Letters to the Editor
Canuckistan Bob
Published Letters: 704 Editor's Choice: 66
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It's Odd
[Read the article: What is your literary deal breaker?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Oddly enough, I don't think it would be a deal-breaker in a romantic relationship, though it certainly is in a friendship and even professional relationship. And my list of books that would be deal-breakers would be fairly long, certainly Ayn Rand, Ann Coulter, Dan Brown, and Hubbard, and Watchtower publications, but also Intelligent Design screeds, David Irving, Francis Fukuyama, oh gosh, the list goes on and on.
But on the romantic front, well if I have loved put up all these years with a woman with utterly execrable taste is music and movies, I suppose I could tolerate vile reading habits.
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It isn't always voluntary or a matter of curiosity
[Read the article: Who's your daddy? ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]For some years now, Canadian Immigration authorities (and US ones too, for all I know) have been demanding DNA testing for immigrant families in various categories, especially refugees, to prove that they are "real" families. The process can be quite invasive, brutal and painful, in that some families, particularly refugee families, are coming from areas where rape is endemic, and the traumatic refugee experience can mean long periods of separation. As well, in many war-torn third world countries, the legal mechanisms for legally adopting say your orphaned niece aren't really there, so your de-facto child can be stripped from you for not being "really" yours, no matter how many years you have been parenting her.
I remember one man telling me, "I really don't want to know. As far as I am concerned this is my child and I love her, and I don't want to know any of the history."
The testing has resulted in tearing families apart, breaking up marriages, and barring children from accompanying the only parents they have known to a new life in the West.
In once sense, I suppose this represents increased affordability, so perhaps at least the financial burden on some families will be easier. On the other hand, the increased affordability may well result in an increased demand for tests from immigration authorities, with all resulting havoc.
It isn't always a matter of "satisfying one's curiosity" (which strikes me as a pretty nice way to describe a suspicious husband checking on his wife's fidelity), in some circumstances, like immigration where human rights and Bill of Rights and so on don't apply, it is going to be used in deeply invasive, painful, and destructive ways.
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Critical Thinking
[Read the article: What makes a feminist book a classic?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]For me it was Sex and Destiny by Germaine Greer. I was in Anthro at the time, and I found it amazing to have someone say out loud an awful lot of the stuff that I was thinking about to myself. Also, it didn't hurt that I was mature enough to be able to like and admire something without having to agree with every word in it; indeed, to enjoy the overstatement of a good polemic. And what she was saying was so different and fresh from what I was hearing from my rad-fem friends in the women's association.
I guess what it taught me was that indeed, feminism is not monolithic, and you can be a feminist all kinds of different yet still upsetting ways. That feminism was about critical thinking about any kind of orthodoxy, including feminist orthodoxy.
(Oh, and I picked up Fear of Flying hoping for a good sex book too, and was severely disappointed. Guess I was younger or something, I always found the book pretty dull, and not very reflective of life as I knew it.)
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Idiots
[Read the article: Breaking the mirrored ceiling]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]What this mostly proves is that Brit execs are a bunch of dullards. Bad music, bad over-priced drinks, women who actually resent you, and so on. And the sad truth is that one naked woman looks an awful lot like the next naked woman, the nudity and caked on makeup seem to erase most of the wonderful differences and quirks that make people interesting and human. I went to a few clubs in my youth out of curiosity, but it didn't take long before I was bored out of my skull.
I don't think the ambitious female execs are missing out on much. I seriously doubt any real business is being conducted at a shout on top blaring crap music over the shoulders of bored contemptuous gyrating drug addicts. And I'm far from sure that there is any real male bonding going on over self-induced sexual frustration, unless they are engaging in corporate circle-jerks in the alley afterwards.
Ambitious female execs would probably do better for their careers staying back at the office and getting, you know, some actual work done. And being able to come in the next day chequing account intact and head not pounding.
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God
[Read the article: "Petroleum perpetuates patriarchy"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]In Alberta, the premier once remarked how it was interesting that all over the world, God tends to put oil under conservatives, sort of an incentive system I guess. And why the richest province in Canada can't afford decent day care.
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Me, I'm just praying
[Read the article: The Obama difference]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I don't really believe in prayer or any conventional notion of god, but me, I'm just praying that the Secret Service can keep this guy alive. I am very worried that they won't be able to.
That is all.
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Barf
[Read the article: Quote of the day: NPR's Peter Sagal ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Two phrases: "Jim Carrey" and "in a film based on a Dr. Seuss classic"
Really, do you need to know anything else to know the results will be barf-worthy on many many different levels?
So they managed to mix some misogyny in with the usual stew of tedium, uninspiration, hideous graphics, and unnecessary sub-plots. I am shocked, I tell you, shocked.
There has only been one decent adaptation of a Seuss story, the original Grinch with Karloff, a classic in its own right, and they did it by staying true to the artwork, and when they needed filler, they added music (pretty classic music, actually), not inanity.