Sockeye Salmon & Bison

In reading the Vancouver Sun editorial about the Cohen report dealing with the uncertain future of wild salmon on the BC coast, I could not help but think of parallels in our national experience with bison -- in particular, the so-called disappearance of the bison from the plains of North America.

To me, the parallels are striking.  In the case of salmon, the word 'decline' has been substituted for the word 'disappearance', the latter of which was for years associated with the almost-complete annihilation of the bison.

We now acknowledge that the elimination of the bison was in large part the result of systematic, quasi-industrial killing efforts, erasing the wild order and replacing it with cattle & grain production, railroads, residential communities and fences.  This is not to mention explicit public policy efforts to starve First Nations populations onto reserves.

Over the intervening years, with regard to the uncertain future of wild salmon, our society has learned to be somewhat more subtle in its approach to the destruction of the wild.  But not a lot different.  Me-first competition among the various fishing interests, introduction of competing but artificial aquaculture, habitat destruction through urban and commercial development, all look to me a lot like what happened to the bison.  We even have rough parallels with regard to the economic and social effects on First Nations of our area.

Perhaps this ongoing assault on the wild is inevitable.  But we ought not to pretend that we are mystified by what is happening.

Seniors Learning

I think the video at the link below is worth sharing:

http://youtu.be/9asb_iISKio

Educational Myopia

"What are you going to do with your degree?"

This is an astonishingly common question asked of people engaged in university education.  I will leave aside the matter that such a question seems to imply that a degree is equivalent to some sort of tool, a hammer or a wrench or the like.  But the question does imply a belief in the mind of the questioners, that all university education ought to represent the educational equivalent of direct career training. 

Of course, there are some university programs that do function in this way, medicine leaps to mind, and engineering, as do more-recently created programs related to the business field. 

But such direct career purposes are not the roots of university education in its classic form, unless one assumes that most original undergraduate education was part of an apprenticeship for a career in academia itself.

Our son graduated this spring from an undergraduate program in human kinetics.  When first registering at university, he had not established any kind of clear learning focus, so he started out in general arts.  After two years of study, he found an interest in human kinetics and moved to that program.  He was, however, constantly bombarded with the question above.  His responses were always vague.

In his final term of study, he took on a part-time, minimum-wage job in the shipping and receiving department of a large retail chain.  As he graduated and summer approached, a manager approached him to ask if he would be interested in entering a short training experience aimed at being an appliance salesperson.  After some consideration, he decided to go ahead with this plan, and in the middle of this month will assume a full-time position as part of the retailer's appliance sales staff.

Many of his student colleagues who graduated at the same time, and some who graduated earlier (his studies took an extra year due to the change in programs of study) remain unemployed.  Interestingly, these same former student colleagues are somewhat dismissive of his current occupation, implying that he has 'wasted' his university education.  Indeed, when we proudly tell family and friends about our son's current employment, generally the reaction also seems to suggest that this must be somewhat disappointing after five years of university education.  For us, quite the contrary.

First, in the employment world of today (and possibly even of yesterday), it is unlikely that any particular work situation will necessarily represent a particular restrictive career path.  Data supports the notion that people will have many major changes in employment over their lifetime.

Secondly, we never assumed that the primary reason he was attending university (regardless of the program in which he ended up), was instrumental training for a particular entry-level job.  We did have a sense that the general learning related to becoming university educated would end up serving him well as he tried to find a future place in the world of full adulthood.

Let me give some examples of how I think this worked:

- His involvement in drama in high school was never intended to ensure that he could pursue a career as professional actor (although this was not excluded); it did, however, give him a boost in self confidence, and the ability to work with others, and to gain comfort in standing out in front of others.

- His involvement in soccer helped to develop his team skills, and ensured that his lifestyle included physical activity.  It also helped build self confidence (albeit including some experiences with bullying) and evolve some leadership skills

- His general experience as a university student helped him to break out of being a dependent child to an independent adult.  He had to learn to assume personal responsibility, to meet deadlines, to organize for success, to deal with failure, and on and on and on.  Oh, yes, he also had to meet the prescribed formal learning outcomes as well.

- As an arts student, he had to accomplish the foregoing, as well as build his capacity to write coherently; he had to build his capacity think in some orderly fashion; he had to enhance his capacity to be mindful and sometimes to think in a constructively critical fashion.

- As a human kinetics student, he had to learn to organize and make presentations; he had to work cooperatively with other students in prescribed activities; he learned about important life skills such as promotion of healthy, active living  and nutrition-related topics.

- And as an emerging adult, he had to learn to manage his finances and to do his grocery shopping, to make his own meals, and to negotiate his way through living in shared accommodation, finding out how to register for utilities, and negotiate rental arrangements for accommodation.

Now he is gainfully employed and finding out what it takes to get along as a responsible adult and member of society.

I think his university education has served him very well thus far, even though some short-sighted folks may not believe that he is actually 'using' his degree.

Economies of Scale and Tainted Beef

Was reading more this morning about the tainted beef recall from the XL Foods meat packing plant in Alberta. Apparently this plant is the second largest in Canada. The slogan is: "Big Enough to Supply; Small Enough to Serve".

The article I was reading indicated this plant, which employs about 2000 people was built to take advantage of 'economies of scale'.

The 'economies of scale' notion is, of course, one which emerged with the industrial revolution, and is suggested as a positive driver of business. As a holder of a business degree myself, I know that when economies of scale are talked about, there is never any real talk about 'disasters of scale'. However, in this case, again we can see a mega disaster in action with all the accompanying costs; and the people who are now sick, and the out-of work employees, in military terms, are probably 'collatoral damage'.... unless you happen to be one of them.

In 1982, the author Kirkpatrick Sale authored the book, "Human Scale", in which he suggested that there is an appropriate maximum size for all human undertakings; and that when considering the idea of 'progress', we ought to think about the ecological implications of making things too big.

This XL case might be just another example that we ought to look seriously at the ideas Sale expressed (think about the recent financial system meltdown, Toyota's accelerator pedal recalls, the BP oil spill, etc.). All such events suggest that we might be well served by a more complex understanding of the idea of economies of scale and the accompanying costs.

On the weekend I was in a Pub in Vancouver, British Columbia.  On the food menu it was interesting to see items featured, proudly proclaiming to be made with Alberta beef.  I suspect that the original 'economies of scale' are currently meaning something different to this pub and others like it.  Tainted meat is now tainted brand.

Who Is Funding Your Interest Group, And To What Extent?

 You may ask: who is Vivian Krause?

She claims to be a freelance researcher who apparently is responsible for investigating the funding of environmental groups in Canada, and for 'discovering' that some portion of the funding for some of the larger groups comes from sister organizations in the United States. The environmental "terrorists", according to the Harper government.

If we accept her findings at face value, the first comment I can think of is that, if the corporate buzzword from the 80s and 90s was 'globalization', why would this idea not also be an organizing notion for interest groups such as Green Peace and others?

My second reaction is to wonder who is funding Vivian. In an article in the Vancouver Province newspaper, May 10, 2012, by Sam Cooper, the reporter, indicates the following:

"[Krause] insists that she has no connection to any of the resource industries — oil, forestry, mining, farmed salmon — that her research appears to support. But after going ahead with research, she has received thousands of dollars in honorarium payments from some of these industry groups for conference speeches. And she has worked briefly as a federal Conservative staffer and unsuccessfully sought funding support for oil industry issues, Krause says."

In reading information presented through today's media, my sense is that it is always helpful to have a sense of who is funding whom.

I am currently funded by the Federal government (OAS) as well as my own retirement funds, including CPP -- ah yes, and supplemented by a very considerate spouse who continues to toil for a salary in the mines of the literate. So, you see, I am in part funded by the federal Conservatives as well..... at least for the time being.

"Subdued Economy" and/or "Waiting for Godot"

For some time now, I have been thinking that the columnists and economic pundits who keep writing hopefully about the end of the recession and the pending economic turnaround may well be wrong.

There is no particular news in the idea that people are poor at predicting the future.  But for a long time, it has seemed to me that such prognosticators believe if they wish/forecast loudly and persistently enough, they will create a self-fulfilling prophecy.  For them, this is best exemplified by a return to the hyperbolic economic opportunities that have characterized our recent economic past.

At the moment, there is a kind of earnest intensity within the popular economic wisdom, in trying to blow the embers of the current "subdued economy" into the kind of hydrocarbon-based, economic flaring that western capitalism has experienced since World War II.

But what if that past fifty years was an economic aberration?  What if the past fifty years was not just another cycle in the longer-term historic economic conditions of human kind?

Thomas Malthus notwithstanding, and current deniers aside, we do appear to be fast approaching the limits of human population growth.  Not in terms of geography, but in terms of resources, environment, and perhaps of potential for pandemics of one sort or another.  Even the potential for global social discord seems too loom.  The pervasive nature of social media have really changed the rules of the game of articulating interests.

The techno-fix(es) has thus far created as many (if not more) problems than it has solved.  Stephen Hawking, in celebrating his 70th birthday, is reported to have stated:   "We must also continue to go into space for the future of humanity, I don't think we will survive another thousand years without escaping beyond our fragile planet."

This is a fine techno-fix sentiment; but the limits of our planet and the speed with which we are sullying our current base in the universe, probably gives humanity considerably less than 1000 years in order to achieve escape velocity, let alone to find some other resource horizon.  We might be better served in the near term by looking at how to effectively manage what we have, rather than for resolution through inter-galactic means.

Perhaps there is a not-so-hidden message in the state of our current "subdued economy".  Perhaps the message to all of us is that we ought not to be trying to return to the overheated economic nature of the past fifty years.  Perhaps we need to experience and hone our human capacities within a subdued economic understanding.

I wonder what subdued economy(ies) might look like?

Clearly there are those who panic at the thought of such a notion.  Canada's federal minister of natural resources seems to be of this ilk.  The viewpoint of Canada's federal government, as conveyed through this minister's open letter about pipeline development to the west coast has a hysterical tone.  The notion that Canadians and others in the global community might mindfully consider how we will go forward economically, apparently strikes this minister as 'radical'. 

I feel as if I am watching two men on a bench.  The minister's views have overtones of role of Lucky.

Misconduct & "Privacy" in Canada

In the last couple of days there have been a couple of newspaper reports through the 'Postmedia' news service, of academic misconduct in Canadian universities.  Based on the details provided, it is challenging for the reader to know if these were two different stories, or if the details outline events related to one instance.

The challenges in sorting out the details appear to result from the notion that the details surrounding this case(es) are protected by Canadian privacy legislation; and as such, while the stories speak to misconduct in the information provided by the faculty member(s) to the funding agency, The National Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), most other details are absent from the reports.  The reading public is not provided with the name of the university(ies) involved, nor is the name of the faculty member(s) provided.

We are told in one of the stories that the faculty member resigned and has been hired by a different institution, but it is unclear as to whether the new setting is a university, whether the setting is in Canada, or whether the new employer has any awareness of the preceding misconduct........

So much information on this case is (to use the word made popular in the United States) redacted, it is virtually an empty story, save for the notion that perhaps most of us are not well served by either the Canadian privacy legislation, or the interpretation of such legislation when it comes to such matters.

What the heck is going on?  How is it that we have become so ensnared in issues around privacy (and in this case, it seems not just personal privacy), that misadventures and their consequences can take place in a vacuum of information.

It was NOT ever thus.  Because of my interest in family history, I have had occasion to review newspaper reports going back at least 200 years.  One of the most interesting revelations of such browsing is that newspaper reports in earlier times were often full of detailed personal information that many today might find surprising.  For example, it was not unusual for local newspapers to review the registers of local hotels and to report the arrivals and departures of registered guests.  It was also not unusual to have reported quite intimate details of family troubles.

In these current days of concern about matters such as identity theft, and with our world of immediate global communication, I am not suggesting that those earlier sensibilities would serve anyone well.  However, based on this recent reporting, one has to think that whatever the 'privacy wall' we have created in Canada, it appear that we have missed the mark in the other direction.

Are We Blind?

This morning I heard the news that Coca Cola Enterprises has announced plans to buy back $1Billion of its own stock.  Apparently this announcement is part of a larger pattern of corporations engaged in similar buy backs.  At least in part, the strategy reputedly is driven by an intent to help shareholders defer taxes.  But the practice also solves a 'problem' for the corporations, many of which are awash in cash reserves for which they have no immediate investment plans.  It is no secret that much of the world-wide corporate sector is sitting on such huge cash reserves.

The irony is, of course, that during this same period, unemployment rates across the globe, and particularly in some parts of Europe and the United States, are at or near record levels, with little prospect of a positive change any time soon.  And as importantly, many countries across the globe are in fiscal difficulty due to rising expenses and declining or stagnant tax revenue -- leading to large accumulated deficits.  Indeed, many governments are being told to institute deficit cutting programs, mostly focused on reducing spending on 'costly' programs such as health care, and apparently 'expensive', but unfunded, pension commitments.

The United States is caught in governance gridlock over an unwillingness on the part of a significant segment of policy makers to consider tax increases for the wealthy and for the corporations.  The outdated, trickle-down notion being that such increases will act as a disincentive for job creation.  Canada is in the process of reducing its corporate tax rates yet again.

In the meantime, the cash-rich corporations, apparently bereft of any further entrepreneurial imagination -- which might indeed create employment -- are using their 'surplus' cash to buy back their own shares.

Does anyone else have the sense that the Matrix is in the process of being torn wide open?

Minimal Compliance

Perhaps it is only my perception, but it seems to me that business, and even other kinds of enterprises often avoid doing the honourable/sensible thing because it is not required by law.

A large example is the tobacco industry, which often resists every sensible constraint with the complaint that the use of a 'legal product' should not be constrained.

Most builders of offices and houses, who might construct more liveable neighbourhoods by constructing buildings with increased setbacks, will construct right to the legal minimum setback, regardless of the long-term consequences for the people who will live in the area for years to come.

I could go on and on.  But I was reminded of minimal compliance recently by a consumer complaint I saw mentioned on the TV news.  A mundane matter really, but indicative of the pervasive nature of minimal compliance.

The consumer asked why s/he could not find a 'best-before date' on canned beans in sauce.  Each can does carry an indecipherable code.  When the company was asked why the product did not contain a best-before date, the response was that Canadian food products with a shelf life of more than 90 days are NOT REQUIRED BY LAW OR REGULATION to carry a best-before date.  So, the company puts on their product an obtuse production code, which ALLOWS THE COMPANY to determine the actual product production date.

The 'helpful' suggestion was that the consumer was welcome to phone the company contact phone number, included on each each label; and that the company would be pleased to decode the number on the can for purposes of informing the customer about the production date.

Oh yeah!  I can see that happening while some harried customer is trailing through the isles of a favourite super market in the late afternoon, while the family is waiting for supper.

My 'helpful' suggestion would be to provide the production date in a readable form (for consumers) on all products on which a company already records such information on the product.

I suspect we will wait a long time for this sensible thing to happen in the absence of any legislation.

Makes one realize why the mercantile world is full of what they call, 'red tape'.

Wealthy lack empathy, generosity of lower classes, study finds

Wealthy lack empathy, generosity of lower classes, study finds

So, in view of this report, we might be inclined to look in the mirror.  While doing so, if you find yourself checking your cell phone, this might suggest something about which of the two social classes you ought to call your own.

"The Beatings Won't Stop Until Morale Improves"

I though the above quote on National Public Radio today, to be quite appropriate in describing the desire to cut government program spending in a time of economic downturn.

I also saw in the newspaper, a quote from Republican Senator Mitch McConnell, "The debt they ran up in the first year of the Obama administration is bigger than the last four years of the Bush, combined."

Well..... yes.  But the more-complete story is that the Bush administration left the US economy in such lousy shape, both through tax cuts and lack of oversight of Wall Street, that Obama arrived to find an gaping economic black hole.  We call it the recession.

And while the popular sensibility is that the US citizenry pays too much tax, the fact is that US tax rates are lower than they have been since the 1950s. 

Talk about fiddling while the empire burns..........

Imagine the Freedom of a Contented Life

The story of Allen & Violet Large, by Elizabeth Payne is well worth considering.

It is heartwarming to say the least.  It is also worth reflecting upon - both the notion of contentment and the generosity.

My only question is:  "Why ever were they purchasing lottery tickets in the first place?"

Perhaps the practice of purchasing lottery tickets has become such a routine part of people's lives that they don't even think about it....?  Curious behaviour when the general populace seems to, for example,  whinge about paying pennies extra for fueling their vehicles...  Especially here in British Columbia, where it is an intentional tax on carbon.

Ignorance of the Law

New data out this week, indicating that crime -- including violent crime -- is continuing to drop significantly across Canada.

In the face of this continuing trend, the Harper government in Canada continues to press legislation forward on mandatory prison sentencing and ensuring that those convicted spend more time in jail. 

The consequence of which is that those who continue to scrabble for lower tax rates, curiously ramp up a taxpayer-funded spending spree of gigantic proportions, on new and expanded prison facilities.

Although a bit of a non sequitur, the current actions remind me of the kind of sensibilities that apparently led a former governor of Texas (Ma Ferguson - 1925) to state: 

"If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it ought to be good enough for the children of Texas."

Privacy for Whom?

I've been feeling under the weather of late, so no entries for a while.  I am a little more perky today.

It has been for some time that I have been concerned about our current claims regarding personal privacy.  The matter raises itself for me in two primary ways.  Perhaps the most immediate of the two is the rising tide of concerns about identity theft.  There seems considerable evidence that this is not a concern without some merit.  Although, aside from having credit cards compromised, I feel happy not to have had a real brush with this issue.  And we do take care in terms of pin numbers, passwords, and even shredding documents with any identifying characteristics.

However, it is the second theme about privacy that has my attention today.  This privacy theme appears for me most commonly when I hear or read about some institutional official making the statement that s/he is not at liberty to comment about some matter or incident, 'due to privacy concerns'.  Usually this remark arises in the context of an alleged transgression of one sort or another, or a conflict.  Often the issue involves an individual or group dealing with an institution, either government or non-government.

In referencing the above claim to being concerned about privacy, I also include the ever-more common claim, that one cannot comment on 'matters before the court'.  Or another version is that one cannot comment on matters before some investigating body, such as the police, or a committee.

So, as the observer or community member struggles to make some sense of an event or conflict, instead of transparency and disclosure of helpful information, often one is left with the stone-wall remark that information cannot be shared due to privacy concerns or other protocols aimed at keeping matters opaque.

I cannot help but feel that such an approach perhaps serves the institutional interests more than it does the interests of the individual(s) who are on the other side of the transaction.

But an overriding notion attached to all this current concern for privacy seems to be related to an idea that one is protecting a sacred, privacy sensibility rooted in earlier times.  I think not.

Because I do genealogical inquiry, I find myself often reading information generated by the media (usually news papers) from the 19th century and earlier.  My own experience in this regard is that some of us today would be left cringing by information which apparently was quite public in the past.  For example, I have seen news reports relating to the probate of a will, in which the news report indicated and named quite clearly, the individuals who had been named beneficiaries and their relationship to the deceased.

I have seen news reports indicating details of the mental health matters related to a member of the community who took his/her own life.

And the 'social columns' of most early newspapers, contained information about who was visiting whom, and many details about the various life events of every-day members of the community.  Some reports about their activities in other locals.  It was not uncommon for the newspaper to publish the names of individuals who had registered overnight in the local hotel(s).

All these things make me really wonder about whose interests are served by the current claims to be 'protecting privacy'?

Conspicuous Frugality - A New Male Sensibility?

Apparently, among the primarily-male technology millionaire rich, there is a new financial sensibility, at least according to Los Angeles Times columnist, Jessica Guynn. Read More

Unlike the sensibilities of captains of earlier industry -- Carnegie, Rockefeller, Van Horne, etc.,  apparently the new, young, technological-age entrepreneurs increasingly do not see asset acquisition and personal wealth building as key measures of personal status.

Perhaps the transitional phase between this older and newer sensibility is demonstrated by the recent versions of Bill Gates and Warren Buffet?  The latter being the leader in the push for some level of frugality, at least in broad terms.

Assuming the shift represents anything significant, I wonder if this will change anything?  I wonder if this is a new meme?

All Knowledge is Equal?

David Brooks is a 'conservative'-leaning news paper columnist in the United States.  But he seems to me to be genuinely thoughtful about most matters.  For example, in the face of pending government budget cuts, he raises a concern about moves to un-fund/de-fund(?) science-related undertakings.

• "People are complicated. We each have multiple selves, which emerge or don’t depending on context. If we’re going to address problems, we need to understand the contexts and how these tendencies emerge or don’t emerge. We need to design policies around that knowledge. Cutting off financing for this sort of research now is like cutting off navigation financing just as Christopher Columbus hit the shoreline of the New World." (July 7, 2011)

Read More

In like manner, Peter McKnight, in the Vancouver Sun, writes about anti-scientific -- not to mention immoral -- examples within the current 'conservative' Harper government in Canada. Read More

In the realm of the press for 'lower taxation' and the cutting of program spending, it is interesting to see the public policy themes that emerge.  Unfortunately, the choices are not without consequences.

I Can Write Short Comments:

Don't you just like the brand and location labels one finds nowadays on fruits and vegetables, especially the ones that use a glue which is so sticky, you tear off the skin along with the label?

Consumer Choice?

Yet another report indicating that, for health reasons, Canadians really, really need to reduce their salt intake.

The news report I read invested most of its coverage to suggesting that we salt consumers need to be more aware in our eating, of the amounts of salt we are eating; and more importantly we need to cut back.

To me, this argument seems similar to the idea that all we consumers need to cut back on the amount of packaging used in the products we purchase.

Say what????

There was a time in this fair land, when one-income families existed, and when there was a stay-at-home spouse (read, mother) who perhaps cooked virtually every meal from scratch.  She could control the salt intake.

Walk into any supermarket today and the shelf after shelf of pre-prepared foods attests to the fact that those earlier times are long past.  My sense is that most families today eat much of their food out of the boxes, cans, frozen packages (remember packaging?) one finds in the supermarket.

Salt aside, I have some special dietary issues that cause me to have to seek alternatives to most of the pre-packaged foods today.  Trust me, if one is seeking ingredients different than those prescribed by the manufacturers, it is no easy task.

So, if we assume that families today do not have the time, finances or other resources to invest seeking scarce alternatives, one is left with the choices made by manufacturers and retailers -- in terms not only of ingredients, but also such matters as packaging and even source (read, New Zealand apples in Canada).

And when I read the nutritional labels, I find, for example:

• Canned Soup - serving 125ml - 480mg of salt
• BBQ Sauce - serving 30ml - 370mg of salt
• Gluten-free bread - one slice - 280mg of salt
• Whole-grain bread - once slice - 115mg of salt
• Frozen, skinless chicken breast - 650mg of salt
• Canned beans - serving 125ml - 410mg of salt
• Canned tomatoes - serving 125ml - 370mg of salt
• Chocolate chip cookies (2) - serving 30g - 70mg of salt

and so it goes.

I don't think most of the above are the worst offenders.  I shudder to think what might be in pre-prepared frozen dishes with wonderful sounding names.  But we do not have any of these on our shelves.

Strikes me, that the target for reduced salt and reduced packaging, and local purchasing, and other "consumer" initiatives, ought to better be the product producers, manufacturers and retailers.  It is unclear to me that we consumers have much control, although I have often thought, after purchasing a highly-packaged product of one sort or another -- about unpacking it in the store and leaving the packaging in the isle after my purchase.

Meme Too

In reading the Vancouver Sun this morning, I ran across an opinion piece, written by a fellow who was concerned about the broadly-shared misconception that an aging population is or will drive massive increases in health care spending.

In making his argument, he raised the notion of memes, an idea about which I had previously never heard.

While his arguments about misconceptions about health care expenditures was interesting enough, it was the notion of meme that immediately hooked my attention.

The following is a Wikipedia definition of meme:

• memes refer to any cultural entity that an observer might consider a replicator of a certain idea or a complex of ideas.... People could view many cultural entities as capable of such replication, generally through exposure to humans, who have evolved as efficient (although not perfect) copiers of information and behaviour. Memes are not always copied perfectly, and might indeed become refined, combined or otherwise modified with other ideas, resulting in new memes, which may themselves prove more, or less, efficient replicators than their predecessors, thus providing a framework for a hypothesis of cultural evolution, analogous to the theory of biological evolution based on genes.

My immediate reaction to reading this definition was to see within it parallels between the notion of meme and the mathematical notion of fractal.

The Wikipedia definition of fractal is:

• fractal is a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be split into parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole, a property called self-similarity.... There are several examples of fractals, which are defined as portraying exact self-similarity, quasi self-similarity, or statistical self-similarity. While fractals are a mathematical construct, they are found in nature....

The notions of fractal and meme are not the same, but certainly the ideas of being self-replicating, self-similar and perhaps infinitely complex, are characteristics which run through both concepts.

And it seems to me, on first blush, that memes may be fractal, or at least have fractal qualities.  A quick Google search of the two terms together shows me that I am not the first person to link the ideas.  Indeed, since the idea of meme (a meme in its own right) apparently can easily be traced back to the early part of the 20th century, I feel like a really late comer to this notion.

I find this ignorance on my part particularly galling, as I have invested the last thirty years or so of my life in the role of meme creator and paid, intentional meme replicator -- an educator.

I need to do more reading.........

Independence Day

We have arrived at yet another "Independence Day" for our neighbours to the south.  This was brought to prominence in my mind this morning, by a reading on "National (meaning United States) Public Radio", of the list of grievances in the United States' "Declaration of Independence".

I am not a student of United States history.  In fact, there are times when I wonder if there are many students of United States history.  Perhaps most of us -- United States citizens included -- live with a kind of shared, superficial, comic-book notion of the more-than two-hundred-year political, cultural, economic and military enterprise that dominates much of what goes on in the everyday world across the entire globe.

In Canada, not only are we not removed from this influence, there are times when I feel Canada and Canadians are perhaps fast becoming a doppelgänger for our powerful neighbour.

We are not there yet; but current events and in matters of public policy, not to mention in the pervasive shared corporate culture, one increasingly captures glimpses of the persona of the other in our Canadian ways.  But that assimilation of another national identity is not my focus today.

Today I want to think out loud about what I view directly by looking south on their Independence Day.  I want to look at two things:

• the first is suspicion of government, and
• the second is the notion of being under external threat, including terrorism.

From years back, I recall viewing the hearings on what is known as the 'Iran-Contra Affair'.  In particular, the comments of now-United States-senator, Daniel Inouye, in rebuttal to some of the silly pronouncements of then-colonel Oliver North, first drew my attention to the idea(s) of the United States.  And it seemed to me that, at the very least, Inouye was telling the colonel that he really understood nothing about this idea.

Over the years, this notion of the United States as an idea, and perhaps as a grand experiment around the idea, took me to some of the early writing related to this experiment.  Prominent among these is Thomas Paine, who wrote and published a pamphlet called, "Common Sense", Feb. 14, 1776.  Early on in this publication, Paine states, "government even in its best state is but a necessary evil in its worst state an intolerable one".

In much of the partisan rhetoric of today from our neighbour to the south, it seems that Paine's pronouncement remains as a kind of standing wave in the rushing stream of the social sensibility that makes up the United States of America.  Whereas the Declaration of Independence was based on the perceived and actual oppression of the governance of the British King George III, the earlier anti-government sensibility appears to have been transformed into the notion that no government is better than any government, except perhaps for an important role in border defense of the state.

And this sensibility appears to be increasingly making its way into the Canadian context, even though, as Pierre Berton (Why We Act Like Canadians) suggested, key tenets of the Canadian sensibility (1982) seem to have been built on "law, order and good government".  An interesting contrast to Paine.

My second point, the notion in the United States collective psyche, of an ever-present danger from the outside.

As the National Public Radio program this morning presented the list of grievances set out in the 1776 Declaration of Independence, I realized that not unlike the early pronouncements of Paine, the United States' concern for national security prevalent today did not arise only (perhaps not even primarily) from the experiences of Pearl Harbor or the more-recent attack on the twin towers.  This concern for security sensibility too seems to me more like another standing wave in the more-than two-hundred-year collective understanding.  Out of many grievances set out in 1776, the following seem to me to point to this way of seeing the world, even today.

• [George III abolished] "the free system of English laws in a neighboring province [now Quebec], establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries [my emphasis] so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies."
• [George III] "has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers..."
• [George III] "has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people."

In my experience from a distance, the Declaration of Independence is most often conveyed in the popular culture as a response ultimately to unfair taxes and taxation without representation.  And while that is not inaccurate, one can see from just these additional grievances above, that taxation was hardly the whole story.

It seems that an ongoing suspicion of powerful forces outside the borders is written large in the national psyche from the outset of the American experiment.  Later incidents only serve to reinforce and justify the original concerns.

Clearly, my thoughts are only initial and partial.  But and a resident of some of the other parts of North America, this is what strikes me today -- so to speak.