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A couple nights ago I was wading about the web, waiting for sleepiness to find me when I came across this video. It exhibits the most beautiful project I’ve seen to in a very long time.
On the surface, it is a colossal exercise of empathy and caring for those in desperate need of support. On top of that, and I think much more important, is the awareness it must spread to the community. The bridge highlights a problem and inspires people to think about it, identify with sufferers, and help in preventative measures. It’s a wonderful thing.
Hymns suck. And I don’t just mean in moral or rational sense, though they definitely suck in those areas as well. I mean musically. They are absolutely wretched. As a fledgeling choral singer, I’m aware of some wonderfully fantastic religious based pieces that are beautiful to listen to and sing, filled with ludicrous immorality though they may be. But those pieces aren’t for the congregation. They are much to difficult and stimulating. No. The order of the day is simplicity and monotony to lull the brain to sleep, priming it for whatever indoctrinated message pasted nakedly across the song. Repetitive droning is key to drilling ugly ideas into the poor minds of parishioners. Of course, if you don’t buy into the B.S, then all you get is a hellishly dull experience that you wouldn’t call ‘music’ even at your most cynical.
If you haven’t checked out the godless comedy of Mitchell and Webb yet, I highly recommend you do so. Today’s viewing, from Series 4:Episode 3, according to David of Mitchell, presents a satirical look at not only the plodding tediousness of hymns, but also the inherent offensiveness of religion, no matter how happy a face they try to draw on it.
In our name, let us mock.
Sometimes “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly” just isn’t strong enough. In one of my recent youtube sessions I ran quite the emotional gamut. Let’s start on a high note, shall we?
The Fantastic
First we have a long overdue “Hero of the Day”. For quite some time, the youtuber Vihart has been producing superb content that celebrates the wonders and joys of math. Irresistibly fun, endlessly charming, and mind-blowingly wondrous, Vihart’s videos present math in a delightful and accessible manner. I recommend that everyone take the time to watch as much Vihart as they can, especially educators. This is how math class ought to be. How marvellous it would be if more children played with mobius strips and wanted Mexa-hexa-flexa-gons for supper.
In her latest video, Vihart expands on one of her previous videos and makes a 3D audio braid. You’ll need earphones for this one, or surround sound. Watch, be amazed, delight in the sonic wonders of math.
The Wretched and The “Oh F*ck, No”
Whilst riding this emotional high of mathematical elation and renewed hope for future generations that will still care about math because of extraordinary projects like those by Vihart, I came across this next video. I crashed. I burned. I debated on whether ‘future generations’ was an option we really ought to pursue.
The two stories presented in this video are beyond ludicrous. The staggering amount of harmful stupid and horrific wrongness exposed here boggle the mind. It’s like I’ve been slapped in the face, but the stunned shock will not wear off. Just watch.
If humanity has any hope at all, it is with educators like Vihart. People who make curiosity, learning, science, and math fun. People who find their passion and wonder in reality and share it with the rest of us. The more children (and in turn, the public) are inspired to think, to be inquisitive, to actually care what is real, the less idiocy like that in the last video will be a part of our society.
If you haven’t checked out all the Vihart links in the first part of this post, now is probably a good time. It will make you feel better.
The last week or so my view of humanity world over has been severely soured. I’ve often expressed an attitude that Alberta is the ‘Texas of Canada’ when it comes to issues of equality and progressive society. Hidden in that stance is the inference that other places aren’t as backward, that in other civilized areas these issues are all but resolved. This inference, it turns out, is ill-founded. Hillbilly homophobia is running rampant even in “high culture” nations.
The French government in pushing through a bill that will legalize same sex marriage and allow same sex couples to adopt. It was one of the issues that got them voted in and, in a refreshing change of pace, they are taking steps to quickly make good on their campaign promise. Sounds great! Let’s celebr…what’s that going on outside?
On March 24th, hundreds of thousands of hateful French bigots (that’s pronounced bee-jo, the ‘t’ is silent) marched in protest of this bill. Police had to resort to using tear gas to keep the mob in control. Since then, things have not gotten better. Violence is rising. Notably a gay bar was attacked, windows smashed and patrons injured. Absolutely disgusting behaviour, a French red-neck horde branding monumental levels of idiocy and malevolence.
But surely, this is only the uneducated rabble, right? No such luck. In parliament, members of the opposition say this bill threatens children, one going so far as to say “You are assassinating children”. I would hope, even in our own ‘Texas of Canada’, such a disgustingly hateful statement would result in the immediate resignation/termination/ruination of any deplorable MLA that dared utter it.
Words failed me in the face of this level of soul crushing mindless hate. I was aghast. I started writing this article a week ago but could not finish.
The other day, however, I found a brilliant ray of hope from across the globe. On April 17th New Zealand passed a Marriage Amendment Bill which that defines marriage as a union between two people. This made New Zealand the thirteenth nation in the world to legalize same sex marriage. And how was this legislation toward equality met by onlookers? Unfounded hate, violent riots and tear gas? Nope. Instead the Parliament House erupted in applause. Then, in a fantastic display of humanity affirming beauty, the spectators in the house broke into song. A Maori song of love.
If you’ve ever witnessed the cut-throat farce that is question period in our own parliament, you may well appreciate my amazement that such a thing could happen. My heart swelled and my eyes got misty.
Props, respect, accolades, honour, acclaim and kudos to New Zealand for its monumental step forward and to New Zealanders for their wondrously appropriate reaction. May your shining example wake up a few French hate mongers to just how full of vile depravity their despicable conduct truly is.
Ideology can be a horrible thing. It sinks the brain in a rut, spitting out automatic responses with no regard to critical thought or empirical evidence. This results in a huge resistance to progress. “Change? No! We were right before, so your new option must be wrong! Actually consider the facts and implications? Nope, not interested.”
This sad fact is now rearing its ugly head in the arena of children’s sports, specifically, soccer. The Alberta Soccer Association is proposing to stop keeping score and tracking wins for children under 12. They tried to push this through earlier, but met with too much resistance from parents. Now, they are trying once more and I’m worried that they may fail to persuade the parents yet again.
So why is this being pushed and what are the concerns of parents? Before we look at the real answer, let’s check in with some commercial media. I’ll start with the pinnacle of mindless, reactionary, things-were-better-with-polio zealotry, The Sun.
“Will it result in coddled kids, less equipped to handle the pressures of winning and losing? Probably.
Will the lack of a score promote a culture of mediocrity, where some kids don’t bother to try, and where the best young athletes are dragged down to the level of the lowest denominator? Pretty much.”
Wow, all it needs is to suggest that this new no-score system will lead to socialism or nazism and it’s like we have our own Fox News. But surely, this troglodyte spewing out baseless claims is in the minority. Other mass media personalities will be at least moderately responsible about what comes out of their mouths and actually look into the issue before spouting ill-informed tripe, won’t they? Sure won’t.
Over in radio land, The Bear’s Yukon Jack, the station’s ranter for the everyman, made a Yap entitled “Sports are for Winning” where he posited that the reason behind the no score movement was ‘winning isn’t important’, declared it “nonsense”, then suggested that without winning, kids would have no reason to try or succeed. Of course, no justification was presented for any of this. But then, it’s pretty hard to present what doesn’t exist.
So what’s actually going on? It’s bigger than soccer. Some few articles will mention that this no-scoring for young children is starting in other sports as well. It’s bigger than that too. Sports Canada, the body dedicated to developing federal policies for Canadians to participate and excel in sports, is putting out a massive amount of programs and research dedicated to getting Canadians active for life. They are pushing for all sports to use the Long Term Athlete Development Model . Indeed, some sports have already implemented much of the LTAD model with great success. The mass of research, study, work, and data supporting the LTAD model is staggering. And guess what? Not only is keeping score not important at a young age, it’s harmful.
The load of moronic BS myth is that ‘without winning, children won’t be competitive or motivated to do well’.
LTAD recommends the removal of KEEPING score, not the removal of scoring. People who confuse the two are insulting the intelligence of children. Kids know full well when they kick the ball into the net, hit the ball with the bat, or run all the way to the end zone without being stopped, they’ve achieved. They will feel the rush of success, the thrill of triumph, and the burning desire to do it again. All the motivation, encouragement, and fun one could ask of sports, and no one loses.
In the simpler world of children, losing is failure, losing is being a bad player, losing isn’t fun, losing can be the end of the world. The message ‘you’re a loser’ being pounded into a young mind has disastrous consequences.
The first response to this point is usually something like ‘it builds character and perseverance’. No, for most kids that age, it doesn’t. What it builds is a dislike of sports and aversion to activity. “Why be active and be called a loser when I can play video games? At least video games are fun.” A huge part of the obesity problem we currently face is people are not active enough. Hardly surprising when old school “character building” is teaching kids that sports are for the few elite winners, not for fun.
The other response is ‘kids need to learn about losing, or they’ll be ill prepared for it later’. I can’t help but see claims like this as deliberately dense, as they are wrong on a couple of levels. One, learning to have fun playing sports is crucial to seeing what is really important, which will, ultimately, develop a healthy attitude towards losing when the child gets older. Two, ‘losing’ is ubiquitous in today’s society. It’s a part of almost all games, activities, and all kinds of social engagements. Taking losing out of sports won’t suddenly make ‘losing’ a surprise.
Children need to learn to have fun playing sports, or you end up with a huge chunk of the population who have all kinds of health problems associated with low levels of activity. Once the love of sports is built in, not only will you have a much more active population, training for high level competition is much more likely to happen later in life for a lot more people.
I point this out, not because it’s the way I was raised. Not because I identify with a group that feels this way. Because that’s what mountains of research has shown to be effective.
Just as they didn’t poll parents when they brought in child seat regulations, I feel it is inappropriate to decide whether to go ahead with LTAD based on what parents think. The information is available. Being willfully ignorant of it to the detriment of children is neglectful and borderline abusive. It should not be an option. Not to say that the LTAD model is perfect. There is still lots to work out in terms of ideal implementation. And I definitely am not denying the possibility of improvement, but hashing out these details is not the discussion that’s being had.
Society should always want better for their children. Improvement of this kind demands we move beyond the ‘it-was-good-enough-for-me’ mentality. This would be expedited significantly if media personalities would actually do a bit of research, speak honestly, and not automatically resort to the traditonal-bootlicking, comfortzone-pandering, misinformation-spreading, ignorance-enabling clap trap that currently pollutes our culture.
Links:
There is a horrendous series of advertisements for the moron mormon church which centres around the ‘appeal to authority’ fallacy. The ads each feature one person (that’s one person for each ad, in case I’m confusin’ ya) and this person goes on and on about how they are a wonderful person. At the end of the ad, the featured person finishes by affirming ‘I’m a mormon.” Of course, nothing in the first part of the ad has much to do with actual mormonism. That would defeat the purpose. The ads are supposed to gloss over all the ugly bits (and there are mountains of ugly bits), build up a bunch of warm fuzzies, then sneakily latch the happy feelings onto their religion. It isn’t a new tactic. Stealing credit from others is a solid ingredient for the foundation of any strong religion.
Enter the latest episode of ‘Way of the Mister’. This series is an offshoot of the wonderfully fantastic web show ‘Mr.Deity”. If you haven’t checked it out yet, I strongly recommend you remedy the situation as soon as possible (YouTube channel, Website).
This video is all about those mountains of ugly bits I mentioned earlier and it brilliantly highlights everything the church of LSD LDS doesn’t want you to know.
All former believers, whatever religion you were freed from, are more than welcome to put their own “I no longer believe” lines in the comments.
Music is our great hope, the universal language, and the ultimate unifier. I can appreciate music from 1720 Venice just as easily as I can music from 1970 Toronto. Further, I’ve been doing so since before I could speak. Such is the power of music that distances of 7000 km and 250 years are rendered moot without the slightest effort. Yet, when one does apply effort, the tunnels of discovery are complex and endless. The study of music can reveal an immense amount about the people, the society, the generation, and the human experience involved in its creation. In nothing else is so much information so readily available to so many.
While these powers can be experienced and appreciated just by listening, their magnitude and influence grow exponentially when one partakes in the creation of music. Again, no special skills are required. Sure, instruments can take years to master, but anyone can take part in song. Indeed, in testament to its unifying power, any lack of singing ability is progressively rubbed out as more and more people join in a song. No one ever needed a voice lesson for a camp fire sing along.
As a wondrous demonstration of this limitless potential for connectivity and understanding to bridge the many powers of division in the world, I present Virtual Choir. Headed by visionary composer and conductor, Eric Whitacre, it is an online community dedicated to bringing the world together through singing.
I cannot do justice to this fantastic project, nor can I match the charisma of the main man himself. So here, along with links to the glorious end products, Virtual Choir, Virtual Choir 2.0, and Virtual Choir 3, I will turn the stage over to Mr. Whitacre and his TED Talk, the inspirational video that introduced me to Virtual Choir, and the Kickstarter video for Virtual Choir 4.
One of the accomplishments of which I am most proud is taking part in Virtual Choir 3. Please join me in participating in, supporting, and spreading the word of Virtual Choir 4.
bleatmop
Mystro
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