Quotulatiousness

October 16, 2012

Asking for help against bullying may be impossible

Filed under: Health, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:57

Matt Gurney in the National Post pointing out that the instinctive response of many to bullying just isn’t a viable alternative for many or even most victims of bullying:

The federal NDP has reverted to type, calling for a national strategy to combat bullying. School boards and educators will no doubt develop strategies and zero-tolerance procedures. Counsellors will want to chat about mediating the disputes. Well-intended suggestions, all. But they all suffer from the same fundamental weakness — they can only spring into action once the victim further victimizes themselves. For many, the solution is as bad as the problem.

I’m referring, of course, to the mere act of asking for help. Bullying is an intensely degrading assault. It strips power and dignity away from the victim. Sometimes it’s crushing and sudden, other times it’s gradual, with the victim’s mental defences whittled away piece by piece. The end result, as we all know, can be a victim utterly convinced that everyone is staring at them, laughing at them, enjoying the defenceless, pathetic state they’ve been reduced to. The bullies themselves feed off the crushing of their victims, but the keen attention of the mob is what makes it so humiliating for those targeted. It’s not just a humiliation. It’s a very, very public one.

And it is in that moment of maximum vulnerability and humiliation that the students are supposed to further compound their embarrassment and signal their total defeat by appealing for help from a teacher or counsellor? Or even a parent?

[. . .]

If there is a way forward on bullying — I’m not sure there is, as much as we’d all like one — it will have to recognize the inherent advantage bullies possess. Their victims don’t want help. They might desperately need it, but asking for it is, for most, a step too far, an added injury they simply cannot contemplate. The only effective means of deterring a bully may lie with the observing mob becoming enforcers of an anti-bullying code. And as that seems unlikely, outrage notwithstanding, this is probably a problem we’re stuck with.

Early Baby Boomers had it much easier than those who followed

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:44

Depending on where you draw the demographic line, I’m either a (very) late Baby Boomer or an early arrival from the next generation. I “get” the anger that some younger folks feel about the BB’s, because I came along too late to benefit in the same way that the early boomers did:

But, have baby-boomers really enjoyed a cozy ride through life? The truly lucky were their parents, who worked in the post-Second World War “Golden Age” of low unemployment, rapidly rising real wages, rising house prices, and expanding public and private pension plans.

The postwar boom was petering out by the late 1970s and early 1980s, just as many baby boomers were entering the job market. The 1980s and 1990s were marked by two severe recessions, and by an increase in jobs which often did not provide steady wages or a decent pension.

The unemployment rate for the baby-boomers, then mainly in their early thirties (age 30-34), was more than 10 per cent from 1983 to 1985, and over 8 per cent for the boomers in their late thirties during the recession years of 1992 to 1994.

Many baby-boomers never managed to find the secure and well-paid jobs characteristic of the 1960s and 1970s that lay the basis for a decent retirement. A recent study by former Statscan assistant chief statistician Michael Wolfson found that one-in-four middle-income baby boomers face at least a 25 per cent fall in their standard of living in retirement. (He looked at persons born between 1945 and 1970, and earning between $35,000 and $80,000 per year.)

The proportion of all persons age 65 to 70 who are still working bottomed out at 11 per cent in 2000 and is now 24 per cent, and about one half of persons aged 60 to 65 are still working today.

In my entire career, I’ve worked for only one company that provided a pension plan — and I was laid off before my contributions vested anyway. I don’t expect to ever voluntarily retire: I won’t be able to afford it. And I’m far from alone in that.

Whither Ontario?

Filed under: Cancon, Government — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:27

Blazing Cat Fur celebrates the departure of Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty, but warns that there’s little joy for the Tories (or ordinary Ontarians for that matter) even with McGuinty off the stage:

So what’s next for Ontario? Tim Hudak will not be the one to lead Ontario out of the wilderness and I don’t blame Hudak. I doubt any conservative will be elected premier for a very long time in Ontario.

McGuinty turned Ontario into a have not province and in the process sold Ontario to the public service unions. No conservative candidate, no matter how blue the 905 etc, can realistically expect to win against Fortress Entitlement, aka Toronto. If you want to see the future of Ontario then look to Detroit. Successive Democratic party regimes looted the tax payers to pay for the promises made to their “friends”. The resulting sense of entitlement became institutionalized, a part of the political DNA. Ontario is no different, look at how Toronto is run, the entitlement spiral is well on its way there. The public service unions will continue to demand more and our politicians will continue to grant them more and there’s nothing you or I can do about it except move. It’s a simple numbers game and there’s more of them than there are of us.

One can only hope that he’s being too pessimistic. But the politician most likely to gain from McGuinty’s resignation isn’t even a member of the Liberal party: it’s NDP leader Andrea Horwath, who may be able to ride the tail end of the federal NDP surge into Queen’s Park as our second NDP premier.

Sorting out the real Ada Lovelace from the legend

Filed under: Britain, History, Science, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:18

At The Register, Dave Wilby tries to get to the real contributions of Ada Lovelace:

Ada Lovelace is a compellingly romantic figure, irresistible in today’s age of equal geeky opportunities.

The daughter of “mad, bad and dangerous to know” Lord Byron, her mathematics-loving mother Annabella Milibanke purportedly beat the poet out of her with relentless studies in science, maths and logic.

A beauty enthralled by scientific progress, cut down in her prime after the publication of her most notable work, Lovelace is often easily romanticised and reimagined as a steam punk heroine spearheading female invention and scientific emancipation.

Such claims are sure to be made again with Ada Lovelace Day today.

This image is fanciful, though, and to the unfortunate detriment of her genuine contribution to British technology.

So what are the facts? What did Ada Lovelace really achieve? Did she outshine her female contemporaries in the scientific field? And what debt do today’s female scientists really owe her?

Warren Ellis on the Space Shuttle, aka “NASA’s crucifix pendant”

Filed under: Space, Technology, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 00:01

In his weekly column at Vice, Warren Ellis “celebrates” the end of the Space Shuttle era:

…and here, dearly beloved, down here in the deep valley of expectations – over whose sides The Future slides like a slab-avalanche of flaming diarrhoea – is where we sit and look up overhead to see the grand dame of the Promised World Of Tomorrow being toured around like an incontinent dowager getting a last viewing from the relatives before being locked away in the old people’s home to drown in her own piss. And not one of us, dearly beloved, not one of us points up at that thing, that Space Shuttle, and calls it out for what it really is: NASA’s crucifix pendant.

Five cosmonauts died in the Russian space programme. A programme of largely unsteerable launch vehicles made to much the same standard as tractors and fuelled with terrifying muck that you’d think was too good to spray on scorpions. The American Space Shuttle alone killed 14. That’s what everyone’s been applauding, by the way – a flying death box that killed 14 people, seven of whom died for the noble and future-facing cause of a good media window.

This leaking thing, paraded across America to joy and applause from a people who don’t even see the lie to them that it represents, will have no eventual museum information board explaining that the Shuttle was the first and only crewed American space vehicle to have no launch escape system. That a limited bailout system was added only after Challenger exploded. There will be no guides reciting the story of how Shuttle killed human spaceflight in America. Also, of course, there will be no large plaque proclaiming that This Isn’t The Real Story.

The Shuttle was sold on the lie that it was the Future, when it was no such thing and never intended for that purpose. It was a domestic political tool for the most part. But it’s also a great object lesson.

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