forgotten when i see your face

A wise man once said: if you have a good blog, you probably have a bad job. if you have a good web site, you probably have a dull life; if you have a good job you probably have a bad blog, and if you have a bad site you're normal.

Canadians across the country should be ashamed of what has occurred in Kashechewan. For two years its 1,900 residents have been under a non-stop boil-water ban and nothing has been done to better the situation. As a Canadian I feel utterly ashamed at both my lack of knowledge of, and concern for, such communities. According to Phil Fontaine, the leader of the Assembly of First Nations, there are currently some 100 First Nations communities that are in a boil-water situation, 40 of them in Ontario alone. It is completely unacceptable.

Can you imagine the uproar were Torontonians, Ottawaians, or Vancouverites faced with this sort of situation? I can assure you that the response to it wouldn’t take two years.

Lastly, shame on members of Parliament and pundits for turning this into a partisan issue. First Peoples routinely get the shaft no matter who’s in power, so stow the finger pointing unless it’s directed at ourselves.

To the following; I am not a Jesus freak. On detrimening humanity, religious traditionalists have always restrained the advancement of science. Yet we can credit monks with being the first chemists, the first geneticists, the first keepers of academia. Generally monks, those truly devoted to the spiritual life, had no inner conflict with wine making and gene testing and alchemy.

If a religious belief is strong then why be afraid of encroaching data that proves its falsity? Those who claim to be of unshakable faith and yet are terrified of technological or scientific advancement show the weakness of their religion and tremble on the fringe of doubt. The bible says that man was created in the image of God. But what we see are hundreds of thousands of versions of God created in the image of men (mostly men, these days, though somewhere in the past God could be feminine). A loving God, a mean God, a homophobic God, a racist God, a God who thinks those caught in the Tsunami were fated to hell, a God who thinks stem-cell research is evil because it destroys life yet condones the necessity of war.

No God-fearing Republican is fighting to limit research on nuclear weapons, the destructive powers of which shaky logic suggests are necessary for our country's self-preservation. The bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki purportedly saved lives by ending the war. The lives of developed full-term humans, with memories and families and sufferings and joys, are worth much less than a collection of blastocytes.

See, blastocytes cannot be hated because they have no memories. Blastocytes are not lesbians, blastocytes are not Muslims, blastocytes are not bleeding heart liberals or tree-hugging environmentalists. Blastocytes therefore are made in the image of women and men the same way God is made. The blastocytes being used for research are of course all white Republicans, and they must be protected and saved and inserted into white mommy placentas.

Religion is an art, an expression of our creative will bring forth awareness of the spiritual unknown. I do not hate religion. I cannot hate religion. Art is my religion, and when I can make it, I'm a believer.

But I do hate the arrogance of those pretending to know what God thinks--so often exactly as they themselves think--and I see these kind of people as being unfully formed and prone to the most destructive kind of hatred.

If the same people who think that war is necessary--that it will save more lives than it will destroy--think also that stem cell research is evil though it can be used to find cures of diseases and save the lives full-term humans (humans with memories, families, joys and sufferings) the ONLY way they are able to validate their argument is to fall back onto the hazy philosophies of religion. And because religion is an art, they can interpret it any way they wish, and use it to trick or treat the less powerful or less aware public.

(Oof, I predict a barrage of hate mail--why is it, anger motivates people to write more than love or appreciation?)

Tell me why the road keeps turning when everything you want is straight ahead and everything I thought worth learning is forgotten when I see your face.