Émile Jetzer's

Coeur de pirate, Métropolis, 24 février 2012 (playlist)

2012-02-25T09:40:00.000-05:00

('http://www.youtube.com/p/FA802C212218ECDF?version=3&hl=en_US',)

Fractal Fractions

2012-02-13T22:41:00.000-05:00

Sur le droit à la mort

2012-02-02T06:15:00.000-05:00

Moi je dis toujours dans le fond: il faudrait que chaque assassin ait le droit à sa corde dans sa cellule. Il décidera de sa vie. Sénateur Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu

Je suggère que plutôt que de permettre aux criminels graves de se suicider, nous leur fassions croire qu'ils le peuvent, et si jamais ils essaient, nous les passons dans une cellule où ils savent qu'ils ne peuvent plus se «prendre la vie». De devoir rester en vie après avoir voulu mourir est une expérience plus formatrice que de simplement rester en prison et de se suicider. Ça force la réflexion, sur la vie, sur la mort, et les choses en général.

Mais le but d'une prison n'est-il pas d'empêcher les criminels de faire du mal, de leur en enlever l'opportunité? Alors pourquoi les laisser vivre tout court? Si c'est là le but de la justice criminelle, d'empêcher certains individus de sévir, de tuer des gens ou de commettre des vols, le moyen le plus certain et définitif est définitivement la mort: qui peut encore agir après la mort (c'est une question réthorique, à laquelle la réponse est «personne»)?

Mais, plusieurs diront, le but de la justice n'est pas seulement d'empêcher les gens de faire du mal, mais aussi de les réhabiliter. Le système udiciaire est en fait une grande école pour apprendre aux criminels à vivre en société. Sauf que c'est faux: le système actuel ne permet pas cette réhabilitation sur une grande échelle. Les prisons servent de dépotoirs pour y mettre ceux que nous considérons être des rebus de l'humanité. C'est une erreur importante. Des multiples options qui s'offrent, de simplement fourer des prisonniers dans un bâtiment est une des pires.

On pourrait, comme dans Batman, envoyer les malades sérieux dans un asile à haute sécurité. J'assume que dans Batman certains psychiatres et psychologues tentaient de raisonner les internés (même s'ils s'évadaient souvent: pas d'évasion, plus d'histoire) pour les réintégrer dans la société. On pourrait en faire des esclaves, et les faire travailler sur des travaux d'intérêts publics: les routes, les ponts, la construction d'école, le remplacement de moteurs à essence par des moteurs électriques, ou autre. On pourrait les tuer tout de suite, de manière simple et sommaire, inhumaine. On pourrait leur donner une éducation de niveau post-universitaire et les réintégrer dans la société ou en faire des esclaves intellectuels. Ces options ont en commun qu'elles ont une logique: elles visent un but précis: se débarraser des criminels, soit en les éliminants totalement, soit en les rendants utiles. Comparées à l'option actuelle de remplir des prisons, je les trouve meilleures.

Mais attention! Pas nécessairement meilleures du point de vue économique, ou éthique. Meilleures dans le sens qu'elles tentent, au moins, d'atteindre un but productif pour la population au complet. Il y a des centaines d'options qui s'offrent à nous pour ce qui est du système carcéral. Elles ont toutes un coût, éthique et économique.

Je n'ai pas de connaissances approfondies sur le système carcéral et judiciaire, ce texte est à caractère philosophique, pas politique.

Ranks and Files

2012-01-26T14:35:00.000-05:00

Ranks and Files:

From Ross Honsberger via Martin Gardner: Deal cards into any rectangular array:

Put each row into numerical order:

Now put each column into numerical order:

Surprisingly, that last step hasn’t disturbed the preceding one — the rows are still in order. Why?

What Is ACTA ?

2012-01-24T23:17:00.000-05:00

Epigenetics

2012-01-24T16:48:00.000-05:00

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-25T13:42:00.002-05:00

This year, for the first time, I feel as if the holidays had passed me by, as if I had no chance of ever getting any real vacation. I think the worst part for me is that I don't even know what I mean by a vacation. Why not define what it means? A vacation is a lapse of time that one takes to relax. Now, what exactly is relaxation? Is it necessarily not doing anything? Are you forbidden any productivity during your vacations? Is someone who does yoga all the time always on vacation? Does it apply to any relaxing activity? I think that this definition is flawed, and false. Relaxation has nothing to do with vacation; or at least nothing to do directly.

What then, are vacations? I think that vacation is time one takes to do different things. A professional diver might not want to go scuba diving in the Caribbeans during his holiday; and a professional singer does not necessarily enjoy Christmas caroling. Vacation is, basically, free time. It is time we can take to think about ourselves, or others; do things that we have been putting off, or that we just found out about. We can also choose to do nothing, or watch television, catch up on reading and sleep. Because it is time that is fundamentally ours.

Now, some people like to get their vacations filled up as fast as they can, by going to organized trips, taking charge of New Year's Eve's party, whatever. It might be because they really enjoy doing stuff, or because they do not know how to manage their time on their own, and need someone to tell them what to do. Do not take this wrong; they might know very well what they want, how to get it, what needs to be done, etc., but when they find themselves without a precise goal, their first reflex is to find someone who will get them one, much like kids can do. Although, typically, children also roam freely without a goal.

I have found this year that I am part of another group, those who are always doing stuff, but without thinking about it. As soon as school was over (and even between exams), I started to read like crazy again. In less than twenty-four hours, I read the eight hundred pages of the fourth Eragon book, Inheritance (which is, by the way, awesome). I also solved conceptually the rendering of graphics on a computer screen and started to look at how to code a graphic card driver so that I can turn pixels on and off on computer screens without going through any graphical library. I kept reading through Brins d'une guirlade éternelle, by Douglas Hofstadter, and filled a few university application forms.

The last item is probably among what many others in their third of four semester of cegep have done as well, along with looking every day on Omnivox to see if new grades are up. Some others might be puzzling: why would anyone on their right minds do computer program and ToK reading during Christmas vacation? Well, because it feels different than what I usually do, which is math and science homework. "But it's the same thing", some might say. "No it isn't", I answer. It is very different. I have not really chosen to build the concepts for a rendering program during Christmas vacation. I knew I was going to do it, but it was not a choice. It is simply what I do when I have nothing else to do. I also play the harmonica, or sing. These things are superficially unrelated, and yet I like to do them together. I listen to music when I code, or write, for what it matters, and when I am tired of merely listening to music, I take a break and play some tune on my harmonica (up to now I can play part of the Harry Potter theme, and the totality of Qui peut faire de la voile sans vent). Then I just keep working. I have no time limit, so I can do whatever I want. My only limitation is my own motivation to do something else than what I am doing; that and the time I have to live. And on the most basic level, it is the same way for every one: we are our own limiting factors.

So, on Christmas this year, today, I did not do anything special, and I thought I would resent it. I kept doing stuff that I usually do at some level, and sure, I had supper with my family at eleven o'clock on the twenty fourth, and we ate fondue, and I got gifts (great gifts), but it does not feel any different than any other day. And the more I have thought about it, the more I realized: it is not because Christmas is not a special day, but because every day is special. Christmas is merely an excuse we have as a culture to be merry and gleeful, but really, we should feel that way every day. We have clean water, food in ridiculous amounts, money in irrational quantities; we have awesome means of transportation, we have friends and families for whom we can afford to care, and yet we act as if we should be very happy on very specific occasions, which is dumb.

I do not resent not doing anything special this Christmas now, because it does not matter. I can always do that stuff on other days, on other years, and do them because I want to, and not because I just want to do something. So, to anyone reading this, I do not explicitly wish a Merry Christmas. Instead, I ask everyone to enjoy their life, and to change it if they do not enjoy it. Have a great year, I'm off to Nicaragua in two days :)

(For more about the differences between work and vacation: http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2007/07/03/twentysomething-when-working-on-vacation-isnt-work/ )

Doodling in Math Class: Triangle Party

2011-12-11T10:01:00.000-05:00

Single Month Pregnancy: NNWM Wrap Up

2011-12-10T20:15:00.000-05:00

Single Month Pregnancy: NNWM Wrap Up: Obviously, this year, once more, I have not finished my novel, although for reasons that I feel are different from last year's. I got around...

Biking Below Zero

2011-12-10T17:20:00.001-05:00

This, year, much like last year, I used my bicycle to get every where I could. I had trouble starting the college semester this way, and for most of September, I took the bus. This is shameful to me, in a way that is delicate to explain, and will be subject to another post sometime in the future. However, being able to start, even so late, going everywhere on a bicycle is a source of pride.

I don't know exactly how other people see it, but to me, cars are lazy, inefficient, polluting, and every time anyone gets into one, they should get slapped, turn the other cheek, left in the waiting for the second slap, and then slapped again by Marshall Erickson from How I Met Your Mother. Because cars are a product of the inequalities in our society; because they are one of the main causes for global warming and our lives of excess; and because they keep us away from the reality of what is needed to go from one point to another.

This is why I so much prefer the bicycle. Apart from being fun to ride, and able to provide a diversified experience that encourages the development of skills, a bicycle is respectful. Here is what I mean by this. On a bicycle, it becomes very hard to accidentally annoy the people around you. First, a bicycle is small. If you are caught behind one, you can pass on one of two sides to get in front; and if you are in front of one, stepping aside is easy. A bicycle does not make noise. Nobody gets awakened in the morning by the roaring pedals of a bicycle. That simply does not happen. A bicycle does not smell, unless you get your nose inches away from the oily chain. They do not pollute while we use them. Of course, all of these "respectfull" characteristics will show to one degree or another, depending on the person riding the bicycle. That is, a smelly, noisy, fat and impolite person riding a bicycle will not suddenly become slim, discreet, respectful, as soon as they start riding. The respect inherent to the object simply allows the personality of the rider to show through.

Much like you can drive a car in different ways, you can ride a bike in different ways. You can ride like a daredevil, taking every jump and jump every sidewalk you encounter on your mountain bike; or you can be a ninja and ride so fast that anybody blinking as you zoom by will not see you at all. You can be a casual biker, and ride your bike in jeans and t-shirt; or you can be a serious biker, like I am, and ride in bike shorts or unitard, with two or three bags strapped to each side of the bike. But how you do it does not really matter, except to you. As far as I have seen, everybody I know who is regularly biking more than two hours a day has a bike suit; and most people who bike once a week or less bike in shorts and t-shirts, and only when the temperature is above twenty degrees. There are ways of biking for every one, depending on how much bike one does.

Back to the initial subject: cars are bad, you should bike instead, or at least take the bus. Cars are good inventions, but, much like most Microsoft products (7r011), they are still in beta. I will consider them to be Gold Master products when they are all electric and automated. Because, frankly, the point of having something that does not need you to move forward for a long time, is to reduce effort. Until the minimal possible effort is not achieved, the product is not done. The car will be finished when it does not need a driver (I can't wait for my Google car).

More on biking, less about cars. This semester, as I biked to school, to work, to judo, to dance, back home, etc., I got about five flat tires. Once, I had to walk home at nine o'clock at night because my tire was flat. These repeated air leaks made me careful, and now I always have a set of rubbers (to repair the tire. Not condoms.) and a portable pump (to inflate the tires. Not to be used in any way related to condoms.) every time I go biking. Annoyingly enough, once I bought the rubbers and pumps, I stopped having flats. That said, having to walk for two hours in the dark with a bicycle on my back did give me foresight. And biking in the cold in general taught me the value of good preparation. This year, I was not able to bike through the winter, or, more accurately, my dad was not allowed by my mom to lend me his bicycle, therefore I could not bike through the winter; but I am hoping to correct that next year.

Also, one last point: as much as I dislike cars, I do value their main advantages, being that they do reduce the effort needed to get from a place to another, and that they keep us warm, and comfortable, when t rains r snows and it's cold outside. I am a big fan of beta products, and I try as many of them as I can, but I do not like when they are considered good enough to be widely used when they are not. And the car was definitely not ready for wide use, we can tell that by looking at the current state of the atmosphere. In any case, if you want a detailed comparison of bikes and cars, I suggest this: http://www.kenkifer.com/bikepages/advocacy/autocost.htm. It dates a little, but the method used is accurate.

Arthur Dent's Creation Of Economy

2011-11-13T15:37:00.001-05:00

There has been a lot of protest recently, and there still is a lot of protest, against the way the economy works. Complaints have been made about the lack of action from the government, the lack of responsibility displayed by multinational companies, the inequalities the capitalist systems allows in our society. I have been wondering about all this, and I decided to build a fictive economical system from the ground. And, for it to make sense and be relevant, it will be built on the concepts of time, matter, and energy, which is what we trade whenever we get paid or buy something: the time to achieve a task, the energy spent, and the matter necessary to the task.

So, I placed myself in the skin of a cave man. This particular cave man, named Arthur Dent, has made a leather bag out of a rabbit. He already had one, and prefers it to the one he just built. Therefore, he decides to sell it. But sell it for what? There is no currency; the concept of money does not exist yet. This is a problem in the way of Arthur Dent, and problems do not like to remain there for too long. Arthur the cave man decides that he will exchange the rabbit leather bag for someone's time: he knows how log it took to catch the rabbit, and make the bag out of it, and he does not want that time to be wasted.

He finds a buyer, and the buyer promises to Arthur to give him the same amount of his time as it took him to make the bag. Satisfied, Arthur goes his way. After a few weeks, he realizes that the table he built out of a tree is not stable, and he does not want to repair it. He goes to Ford, the buyer of the leather bag, and asks him to come over and repair his table, to erase his debt. Ford answers that he does not have to, because they never agreed upon when he would have to repay his debt. Angered, Arthur goes his way, and tries to find a solution to this annoying problem.

He soon realizes that there can be no system where every one benefits from economical transactions without trust and good faith. Indeed, the moment that one of the parts involved decides that he will not fulfill his part of the bargain, or that he it will use deception against his buyer or seller, only one of the two benefits from the exchange, and it creates a gap between the buyer and seller, which can eventually spread tho the whole of society, creating two groups or more: the rich and the poor.

Arthur does not want that. He wants to be able to do what he likes, and allow others to do so as well, by exchanging services and goods. Soon, he realizes that he should ask for a product equivalent to the one he gives away. But how does one evaluates the equivalence of two different objects? I believe there are two great ways. The first is for the builder to determine: how much time it took to build the object, here let us say a slingshot, how much energy it took, and how much material was needed. The amount of material can be expressed in the two other quantities: the amount of time and energy it took to find it.

Energy is a quantity that is hard to measure in every day life, so it is probably better to calculate it in terms of how much time it will take to recuperate that energy and to get the food needed.

The second is for the buyer to decide: how much time will it save him, and how much energy. In an ideal world. Because in our society, we give value to things that have very little, because of our emotions, and the way we relate to objects. The emotional value of things can be quantified in many different ways, and I do not know how good they each are. For consistency's sake, I will evaluate the emotional value of an object in the time and energy spent weeping over it if it is missing, or saved by having it improve our mood. It is hard to measure, but it does the job.

I order to enforce trust and good faith to his newly built system, Arthur decides that instead of asking for time, he will ask for something that has the same time and energy value. He goes back to Ford, this time with his slingshot made out of rabbit guts, and asks for his price. Arthur is certain of how much the item is worth, and he thinks he knows what Ford will give him in exchange.

It took Arthur about two hours to find a rabbit and kill it, plus an hour to make the slingshot elastic, and then half an hour to find a piece of wood and correctly attach the elastic. It makes a total of three hours and a half, and he knows that he spent the equivalent of half a meal in energy, which takes about an hour to prepare. How surprised was he when Ford came out of his cave with a simple walking stick to give him in exchange for the slingshot! How can that happen? What did Arthur did wrong? Find out in the next episode of "Arthur Dent's Creation Of Economy".

Single Month Pregnancy: November Eleventh

2011-11-12T00:25:00.000-05:00

Single Month Pregnancy: November Eleventh: I imagine that living with a dying person, someone whom we know will die prematurely, before all of us, because of a cause that is out of ou...

Extended Essay: Music & Flow State - Music & Flot

2011-11-10T13:43:00.001-05:00

In English: (la version française est en fin d'article)

I assume that most of the people who will read this post will already know about it, so to them I say: never mind the introduction. In the IB program, we have this assignment called the Extended Essay (to date, I have never seen it be written uncapitalized. Edit: not true, on the IBO website, they do not capitalize it...). We have to find a research question, perform the research that goes with the question, and write a 4 000 words essay about it. My EE is about the influence of music on work quality, relating to the flow state. To keep it simple, I have to investigate whether music makes people work better.

Initially, I wanted to perform an small experiment, where the participants would have written math tests, with and without music, and I would have graded them, and performed a statistical analysis on the results. Sadly, this did not work out. So instead, I have chosen (or fate forced upon myself) to do a survey concerning work habits. In fact, I did not have the idea, Stacy did, and I found it awesome, so I decided to use it. Thanks Stacy!

Basically, what I need is for you (people, students, adults, teachers, workers, human beings, nerdfighters, and others) to answer a few questions about your work habits and music. You can answer the questions, which can be found here, either in essay form or in point form. I do not expect more than a page of writing, with about a paragraph per question; although if you cannot come up with a paragraph long answer, I certainly will not blame you: I do have to read and analyze all of the answers, and it will take time. Make it concise!

If you want to participate to my EE survey, just take a look at the questions, which again, are available here, and send me your answers by email, Facebook message, Omnivox, in person, by Twitter if you want, it's your choice. If I do not answer you within two days after you sent me your answers to the questionnaire, you are allowed to spam me a little. I should answer quite fast.

Thank you in advance to everyone who participates, it is really appreciated. By the way, if you happen to be a random internet person, or someone I do not know personally, you are allowed to participate as well (it would make no sense to post this on the internet otherwise), your answers will be just as valid as anyone else's. And for anyone who prefers French to English, I have a copy of the survey in French available right here.

En français:

J'assume que la plupart des gens qui vont lire cet article le savent déjà, et à ceux là je dis: ignorez donc l'introduction. Dans le programme du BI, nous avons un travail appelé Le Mémoire. Nous devons trouvé une question intéressante, et investiguer, puis écrire une texte de 4 000 mots sur le sujet. Mon mémoire porte sur l'influence de la musique sur la qualité du travail, lié à l'état de flot. Pour faire simple, je dois voir si la musique permet de produire de meilleurs travaux.

Au départ, je voulais faire une petite expérience, où les participants auraient eu à répondre à un test de mathématique, sans puis avec musique, et je les aurais évalué, puis fait une analyse statistique sur les résultats. Malheureusement, ça n'a pas marché. Alors, à la place, j'ai décidé de faire un sondage concernant les habitudes de travail. En fait, ce n'est pas moi qui ait eu l'idée, mais Stacy, mais l'idée est bonne, alors je l'ai prise. Merci Stacy!

Donc, ce dont j'ai besoin, c'est de volontaires (vous) pour répondre à quelques questions sur vos habitudes de travail et d'écoute de musique. Vous pouvez répondre aux questions, disponibles ici, soit sous forme de texte, soit en point par point. Je m'attends à au plus une page de texte, avec environ un paragraphe par question; mais si vous n'arrivez pas à écrire un paragraphe complet comme réponse, je ne vous blâmerez pas: il faut quand même que je lise et analyse toutes les réponse, et c'est certain que ça va être long. Restez concis!

Si vous désirez participer, allez voir les questions, disponibles ici, et envoyez moi vos réponses par courriel, Facebook, Omnivox, en personne, par Twitter, peu importe. Si je ne confirme pas la réception de votre réponse dans l'espace de deux jours, vous pouvez spammer ma boîte de réception, je devrais répondre assez vite.

Merci d'avance à tous les participants, c'est vraiment très apprécié. En passant, si je ne vous connais pas dans la vraie vie, vous pouvez quand même participer, vos réponses sont aussi valides que celles de n'importe qui d'autres. Et pour ceux qui préfèrent l'anglais au français, le questionnaire est disponible en anglais ici.

Single Month Pregnancy: November Eighth

2011-11-09T07:33:00.000-05:00

Single Month Pregnancy: November Eighth: ``Oh my God!'', he said. ``I must have left it in my car! Can you please check on this while I go and see?'' `̀Sure, no problem. Just come b...

Single Month Pregnancy: November Seventh

2011-11-08T05:26:00.000-05:00

Single Month Pregnancy: November Seventh: I need to prepare for Zoe's arrival. It is almost twelve now, and if her pills are not ready when she arrives, she goes crazy and start thin...

The girl who silenced the world for 5 minutes

2011-11-07T16:34:00.000-05:00

Charlie Chaplin final speech in The Great Dictator

2011-11-07T16:25:00.000-05:00

Raising Money For Nicaragua: Spaghetti Supper

2011-11-06T19:52:00.000-05:00

Last Friday we had the last fundraiser for the Nicaragua trip, the biggest and most fun of all: the Spaghetti Supper. First off, a bit of history about the Spaghetti Supper. Every year, in the last few years, the Nicaragua Trip Crew would organize the Spaghetti Supper to get to their fund raising objective of 7 000 $. This year, because we were incredibly efficient at making money for the cause, we busted the 7k ahead of time, but decided to go on with the supper anyway.

The event itself was amazing. The dinner was in the school (Champlain College) cafeteria, we had more people than expected, and we, the organizers, still had leftovers to eat; and so did the dance crew from Dimension Arts, where I am learning how to dance. We had a silent auction, a touching slide-show of pictures taken by one of our chaperone teachers, two danced performances, and one happy birthday wish, by me. The music and the atmosphere were awesome, and I think pretty much every one present had fun.

At the beginning, when we were setting u the cafeteria, there was a lot of walking around in circles trying to figure out what to do, but eventually every one got a job to do. I supervised and helped with the setting up of the tables, with Sébastien, Alex and Bethany's friend whose name I forgot, but it does not matter much because he probably forgot mine as well, so that every one would have space to eat, and the dancers space to dance. I then helped with putting up the table cloths, set to the colours of the Nicaragua flag: white and blue, just like the slippers I was wearing with my suit before my dad got there with my shoes later in the evening.

I also helped, very, very little, with the setting up of the AV. The technician was (and still is) called Pat, and he did an awesome job, he's very professional, very good at being professional, and a generally nice person. Others were helping Jason the cook in the kitchen, to prepare all the noodles and sauce and salad and bread and everything for the supper. Some were setting up the silent auction, fixing a starting price and an increment value to each item (I got a Latin music CD, and maybe a Linux penguin, which I will exchange against a book on Go). We also had some people decorating the cafeteria with ribbons and balloons, and some more decorating the rest of the school with indications as to how to get to the cafeteria.

I would say that my real job started when the first dancers arrived, at around six o'clock, thirty minutes before the supper. I did not have much to do, but I had been the link between the dance school and the supper organization, because I suggested that they come to our supper and dance at that same dance school, so I kept my role, and guided the crew and choreographers to where they could leave their bags and costumes, where they could change, showed them where the dancing space would be, and had much fun doing it.

The Troupe Dimension Arts performed twice during the evening, once at the beginning, on Bad by Michael Jackson, and a second time at the end of the supper, on a music which I don't know the title of, but I do know that the performance itself was titled Globetrotter. The first one was good, and people were watching, but the second one was amazing, and every one stopped talking to watch them dance and listen to the music. It was awesome, they were awesome.

As a sideline to the supper, we gave around orange shoe laces, from previous fund raising campaigns. It was funny to see every one wearing a flashy coloured shoe lace on their shoulder, around their arm, as a tie. The girls in the dance crew all got one, by their demand, and so did many other people. It seems funny to me that every one who asked for a shoe lace did so in a somewhat childish way. Is it possible to ask for something as silly as an orange shoe lace without being childish?

Edit: I have no idea of how much money we made with the supper. I am sure that we made some profit, but we did not have time to count all of the money yet.

DTD Parsing On Forrst

2011-11-06T18:46:00.000-05:00

"An excerpt of the code from my DTD parser. Right now, it can parse simple element and attribute definitions:

Define the content of an element, including the number of elements present in another;

Define the attributes for an element.

The next step is to allow for document validation..."

- Me, on Forrst, about DTD parsing.

Single Month Pregnancy: November Third 2011

2011-11-03T23:53:00.000-04:00

Single Month Pregnancy: November Third 2011: Talking about fast things, the bus is coming, nearing the sidewalk and stops right in front of me. I realy like when that happens. It make m...

What Is Halloween For? Talking About Halloween For Hunger.

2011-10-31T21:51:00.000-04:00

Today, apart from being the eve of NaNoWriMo, as I said subtlety in my last post, is Halloween. To anyone who has ever watched The Nightmare Before Christmas, it is clear that Halloween is only a conspiracy designed to steal Christmas. To everybody else, Halloween is an excuse to dress up, eat candy, and party or go treat-or-tricking. This year I did something different. Well, partly different. Technically, I did go treat-or-tricking, and I did eat candy, but the two activities were not directly related. I went from door to door (I wasn't alone) to collect food for children (and adult as well) in difficulty. This event is called Halloween For Hunger, and is organized by the international non-profit organization Free The Children. I will not talk about the project itself in precise details, so if you want to have more information about it, I suggest you visit the official website, http://www.freethechildren.com/getinvolved/youth/campaigns/campaigns.php?type=halloweenforhunger.

What I found interesting in participating in this event is how people acted when we came knocking at their door. I cannot really talk about the team spirit of every one participating, because I was in a team of two, and we barely know each other, so the team spirit wasn't two high. The two local organizers of the event were really into it, and that was cool, and there were a few other people too, of whom I will refer as the 'inner core' (because I am reading Cussler's book Cyclops, an excellent novel about politics during the cold war and moon colonization), who were really enjoying themselves (I did have fun, but they had more). So, about the people.

There were these people who told us that they did not have any cans or noodles or anything. It is unlikely that a given person does not have non perishable food in one form or another (I do not have any number or statistics about that). Not many people nowadays buy all of their food fresh. But I guess we will never know, unless we go back and ask them (maybe we should), whether they really had nothing, or if they just did not want to have to feel guilty about it.

Then there was this guy who told us that he could not give us anything because his mother was away, and therefore there was no food. This guy was definitely older than I am, and I would have thought that he'd be able to either give an answer along the lines of "I don't want to make a donation." or that he would be competent enough to do groceries. But maybe he just didn't have time, or maybe he forgot about it.

There was also the 2$ guy, who did not open his door fully and handed us a two dollar piece. He did not even talk to us. He said "Here, take this." as if he was talking to air. He really wanted some time to himself...

Of course, there were cute children everywhere in the streets, a few speeding cars (speeding at 20 kilometre per hour, because of the so many kids), and way too many people over fifteen trick-or-treating (finally got it in the right order). That was weird, and very cool. In past years, whenever I went to get candy from door to door, people would be surprised, ask me if I was not maybe too old. But this year, and maybe only in this neighbourhood, they went from door to door and nobody was asking nay question. People even tried o give my partner and me candies a few times...

There is no point to this blog post. I just wanted to talk about how interesting I found Halloween. I also like how Halloween For Hunger spreads the concept of charity and giving more equally around the year. And it allows me to tell anyone reading this that sharing resources is important (the last house we went to understood that, they gave us enough to fill a whole bag, and were expecting us). Of course, you do not have to give every time you are solicited. Personally, I save money to give during Project For Awesome, following the 1% Income Rule, but that is my own choice. In the end, however, you can do whatever you want.

Preparing For NaNoWriMo!

2011-10-31T21:00:00.000-04:00

This is it. Tomorrow, or tonight at 24:00, is the beginning of the 2011 National Novel Writing Month (http://nanowrimo.org). This is the maddest and craziest and most fun literary event in the world. Its principal quality is its premise: you have to write a story, about anything. Really, anything. No one has to read it; it can be bad, it can be good, it can be average, it doesn't matter. The only limit is the minimal number of words. The goal is to write a novel of 50 000 words in one month. That is 1 667 words a day, on average. This is huge. And it makes NaNoWriMo an excellent occasion to write down that story you have always kept inside your head.

Last year I tried NaNoWriMo, and stopped writing my story before half of the adventure was passed, at 17 000 words. I will not say that I failed, although that is how it felt at the time, because I won experience regarding time management, I learned how to write fast and to elaborate, and I finally understood the importance of preparation (hopefully).

This year I have a full outline, specifying the number of words for each section of the novel, what I want to talk about it it, some character traits, and other useful information about the time line, narration, and other useful details about the story. It was surprisingly easy to write that outline. It took me a total of two hours. I seem to be getting the hang of writing outlines, probably because they ask for so many of them in college. Which is probably a good thing. With an outline, you can produce better work with less effort. If you put the same effort that you would have been ready to put in without the outline, then the results can be grandiose! Which is what I am aiming for, on the very long term.

Another achievement of which I am proud is to have convinced someone to participate in NaNoWriMo this year. And I am certain she'll like it at least as much as I do. Good luck to all WriMos!

Raising Money For Nicaragua: Bagging

2011-10-23T19:00:00.000-04:00

In December of this year, I will leave with a group to Nicaragua. We will go there for multiple reasons, the ones I am concerned with being that I want to learn part of a new culture and language, and help people less fortunate than I am. Once there (we leave on December 27), we will live with local families until our departure (on January 17). What will we do there? Work at a senior centre, an elementary school and a local farm. Of course, we will spend part of the time learning how to speak Spanish, and very little time for leisure and tourism; but mostly, it is about helping the local population during a few weeks.

One condition for going, with the organization we are in contact with (Casa Canadiense), is to fund a project. They have a list of community projects in need of money, from which we can choose one to finance. For the few past years, the selected project was almost always to fund elementary schools, so this year they had enough of them, and we moved on to funding a seniors' centre for a whole year. We needed to get 7000$, which we did, mainly with a series of very lucrative fund-raising events: we went bagging.

Bagging is fairly simple, mostly boring if you concentrate on the bagging part of it. What is interesting is to see what type of people will answer "yes" to the question "Can I help you pack your groceries?". Basically, people can be put in one of two categories: those who let you pack their groceries, and those who don't.

The kind of people who let you pack, or even ask you to pack, can be divided further, but they have at least one of three characteristics: they can be trusting and believe that you are able to pack their groceries properly; they can be afraid to say no because you look so happy to help; or maybe they would give money anyway and do not like to give money for nothing (there are many more, but I cannot enumerate them all here).

The first kind, the trusting and confident ones, might be trusting either because they trust others more than they trust themselves, and have confidence issues; or because they know what themselves can do and are good judge of what others can do as well. Is it more important to do good with people who have confidence issues than with those who are sure of themselves? If they misplace their trust, will they, in both case, lose part of their trust towards others?

The second kind are either psychopaths or deep insecures (or normal people). Why did they not want to give money at first? Why do they not hold their views about donations? Is it because they try to pass as kind and caring for people thousands of kilometres away? Or because they actually do care, but do not consider that they have enough money to be able to give money away to such causes, and so get forced by peer pressure to give out more than they can?

The third kind seems quite narrow minded to me. The way I put it above, it looks as if they associated the action of giving money with a counterpart of service or product that they have trouble to accept one without the other. What happens when their friends ask for their help to move? Do they expect to get paid? Do they accept payments in things other than money? What about when they ask their entourage for help? Do they pay them wages?

None of these questions crossed my mind while I was bagging. What I thought about was along the lines of "Oh, this lady is organizing a barbecue." or "Hey, they are having a birthday party tonight." and sometimes "Oh, this baby is so cute!". I sometimes made minor (and private) judgments when people bought exclusively junk food, or exclusively meat (I am vegetarian). At times, packing food made me hungry. Sometimes the people whose groceries we were packing discussed with us, about the trip, our studies, what they were going to eat for supper, or how to pack food (eggs last, meats together, frozens together, etc.). It was a nice time spent with the other people from the trip, a prelude to how close we are going to be during the trip. It was fun.

More about the types of people: there is no way to actually know who they are short of stalking them and becoming their close friend, which s creepy, and, in the big picture, quite useless (like most things, only more so). The point is, can we really know who a person is in only a few seconds, like Patrick Jane does on The Mentalist? Probably. But I bet it asks for a lot of training. Just like Patrick Jane has.

You are a SUPERHERO.

2011-10-20T17:32:00.000-04:00

Is Draco Malfoy An Evil Person?

2011-10-16T16:16:00.000-04:00

Last week, I had a very emotional discussion about Harry Potter with a friend (she will deny that it is emotional, but whatever, everyone knows that Harry Potter is a cause of great emotions in her). More specifically, this discussion was about whether Draco Malfoy was a good (her side) or evil (my side) person. In the end, we ended up discussing what love is, but that's for another post. The main point here is: how do we determine if a person is good or bad?

For the sake of our discussion, we implicitly decided that there were absolute rules to decide what was good or bad. It is my opinion anyway, I do not know if it is hers.

Mostly, I told my friend, Draco acts in an evil way. He does not merely act in a selfish way, which is okay and good at times; he acts to discredit others, lower them, hurt them, not merely for his own benefits. Hurting others gratuitously is a bad action. It reduces the well being of the hurt people around, without making that of Malfoy significantly higher. At best, hurting others can create an ephemeral feeling of superiority, which will vanish soon afterwards, creating an artificial need of hurting others in order to feel superior; imprisoning Malfoy in a loop of name telling, murder attempts, up to becoming a Death Eater. His own way of acting is detrimental to himself, because it puts him in undesired situations, such as being caught between choosing Hogwarts or Voldemort, or between his parent's life and killing Dumbledore, without making the world around better.

But, my friend replied, it is not his fault if he behaves that way: he grew up in a Death Eater family, under the beliefs that Muggle-borns were disgusting and against nature. You cannot blame him for the consequences of other people's actions. The reason why Malfoy behaves so badly is that he never had a good role model. At heart, he is a good person, because he wanted to change, and wanted to become a better person, but did not know how to. Also, he was caught in Voldemort's world, because Voldy held his parents captive, so the actions you say are evil which he did while being a Death Eater were forced upon him by Voldemort. Draco was justified in attempting to kill Dumbledore and help Mangemort enter Hogwarts because his own life and his parent's lives were threatened.

Open parenthesis.

This concerns what is called "super human altruism" in ethics, which involves the idea of a perfectly objective human making ethical decisions. How much can we ask of other human beings? How objective can our decisions be? I think that this question can be answered in the following way.

Any choice we make is based on what we know of a situation. We can know things on different levels and in different ways, with our emotions, our reason, from what we have been told in school to how we were raised at home. This information is what allows us to make a decision concerning an issue.

Here it becomes very important to make the distinction between an objective person and an omniscient person. An objective person will consider all of the information that is available to them. An omniscient person will know everything. An omniscient person is conceivable that would willingly ignore part of his own knowledge, thus being subjective. Objectivity and omniscience are not synonymous.

If we have here an objective non-omniscient person, they will consider all the information that is at their disposition to make their choice, but will not know every thing. Thus, in the absolute, their decision might be wrong, but still be the best choice based on what the person knew. Let us put this concept in practice with the "Yo' Mama" hypothetical situation.

Imagine that you are in a locomotive, going at a relativistic speed (above a tenth of the speed of light), towards a junction. You have the choice to go left or right at this junction. Suddenly, you see your mom (hence the "Yo Mama" situation) on the right track, calmly sitting in the middle of the railroad, reading a book. What do you do? Without question, I would turn left, thus not killing my mother, and leaving her to enjoy her book. Why? Because upon seeing her, I would know that she is there; and I already know that I do not want my mother to die, even less kill her. So I would take the decision to turn right and save her.

Let us complicate the situation a bit here, and why not, completely change it. You are a time traveller in a transdimensional blue box, torn between two options. Leaving the two most powerful species in the universe to their universe destructing war, or stop the war by sending your own species (who is one of the two most powerful species) into void along with their enemies. What do you choose (the "Yo Mama" equivalent is to have a unicorn on the left track, with you mom on the right one)? Will you leave the universe to its fate, or save it by destroying your own race and a second one in the same stride (do you save the unicorn or your mom)? Doctor Who saved the world instead of the other Time Lords. Replace the unicorn by something that exists, such as ten thousand school boys eager to learn new things in their next class the following day, and you get a real dilemma.

All in all, the choice will be affected by what you know of the situation. What will be the repercussions of your action? On you? On others? Do the repercussion on others matter? The whole thing depends on how important children are to you, opposed to how important your mom is to you; in my case it also depends on how important school boys are to my mother; and in lots of cases, likely including mine, it depends on what others would think of your action. In the end, it may depends of what you know of what others know, not only of what you yourself know to be true. This is the reason why this situation is often used to illustrate the subjectivity of morals. But I disagree with that use: it does not show that moral rules are relative, it shows that the knowledge each of us has of them is different, sometimes wrong, sometimes right.

All this to say that your actions can be explained and understood by someone else, and be the best thing you could have done in your situation, without being the absolute best thing to do; it might even be completely wrong to do what you did, but forgivable because you could not know better.

Close parenthesis.

Malfoy knew he could act differently: he lived in a school of wizardry where most people were against Death Eaters. He was surrounded by a society who had wished the disappearance of the Dark Lord for years. He was definitely exposed to opinions contrary to his, and, probably as a result of this, we can perceive changes in him by the end of the series, by the way he hesitates before acting (of course, maybe he is just a coward).

But, my erroneous friend said then, Malfoy is so conditioned to being bad that it takes him time to become good. It is irrational to expect him to suddenly become a saint! To this I reply: I don't expect him to behave saintly. I would expect a good person to think by their self instead of remaining indoctrinated by principles which he can see are wrong. He could see that Hermione was a fantastic wizard even though she was Muggle-born. He could see that the Weasleys were good and respectable people (as if being good at Quidditch was not enough, the family has to be generous as well) even though they were poor. And he could see all the other people around him being happy together, while he was kept alone by his family built hatred. Malfoy is a bad person (except maybe after the books, in the epilogue, because we don't know what he's done between Hogwarts and then).

Note: This is not the verbatim transcript of a conversation, it is an adaptation of what was said to highlight my own views and show that I am right. I encourage my anonymous friend to reply.