People are already speculating that this was brought up to bury the census story. But I don’t think that’s all of it. I think it has more to do with Shirley Sherrod.

For those who don’t know, Sherrod was the Georgia State Director of Rural Development for the USDA. She gave a speech in which she discussed some of the biases she overcame (24 years ago) as an employee of a private advocacy firm. In interacting with a white farmer, whom she was hesitant to help, she realized that the dividing line was between poor and rich, not white and black. She went out of her way to overcome those potential biases, and gave equal assistance to both black and white farmers in Georgia. A short, misleading clip from the speech was posted on a right-wing blog and Fox News picked it up and immediately thrashed her to pieces. Within a day, she was forced to resign, and the NAACP got phone calls from white supremacists saying that the streets would run red with the blood of black people.

It’s remarkably easy to fracture support for minorities and galvanize right-wing voters, so long as you can find a white person who’s faced discrimination and put them on the news. And this is what they’re mirroring up here in Canada. It’s not about fairness, and it’s not about equal opportunity for work. It’s a way to bring everyone together in a unanimous fight against The People Who Are Taking All The Jobs. (Psst! That means minorities! Who just happen to be the people who are most vulnerable to neglect in a voluntary census, but I’m sure that’s not at all the reason they’re bringing it up.)

Altogether now:

Affirmative action is a thorny issue, and I’m sure the audience of this blog is probably split on it as well. It tends to be split according to race and gender, although that’s not a hard and fast rule. The most common arguments I’ve seen are as follows:

1) I am a white male and I didn’t get a job because of affirmative action.
2) I am a black female and I didn’t get a job because of discrimination.
3) I am Eve and I’m constantly having to reassure people that I know computers, and that’s why I’m at a computers conference, and no I’m not a wife of someone here, I do science for a living and it would be nice to be taken seriously, or at least evaluated on my merit rather than my milkshake. No matter how many boys it brings to the yard.

The problem with this issue is that the people who are discriminating in their hiring do not realize they are doing so. When two equally-qualified applicants are evaluated, the person whose gender or race is perceived as more suited for the job is more frequently perceived as better. The cause of this is very interesting. The hirer tends to shift the criteria toward the perceived deficit of the incongruent person. So if you are hiring based on 50% competence and 50% social skills, women who are high in competence and low in social skills receive low evaluations because they are not social enough. Women who are low in competence and high in social skills receive low evaluations because they are not competent enough. Essentially, what is happening is that employers develop a feeling first for who they want to hire, and justify those feelings by slightly altering the criteria. It’s completely understandable for folks to think that they’re being fair, because they truly believe that they are basing their decision on the facts only. What’s dangerous is that they’re not.

So while I don’t think affirmative action should be permanent, it might have a place somewhere. Shirley Sherrod used a version of affirmative action unofficially, to keep herself from being unfair to white farmers, and I would be pleased to see such self-awareness from other organizations. I would be horrified to find out that I got a job because of affirmative action, but that’s a low probability anyway because I’d knock everyone else out of the water because of how awesome I am. Hopefully (and this is a big Hopefully), we won’t have to worry about all of this in the next generation.

(I’ve had to wean myself off of it with PuzzleQuest, where you can build a character and have mounts and magic items and spells. It’s essentially a Bejeweled RPG and it’s also awesome, and eventually I will have to wean myself off of that one, too. Maybe I should wean myself off with manuscript writing this time so that I actually get something done. One day, NIRS-SPM, one day I will be done with you and done with data analysis and I can have a life again.)

And apparently, unlike Bridge To Terabithia, I hear it might actually be good.

That makes me happy.

Here’s how it works.

You win, Stephen. I have officially given up hope that Canada will emerge unscathed from your horrible leadership. I hope you’re happy.

First of all, under which agencies do Sasquatches fall? I suppose if you are researching Sasquatch health, you would apply for a CIHR (Canadian Institutes of Health Research) grant. If you are more concerned with Sasquatch social structures or perhaps want to write poems about Sasquatches, you would go for a SSHRC (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council) grant. And if your research would pertain to other aspects of Sasquatch science or engineering (perhaps you would like to build a bridge made of Sasquatches or power a car with Sasquatch smiles), you’d go for an NSERC (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council) grant.

Then, there’s the wait. It can take a year to find out if your grant has been funded, and by that point your Sasquatch has probably disappeared back into the bush. You may have to pay out of pocket for the Sasquatch detector you bought from that nice fellow at the wharf. That goes double for all those cans of cat food collecting dust in your garage that didn’t appear to be much of an attraction to an ape man, despite LeatherSas68′s glowing recommendation on alt.sasquatch.science.

Whichever grant you choose, I have a feeling you wouldn’t be funded. It’s hard enough to get a grant for legitimate science in Canada, let alone fringe science. So let’s leave the Sasquatch research to J.J. Abrams and the fine people of Fox television, and if they come up with something that sticks, I’m sure the Canadian granting agencies will be all over it like microwave cavities on a synchrotron.

The greatest test will be in a few minutes, when I have to shave my legs for the wedding tonight. I think I’ll take out the big guns this time: rubber gloves and duct tape.

My mehndi will be the envy of all those who have washed their hands in the last two days.

Kneel before Zod!

This could be a great analogy to controller behaviours. You see, I was just putting my pants on in a morning haze, and my pants this morning had two buttons instead of one. I tend to forget to zip them up because I’m used to doing only two motions when I put jeans on, and this morning I specifically focused on zipping them. But the buttons suffered because of this focus, and I only did one of them up. Apparently I only have space in my jean-application procedure for two moves.

Side note: I was at a Mehndi (henna) party yesterday and my hands are all tricked out now. The dye was orange at first, but now it’s developed into a deep maroon. This is supposed to indicate that my boyfriend loves me very much. (Aw.)

• Violent protesters were allowed to protest violently, destroying police cars and setting them on fire, and vandalizing storefronts. Many believe that this violence was allowed to go on to justify the massive G20 security expenditures.
• Peaceful protesters were surrounded and intimidated, were told that they were not allowed their Charter right to peaceful assembly, and numerous non-violent protesters and journalists were beaten by police with no provocation. Smoke bombs and rubber bullets were fired directly into crowds.
• Both protesters and bystanders were detained for no reason, and forced into inhumane conditions with little food or water.
• Women were ordered to strip in front of male police officers and at least one woman was physically, sexually assaulted by an officer. These women were either intimidated into giving up their rights to privacy, or did not know that they had them.
• Photographers had their cameras seized and then “lost.”
• A person who asked to be released from detention after his 24th hour was told that “sometimes your rights just don’t apply here.” The same person was segregated from the rest of the group because he was gay.
• The Miami model was definitely fulfilled.

Some of this may have resulted from confusion about emergency bylaws put in place in secret a few days before the G20:

G&M, CP24: Civil libertarians were fuming after hearing Friday that the Ontario cabinet gave police the power to stop and search anyone coming within five metres of the G20 fences in Toronto for a one week period.

However, the Ministry of Community Safety says all the cabinet did was update the law that governs entry to such things as court houses to include specific areas inside the G20 fences — not outside.

When asked today if there actually was a five-metre rule given the ministry’s clarification, Blair smiled and said, “No, but I was trying to keep the criminals out.”

This is deeply, deeply saddening. I sincerely hope that the people responsible for this lie, and the violence that ensued this weekend, are held accountable. I am writing a letter to Bill Blair and to the mayor’s office, and if you feel strongly about this as well, I encourage you to do the same.

Here are a few videos of note:

Amy Miller on the sexual assault of detainees:

Steve Paikin on attacks on protesters and the beating of a journalist:

A ten-minute video with shocking evidence of violent police tactics:

Joe Wenkoff on the permissiveness of police to violence:

Police rush a crowd singing the national anthem:

Police fire smoke bombs into a crowd:

I’d like to end with some commentary by Laura K:

…Vandals broke windows and burned a car. The police fired rubber bullets into humans. The police hit human beings with bicycles, batons and fists. The police trapped and held human beings for hours without shelter, food or water. The police threatened human beings with rape. The police stripped-searched (and worse) human beings.

Even given our society’s obsession with property rights, most people agree that human beings are more important than property. Supposed Black Bloc protesters destroyed property. The police assaulted human beings.

The bike ride was peaceful and no street laws where broken. The mass ride was riding along Yorkville and this is where I was attacked. A police cyclist blocked my path directly in front of me; another police cyclist struck me in the face, hitting my teeth with his fist. Another police cyclist threw his bicycle into mine causing me to fall to the ground. The squad of five police officers threw me onto the fallen police bike, pushing me down onto the bicycle and beat me in the face and the groin. The officer that struck me first held my knees open as another hit me repeatedly in the groin. I was then turned on to my stomach and my face was smashed into the street repeatedly, leaving a pool of blood. This all happened without any notification by the police officers as to what crime I committed or why they were attacking me. As the beatings continued I repeated in a strong voice, “I am not resisting.”