Category Archives: Social Constructs

For those of us above the 49th, watching Target stores go down the porcelain facility was an exercise in schadenfreude, taking pleasure in the misfortunes of others.  Target bought up a lot of the old Zellers real estate, changed the livery to the ubiquitous red and white splat then sat back to wait for the drooling parka-clad throngs to bust down the doors screaming “Shut Up, and Take My Money!”.

It didn’t quite work out that way.

Target Canada came off as a “special” cousin to Zeller’s or maybe K-Mart’s addle-minded Uncle Gordie.  Target drooled a little, smelled funny and didn’t have actual stock in the stores that people wanted to buy and prices that were competitive.  Canadian consumers tried Target once, perhaps twice, then vowed never to go back.  By January 15th, Target Canada announced the closure of all 133 stores, tossing about 17,000 employees into the ditch with a hearty “Thanks for working at Target!”

Now coming to light are a couple of outrages that are being perpetrated on the cadaver.  Former CEO Gregg Steinhafer got a golden parachute that was bigger than the severance issued to the now-former employees of Target Canada.  Steinhafer was fired by the way, not ‘resigning to pursue other opportunities’ or ‘spending time with family’:  He was s-canned, but like most CEO’s had negotiated a deal with the Target Board that unless he was found on the Washington Mall at noon hour, drunk, disheveled and engaging in an unnatural act with a live penguin, he’d get his piece of pie.

The second outrage is one of insolvency jiggery-pokery.  A Toronto-based market research firm was told to switch its invoice for $232,328 from Target USA, who hired them, to Target Canada, a few days before Target Canada pulled the yellow handle.  When Target Canada did the deed, that invoice, now residing with an insolvent company might be worth $50,000, maybe, maybe not.  Essentially, Target knew they were going under and tried to bury as much as they could in Canada, to maximize their going-out-of-business profits through the liquidation process. 

We’ve got two beefs here.  By definition a Board of Directors is charged with ensuring the company is being run in a way that is prudent and profitable for shareholders and to provide a group of savvy multi-disciplinary advisors to the corporation to ensure prudence and profitability to the shareholders:  Not the employees, not the suppliers, not the kid who collects the shopping carts after school every afternoon.  Fine, that’s the capitalist system we work under.  It sucks sometimes, but that’s what we’ve got as rules of engagement. 

Where most Board of Directors fall over is in their sheep-like mentality of not questioning anything.  A well-suited, pricey-per-diem Compensation Consultant tells the Board that the CEO must be paid a grotesque amount of money “to attract the right candidates” for the position.  Yes, CEO is a good-paying gig and most CEO’s don’t last long, so the candidates negotiate big money and big perks up front.  The candidate is not incentivized to play the long game, as all the goodies come home on Day 1, not Day 995 of their gig.  The Board nods sagely dazzled by the haircut and the cufflinks and the CEO gets his or her payday, so even if caught up to the bristles in a penguin, the CEO still gets a mammoth payout.

The second beef is boning the suppliers.  Businesses of any kind run on third-party companies that provide things to the business to conduct their operations.  The amount of credit from a supplier is a conscious wager by the supplier that the company is going to be paid for what they’re providing.  It does not matter if it’s 40 footer full of green garden hoses, or the contract for the guy to push the floor cleaning machine around the store, the supplier is trusting the company to pay their bills on time, in full, for services or goods provided.  Those suppliers need that money to pay the minimum wage to the guy behind the floor cleaner, or the Xiolang Tractor Painting and Garden Hose Manufacturing Cooperative #22 in Baoding, China, who shipped over the container full of garden hoses.  And the shipping company and the trucking company and the warehouse people and the printers and packagers and so on down the line.  Everyone gets boned.

What the Board isn’t doing is making sure that the company is doing what is the Right Thing to Do.

Henry Ford, the noted rapacious capitalist and owner of the Ford Motor Company back in the day, did it very simply.  He paid his people very well for the time, and priced his goods at such a point that his employees could actually afford the products they were making on the earliest assembly lines.  This is called Enlightened Self-Interest.  Ford knew that his folks on the line would bust their guts to do the best possible work, for a really good wage, so they could buy a car.  That created an instant market of 12,000 employees who were potential customers. 

Ford also played the capitalist card well.  When the Steel Combine in the US decided to up the prices on the raw material for the cars that Ford was making, Ford essentially said “Screw you, I’ll make my own damn steel”  Then he did it.  The River Rouge Complex in Detroit was the result.  Ford brought in the ore on his own ships, to his own steel mill, to make his own steel that they smelted, forged and stamped on site to make the cars coming off the other end of the assembly line.  Our long-lamented 1987 5.0 Mustang was made at the Dearborn Assembly Plant with copious amounts of River Rouge steel and glass.

So what about the Board of Target?  They’re getting theirs, collecting their per-diems and ‘creating value for shareholders’ at least as measured by this month.  Are the doing the Right Thing?  Not by a long shot.  The Board, like most Boards, are sheep.  Nobody is rocking the boat, asking pointed questions like “What the hell are we paying this clown for?”, “How will this be good for us in two/three/five years?” or “Is this the Right Thing To Do?”

For that, they should be ashamed.

We’re going there, sorry, but the stories are getting out of hand.  We’ll start with the anti-vaxxers who point to a “prestigious study” in The Lancet that says vaccines cause autism in children.  Here’s the link to the article, Feb 2 2010 where The Lancet retracted the article by Dr. Andrew Wakefield, because his research was, to be generous, bullshit. 

There are no scientific links between being vaccinated and becoming autistic, or any of the other shades of autism spectrum disorders.

Yes, there has been thiomersal in many vaccine fluids.  Thiomersal is an organic mercury compound in use since the 1930’s as a preservative and anti-fungal.  It was developed because an early (1928) diphtheria vaccine under testing created a more than 50% fatality rate when injected as the vaccine did not contain a preservative.  The children died of staphylococcus from the injection media, not the vaccine.

Oddly enough there was no incredible uptick in the cases of autism when thiomersal was incorporated into vaccine preparations in 1930.  One would think that there would be several generations of autism victims to research, but that doesn’t seem to be true.

However, since us humans shouldn’t be exposed to any more mercury than is really necessary, the CDC asked vaccine makers to remove it, just in case, and since 1999, they have.  Thiomersal is still used as a preservative in contact lens solution, nasal sprays and tattoo ink. 

Using the anit-vaxxer logic circuits then, any woman either pregnant or hoping to become pregnant should be prohibited by law from wearing contact lenses, using nasal spray or getting some ink.  Needless to say, young kids should never get tats until they’re older and can make bad decisions on their own. (Daddy I can’t get a job for the summer, nobody will hire me! It’s because you have have Donnies’ Fuck Bitch poorly and illiterately tattooed on your face, dear daughter.  Now what did I tell you about the possessive apostrophe?) 

By way of comparison of the concentration of thiomersal in a vaccine, you would have to take a piss in an Olympic sized swimming pool, then drink all the pool water to equal the concentration.  You probably get more mercury exposure from being near a burned out compact fluorescent light bulb.  Funny how nobody has drawn a link between CFL’s and autism.  Could it be there is no link?  Just sayin’. 

What the anti-vaxx movement really shows us is how dumb we have become.  We have near-instantaneous access to a gazillion pages of learned research, from people who have forgotten more about disease prevention than we will ever know, but yet we grab at that one miniscule outlying data point in a million that ‘proves’ our opinion.

Here’s a suggestion:  Do your due diligence before opening your mouth.  If you think that there is a causal link between A and Z, odds are you can find research by someone that will give you more leads to more research, from more people.  This sounds like Journalism 101 and in many ways it is very rudimentary research. 

The other concept to keep in mind while doing your research is this one:  Cui Bono?  It’s Latin for Who Benefits?  To contemporize it, follow the money, meaning who is paying for the research.  Sorry dear scientists, but money rides and ethics walks when it comes to primary research these days. 

Now, if you can find three unrelated, probably accurate, unbiased sources, odds are the idea is nearing the department of truthiness.  There are hard facts out there.  We use Wikipedia for some of them, but tend to keep our use to things like How many square miles is France (247,368) or what is number 44 in the Periodic Table of Elements (Ruthenium).  When it comes to opinion or analysis, there are too many sources to list, but we do tend to investigate both sides of an argument to find where the middle ground is, as that is where the real truth is most likely to reside.

The third concept to keep in mind is the overall benefit of something.  Back in the 1960’s seat belts in cars were considered weird Birkenstock-wearing tree-hugger, stream-tasting, safety-freak articles.  Drivers and car makers complained that they would be trapped in their cars with seatbelts and millions of innocents would drown or burn to death in crashes, strangled and mummified by seat belts.  Fifty years later, we belt up automatically.  (I’m primary research in the efficacy of seat belts, having survived a couple of serious and fatal crashes:  Seat belts are the only reason I’m alive.)

Overall benefit is sometimes tough to measure and there are always mitigating opinions on both sides.  Take the simple tool of a ladder.  Ladders are wonderful things and have been around for thousands of years, but they can be tricky for idiots to use.  Go to Home Depot and look at a ladder.  If you can find the rungs behind all the warning labels, you’ll find a useful tool.  Those labels are there because someone sued someone else, which has nothing to do with the overall benefits of a ladder – It has plenty to do with Cui Bono. 

This doesn’t mean that ladders are inherently dangerous, but it does mean that idiots should use them with caution.  There is no international conspiracy of ladder manufacturers to make them more dangerous, so you will be forced to hire a licensed ladder operator to change that light bulb in the foyer.  The overall benefit of a ladder exceeds the number of morons who have climbed up two storeys and their last words have been recorded as “Honey, watch this!”

To tie this all up, use your brain.  If you see an internet posting that says stuffing two sticks of unsalted butter and a dill pickle up your ass will cure cancer and you believe it to be true, then you need to step away from the keyboard, slowly.  Do some research, follow the money and look at the overall benefit of something before pontificating.

Things on the Jian Ghomeshi side have now come to their logical conclusion.  For those with Attention-Deficit disorders, the story is here and here.  Jian has been charged with four counts of sexual assault and in a post-charge perp walk, the lawyers have said they won’t fight the case in the media. 

After tapping the silence bar on our bullshit detector to keep it from wailing too loudly, we went back to the basics.  Now that the person involved has been charged, we have to apply a certain mindframe, that being the hard one, of Innocent Until Proven Guilty.

It’s hard to do because like every other human around, we make judgments every day: Can I turn left between these two cars?  Can I mix regular and premium?  Does this smell bad?  Is Person X guilty as hell? Do these pants make my ass look fat?  Is that shoelace about to break or can I get through another day? 

These are all judgment calls we make, sometimes in milliseconds (no, don’t turn now) and sometimes over days of agonizing about the minutiae and endless if-then (pants) internalized discussions that go on and on and on.   

Simultaneous to Jian Ghomeshi’s fecal matter storm, it comes out that Bill Cosby has been the subject of sexual assault allegations, going back several years, usually involving younger-ish women who have claimed Cos drugged them, then sexually assaulted them.  Cosby? WTF? 

Here’s the conundrum about judgments.  If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and poops like a duck, it’s probably a duck. 

A fast-talking puke at your front door offering to check your hot water heater for dangerous fumes and violent explosive potentials is probably a lying sack of skin that should be tossed off the front step with one of your shoes lodged in his backside.  A beloved comedian, Jell-o pitchman, social activist, philanthropist and character actor with a secret life as a walking Pez dispenser of roofies and dick doesn’t quite fit with duck analogy. 

Which is where we get discomforted.  There is some kind of line where we have to consciously stop trying to come to a judgment and let the legal process go to work.  If Cosby has been a scumbag (judgment call there) then the Law should be doing something along the lines of charging him with several counts of sexual assault and proving their case in open court.

Crap, there is that horrible term when it comes to sexual assault charges: Open Court.

We have reasonable rape shield laws in Canada and most US States have at least some vestige of the same thing:  The trial isn’t about what the victim was wearing, or has done in previous interactions with the defendant, or others.  Therefore many lines of questioning are inadmissible in court to keep the questions relevant to the issue of consent and the suspension of consent as that is the key moment when an encounter becomes non-consenting.  A judgment point.

Even with rape shield laws, the judge has to make several hundred calls about the case and the facts at hand.  Not all facts can be corroborated by dash-cam video of tab A in slot B, then a puff of smoke and Skittles everywhere.  Reality doesn’t work that way.  There was no cellphone selfie video of Lee Harvey Oswald speaking to camera then firing four rounds at a limo and running for the door to connect him with a President who was suddenly cured of migraines.  Life is not CSI.

What we come down to is a judgment of who is telling the complete truth and who is not telling the complete truth.

Jian goes to court.  We’ll see.  Cosby, if he’s charged, will probably go to court too.  And again, we’ll see.  We have to make a judgment call here and trust the system to do what it needs to do. 

Be prepared for a very icky ride. 

More details have come out regarding the Parliament Hill shootings and the killing of WO Patrice Vincent last week near Montreal.  The stories will continue to fill out, more factoids and colourations coming to light about the people, the actions and the results.

We’re more inclined to look at the bigger picture. 

What is striking is the commonality between the killers.  Both Canadians.  Both a touch messed up in the head.  Both ostensibly radicalized by religion.

Don’t get us wrong, you can pray to whatever God you like. 

Like we have Chevys, Fords or Nissans, at the end of the day it’s the same thing: A Car. 

Anglicans, Jews, Buddhists or Muslims; at the end of the day it’s the same God.

We’re not going to crap all over Islam, or any other religion.  We think labeling someone as a radicalized or a self-radicalized Muslim is a cheap media trick to make us afraid.  Especially afraid of the new term, the Lone Wolf Jihadist. 

We’re calling Bullshit.

The Klu Klux Klan wrapped themselves in God as their rationale for dragging a black person behind a pickup truck.  German soldiers in WWII often wore a belt buckle that said “Gott Mit Uns” – God With Us, while leading innocents to their deaths at Treblinka.

Don’t get us going on the Inquisition or the Crusades.

Looking down the pages of history humans have been fighting religious wars since way before Jesus.  Greek gods were all renamed by the Romans, same god, different handle, done for spite.  Catholics fighting Protestants.  Orthodox Jews battling Reform Jews.  Shiites and Sunnis at each other.  Hindus trying to kick Sikh asses. 

(We suspect the only group that stayed out of religious battles were Buddhists, but we wager they’ve said some snarky things about Shinto adherents, however these comments are lost to time.)  

What does truly get our back up is what are called Terrorists, organized or not, regardless of what brand of God they hide behind. 

Terrorists try to make you afraid of everything in the name of their particular brand of God either to change you to their brand, or as an excuse to do violent, horrible things. 

If the great shadowy organizers of these things were truly, deeply, sincere in their beliefs that killing a bus-load of school children, bombing a pub, or shooting a soldier standing watch at a monument in the name of their brand of God, is exactly what God wanted and they would be rewarded fabulously by that God, wouldn’t they logically want to be at the head of the line, strapping on the vest and going first, to show, to demonstrate, with their very lives that, yes, our God is pleased. 

No, it would seem they don’t.  It’s much cleaner to have someone else do the real dirty work for you. 

So they recruit or inflame the crazy, the weak, the loners. the losers, the simple and the lost to do unconscionable things on their behalf, in the name of whatever brand of God they’re peddling.

They figure they might as well make us afraid of everything with their acts and it often works, thanks to our media reporting every outrage and savagery in as much detail as they can.

For the Terrorist, that’s when they figure they’ve won, lone-wolf or not; they’ve made us afraid. 

Thursday morning people here in Ottawa went back to work, a little sad and little quieter than normal.  Yesterday people gathered at the War Memorial to observe silence for Cpl Nathan Cirillo in a spontaneous display of thanks and mourning.

As they took his body back to Hamilton down the Highway of Heroes yesterday, there were thousands of regular folks along the route on one of the busiest highways in Canada, lining the road and on the overpasses to honour and bear witness. 

Aside from honouring Cpl Cirillo, we think we are also saying something important, the subtext of honouring those who terrorists have killed.

We’re going to be crude, sorry, but here it is:

Dear Terrorists:  Fuck You.

We’re going back to work.  We might not be happy right now, but if we climb under the bed and spend all day and all night being scared of our shadow, then the terrorists win.

To which we also say: Fuck you, you won’t win.

We’ve got people who don’t give up and won’t give up and we demonstrate that by backing up our military, our cops and even our government, no matter how messed up they might be.

We’re not afraid of you jumping out from behind the bushes yelling “Boo!” waving your guns, your flag and your tiny dick around. 

Yes, some of us are going to get hurt when you try to terrorize us with car bombs, beheading videos or hijacking planes into buildings but we’re not giving up.  We’ll be sad, but then we’ll get back up and do it some more just to piss you off.

We’re doing it because it is the Right Thing To Do.

Everybody on this planet has the right to have enough food, go to school, go to work, have a roof over their heads and have enough money left over to goof off once in a while.  That’s called Freedom. 

It includes the right to be free from fear.

We’re so confident that we don’t even have to do it in the name of God. We’re doing it because it is the right thing to do.   

We are not afraid.  You lose.  Fuck You.

Since we all seem to be spiraling out of control on Ebola perhaps it is time for a basic backstory and declutter.

1: Ebola virus disease, or Ebola hemorrhagic fever has been around since 1976, first manifested as Sudan virus, one of the five categories of ebolavirus, being Ebola, Sudan, Reston, Tai Forest and Bundibugyo.  The family is also related to Marbergvirus another nasty that has been around since 1967.  Short form?  Ebola ain’t new.

2: Symptoms?  Sudden influenza-like stage of fatigue, fever, headaches, joint, muscle and abdominal pain with nausea and the shits.  Sounds like the warning label on just about every over-the counter cold remedy and most prescription drugs.  It’s when you progress to the bleeding from the eyes, nose or GI tract that things go grim.

3: Likelihood of you getting Ebola while sitting on your ass in an office downtown?  Unless your co-workers have spent the last few weeks in Liberia at a hospital acting as unpaid mortuary attendants, slim.

4:  Things you can do to not get Ebola.  Stay the hell away from working as an unpaid mortuary attendant in Sierra Leone, Liberia or other region of the world where Ebola is actively contagious.

5: When all else fails, what did Mommy tell you?  Wash your hands.  Since just about everything that causes the symptoms, including the flu, colds and the like are transmitted via bodily fluids, there are only two things you can do, one of them impractical.  The impractical is to cover yourself in sterile plastic and live in a bubble.  Which is great if you have unlimited money, time and undiagnosed OCD. 

For the rest of us the simplest preventative that works for colds, flu, sniffles, and Ebola, is to wash our hands frequently.  The common transmission human to human is by direct contact with bodily fluids from an infected person, or contact with an object contaminated by that person.  Just like the flu or a cold.

Right from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) here it is:  When and How to Wash Your Hands

Which means that the gauntlet of thermometer-wielding folks at the airport, or motions to shut down all international travel is Bullshit Theatre.  It’s a fallacy right up there with the TSA mook asking if someone else packed your bag:  “Oh yes, that nice Arabic gentleman with the sunglasses and the kerchief over by the curb repacked my bags for me.  He was very nice and it only cost me $5” said Auntie Pauline on her first flight in a dozen years. 

We’ll add another one to the list, since it is almost flu season.  If you’re feeling sick, stay home.