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I have several online newspaper subscriptions but the headline from the UK’s The Independent caught my eye.
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“Teenagers risk death in internet strangling craze”
What? Is someone target youth maliciously? A stalker, some miscreant after the children.
Hell no.
It is a a toxic meme that has apparently gone viral.
Just check out all the ‘related videos’. How absolutely bug frakking crazy do you need to be to do this sort of stupid shite? Very..and it is spreading, so says the Independent:
“The problem has been increasingly acknowledged in the United States, Canada and France but campaigners warn that Britain is turning a blind eye. The craze is spreading on the internet largely without the knowledge of adults.”
So what is going on? What is the trick?
“Known by a variety of names from funky chicken to space monkey, the “game” involves hyperventilating or squeezing the carotid artery in the neck for a few seconds to achieve a high. Constricting the artery cuts blood flow to the brain; when the pressure is released, the resulting rush of oxygen causes the high. Experts say it is most prevalent among high-achieving adolescents who do not want to get in trouble by taking drugs or drink. The practice is different to autoerotic asphyxiation because it is not done for sexual gratification.”
So choking oneself is being done because all the cool kids are doing it. *sigh* Another not so brilliant moment in the Digital Age.
Now you know, even if you did not want to.
The alt-med community, and their particular brand of stupidity had it coming…
I am not a big fan of Stephen Harper and his merry band of reactionary pundits which he calls a government. His
Kittens: Great for Breakfast.
proroguing of parliament is another bitch-slapping of democracy and the Canadian People.
We need a voting system that better represents the people of Canada. I am proud to be part of the riding that went to the NDP in the last federal election. It was a close battle with the incumbent conservative (tough on crime, currently facing drug charges) was beaten by Linda Duncan. We are the tiny crack in what has been fortress tory Alberta for much too long. Go to Fair Vote Canada and sign up and let us turf this antiquated and thoroughly anti-democratic First Past the Post system of representation.
Fair Vote Canada has a great FAQ. I snipped the first two topics off their page. Read the rest here.
Myths About Fair Voting and Proportional Representation
Rather than defend the glaring problems with Canada’s winner-take-all voting system, critics usually spend more time trying to frighten people about change. Let’s look at some of common myths they promote, compared to the facts.
Myth 1: There are trade-offs between good democracy and good government.
The Facts: In his landmark study, Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Democracies (1999), internationally-renowned political scientist Arend Lijphart assessed and compared the performance of majoritarian democracies (associated with winner-take-all voting systems) and consensus democracies (associated with proportional representation systems).
He concluded: “the overall performance record of the consensus democracies is clearly superior to that of the majoritarian democracies” and “the good news is that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, there is no trade-off at all between governing effectiveness and high-quality democracy – and hence no difficult decisions to be made on giving priority to one or the other objective.”
Fair Vote Canada has prepared an 8-page summary of Dr. Lijphart’s key findings.
Myth 2: Proportional representation means coalition governments and that’s bad because it requires deal-making.
The Facts: Governments formed under any voting system are coalitions of different groups who negotiate and make deals. That’s the way democracy works.
In Canada, the two largest “big tent” parties are coalitions of factions which are generally hidden from public view except during leadership races. These internal factions compete with one another and then negotiate and compromise on the party platform and policies.
The primary difference between this and the formation of multi-party coalition governments under fair voting systems are: 1) transparency – coalition negotiations among parties are generally more visible to the public and the compromises are publicly known; and 2) majority rule – under fair voting systems, the resulting coalition or governing group represents a true majority of voters.
“Two Palestinians have been shot dead by Israeli soldiers close to the northern border of the besieged Gaza Strip.”
Al Jazeera grimly reports that another two lives have been snuffed out. In Canada our war dead are commemorated with media attention and ceremony. In Gaza, another two dead does not make headlines in the international press. the contrast and compare analysis infers much about the value of human life of us versus official enemies.
“Palestinian witnesses said that the men were collecting scrap metal when they were killed late on Saturday, but Israeli officials said they were fighters trying to launch rockets into Israel.
”]
The deaths came just days after Israel distributed leaflets warning the 1.5 million Gazans not to come within 300 metres of an internationally condemned border wall.”
How nice. It is your land, but don’t you dare tread on it.
Plus Gaza was still reeling from the recent 22 day Israeli military offensive. 1300 Palestinians dead, 13 Israelis dead.
The injustice continues.
I saw part of this discussion going on at the Drudge Retort in a thread that I sadly cannot remember. Chalk it up to the fire-hose nature of information here on the web. Anyhow, as I was looking at the thread that shall remain unnamed it turned out that a strong possibility for the lowering of the crime rate in the US was the 1973 Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision based on the following wisdom:
“When a woman does not want to have a child, she usually has a good reason…” – Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J.Dubner in Freakonomics p.138 of the paperback edition. (all further quotes from the same authors).
Amazing what happens when you give women the autonomy that they deserve. But the argument is as follows.
“[…] two factors – childhood poverty and a single parent household-are among the strongest predictors that a child will have a criminal future. […] In other words, the very factors that drove millions of American women to have an abortion also seemed to predict that their children, had they been born, would have led unhappy and possibly criminal lives.” – [ibid, 139].
Factor in other sociological factors like the propensity toward of child criminal behaviour in single parent households and the effect of the level of maternal education on children one can conclude that leaving the reproductive choices in the hands of women is the right choice, not only for women, but society as a whole.
“In the early 1990’s, just as the first cohort of children born after Roe vs. Wade was hitting its late teen years-the years during which young men enter their criminal prime- the rate of crime began to fall. What this cohort was missing, of course, were the children who stood the greatest change of becoming criminals. And the crime rate continued to fall as an entire generation came of age minus the children whose mothers had not wanted to bring a child into the world. Legalized abortion led to less unwantedness;unwantedness leads to high crime; legalized abortion, therefore, led to less crime.” (emphasis mine). -(ibid 139-140)
So it would seem, abortion is a good thing and a feature of societies with low crime rates. The funny thing is that in the US at the time the remarkable drop in crime was erroneously attributed several memes that received a lot of play in the media.
“Innovative policing strategies, increased reliance on prisons, changes in crack and other drug markets, aging of the population, tougher gun control laws, strong economy, increased number of police, and other (capital punishment, concealed weapons laws, gun buybacks…)” – (ibid 119)
The supply of cocaine greatly increased as well as the number of police officers these two factors did play a role in the decline of crime during the 1990’s. The rest as the authors say:
“The others [options], for the most part, figments of someone’s imagination, self-interest or wishful thinking.” – (ibid, 119)
I imagine this sort of correlation must gall the staunch reactionaries that populate the right wing these days. What? Abortion is Tough on CRIME? *head explodes*
This is a meme that deserves to be propagated.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
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