Nicolas Demers – Page 9 – Nicolas Demers

Northern Voice 2013, Part 2: Bigger on the Inside

No, this post isn’t about TARDISes, but about stories and the art of storytelling. Neil Gaiman wrote (in Sandman, I think) that everybody has worlds of stories in them, no matter how mundane and small they seem on the outside.

Theresa Lalonde: #story

Theresa Lalonde loves stories. Listening to other people’s struggles and how they’re navigating this difficult world, creates a sense of connection and gets her own creative juices going.

The real gift of a good storyteller is to respect the people whose stories you’re sharing. You have to make them feel that they’ve’ve been heard. Her motto is “Everybody else is more interesting than me”. Which sparked a bit of discussion—no, it shouldn’t be taken literally to mean you’re the least interesting person on the planet. A good storyteller has to be an interesting person, to properly reflect other people. But when you’re in storytelling mode, you’re not supposed to take centre stage yourself. Let other people be the stars.

There are stories everywhere, it’s just a question of watching out for them. Theresa told the of Fraserview Cemetery, where the paupers’ graves hold three people deep, and are recycled every 40 years. But the names are still there, and you can find out their stories.

(She might have told the story of one such pauper, but I don’t have it in my notes. The mention of cemetery names might have got me thinking about this amazing Vlogbrothers video, which led to this even more amazing video, and if that’s not the perfect illustration of Theresa’s point, I don’t know what is.)

She also dispensed some more practical advice: use the “zoom-in” factor, to focus on small details of a story thereby making it more immediate and personal. Also, need to overcome the fear of the blank canvas? Dirty it up, scrawl some doodles and/or nonsense words, that’ll dirty it up and get you ready for the real work.

Photowalk

Friday afternoon was the photowalk, hosted by Vivian McMaster. For some reason this was the first ever photowalk I’ve been on. I think last year the weather was too bad, and in previous years… I guess there were interesting talks going on at the same time.

Anyway, Vivienne took a bunch of us around Vanier Park, offering a few tips on thinking outside the box: trying different angles, different perspectives, wave your camera around and capture the motion blurs. I took a number of photos and I’ve decided to post them all, even the out-of-focus ones, even the repetitive ones, without any self-censorship. It’s liberating, and intriguing. There are actually some nice shots in there… And here they are.

Near the end a couple of us were chatting and I mentioned how I’m a very left-brain person, and how sometimes I doodle to work out my right brain. They suggested doodling with my off hand to really give my right hemisphere a workout. Sounds like a good idea!

Dave Olson: Vancouver: The Untold Stories

What can you say about DaveO that hasn’t already been said? He’s smart, hilarious, and insightful as hell. I won’t go into too much detail his talk because (a) I couldn’t do it justice, and (b) I wasn’t taking notes at all (more on that below). Partly it was about the roots of today’s social media in much older technologies (home-printed zines, CB radio—a recurring theme, he talked about that one in a previous NV), the history of Vancouver’s music scene (complete with tickets and posters), and tips on finding stories.

Basically: get out of your comfort zone, and find weird things. And you don’t even have to look that hard, either. The weirdness is all around, from a street in North Vancouver named after one of the Group of Seven who lived in Kits for a bit and kick-started Vancouver’s art scene, to anecdotes of bands playing in long-gone clubs, every block in the city is crammed with stories that just need a little digging.

DaveO did some of the work for us, too. He had a couple of large envelopes from which the audience could pick out cards with names to start from. I picked Frederick Varley (the aforementioned Group of Seven artist). I was a bit relieved, since it seemed easier than digging up dirt about old Gastown clubs and whatnot, but maybe not. Who knows what this’ll lead to?

One last point about the talk: at the start Dave invited a few audience members to come up on stage and handle some of the props (posters, records) while he sat in his comfy chair and babbled on. So I went up, sat by the fire and put a couple old records on.

A friend told me afterwards that I was brave for going on stage. Brave? Maybe, I don’t know. I’m not usually one for the spotlight and yes, there was a little part of me that hesitated, but I made the leap without trying too hard. I guess bravery is in the eye of the beholder. Going up to talk to a cute guy? Really hard. Being on stage in front of a few hundred people, at least when I’m not the centre of attention? Apparently not that hard. Go figure.

Northern Voice 2013, Part 1: We’re on a Journey

Another amazing Northern Voice conference, this time at the HR MacMillan Space Centre. An excellent venue, and conference-goers got to visit the Museum of Vancouver for free! As a bonus, a really cool avant-garde play, which I will totally be blogging about.

Just like last year I’m writing several Northern Voice posts, each grouping related talks together.

Mark Blevis and Bob Goyetche: Podcasters Across Borders

The morning keynote speech by Mark Blevis and Bob Goyetche, recounted the history of Podcasters Across Borders from its first year in 2006, until they chose to close it down in 2012.

It was a fascinating story. I’d never heard of PAB before, not knowing anything about the podcasting scene, but I could see the parallels between it and Northern Voice. The first few years—aka the “Podeozoic Era” were apparently focused on the technology. Producing audio, editing, all the nitty-gritty details. 2009 was the transition year, named the “Jowisic Era” after Jowi Taylor, creator of the Six String Nation guitar; from then on (the “Creatious Era”, 2010–2012) the focus was much more on creativity and building community. (I’ve noticed this trend in NV as well.)

It was a great look at two very passionate people who created “a conference about journeys”, and the lessons they learned along the way:

About values: you must have values and be committed to them. They’re much more than goals; goals will tell you what you’re trying to achieve, but not why, nor how you got to where you are in the first place.
How to nurture creative spaces: for instance, having only a single track, to strengthen bonds between attendees. And they experimented with room layouts, to make the talks a bit more intimate. In 2010 they moved the conference to the National Arts Centre in Ottawa from Kingston, which apparently gave the creatives the upper hand and scared off all the marketing people.
Choose to grow. “Look beyond the fishbowl” and don’t be afraid to experiment. You may lose attendees who expect the same things year after year, but you’ll pick up others who will grow with you.
Trust yourself, your instinct and your passions. A strong and safe creative space needs curators, and this was something you couldn’t organise by committee. Apparently in any arguments they had, whoever was most passionate won.

And then PAB ended, because they wanted to move forward to other projects; to do that, they had to close that chapter of their lives.

Mike Vardy: Life Changing Blogging

Okay, so this is the second slot, and already another talk about journeys? I’m sensing a theme…

Not that I’m complaining. I love listening to Mike Vardy, his nerdy shout-outs, the inspirational story of his life. From Costco employee out east, to Costco employee in PoCo, to comic, podcaster, writer and productivyist, which is totally a word now.

My take-aways:

You have to do, not try. Yes, I know Yoda said if first, but it bears repeating. If you’re going to go for something, you have to really commit to it, not just half-ass it and tell yourself that was good enough when/if it fails.
You have to work to live, not live to work. The much more laid-back West Coast lifestyle was a bit of a culture shock to him, where employees would call in sick because the weather was too nice to work. Your job is there to let you lead a fulfilling life.
Sometimes you have to move on. See the PAB story above. There were some projects he had to let go, in order to start something else. Because there’s no such thing as multitasking. The important thing for creatives is to be open to these kinds of shifts.
But if you focus, you can achieve amazing things.
You have to keep your integrity and care about your reputation. He doesn’t do infomercials, doesn’t shill, and in the past he quit a lifehacking site (I forget which) because his boss wanted him to write about recipes. Something about how to arrange the lettuce and the buns in a hamburger? It sounded pretty inane, anyway.

John Biehler: How Blogging Changed My Life

This is the story of John Biehler’s adventures in the last couple years since he blogged for the 2010 Olympics and then the Paralympics: he took 6 weeks off work and blogged the hell out the events. Then got invited up to the Yukon. Then Chevy offered him an electric car to drive to SXSW in; then, a trip to Alaska…

The focus here was different than Mike’s speech. It’s not so much about a lifelong journey from here to there, but more about choices that changed his life very quickly.

The main take-away for me is: seize the day. I haven’t done enough of that so far, and I need to step up my game. And also, that personal integrity doesn’t have to stop you from having fun.

Last take-away: 3D printing is fucking awesome. That’s his latest interest, and he brought a couple of his creations for us to gawk at. The future is here!

Thoughts on Star Trek Continues, Episode 1

This video is beautifully done: very true to the 60’s show both in tone and content. The dialogue is expository, the action is slow, the physics are loose and kinda mystical, the men are real men, the women are real women, the costumes are beautifully retro, the sets are authentic down to every detail. How did they even manage that? Did they get access to Paramount Studios or something? Did some enterprising (pardon the pun) geek recreate them from scratch?

So much fun.

Star Trek Continues E01 “Pilgrim of Eternity” from Star Trek Continues on Vimeo.

The actors are quite good too. Vic Mignogna as Kirk has the steely gaze down, and is way more built than Shatner ever was (hello, gratuitous shirtless scene!) Todd Haberkorn is kinda bland as Spock, and Larry Nemececk is quite good as a somewhat-less-curmudgeonly McCoy. Chris Doohan (son of James Doohan) was excellent as Scotty, and I found myself thinking it made perfect sense to have an actor with a natural Scottish accent—until I remembered Doohan wasn’t Scottish. Huh.

The biggest surprise was Grant Imahara as Sulu. I didn’t even know it was him. Sure, Sulu kind of looked like Imahara… and he sounded like Imahara doing Sulu… but it wasn’t until the closing credits that I saw it was actually him! Wow.

The plot was an interesting revisit of “Who Mourns For Adonais?”, with the Enterprise stumbling upon a crippled and dying Apollo (played by the same actor, even) who claims to no longer desire worship, and merely wants to live out his remaining days with mortals, in peace. Kirk sympathises but doesn’t really trust him, Spock is neutral, Bones is more sympathetic, and Scotty flat out doesn’t trust Apollo at all. At first I thought he was just being contrary to drive the plot, but he’s got good reasons: I’d forgotten that in Mourns, Apollo made the moves on Scotty’s girlfriend, and also attacked him with his divine lightning. But more than that, it’s revealed that said girlfriend, Lt. Palomas, was still infatuated by Apollo, and so distraught by the experience that she transfered away from the Enterprise, which later led to her death. So Scotty blames him for that too.

It makes for some good continuity, but also sadly continues the TOS tradition of women going gaga over charismatic alpha males, whether physical gods or genetically enhanced supermen. And I got to thinking: do we need a continuation of the original series? Okay, maybe that’s the wrong question: it’s art, of course we don’t need it. And granted, NCC-1701 is the ship that started it all, and the series does have a special charm all its own. But I’m torn about seeing it recreated so faithfully, with all its flaws intact. The slightly improved special effects and different actors highlight to me how problematic some of the tropes TOS ran on were, and how maybe they shouldn’t be given new life in the 21st century. The franchise has moved on. The world has moved on.

Overanalysing? Maybe. And to be honest, it didn’t keep me from enjoying this episode, or looking forward to any future episodes. Because seriously: getting Michael Forrest to reprise his role? Jamie Bamber as a redshirt? Marina Sirtis as the computer’s voice? You gotta respect that.

The Road to Kamloops

Oh, and I took pictures before, during and after Imagine No Religion! The weather was fine throughout and if I do say so, I took some awesome shots. I’m particularly proud of my shot of Merritt after we left it, lightly kissed by the setting sun.

Plus, the Kamloops flora and fauna. I didn’t see any magpies this time because I didn’t go on a long walk, but there was this species of tree growing by the convention centre parking lot. It had very thin leaves, of a light silvery-green colour. What kind of tree was that? My googling suggested some kind of spruce, but I don’t know anything about trees, so… All I know is, I’ve never seen one in Vancouver. They must like the drier climates.

Oh, and a moonshot. This was pretty much the only time of day I can take photos of the moon: late enough that it’s clearly visible, but with enough light for my camera to work.

I think I heard one of my friends say this is the Coquihalla summit.

Imagine No Religion 3, Day 2

Day 2, from DJ Grothe to Daniel Dennett

D.J. Grothe

Skepticism is about doing good by being right

That’s how D.J Grothe, President of the James Randi Educational Foundation, summarised their mission and their work. The JREF has been working to expose psychics, faith healers and other fakes for years, through the Million Dollar Challenge, as well as outreach, literature, podcasts They never engage the credulous, because they are not the bad guys. Skepticism, as Grothe reminds us, is not about some snooty elitists in a bar finding reasons why Bigfoot doesn’t exist. Psychics and fakes hurt and exploit people, usually at their most vulnerable.

And the JREF is moving into the classroom! At the JREF table in the lobby were copies of their excellent new classroom kits, designed to teach skepticism to high school kids.

William B. Davis: Living With Belief

Yes, William B. Davis, the Cigarette-Smoking Man from X-Files. He started by talking about his early life, dealing with religion. Nothing terribly out of the ordinary growing up in rural Ontario in the 50’s: learning that Jews are bad in Grade 2; having people try to save him after publicly admitting he’s not a Christian in high school… thankfully, he found other unbelievers in university.

After he became part of X-Files, people naturally assumed he believed in UFOs, but it was always just a gig to him. Still, he was curious, so he did some research, found Barry Beyerstein and CSICOP, and now he’s got arguments against UFOlogists!

But speaking of X-Files, he did also mention how Dawkins (who he greatly admires) once criticised the show for feeding paranormal beliefs. And you know, that’s one thing that bothered me too, even before I identified as a skeptic. But what could Davis do? He didn’t want to quit. In the end he decided that the show wasn’t that bad, and he didn’t really see that it increased beliefs in UFOs. Fair enough, I probably would have done the same.

He ended with criticism of Stephen Harper, and how the biggest issue of our time is climate change.

So that was interesting. A bit scattered but engaging.

Cristina Rad: The Nature of Evil

Christina (aka ZOMGitsCriss is a Romanian YouTuber, and she’s freaking hilarious. Go check out her videos now. Her talk was not about the nature of evil, that’s just a title she came up with for the schedule. No, the talk is about anti-theism. If you don’t believe it’s important to speak up, because religious beliefs are still shaping the world. A secular world may not be paradise, but at least it’d be one less excuse to oppress and discriminate.

Bottom line? Don’t be a dick. But don’t be a pussy either.

And seriously, check out her channel!

Sean Faircloth: Attack of the Theocrats

Sean Faircloth is an attorney and former Maine state senator (in his last term, he was the Majority Whip). He came to talk to us about religious fundamentalism, and how it’s a booming business. American-style religiosity is exported to countries like Uganda, and even New Zealand: it seems NZ has special religious education in the public school system. Kids of minority religions have segregated and punished for no reason. In Canada, public funding is increasingly going to right wing Christian or Muslim schools.

But all is not lost! Humanists and freethinkers can be organised as well.

If the religious right can organise for intolerance and injustice then we can organise for reason and science and compassion

Victor Stenger: The Atheistic Atom

Dr Stenger is not a very engaging speaker, I’m sorry to say. The main thrust of his talk was that atomic theories and atheism have historically gone hand-in-hand. From the early Greek philosopher who believed that the vengeful gods of stories didn’t exist (and if any gods did exist, they didn’t care about humankind) to Renaissance scientists who rediscovered their theories, to modern scientists who discovered that atoms are themselves divisible…

He went over the Standard Model quite a bit, but there was no explicit link to atheism. Is it that visualising the universe as a collection of particles interacting in quantifiable ways tends to lead to atheism? Maybe. My notes don’t say. A crash course on particle physics is not really what I signed up for.

Aron Ra: How Religion Reverses Everything

Hey look, his talk is on YouTube! The bottom line: religious fundamentalism turns everything upside down. Knowledge and progresss are disdained, ignorance is elevated, abstinence is preached but never practised (Evangelical xians have the highest divorce, teen pregnancy and abortion rates), religious people are more likely to condone torture or the death penalty, and on and on.

Also, heavy metal caused a drop in violent crime in 1981. There was a similar drop in the mid-90’s, possibly due to the availability of downloadable porn. Check it out at 22:00

Taslima Nasrin: A Woman’s Life in a Muslim Country

Dr. Nasrin is a writer who was exiled from her native Bangladesh for criticising Islamic misogyny. There are fatwas against her even in India, and her writings are banned in her native country.

(I took very few notes during her talk because it was so engrossing.)

Daniel Dennett: Non-Believing Clergy

The closing keynote speech was a whopper. Dr. Dennett talked about his work with non-believing clergy

It’s got to be a horrible situation, and Dr. Dennett was very good about making us empathise. You grow up believing that priests / ministers are all good people, doing good for others, so naturally you want to join them. But then you get to a seminary, and you have to actually question and analyse scriptures, taught by people who may be a lot more cynical and jaded than you. It’s a shock, and apparently a lot of such schools have counselors specifically to deal with crises of faith.

Even if you make it through, it’s an incredibly isolating life. Non-believing priests may think they’re the only one to doubt, probably don’t have any peers they can spill their guts to (especially not their parishioners) and in general will feel trapped in a non-believing closet. If they quit, they’re letting their flock and their own dreams down. It’s a dreadful bind.

Mind you, that’s if they make it through. Fewer and fewer prospective priests are even making it through religious schools; on top of that, fewer and fewer people are called to the priesthood; worst of all for religious authorities, fewer and fewer parents are successfully passing on their religious traditions to their children. What will happen to religious structures when they run out of people?

Dr. Dennett used an excellent analogy, that of the cell. Now, biological cells can be reduced to just a few processes and elements: a membrane, to keep the insides in and the outside out; energy consumption, to keep on living; and reproduction. Could we look at social groups in the same way? In this analogy, energy would be cash to keep the group going; the membrane would be whatever hoops one has to go through to join; and reproduction would be whatever is necessary to keep the group going or expanding.

We looked at four types of social cells: Japanese tea ceremony schools; debutante cotillion training programs; Ponzi schemes; and religion. Without going into too many details, the first two are very similar in that members pay buttloads of money for something that is supposed to enhance social status but (a) serves no actual social purpose and (b) at least for cotillions is increasingly seen as silly and irrelevant in today’s world. For the last two, people often get started without realising what they’re getting themselves into, and by the time they realise the costs it’s too late to easily quit.

And what will the world look like in a generation or two, when today’s religions have shrunk or mutated beyond recognition? Will the Vatican be reduced to a museum and gift shop? Will Mecca be a Disney subsidiary? What social structures will replace churches? Should we need to worry about it? How painful will the transition be? That’s still an open question, obviously, but we can can find clues by looking at the deeply secular parts of Western Europe and Australia: people still form relationships, and find purpose in their lives. You don’t need religion or religious social clubs to do that. The reactionary elements will fight back, of course, but that’s another story.

Imagine No Religion 3, Day 1

I wasn’t even sure I wanted to go this year. Last year’s INR was fun, and had some great speakers, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to shell out the bucks again. But then a friend of mine was going, and needed both a ride and a roommate, so I figured what the hell.

And I’m glad I went! The drive was lovely as always, and the speakers were generally excellent.

Dr. K. Sohail: Secular Ideas, Humanist Ideals

The first talk was by Dr. K. Sohail, an ex-Muslim secular humanist and psychotherapist. He started with the story of his childhood in conservative Pakistan, surrounded by superstition and hardline dogma but also—fortunately—a couple of freethinking older relatives who encouraged his questioning, and how he gradually moved away from religion.

His talk was mainly on the harm caused by organised religion, both to individuals (eg: blind faith, wilfull ignorance, sexual guilt and other problems) and societies (eg: discrimination, violence). He’s seen both, first-hand: in particular, he told of a holy war against India taking place when he was 13, and how he was swept up in the fervor of it all.

But Dr. Sohail’s focus was on compassion, and how important it is if you want to establish a dialog with religious people and form intercultural alliances. Freedom of religion (other spiritual paths) and freedom from religion (secularism) can both challenge organised religion. Having multiple faiths coexisting peacefully is a step in the right direction.

Other people’s journeys had helped me, maybe my journey would help others.

Peter Boghossian: Street Epistemology

Dr. Boghossian used material from his upcoming book A Manual for Creating Atheists to give us some extra tools for talking people out of their faiths. The basic idea is that religious people can be classified on a scale, starting with “pre-contemplative” (not questioning their beliefs at all, being 100% convinced of their truths). The goal is not to immediately create freethinkers, but to nudge people up on the scale of non-belief.

He went over one technique he called “street epistemology:” because it can be used anywhere, even on the street, and it focuses on faith as epistemology. It’s not about debunking particular beliefs; precontemplative people, Boghossian argues, wouldn’t be receptive to facts and education. However, they may respond to being asked why and how they believe the things they believe, turning their focus on themselves without any need for defensiveness.

Thing is, though… that technique may work in his practice, in controlled conditions, but I question whether it’s particularly useful on the street. It’s certainly one more tool in your rhetorical kit, but people can find a lot of rationalisations for the kookiest beliefs.

Another thing that bothered me, and this hit me only after several hours of picking away at it, was that his approach to street evangelism seemed condescending and even manipulative. In my notes, I wrote that it was a more aggressive counterpoint to Dr. Sohail’s talk, with a different tone but with similar goals. But then I realised it really wasn’t. Dr. Boghossian repeated several times the phrase “sitting at the adult table” to mean have a rational discussion about one’s beliefs and epistemology, and if you couldn’t do that there was no point in having a conversation. My problem is that approaching people to evangelise to them, while looking down on them in that way, is not a good attitude to have. This is not the compassion espoused by Dr. Sohail, it feels more like pity.

Plus, it’s inaccurate. As a couple other speakers prove over the weekend, even precontemplative people can be de-converted by facts and education. Even when those facts come from New Atheists like Dawkins or Hitchens.

Aruna Papp: Unworthy Creature

Aruna Papp grew up as the daughter of a church pastor (Seventh Day Adventist) in India. All her life she was despised just for being a girl, and her mother equally despised for giving birth only to daughters. Married against her will, her family relocated to Canada—a good Christian country, she was told, almost paradise. She started taking classes, making friends with other immigrant women who were also abused, and eventually found her independence.

This deeply moving talk got the first standing ovation of the day.

Richard Carrier: Bayes’ Theorem

After a lunch break, we’re back to academia! Here Dr. Richard Carrier looks at the question of the historicity of Jesus using Baye’s Theorem as a starting point to discuss how likely the Jesus story is, versus other dead and resurrected saviours.

Turns out, there are quite a lot of them—including Romulus, which I didn’t know—and they can be ranked according to a checklist.

A fascinating talk, though the mathematical stuff went a bit over my head. But I learned a few neat factoids, a couple new historical terms, so it’s all good.

Christopher DiCarlo: The Future of Ethics

Dr. DiCarlo examined the problem of free will. Namely, how much do we really have? Total free will? Some free will? None at all? Some probably have more than others, being pulled and pushed by faulty brain chemistry… So the question is, what if there is no free will? What if we are nothing more than agents in complex webs of systems?

The goal, then, is to understand and model these systems. This is what he calls the Onion Skin Theory of Knowledge (or OSTOK); like onion skins, knowledge modeled this way would be extremely complex and multilayered.

This is actually not too different from this talk last year. And maybe it’s just me, but I don’t see how this new conceptualisation of human behaviour can really move us further along, since we don’t know how much free will we actually have. So that was a bit disappointing.

Louise Antony: Can’t We All Just Get Along?

Friendships are based on common values, not metaphysics. It shouldn’t stand in the way of making common cause.

And that’s mostly what I got from Dr. Antony’s talk. She admitted at the start that she was going off script (I think, to respond to earlier talks), so it ended up kind of rambly and disorganised. Originally it was going to be a double challenge: to theists, it was to speak out against extremists of their own religion as much as we do. To New Atheists, it was to avoid replacing religious extremism with atheist extremism.

Which… is a really problematic equivalence. It’s true that secularism is no guarantee of ethical behavior, but using the Tuskegee Experiments (done “in the name of science”) as an example that science can be just as bad? No. So, I didn’t get a lot out of this talk either

Brian Dalton: Mr. Deity

I guess I’ve been horribly deprived, because I’ve never watched Mr. Deity. Well, I’m remedying that as we speak. I didn’t take any notes during his talk, which largely consisted of clips of his show.

Zoltan the Adequate

After dinner, we had a fun little magic show by a skeptical magician. Educational, too: he repeatedly counseled against looking down on victims of psychics and so on. It’s too easy to say, “well, they deserve it for being stupid/ignorant/gullible”, and easier to say “I’d never fall for such obvious scams.” But we’re all human, and vulnerable people deserve our support, not our scorn. Educate them, sure. But it has to be done from a place of empathy. We the skeptics have to know what it’s like to feel stupid.

International Day Against Homophobia

Today was the International Day Against Homophobia. One way we celebrate it here in Vancouver is with the IDAH breakfast, organised by Qmunity. This event brings together local VIPs, politicians, business owners, as well as ordinary folks who can afford the ticket for a couple hours of eating, schmoozing and inspirational talks. The theme this year was: Homophobia and transphobia in sports. It was my first IDAH breakfast, and I was there with several other members of the VGVA board.

All the talks were wonderful and inspiring. Anita Braha, of the Vancity board of directors, spoke about Vancity’s commitment to inclusion and a healthy sustainable communities. Apparently, it was only in the 70’s that husbandless women could sign for a mortgage in their own name (sorry i dont remember the exact date); Braha and her partner were the first lesbian couple to get a mortgage from Vancity.

Next up was Louise Cowin, Vice-president of Students at UBC. Among other things, she is responsible for student athletics. She spoke of the continuing stigma against queer, trans and gender-variant players, even in places of higher education where you would think the only thing that matters is achievement. And, she shared some anecdotes from her own adolescence in the 70’s, where she was forced to undergo a test to determine is she was really female. Such tests were only discontinued in 1999, and even today female athletes (whatever their sexual orientation) have to go out of their way to “prove” they really are properly female. We still have a long way to go.

But maybe not a very long way, as proved by the next speaker: Olympic gold medalist Ben Rutledge. He started out delivering what felt like nice cliches about when you’re training for the Olympics your teammates’ sexuality doesn’t matter, it’s what you can do together. But then (and I’m sorry I don’t remember in greater detail) he said something about not always making the best decisions about choosing your teammates, and then something about “being on the wrong side”… and choked up. Whoah. That was unexpected! I don’t know what mistakes he made in the past but clearly he still feels terrible about them. Someone handed him a kleenex and I think that was the end of his speech because the next thing I remember was a standing ovation.

And it just goes to show: people mess up. And that’s okay, as long as they learn from their mistakes and their hearts are in the right place. That’s what allies do.

The last speakers were Cory Oskam, a 16-year-old trans hockey player and his mother. She’s absolutely the sweetest woman you’ll ever meet, 100% supportive of Cory. She spoke of his early challenges, not really fitting in with girls or boys (until he proved his athletic talent, and then the boys totally accepted him!), refusing to wear any underwear except Superman boys’ briefs, and a few cutely embarrassing anecdotes which, as the mother of a teenager, she’s contractually required to share.

Cory is amazingly bright and articulate. I was stunned at his determination to make the world a better place for others, and his impressed by his decision to not choose a gender just yet. He said his gender is fluid, though he’s closer to the male end of the scale. But picking a gender is like picking a name, it’s something you have to put some thought into.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: my mind is blown by kids today, how much smarter and freer of prejudice they can be compared to my generation. There’s still a lot of work to do, yes. But the future belongs to young people like Cory.

It’s made me think about VGVA, and the context in which it exists. After 30+ years, it’s an established part of the Vancouver cityscape; but in its early days, it and other queer sports leagues must have been incredibly revolutionary. The idea that gays can play sports? Now that’s just crazy talk!

But to some people, yes, its still crazy. And queers shouldn’t have to choose between their sexual / gender identity and their love of sports, as many still do if they’re surrounded with homophobic players. So there’s still a special role for groups like VGVA, and I need to remember that.

And maybe the timing’s a coincidence, but just this Monday the Vancouver Park Board passed a motion to create a working group to make parks, community centres, etc… inclusive and friendly to trans and gender-variant people. It’s a historic first step, and it couldn’t have happened without (a) activists spearheading the effort and (b) the support of straight and cis allies. I was there at the meeting, and though the list of speakers seemed interminable (it adjourned past 1PM!) I was deeply moved at everyone who came out and suported the motion and shared their stories.

The motion passed unanimously. It wasn’t a happy ending, it was a happy beginning. And on a different note, the whole evening was an interesting look at local politics, which I’ve never paid much attention to. But hey, who knows? This is another way I could make a difference…

Book Review: The Fault in Our Stars

There I was in Chapters the other day, not looking for any particular book, and ended up walking out with: volume 2 of The Unwritten, Alison Bechdel’s latest graphic novel Are You My Mother, and John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars. I’d never read any of his books before, though I’ve been a huge fan of Vlogbrothers and Crash Course for months.

There I was in Chapters the other day, not looking for any particular book, and ended up walking out with volume 2 of The Unwritten, Alison Bechdel’s latest graphic novel Are You My Mother?, and John Green‘s The Fault in Our Stars. I’d never read any of his books before, though I’ve been a huge fan of Vlogbrothers and Crash Course for months.

And I told myself I couldn’t start on any of these until I finished Contes du lundi (currently reading) and Faitheist (next on my list). But of course I couldn’t resist. I went through my new acquisitions right away, saving TFiOS for last.

At first it wasn’t the magnificent opus I was expecting. Engaging, moving, brutally honest? Definitely. Hilarious and nerdy? No doubt. Smart and thought-provoking while still totally unpretentious? Oh yeah. Through all of it, I could hear John Green’s voice in the narration. Hard not to, really, I’ve been listening to that voice on my computer for the better part of a year—silly and bouncy when he talks about the Dead Baby Orphanage or whatever, low and quiet and thoughtful during his Thoughts From Places. Every side of him is in Stars, and they manage to mesh together perfectly.

But still, except for a few passages, the first ten chapters didn’t really touch me. That all changed when Gus and Hazel arrived in Amsterdam. I don’t know if John (is it okay if I call him John?) wrote the Amsterdam parts in Amsterdam and the Indianapolis parts in Indianapolis, and if that explains why the Amsterdam parts felt more alive and magical; and now I’m thinking that was deliberate, that that whole trip was magical because it was a granted wish in a world that is not a wish-granting factory. And now I’m thinking maybe I’m overanalysing this. Wouldn’t be the first time.

Regardless, I started to perk up here:

“Are these houses very old?” asked my mom.
“Many of the canal houses date from the Golden Age, the seventeenth century,” he said. “Our city has a rich history, even though many tourists are only wanting to see the Red Light District.” He paused. “Some tourists think Amsterdam is a city of sin, but in truth it is a city of freedom. And in freedom, most people find sin.”

I don’t know why that last sentence intrigued me so much. It kind of sounded like something John might say, except he’s never talked about sin in his videos…

But I kind of lost it a few pages later:

There were elm trees everywhere along the canals, and these seeds were blowing out of them. But they didn’t look like seeds. They looked for all the world like miniaturized rose petals drained of their color. These pale petals were gathering in the wind like flocking birds—thousands of them, like a spring snowstorm.
The old man who’d given up his seat saw us noticing and said, in English, “Amsterdam’s spring snow. The iepen throw confetti to greet the spring.”

I don’t know what elm tree seeds look like, so in my mind all I saw were Vancouver’s cherry blossoms, all shades of pink, brightening up the city just a couple weeks ago. A symbol of renewal and hope but also of the impermanence of all things and if that’s not the perfect accompaniment for two dying teenagers on the trip of a lifetime, I don’t know what is. In my head I was with Hazel and Gus, looking up at the elm tree snow, and I felt so sad for them but also happy because they were having an amazing time and now I wish so badly to visit Amsterdam myself, and I didn’t know if I wanted to laugh or cry so I settled for both.

Talk of champagne as bottled stars (‘Come quickly, I am tasting the stars.’; “We have bottled all the stars this evening, my young friends.”) made me think of Esther Earl, and I know Hazel is not Esther, but how can you not make the connection?

I’m not a fan of champagne and it never tasted like stars to me, but it’s such a beautiful image that next time I drink champagne I’ll think of stars—and, for what it’s worth, I’ll make a wish.

CSS3 tidbits: background-size and box-sizing

A couple little CSS lessons I learned recently and wanted to pass on…

background-size

I learned about this property a couple of months ago, in a local WordPress meetup. As the name implies, this is used to set the size of background images, as a value or a percentage of the element’s dimensions—and you can set the background height and width separately. There are also a couple of keywords (“contain” and “cover”) to do a couple of extra tricks with the image.

It’s a neat little property that so far I haven’t used myself; but in the example given, the Ridge Meadows Recycling Society, it looks very good. A couple points that were brought up:

Apparently, if you’re applying background-size to the entire page, it has to be set for <html>, not <body>. I’m not really sure why that is, though.
If you’re using the cover or contain keywords, you need to make sure your background image is at least as big as your element; otherwise it’ll stretch, and obviously not look as good.
Not CSS-related, but one of the presenters mentioned working on WordPress templates through text editors + FTP, not through the admin dashboard. That had honestly never occurred to me before, but it makes sense: in the dashboard you can’t roll back your changes since there are no backups, and if you mess up it could take down the whole site (and then you’d have to fix it via FTP anyway).

box-sizing

I needed to set a form field’s width to be exactly as wide as its surrounding div, even counting padding and border, and since I wanted to make the theme responsive I couldn’t set fixed width values. The answer is the box-sizing property. Set its value to “content-box”, and it will draw the element as you’d expect, with the padding and border adding to its width. Set it to “border-box”, and the padding and border will be drawn inside the border box, thus allowing for a snug fit if you write a rule like so:

#sidebar .searchform .s {
  display:block;
  box-sizing:border-box;
  width:100%;
}

box-sizing is supported by most browsers nowadays except Firefox. Not to worry, there are vendor-specific rules you can use (-moz-box-sizing, etc…)

Drupal and Node.js

I’ve been working on a project that required real-time Javascript updates based on user actions (including other users’ actions). At first the only solution I could see was polling the server every second via Ajax, but that (a) was very resource-intensive, (b) didn’t give me as much freedom with the JS as I wanted (though maybe that was my relative lack of experience with jQuery), and (c) though pretty close, wasn’t exactly real-time. I did my best to reduce the computations on the server as well as the bandwidth, but the result was still not that good. I had to find another solution, and I did: Node.js.

As it happened, there is a Node integration module, but it still meant I had to set up a Node server somewhere. My localhost seemed like the logical place to start, especially since a Mac installer was available to download. The installation process wasn’t too hard; it did force me to dig into the command-liney parts of my Mac, which was a new experience. Likewise, I gave myself a crash course on Apache virtual hosts and iptables and a few related tasks. Problem, I could never get it to communicate with my local Drupal install, and I’m still not sure what I was doing wrong. In hindsight I probably should have taken better notes.

Things went a lot better when I installed Node on the actual production server. Different system, so I had to find different instructions: here for the Node server, and here for the Drupal side of things. And it worked, pretty much right out of the box! I say “pretty much,” since the instructions are kind of incomplete, and in at least one case the automatic config generator was wrong, and I had to tweak the config file manually. I’ll be blogging more about that, as well as raising the issue with the node.js project. As soon as I double-check that it really is an issue.

So yeah, we do live and learn. I’m glad this project pushed me out of my comfort zone and made me learn Linux development… not to say I’d ever do it full-time, but hey, knowledge is never a bad thing.