Richard Wilkinson is a Public Health Researcher. He has a
new book out, The Spirit Level,
co-authored with Kate Pickett, in which he provides an exhaustive statistical
analysis of the effects of income inequality in modern society. I could go on,
but here - just watch this TED talk:
Showing posts with label sociology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sociology. Show all posts
Thursday, October 27
Friday, February 5
‘Can this Onion Ring get more fans than Stephen Harper?’ Facebook Fansite Page, 02.04.10
Yesterday a Facebook group started asking this very question and inviting people to join up. By the time I found it yesterday afternoon membership had already exceeded 45,000. This morning it has exceeded 64,000 fans and is growing at a rate in excess of 1000 fans per hour.
It obviously isn’t meant to be a serious site, but it does capture the moment, and does so with a typically Canadian sense of humor. Many Canadians are as embarrassed of Stephen Harper and his Conservative party, just as many Americans were of George W. Did we ever think it could be this bad?
Canadian politics is a joke of course. A multi-party system of parliamentary democracy with a figure head executive position in the absence of an actual queen, and an appointed senate that is an utter joke in terms of actually providing any kind of check and balance to the system. Our Prime Minister, whether a Conservative, Liberal, NDP or Onion Ring, gains that position not because the country votes for him or her, but because she or he wins their electoral riding after their party votes them into a leadership position.
Think about this: The leader of our country is the leader only because a very small percentage of the country thought he should gain office. In fact, if a Party Leader fails in their electoral riding, another member of their party can and has stepped down to allow said leader to have a seat in the House of Commons. Hypothetically, the Prime Minister can fail in their election bid and still become Prime Minister.
What’s wrong with this picture?
So yeah, the Onion Ring is gaining momentum. Harper has gone on record saying he only needs 40% of the vote to maintain his minority government. That works out to around 25-30% of the eligible voting population, or in the neighborhood of 6,666,000 votes. And that’s making some fairly optimistic assumptions regarding voter engagement. What will it say if this little group of nonsensical dissent can reach that marker? There are already t-shirts available, one of them (my favorite) with an iconic Obama-ized theme. A faux-Onion Ring Party has even been started (anyone remember the Rhinos?). How can an onion ring capture more of the national zeitgeist than the nations elected officials?
Most importantly, how can the politicians of Canada
Does anyone really want an Onion Ring as the leader of our country? Probably not, but there are many that think it would be an improvement…
Thursday, November 26
“The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action.” Frank Herbert
I'm going to start something new today. I've been thinking about it a fair bit since my November 11th Noam Chomsky quote of the day, and in particular since I received a couple of the responses to it. It struck me then that, while my chosen quotes meant something to me, and always something positive to my train of thinking, some of them might not always seem so positive to the people that see them on Facebook.
We all perceive the world through our own 'lenses', and if somebody else's lens converted the quote into a negative for them, then my purpose in posting was being lost in translation. Considering that the only thing I seem to be any good at is communicating (and that might even be a reach), the last thing I wanted to be doing was miscommunicate simply because I was to lazy to post what I got from a quote and what i thought it meant.So here I am, trying to be less lazy. Now I have less than 100 words left, so I should get on with it.Mr. Herbert's quote is a bit vague, which I suppose makes it more interesting. I hear him saying to be wary of those who have one set agenda, or hold too dogmatically to one proscribed path to success. His point, to me, is that the reasoning mind, no matter how much we might think that we've found a belief system or ideology or philosophy that works, will always remain open to new concepts and ideas. Learning should never end, and to close ourselves to ideas that don't necessarily fit with our comfortable world view can be dangerously lazy.
I'm going to start something new today. I've been thinking about it a fair bit since my November 11th Noam Chomsky quote of the day, and in particular since I received a couple of the responses to it. It struck me then that, while my chosen quotes meant something to me, and always something positive to my train of thinking, some of them might not always seem so positive to the people that see them on Facebook.
We all perceive the world through our own 'lenses', and if somebody else's lens converted the quote into a negative for them, then my purpose in posting was being lost in translation. Considering that the only thing I seem to be any good at is communicating (and that might even be a reach), the last thing I wanted to be doing was miscommunicate simply because I was to lazy to post what I got from a quote and what i thought it meant.
So here I am, trying to be less lazy. Now I have less than 100 words left, so I should get on with it.
Mr. Herbert's quote is a bit vague, which I suppose makes it more interesting. I hear him saying to be wary of those who have one set agenda, or hold too dogmatically to one proscribed path to success. His point, to me, is that the reasoning mind, no matter how much we might think that we've found a belief system or ideology or philosophy that works, will always remain open to new concepts and ideas. Learning should never end, and to close ourselves to ideas that don't necessarily fit with our comfortable world view can be dangerously lazy.
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