About Canada and the war of 1812; about reproductive rights; about Rain Dogs

I follow a few history-sites on Twitter and one of them posted this account on the War of 1812, describing how integral it was to cementing Canada's separate national identity. As most citizens of the USA, I never learned too much about this particular war in school-- and perhaps irresponsibly, I spent my college history classes learning desperately about cultures I had never learned anything about, primarily in Asia and Africa, out of retaliation to an education previously centered on Europe and the Americas. (I must credit my teachers in one excellent respect: I learned more about several South American and Central American countries than I think is standard, thanks to going to charter schools*. Never learned about Oceania, though.)

Anyway, here's the piece, which is pretty awesome and should be read! I think it's silly that we go out of our way to sweep this event under the rugs.

That Time We Beat the Americans:

"There are many reasons why neither side cares to tell the story of the War of 1812. It doesn’t fit America’s ideals of itself, casting founding heroes like Jefferson and Madison as bellicose fools, and showing the United States at its worst: woefully incompetent. For us, the war doesn’t fit the victimology that has nestled comfortably at the heart of Canadian nationalism since the 1960s. Far from identifying Canadians as “beautiful losers,” the War of 1812 casts us as rather nasty fighters with a vengeful streak."

In the realm of reproductive rights, people are talking about Darcy Burner some more. I really like her and plan to support funding for her campaign in the next month or two. She's onto something important, I think, and this article about how abortions have improved the lives of men, as well as women gets to the heart of her point: that we must embrace and accept contraceptives and abortion as rights that are good and positive for the people who make use of them, since they permit women to choose when (or whether) to have children.

It grates me to think that women won't be heard because the society we live in as it stands simply values male voices more, but I don't doubt that there's a lot of unpleasant truth in that. And I do think that abortion has actively made life better for a lot of my male friends who don't even want to be fathers now, and would not have wanted to be fathers at a younger age.

Finally, Rain Dogs: last night I put away my other projects for an hour and a half and designed a t-shirt for DeviantArt's 'musically inspired' contest. I'm not really sure I'm entering the contest, per se, but the idea of designing a t-shirt based on music sounded fun to me. I debated over what song to use; Hello Dolly! by Louis Armstrong, Last Leaf by Ok, Go, The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins by Leonard Nimoy....I ended up going with Bride of Rain Dog by Tom Waits, because Tom Waits is an awesome guy.

It's kind of a weird design but I enjoyed trying to find ways to represent the song's lyrics visually, since Waits has a tendency to string words together in a way counter to intuition. I love that about him. So here's the result on DeviantArt. Maybe not quite clean enough to wear, but I think if I found a shirt like this I might buy it.

( * Not sure how well known the concept of a charter school as per my meaning is, so here's an explanation for anyone who's curious. )

Why you should give a flying fuck about amounts that total less than a dollar

For some reference. This is of course only the 2010 Median Annual Earnings by race and gender, but I think it makes the point pretty clearly.

( Personally, I take away from it... )

For a less charged topic: In the Phoenix area of AZ, the range of gas prices as of today is between 3.29 (cheapest) and 3.79 (most expensive). (For the whole state, the cheapest price is in Tucson at 3.09 and the most expensive is in Williams at 4.09, which is a pretty significant difference).

Edited to add for the curious: Nationwide for the USA, the range appears to be between 2.75 at the lowest, and 5.39. The important thing to remember is that I'm limiting my area of search to a specific state for cost of living reasons. It's more expensive to live in HI than AZ, for example; so a nationwide average isn't helpful because it negates the acknowledgment that anyone paying the higher prices is living in an area where the higher prices are possible. Instead, I'm looking at a small part of AZ, where it's fair to say that the base cost of living is going to be the same regardless of social class. Someone making less than I do still has to pay the same gas prices I do here; someone making more, same. Therefore, it's an accurate gauge of why the gas prices are a big deal. To someone making a lot of money? Probably not. To the rest of us? It's exponential. To me, 600$ is a big difference but as an annual cost, not too bad. To someone making 10k$ less than I do? That's a very big difference-- because that person is making about 385$ less per biweekly paycheck than I am.

Assume you have an 11-gallon gas tank and you fuel up weekly, and in the Phoenix area of AZ? That's an annual price difference of almost 300$. In the full area of AZ? That's an annual price difference of 600+$.

Now let's look at the wage gap. Carmona, who I hope anybody in the AZ area will be voting for-- just like I'd be voting for Darcy Burner if I was in WA-- posted to a Tucson online publication today calling for wage equality and the passing of the fair paycheck act. He pointed out that the wage gap here in AZ is 82 cents to the dollar.

That means that the job I'm going to, which refuses to offer me more than a salary that is 2k$ less than my current salary (and I'm still taking because I think I might be able to make supplemental income), would theoretically be offering a salary 8k$ higher than the one I'm being offered if I was male. When I tried to negotiate, I was told that this amount is what I'm being offered based on my education. And like, I could have pushed, but I kind of wanted the job more than I wanted to potentially just get excluded because of my insistence on fair treatment.

But the thought that I could be making a net of 6k$ more than I am currently making, and might not be because of paycheck unfairness? That makes me pretty fucking angry. That makes me angry in the same way that seeing the gas prices crawl up and corporations actively try to suppress research into alternative fuel options does.

And stuff like this adds up really fucking fast.