Accepting Racism

    First of all, I want to say that I think that the strength of the human race is in its diversity. We all know that if brothers and sisters have children they stand a higher chance of having congenital defects. To a lesser extent, the same could be said of intraracial unions. From that point of view, racists seem extremely misguided.

    Most racists are against the acceptance of foreign people or cultures into their own. They shun diversity and feel that they are stronger by themselves. What I find fascinating is how people that call themselves open and welcoming treat racists the way racists treat foreigners. Basically, racists are pariahs and often can even be arrested for their ideas. If they aren't they become a non-functioning member of society. In that situation, some of them resort to violent or "sublime" acts in order to get themselves heard. Of course their targets will be the hard working members of cultural communities. In the end, society's knee-jerk reaction to people with different ideas ends up hurting those they are trying to protect.

    Obviously, my conclusion is not that we should all be racists. It is that we should accept that others can think differently. It might even make us uncomfortable but we should be able to feel pride in knowing that we can listen to their viewpoints and form logical and civilized responses to them.

Our democratic system is flawed (part I)

    The various forms of Democracy used within the western world are all relatively old and somewhat static. Because of this last characteristic, they are inherently flawed. The question is, is there a way to make the whole system dynamic, adapting through time? This is what the next series of posts will be about.

    Right now, in Canada, we have a parliamentary democracy. Similar to the situation in the US, we elect people to represent us in the government. The difference with the US is the idea of strict party lines. I do not know whether or not this is due to the type of democracy or if it just evolved that way naturally, but we do not choose our representatives based on themselves but based on the party (or brand) that they represent. Because of this, representatives are only given the mandate to follow their party line. The leaders have most of the impact even at local levels. I've seen it when I ran, sometimes, people who liked me wouldn't vote for me because of my party leader and sometimes the opposite was true. From the elector's point of view, it is simply to find information about the leader than about any of the lesser candidates. The party becomes a brand with the leader as its mascot and its ideas as its core values. This streamlines the information gathering process.

    The elected MNAs and MPs therefore have no choice but to follow the party line because this is what the people chose them to do. The problem I see in this is simple. In Quebec there are 4 parties in the National Assembly. The government's role is to come up with their own ideas (different from anything the opposition might have said in the past) to pass as laws. The 3 opposition parties systematically go against those while trying to differentiate themselves from each other. In the end, the parties are defined by one another. The party line makes sure that the same holds true for MNAs. Even if the Member agrees with something another party says and that thing would be a plus for his or her constituents, it will be tremendously difficult to approve of it if the leader doesn't.

    Like in any situation, the leader is also very important in this. In truth, a leader can set the tone and chose to follow his or her core values to make decisions, voting with the opposing party or against it depending on the situations. Sadly, this is not what we've seen in Quebec in the recent past since such actions makes it harder for the leader to differentiate their party, thus win votes.

Happy Birthday Spirit

    Although they were only set to work for a few months, the two Mars Rovers have been going at it for a few years now. Today marks the 5^th anniversary of Spirit`s landing.

http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/

Collaborator

    This blog is about creativity. I've mostly been writing about politics and society and will continue to do so but in the coming weeks, Mouez, a friend of a mine will walk us through one of his projects.

Champlain Bridge

Browsing for some completely unrelated stuff, I came upon this article about the Champlain Bridge. For those who do not know, The Champlain Bridge in Montreal is going to (eventually) be changed. In the meanwhile, to alleviate traffic on it, there was the idea to build a light train system next to it. What the author of the blog talks about is an alternative to that. While I do not like drawbridges, his idea is simple and probably inexpensive…

Resolutions

Happy New Year!

Here is a post by Jacobs Paulsen about achieving goals (for those of you with resolutions!).

http://www.jacobspaulsen.com/blog/?p=5