankly, this is no surprise to me. There was no doubt in my mind that he supported same–sex marriage the whole time. He just didn’t say so in a hopeless attempt at hair–splitting, meet–in–the–middleism in a pathetic try at compromising with unreachable wingnuts.

Worst punctuation complaint ever

I just found this ridiculous rant concerning punctuation. The guts of that post is that English punctuation is illogical because we don’t use Spanish–style inverted question marks to begin questions (and, mutatis mutandis, inverted exclamation points). By reading his rant you’ll notice that the writer seems not to know the difference between a tag question and a tag itself. The reason for his belief is that it is confusing to rely on context to determine when a question begins. The fact that he makes such a claim shows why he has no clue what he’s talking about.

Heres why.

What happens when you ask a question in the English language? In almost all cases, either you invert the subject and an auxiliary verb (if there’s no auxiliary, add one), or you do the preceding and also begin with one of the wh–words. The main difference between the two question forms is that the former is a yes–no (or polar) question, while the latter is a wh (or non–polar) question. The other form is a tag question. Tag questions are a semantically a subtype of yes–no questions. Let’s look at examples:

• (Declarative): You went to the store.
• (Polar) Did you go to the store?
• (Wh) Where did you go?
• (Tag) You went to the store, didn’t you?

What do wh– and yes–no questions have in common? The first word(s) (or implicitly, the word order) in either of them indicate that the following sentence is a question. In other words, the beginning of these sentences indicates that what follows is a question. Hence, there is no need for a beginning of sentence question–marking punctuation mark because the words and word order already do that. Tag questions are rare enough that they won’t need special punctuation rules. Indeed, in speech, tag questions have no “marker” at the beginning that tells us a question is coming, but this in no way hinders our ability to make ourselves understood. The same applies to writing.

This post has been edited for clarity.

Book Review: World on Fire

Recently, I picked up World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability (Doubleday 2003) by Yale law professor Amy Chua for a reread.

Chua’s basic thesis is that the sort of austere economic policy (such as no safety net, etc.) promoted by certain organizations and entities (free markets), in conjunctions with democracy (universal suffrage), when certain conditions arise, leads to a situation similar to a powder keg ready to blow up. The certain conditions are the presence of an ethnic minority that is disproportionately wealthy and economically successful. Chua calls them “market–dominant minorities”. When the previously–mentioned economic policies are implemented, any economic benefits that arise flow exclusively to the market–dominant minority. In a democracy, a demagogue arises and riles up the poor majority against the minority, using this to come to power. The result can therefore be a backlash against the democracy (where the minority takes over, sometimes with the help of a majority dictator), a backlash against capitalism/markets (nationalization, expropriation, and so on), or a backlash against the market–dominant minority itself (leading to genocide and the like).

Chua provides several examples to support her thesis. Some examples seem more supported by her evidence than others. For example, she uses the example of her own people (ethnic Chinese in the Philippines), including a discussion of a relative’s murder that was motivated by ethnic resentment. On the other hand, several examples seem like she is stretching her thesis. One example she used was the Russian oligarchs. As a number of them were Jewish, she attributes (qualifying her conclusion that it is only a partial explanation) anti–Semitism in Russia to resentment of the oligarchs. But anti–Semitism in Russia goes back way before the oligarchs arose, and it remains after many oligarchs have been weakened. For example, in the nineteenth century, members of the intellectual class routinely used anti–Semitic terms in correspondence, and agents in the czarist secret police plagiarized a novel to create that hoax, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. For those and analogous reasons, I did not find all of her examples convincing.

To the extent to which Chua’s thesis holds, she suggests mitigating both halves of the causation equation; more redistribution and social safety net, a slower democratization process. I’m not sure a slower democratization process is necessarily the best way to go. Democracies are more peaceful than non–democracies, and hybrid (between autocratic and democratic) regimes are the least peaceful of all. Hence, there could well be a possibility of a long period of democratic transition blowing up spectacularly. And if that happens no one will be better off.

And I am not sure that demagogic backlashes even require there to be a wealthy, market–dominant minority. (Although Chua pretty conclusively demonstrates that they certainly help cause them, at least). For example, consider the United States in the 1930s, during the Great Depression. One of the challengers to Roosevelt was Louisiana Senator and Governor Huey “Kingfish” Long. He came up with the political platform of “Share Our Wealth”. As its name implies, it was an explicitly redistributionist movement. This was popular enough that, if Long ran in the 1936 election, he would have split enough votes to swing the election to the Republicans. And what did Roosevelt do in response to this left–wing threat? He adopted some of their rhetoric and co–opted enough of their leaders to defuse the threat enough so that he would win the election. The net result of this was that there was no socialist of communist revolution. In other words, FDR saved capitalism.

The key point to draw from the above is that it is entirely possible to have a (nascent) backlash against capitalism, where there is no group that can be considered a market–dominant minority. And another conclusion to draw from this is that the typical wingnut response of “resort to private charity” does not work. In many of the countries where such backlashes have occurred, private charity has been ineffective at preventing backlashes. The fact that several international organizations (in some cases, used to) be against almost any sort of social programs will inevitably lead to the backlashes Chua describes. Hence, actual government programs ought to be tried. Even if it fails to result in some sort of egalitarian utopia it would likely do enough to allay resentment and kill any backlashes. Chua provides examples to support this. And anyone who advocates policies like no safety nets, no redistribution etc. is only asking for trouble and is taking a step on the royal road to socialism (or worse). It’s a complete fantasy that people will continually cheer on their plutocratic overlords and gleefully accept forever having no future. Eventually something will give.

I explicitly decline to firmly recommend or not recommend this book. World on Fire is a much better and more impactful book if the qualifications I mentioned above are kept in mind. If that is done so it will be a good read.

Cover picture from Wikipedia. This post is based in part on a comment I made at Dead Wild Roses.

Canada wins!

Team Canada has won the 2012 IIHF Women’s World Championship! The United States won second, and the surprise bronze medal winner was Switzerland, who had their best finish ever. Congratulations to all the medal winners. This is Canada’s tenth win, and first since 2007. The final rankings are as follows:

1. Canada
2. United States
3. Switzerland
4. Finland
5. Sweden
6. Russia
7. Germany
8. Slovakia – Relegated to Division IA for 2013

Barring a change in format, the groups for the 2013 tournament will be:

Pool A	Pool B
Canada	Sweden
United States	Russia
Switzerland	Germany
Finland	Czech Republic

Based on their finishes, Sweden and Switzerland have qualified for the 2014 Winter Olympics, where they will join Canada, the United States, Finland, and Russia. The two remaining spots will go to the winners of qualification tournaments.

The 2013 edition will be held April 2–9, 2013 in Ottawa.

Women’s World Championship final prediction

This is my prediction for the 2012 Women’s World Championship, which begins right now. Canada and the United States can be considered the “Big Two” of women’s hockey, and predicting them to reach the finals is always a safe bet. Finland and Sweden can be considered the “Little Two” and are usually the other medal contenders. The remaining teams are well–behind the top four (especially the top two), occasional upsets notwithstanding.

As for background, Canada and the United States teams have met in all of the previous thirteen finals. Finland has played in every bronze medal game. The only other team to win a medal was Russia in 2001. As much as I would prefer someone else to make the finals, I predict that the current streaks will continue.

Since I am Canadian I will be cheering for Team Canada. (Careful readers, noting this and my desire for some team other than Canada and the United States to make the finals, should deduce that I would like the United States to be upset [which has happened!])  If Finland or Sweden’s goalies pull a fast one there might be an upset. No one else has a snowball’s chance in hell of making the finals, and only a little better chance of winning a medal.