Review of "The Baby Book" by Dr. William Sears and Martha Sears

Disclaimer: Apologies to my friends who are attachment parents. Please do not misconstrue this article as a reproach of how you raise your children. Continue to raise them in the best way you see fit. If your feelings are hurt, I apologize. Thank you.

So me and my wife, Suzi, were minding our business raising a talented, clever and happy baby, Kara. Then a well-meaning relative gave me a Father's Day present. Browsing at the bookstore, she had seen a very large book which gave helpful advice about feeding our baby, who was just turning six months old. The book presented reasonable information about how tall and heavy a baby ought to be at a certain age as well as expected developmental milestones.

That poor relative! She had no idea the effect that this book would have on my family. For she did not know the name Dr. Sears, nor his reputation as the man who coined the term "attachment parenting". She could not have known the amount of upheaval and sleepless nights it would cause us. The moment we opened this book, we began to feel horrible about ourselves.

I'm fairly certain that this was not the intention of the Dr. Sears and his wife when they wrote The Baby Book, either. I will grudgingly admit that our own insecurity as parents is our unresolved issue, not theirs. But, for vast sections, the tone and style of The Baby Book is written from an emotional and intuitive standpoint, and the language stirs powerful emotions in the reader.

Attachment parenting is a style of raising children that emphasizes intense emotional nurturing. It stands in stark contrast to many of the commandments fostered by physicians of the 19th and 20th Centuries. Attachment parenting features closeness to your baby at all times: co-sleeping, sling transport and skin-to-skin time. It recommends quick responses to crying and obeying intuitive parenting instincts. The first chapter of The Baby Book is about attachment parenting and the rest of the book is infused with it.

I like the idea of attachment parenting. So does the wife. So does the Royal University Hospital maternity department where we had our baby, which recently abolished its nursery so that parents could spend the first days of their child's life in close contact. While we had never previously read anything by Dr. William Sears, attachment parenting has inflitrated the institutions surrounding birth.

We really wanted to be attachment parents. We succeeded at first. Then, two and a half months after our baby was born, the wife had to get a job. The details of this decision I chronicled in this post. Basically, we decided that she could support us monetarily while I couldn't. With that, she spent less time with our baby. Her body couldn't keep up with baby's increasing breastmilk demands, so formula began to creep into Kara's diet. Then, a little past the four-month mark, Kara began to squirm, kick and scratch us in her sleep. We woke each other constantly. I was tired, Kara was cranky and Suzi was hopelessly exhausted with night waking, nursing and working.

Something had to change. Then one day when I was at the end of my rope and Kara was crying for seemingly no reason, I obeyed an intuitive parenting instinct and put her alone in her crib in a dark room. Five minutes of fussing later, she was asleep. I was shocked. Then I tried it again in the afternoon and hallelujiah, she slept again! I researched. I was ashamed because I knew that "cry-it-out" was not "in" and I was certain Suzi would disapprove. I secretly continued to practice Dr. Ferber's method for a week before I broke down and told her. After many apologies, we both decided Dr. Ferber knew his shit. Kara slept, I slept, Suzi slept, we were all sleeping, we were all happy for a month.

As it stood, we tried contemporary parenting and it simply clashed with modern life. We couldn't sustain it and keep ourselves fed and rested at the same time. So food and sleep won and Kara actually seemed more-rested for it.

Then this damn book appeared. Apparently, we were causing permanent damage to our little girl. Suzi should have obeyed those instincts and come running with her boob outstretched. The worst part was that we had already done the damage: Kara was Ferberized and broken forever.

What followed was several weeks of guilty vigilance on Suzi's part. She would wake with every tiny night-cry and I started having midnight arguments with her about running to the baby's rescue. Exhaustion slipped back into our lives. We both knew what the book had done, knew that we were good parents and had a wonderful and unbroken baby, and yet the book continued to haunt us silently from its place at my bedside table.

This is what The Baby Book did for us and Eris-help-me, we're still recovering. For this disservice alone, I am inclined to follow my emotional and intuitive instinct to tell the Dr. Sears that he can shove copies of his book up the arses of his huge and supposedly-perfect family. But that's not exactly fair. This reaction is based on my own subjective experience and surely it won't be the same for every parent. So for their benefit, I'll try to actually REVIEW this book and be as impartial as possible.

As I mentioned before, the tone of the book is from an intuitive standpoint. It is unsourced. It is scientific only in that a respected pediatrician and his registered-nurse wife authored it. I can't begrudge that, however: it's a parenting book and no parent needs to read a scientific article to learn how to take care of their baby. Scientific writing is boring writing, so not sourcing their claims is just fine. What maybe isn't fine is this: in the opening chapter the authors actually admit that their advice on parenting is not scientific. They say that their parenting style is based only on their subjective experience of dealing with parents of children whom they considered to be "good". Shabby.

Incidentally, William Sears has indeed published articles with actual sources independent of The Baby Book. I haven't read them, nor do I really want to after my experiences with his other writing, but I did find this article slamming his views on cry-it-out to be very interesting.

The subjective tone of the authors prevails everywhere in the book. Allow me to paraphrase a sidebar which appears in their section on baby's sleep habits:

There once were two parents who were offered a cry-it-out book to help their baby sleep. They tried it and their baby screamed all night. They were heartbroken and sad and as a result of this method they lost their sympathetic connection to their baby's cries. His crying didn't affect them anymore and they stopped caring for him and took increasingly long vacations away from him. The End.

Please allow me this uncharacteristic slip into leet: lolololololololstfu!!!!1!!11!

That's a very accurate paraphrase of their story and I challenge anybody to find it in The Baby Book and tell me I haven't captured the spirit of it. It's absolutely ridiculous. If these parents, who I doubt actually exist, stopped caring about their baby because of cry-it-out, what the fuck kind of parents were they in the first place? The world is filled with parents, such as myself, who continue to love their children and yet have let them cry-it-out. This bullshit story about two sociopaths who abandon their baby insults my intelligence.

The tone of the book continues to drag it down. The average section begins with inflammitory language wherein the Sears' state their opinion, then they repeat themselves over and over again. Then they say, "but if you can't manage to do this, that's okay too!" Then follows a section whereby they answer the critics of attachment parenting by stating the concerns and then unscientifically stating, "No, actually they're wrong and the opposite thing happens." Here's a parody:

Playpens: The Black Den of Evil

Often we find parents asking us about playpens. Are they good? In our experience, no. To a child, a playpen is a prison and you are an abusive guard. She wails and cries and the parent doesn't respond and she learns that nobody loves her. She needs to crawl everywhere and if you don't let her, her muscles will atrophy and she'll get ADD. You shouldn't own one or think about owning one and you should avert your eyes if you see one.

But it's okay to put her in the playpen if you need to answer the phone. Also, if you can't not put her in a playpen, feel free to do so! You need to feel your own way through parenting, so even if you have to keep her in a cardboard box for six hours, that's fine! We're not judgmental!

Some of you are dumb and won't take us at our word, so here are some of your concerns:

I can't watch my child all the time and playpens keep my baby from falling down the stairs or eating electrical cords. Should I use one?
Absolutely not! If you're watching your baby all the time like you should be, then you can keep her out of electronics. And because we don't believe in using harsh language or physical punishment, your baby will learn "no" but not care about it until she's six, she won't learn anything and you'll get to spend even more time watching her!

My baby always has fun in her playpen and seems to enjoy being in there because it's safe. Is that possible?
In our experience, babies only pretend like they're having fun in their playpen. Inside they are screaming for emotional attachment to their parents, but are too frightened to express themselves because they are afraid that if they cry they will have to spend more time in the playpen as punishment. Babies who find themselves in this predicament grow up to be like Hitler.

I heard a baby was put in a playpen and he died. Is that true?
Yes.

Joking aside, The Baby Book would actually be very helpful if its tone didn't make it unreadable. As that relative observed when she bought it, it is full of great information. I opened it many times for the charts. Personally, I think it could be rewritten. Half could be chopped, namely the paragraphs where they write the same thing over and over again, then some judgmental bullshit and of course one or two stories that probably didn't happen.

As it stands, this book is a giant mess of repeated unobservable and unscientific commandments with some useful charts hidden within it. I'm sure your money could be spent better elsewhere. As for my copy, it eventually left my bedside table and, for a week, it received its greatest use as a block to prop up Kara's carseat so it was level. Then it got returned.
1/2 a value judgment out of 5

And finally, I have some more personal comments to share. I've already railed against the tone of The Baby Book. However, the book does contain a passage that I'll take with me. The Sears ask us to simply not rely heavily on any baby book to raise our children. They say that no book has all the answers and as your child's parent, you know better than anybody else. It's commendable advice and after all the crap I read in this book, I was not expecting to read this passage.

Whenever discussing parenting, parents get uppity. When parenting emotions are stirred, they get judgmental. It's this attitude I object to. Despite the effort the Sears put into making their tone neutral, attachment parenting now has fanatic acolytes who believe that all of society's problems and their own personal disfunctions are Dr. Ferber's fault. Many attachment parents look down on parents who think differently than them. Like the Victorian chowderheads who invented the dispassionate and clinical approach to parenting of yore, they are being bitchy and judgmental and making other people feel bad about themselves.

In the end, the Sears are right about intuitive parenting. The truth of how to raise each kid lies somewhere between attachment parenting and Prussian child-rearing. Different kids will respond better to different things. Furthermore, no scientist on earth can accurately tell you how much nurture effects children versus nature. Some kids are born caring and some dispassionate, some artsy and some mechanical, some gregarious and some asocial and nobody knows how or why. Parenting just isn't a science. Those who pretend that parenting is a science are trying to make money.

So take a page out of the book of the man who coined "attachment parenting" and don't take his book that seriously.

http://pharoahphobia.blogspot.com/

Review of "Starfish" by Peter Watts

Starfish is a sci-fi novel by Canadian author Peter Watts. The story mainly follows Lenie Clarke, a deep-water worker who has been cybernetically enhanced to survive benthic conditions. The world's thirst for electricity has led humankind to tap geothermal power from deep-sea vents, and Clarke and her fellow rifters are specially selected by their employer to be psychologically primed to work in the freezing dark. That is, they are all broken: victims of abuse, unhappy loners, perverts or dangerous psychopaths. Starfish studies how the rifters change themselves, how their environment evolves them, and finally how their world transforms the unwitting humans who rely on them.

I feel safe in an assertion that you have never read anything like Starfish (or its two sequels) in your life. Watts' story is steeped in marine biology, sociology, psychology, parapsychology, computer science and biotechnology. Lenie Clarke's world is unique. She endures lack of sunlight, isolation, dangerous and unpredictable seafloor eruptions, attacks from monstrous fish, and finally the conniving politics of her own employers. Though an unhappy sufferer of previous sexual abuse, she learns to thrive in her new environment.

This book is in many ways a study of how life evolves and changes. Each deep-sea organism that Watts spotlights has learned to survive in hostile conditions in its own way. The rifters themselves are changed. Above the ocean's surface, humanity struggles with the evolving artificial intelligences of computer viruses and "smart gels", or bio-engineered brains. Because humans are so numerous, so are the illnesses that plague them. The world of Starfish is one in which nature has begun to compensate for the sudden evolutionary dominance of homo spiens.

The plot is fascinating. Lenie Clarke is a wonderful protagonist. She starts as quiet, shy and broken, and develops into a character with understated power. The story also features a few secondary protagonists, all fully-developed and intriguing. Each character is wonderful, real and morally ambiguous.

Summing, Starfish is unique and, above all, it is a fantastic read.
4 1/2 crippled fish with broken teeth out of 5

The Faceless Enemy

Since fiction has existed, hordes of incompetent foes have assailed heroes. These foes are a literary device which, at first, encourages audiences to fear villains by making them seem formidable. Then the foes get blown away and the secondary literary function is achieved: the hero looks very tough indeed. When these foes appear in a visual setting, such as theatre, comics, film or video games, these foes often have their faces shrouded or hidden. It's a tradition that I'd like to examine.

The Faceless Enemy has a long history. The earliest example I can remember with any clarity is the ninja. The famous shinobi shōzoku outfit that we all know, the all-black costume with the facemask, puffy pants and two-toed shoes, was very likely never used by actual ninja. Rather, it was a symbolic stage-convention of Japanese theatre that would allow audiences to easily identify a character as a ninja. It's a cool-looking costume that sticks in the viewer's mind. No wonder that it resonated over hundreds of years in Japanese culture and was copied by North American filmmakers in the 1970's. Many heroes have donned the awesome ninja garb, but when enemies do so, they are frequently very bad at their jobs.

Of course, the most famous Faceless Enemy these days is the Imperial Stormtrooper. For over thirty-five years, the Stormtrooper has been a pop-culture icon. However, we must not forget that the Imperial Stormtrooper was a dream inspired in George Lucas' mind by the Faceless Enemies that Flash Gordon and other cheapo-serial heroes fought in the early days of cinema.

In the world of video games, you will be playing an exeptional game if you AREN'T killing Faceless Enemies. From the masked-enemies of Borderlands to the shrouded reapers of Infamous to the balaclava-terrorists of Rainbow Six: Vegas 2, they are the industry standard. The reason for this is that it's just easier to program a certain number of enemies for the player to murder and if they don't have faces, it's less likely that the player will say, "Hey, didn't I kill that guy already?"

You get it. They're everywhere. But why? What is it about Faceless Enemies that we seem to like so much? Why do we like seeing them getting killed? It seems to make no intellectual sense. As a writer I am told over and over to fully-flesh my antagonists, yet fiction is rife with cartoon baddies Wilhelm-screaming and falling off roofs.

The enemy who has his face hidden is an enemy who has been dehumanized. Humans have instinctive reactions to seeing each other's faces. When the face is shrouded, those instincts are deadened.

This has two major effects. Fistly, for audiences, we cease to identify with the enemy. It just won't do for viewers to sympathetically exclaim, "Han Solo, you brute! That poor Stormtrooper! Did you think about his family when you blasted him?" This allows heroes to plow through hundreds of faceless foes, letting audiences worry only about the protagonist's peril.

The second major effect is a by-product of the first. When we have our sympathetic reactions to death impaired, it affects censors like the MPAA and the ESRB less. Dead Stormtroopers make for PG-ratings in theatres, at worst Teen ratings in video games. By putting a mask on your baddies, you are making your story available to millions of bloodthirsty children.

Okay, so that explains why creators select the Faceless Enemy. But why do audiences find them compelling? I've mentioned that the mask dehumanizes them, but with dehumanization also comes fear. The mask represents mystery and fear of the unknown. The emotions of a Faceless Enemy cannot be read except by body language, making their thoughts a mystery as well. With the identity hidden, the Faceless Enemy becomes a menacing stranger. Menacing strangers are a powerful human fear, as evidenced by the amount of media attention random murders, child-snatchers and serial killers receive. Lastly, when the Faceless Enemy serves a political entity such as an empire or terrorist group, he becomes a symbol of powerful conformity that has obliterated his identity, quietly whispering to the viewer, "This could happen to you, too."

In short, as a literary device, Faceless Enemies can inspire terror in the human heart. By including them as followers of your antagonist, (who should remain fully-fleshed), they significantly enhance his/her fear factor. Are you still worried about allowing poorly-fleshed characters into your work of fiction? Remember that the way to be a bore is to say everything. Unless that gas-masked Nazi is going to play a significant role in your plot, we don't want to know about him. We don't even want to know that his name is Hauptfeldwebel Helmut von Pickelhube. Just let your protagonist murder him and move on with the plot.

Believe it or not, this diatribe has real-life application. In his book, On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, Lt. Col. Dave Grossman showcases the innate human resistance to killing other humans. Apparently, before the Korean war, only about 15% of soldiers actively tried to shoot their enemies. The rest helped wounded comerades, reloaded weapons, cowered in fear, ran around shouting like idiots or fired their weapons over the enemys' heads. Generals like Carl von Clausewitz were confounded as to why, when a Prussian infantry formation fired a musket volley at a barn, all the shots hit, whereas when the same formation fired at an advancing line of tightly-packed infantry, only one or two enemies dropped. The closer you get to your enemy, the harder it is to overcome the urge not to kill him. A pilot can easily fire a torpedo at a battleship and sink it, killing who-knows-how-many soldiers, but the same man may freeze and be unable to bayonet one enemy in close-combat.

Modern training and drilling techniques have been introduced to overcome the resistance to kill. It also helps to have a superior officer yelling at you to kill. The American military also makes extensive use explosives and snipers, which kill at a distance rather than forcing up-close confrontation.

But by far the most time-honoured tradition of getting soldiers to kill is the art of dehumanization. From the made-up stories of the barbarious Hun mutilating innocent Belgians in World War I to the bullshit story about Iraqis tossing babies out of incubators, governments have been using real and fake propeganda to encourage soldiers to kill. If a soldier can view the enemy as degenerate subhumans, he/she can pull the trigger with more ease.

So here's the point of all this. Many special forces, SWAT teams and guerillas purposefully hide or cover their faces when they go into combat. Sometimes it's a balaclava meant to hide the wearer's identity. Sometimes it's facepaint to assist camouflage. Sometimes it's infrared goggles. Sometimes it's a gas mask to protect against airborne toxins.

Considering what Dave Grossman has to say and how audiences react to fictional Faceless Enemies, it might be worth examining the wisdom of hiding the face. Camouflage, anonymity, night vision and protection from chemicals have their uses. But by hiding the face, these soldiers and police are dehumanizing themselves and becoming more attractive targets. In situations where the enemy has no modern military training, this is especially important. An untrained fighter is more likely to shoot a menacing mask than a real person with a human face.

If this is something that soldiers and commanders consider before they enter combat, that's good. I'm glad to hear it. But otherwise, it's something to think about. Obviously there will be other tactical considerations in any engagement, but if I were a soldier (and I'm not), I'd think twice about putting on that balaclava.

http://pharoahphobia.blogspot.com/

Making D&D Alignments Work

Nerd alert! This post is for my D&D readers. You pipe-smoking intellectuals who come here for the dreamy intellectual poetry might want to sit this one out.

Dungeons & Dragons has been around for over thirty years and its system of alignments has been around for nearly as long. The alignment system defines characters along two axes, good vs. evil and law vs. chaos, with neutral between both. The intersection of the axes allows characters to choose an alignment that suits them, such as chaotic evil, lawful good, neutral good, lawful neutral or true neutral. This alignment defines their personality and also has game effects. Something about this system captures the imagination of players. I have to admit that I have thought about it a lot. My opinion of it has swayed back and forth from it being one of the stupidest ideas ever to a system of quiet brilliance.

Here's a quick review of what each point in the axis means:

Good characters like helping people and being nice. Evil characters like hurting and enjoy being mean. Neutral characters follow selfish ideals or have a true commitment to being impartial.

Lawful characters obey the law and have strict personal codes. Chaotic characters disobey authority and have few personal restrictions. Neutral characters can go either way.

It's an interesting way to view the world. But is it applicable to real life? A look at psychologist Theodore Millon's Inventories, which I covered briefly in this post, shows some similarities. Millon also has axes of personality and motivation, but many more of them.

The Law vs. Chaos axis in D&D bears close resemblances to two of the axes in the Millon Inventories: Systemizing vs. Innovating (cogniative) and Conforming vs. Dissenting (behaviour). Systemizers live their lives based on past experiences and evaluate new things based on old views, while Innovators seek novelty and change. On the other axis, Conformers follow societal trends and obey authority while Dissenters follow their own drum-beat. Realistically, the behaviours covered in Law and Chaos should follow two axes, not one.

Good vs. Evil is a little more difficult to compare. For one thing, Millon does not acknowledge the existence of malevolence in his inventories. Most of the axes that deal with such things view behaviour as either selfless or selfish, which in D&D terms translates into good or neutral. I would imagine that psychologists would see the desire to hurt or cause harm as a rare mental disorder rather than having its own place on a Millon axis, and when such individuals are following selfish desires when they act upon those brutal urges.

Regardless, Millon has two axes which could fit upon the D&D scales: Nurturing vs. Individuating (motivation) and Complaining vs. Agreeing (behaviour). Nurturers love to help others while Individuators prefer to help themselves first. Complainers are angry and sullen while Agreeing folks are generally nice. Once again, two realistic axes in place of D&D's one.

Aside from the four axes I listed in this post, Millon classifies personalities with eight others, making a total of twelve. While Dungeons & Dragons has 9 possible alignments, if you made an alignment for each of the combinations in the Millon Inventories, tacking neutral into each axis, that equals 531,441 possible alignments. Not gonna happen. Still it's fun to think of the possibilites. I'd love to see a spell called Sense-Blast that did extra damage to characters with the Intuitive alignment, or the Antisocial Sword that does 1d extra damage to Gregarious characters. Ha!

But D&D has only two axes and if you play you have to live with them and the limited roleplay possibilities that result. Not only that, but in a game system where your alignment can shift depending on your character's actions, leading to important game effects, you have to pay close attention to what your actions really mean. DMs especially should think about alignments and be clear with players about the decisions when they arise with players. Players who commit alignment-altering actions and unexpectedly find their alignment shift can get pissed-off.

That doesn't mean you can't have fun with the system. Here's some tips on the common pitfalls that can make this system annoying and how to avoid them.

Chaos is Bad

As a Discordian, this particular logical flaw is very important to me. The Milgram Experiment proved conclusively that most of the human race is Lawful. We obey the rules and if somebody in charge tells us to do something, we do it, especially if they're yelling. Another trait of humans is the tendency to fear and hate things that are different from us. Therefore, many players confuse Chaos with evil.

This just isn't true. Chaos is change. Change is neither good nor evil. Yes, change claimed your kindly grandmother on her deathbed. But it also killed Hitler. Change began every government and will destroy every government and all its laws. When a law is broken, even if it is theft or murder, good or evil can result.

Remember, Order and Law are merely artificial constructs that allow us not to think very hard. The breaking of a tradition merely forces us to re-examine it. Unless the breaking was intended to maliciously hurt or generously help somebody, the act of breaking is not a moral action.

The Chaotic Good Paradox

A Chaotic Good character has a thin line to walk. His mantra must be to do as much good outside the scope of the law as possible. The only real way to do it seems to be selective about who and what he uses as the targets of his chaos. Destruction and punishment of evil must be the main focus, rather than fixation on Law versus Chaos. Cruel brigands should be his target just as much corrupt tax collectors. Robin Hood is a good example of a Chaotic Good character. He robbed only the rich and wicked and routinely gave the money to people in need. Similarly, Malcolm Reynolds of Firefly loves to win fights by thwarting warrior codes and catching opponents unprepared. A Chaotic Good character should have no problem knifing a psychopath in the back if it prevents others from being hurt.

Malcolm Reynolds and Robin Hood were lucky, however. They were in direct opposition to governments which could be fairly called Lawful Evil. It is much more difficult to play Chaotic Good when living under a government that is Lawful Good. How is it done? With difficulty. Certainly a Chaotic Good character would refuse a draft order and engage in illegal protests if he was riled enough. I also don't see this character paying taxes. But neither do I see him hurting soldiers, police and government agents when they come to arrest him, unless he knew they were bad people.

Whose Laws are you Following?
Lawful characters are great if your campaign takes place in one kingdom. However, it's more than likely that your decade-spanning epic will not. So what happens when your goodie-two shoes paladin crosses the border?

If said paladin enters a wilderness area with no government or laws, I hardly think it would make sense to take a literal view of things and let your paladin start robbing travellers. It would make much more sense for him to continue to live the life of a law-abiding citizen from his own kingdom within the barbarian reaches.

Well and good. Now he travels to the magical elf-lands of Franduil. Like most elves, they are Chaotic Good and live as a sort of anarchist commune. Their legal system is lax and it is more likely that families and clans will punish their own, if at all. Your paladin's urge to smite the guilty is going to get him into trouble. Not only that, but if he imposes his kingdom's laws upon the elves, is he truly acting in a Lawful manner?

After eviction from Franduil, our paladin travels to Wickedia, a Lawful Evil kingdom ruled by vampire overlords who rob their peasantry of riches and blood. What does the paladin do when he witnesses his first perfectly-legal virgin sacrifice? If he halts it, he's breaking the law. Does he impose his own kingdom's standards on Wickedia?

Here are the basic moral dilemmas. If he chooses to impose his kingdom's laws elsewhere, how exactly is "Lawful" even a universal alignment if it's based on ONE KINGDOM? Next, if he chooses to follow local traditions, he will often find himself doing stuff contrary to his alignment. And lastly, if it's his own choice whether he chooses to follow the laws of whichever kingdom he's in, how is he any different from a chaotic character?

Honestly, I don't have the answers. This is a matter of choice for your Dungeon Master. DMs, think about this one. If you don't have an answer you might have annoyed players.

Vigilantes: What alignment is Batman?

A D&D sourcebook called "The Complete Scoundrel" lists Batman as being a Lawful Good character. But is he really Lawful Good? He's a vigilante, one of the most lawless professions known to man. He is routinely hunted by police for being a vigilante. He constantly assaults police officers, resists arrest and wrecks public resources to evade capture. Yes, he hunts lawbreakers, but he breaks the law to do so. So what alignment is he?

I'd say he's Neutral Good, honestly. But once again, if you're playing a vigilante, ask your DM. The same goes for evil vigilantes like the ones that Woody Guthrie used to complain about.

Evil characters in the party

It's likely that a Lawful Evil character with his code of honour could fit well into a party situation. But what about a Chaotic Evil character, the sort of personality that is basically a dangerous sociopath. Or the Neutral Evil character's pure and passionate dedication to cause harm in the world? What is stopping these characters from slitting their friends' throats while they sleep and fleeing with all the magic items?

Obviously, the most simple solution is for DMs to say outright, "No evil characters allowed." It's an easy solution that works. But some players like being evil.

The best way to justify the existence of an evil character and his continued cooperation with a party of adventurers is the long-con. He is only temporarily working with them so that once they have defeated your campaign's antagonist, he can make his play for true power. Either that, or traveling with a pack of powerful troublemakers who constantly engage in combat provides many opportunities to inflict suffering on others. Of course, there is also a chance that a player of an evil character will engage in "character development" (in D&D? Seriously?) Witness the development of Sawyer in "Lost", in the first season starting Neutral Evil and later becoming Lawful Neutral.

These solutions sound good until that paladin character shows up. If the alignment system was more ambiguous, it might be easy for a paladin to work with evil characters and have doubts about them without smiting them. However, paladins come equipped with Detect Evil spells and paladins cannot suffer evil to live, right? If you're a DM who wants to allow evil characters in the game, you might actually want to say, "no paladins allowed."
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That's the best I can do for making the D&D alignments work. Personally, I'd rather play an RPG like GURPS or Savage Worlds that allows for complicated personality customization. But D&D has such massive appeal that it is easier to find a game. D&D games can be found in the most unlikely places, from tiny prairie towns to isolated forest cabins to secret games in the basements of Mormons. So if you're starved for the art of interactive storytelling, D&D and its beautiful and flawed alignment system is often your best option.

http://pharoahphobia.blogspot.com/

Review of "Night Watch" by Terry Pratchett

"Night Watch" is the 29th of Terry Pratchett's book set in his Discworld and the 7th starring the Ankh-Morpork city watch. The main character is, of course, the capable and cynical Sir Samuel Vimes, commander of the watch and Duke of Ankh.

This time, Vimes is accidentally tossed back in time by a freak magic storm into his own history. Unfortunately, at the time of the storm, he was locked in mortal struggle with the heartless criminal Carcer, who appears in the same time and murders Vimes' former mentor and Sergeant-at-Arms, John Keel. Vimes is recruited by the History Monks, guardians of time, to play the role of John Keel, teach his younger-self how to be a good copper, and nab Carcer before he causes more damage. It's another great adventure which Vimes negotiates by scowling, improvising and outsmarting his opponents.

Unlike The Fifth Elephant, which I reviewed about a year ago, "Night Watch" handles its exposition brilliantly. Though Vimes appears in a different time, no exposition is offered except that which is absolutely necessary. Though the Time Monks had been active in previous Discworld novels, though the readers were unfamiliar with the time period, and though history was being repeated for Vimes, there are no long expository diatribes. I was able to navigate the tale perfectly and something interesting is always happening.

The climax of the story is very moving, and while comedy is always present in Discworld, "Night Watch" manages to negotiate the unsteady line that plagues every story that tries to tread between humour and drama. I loved this story.

4 1/2 lilac-honoured graves out of 5

This story, more than the others in the City Watch series, presents interesting ideas about policing. More such ideas were featured in HBO's series "The Wire", which also happens to be the best television show I've ever seen. Vimes' unconventional policing style works wonders in Ankh-Morpork. I wish it could be applied in the real world. Can it?

Vimes' watchmen are peace-keepers. It is achieved thusly:

1. Being a part of the community. Vimes and his best officers know everybody on their patrol. They know every street and alley. They know who is worth querying and how to negotiate with them. They are not uniforms, they are members of the city that everybody knows. In "Night Watch", when a riot brews outside the watch house, Vimes puts his most harmless-looking coppers in front of the station and serves the gathered crowd cocoa. When a troublemaker hurts himself by smashing a bottle, he gives the man medical treatment and allows people inside the station to make sure he's okay. Vimes' coppers do not cause confrontations or exacerbate them with fear or anger.
2. Ignoring mostly-harmless illegal stuff that you can't do anything about. From prostitution to slightly-illegal sales to public drunkenness to Corporal Nobbs' casual kleptomania, the City Watch ignores a wide variety of crimes. This allows them to concentrate on policing more serious crimes. A similar idea is expressed in "The Wire", when Howard "Bunny" Colvin discusses alcohol in public. A law prohibiting displays of alcohol on the street was turning people, for example, friends enjoying a beer on their front steps into criminals and distracting police resources. The solution: a paper bag. The bag allows police to look the other way and law-abiding citizens to continue to stay out of jail.
3. Arrests with as little violence as possible. The courts are supposed to be society's instrument of punishment. Furthermore, violent scuffles and fights can disturb the community and cause harm to innocent people. Vimes uses reason and intimidation to get criminals to surrender peacefully, and if this fails, uses quick and intelligent action to incapacitate. He routinely orders constables to leave their swords behind and instead carry clubs (like English bobbies) in order to prevent conflict escalation with criminal groups.

Think about your own local police force. Do they resemble Vimes' watch, or are they a faceless uniform that cruises downtown in a police cruiser and occasionally gets embroiled in some racist scandal? Just saying.

I'm sure greater minds have considered this stuff, so I'll shut up now.

The Ten Worst Canadian Things... Ever!

Canada struggles for its identity. It hovers in the shadow of the United States, an economic and cultural powerhouse. Many seek to define Canada by what it isn't and produce a litany of cultural and historical characteristics that make us not the USA. Others point to Canadian victories in war (the reputation of fighting Canadians in the World Wars), victories in politics (Arts Boards, Medicare), victories in science and technology (insulin, the Canadarm, the telephone), or victories in sports (uh... there's probably some real-good sports victories out there to mention but I honestly don't give a fuck).

But let's face it. If we're going to be a real culture like the United States, we need, NEED, a list of bad things to define us. The US has a history of slavery, a bizarre half-assed colonial thing, unbelievable poverty in the midst of immense wealth and a weird news-media culture that can only be called a triumph of the subjective. As Canadians, we can look at these things and say, "See? We didn't do that. We're better than those awful Yankees." If we ever want to be taken seriously, we need a list of faults, bungles and morons that any American can see and say, "Thank God, thank God I'm an American!"

THIS IS THE LIST.

Here are the rules by which the list is compiled. The things on this list must be Canadian icons, people or influences that reached beyond our borders and spread their cancerous filth like gangrene upon the world. Canadian politicians are off the list because they're too easy and, also, one man's hero is another's devil. So as much as I want him here, Stephen Harper is safe. I have also omitted serial killers like Robert Pickton and Col. Russell Williams because, once again, they're too easy, nor do they have much comic potential. Now begins the countdown:

10. Krantz Films, Inc.

Perhaps you've never heard of Krantz Films. No actually, you have, though you were very young when it scarred you. For it was Krantz films that was responsible for those awful, lazy Rocket Robin Hood cartoons and, more famously, the Spider-Man series of the 1960's. The cartoons produced by this animation house can scarcely be called animation. When movement occurs, it is choppy and sloppy. Footage is re-used shamelessly.

"Come on, J. Adrian," you might say if you were in-the-know, "Krantz didn't make anything lazier than any other two-bit animation house of that era. Remember The Fantastic Four, The Hulk and Mighty Hercules cartoons?" Yes. But even they did not sink to this low: plots were re-used. Remember Dementia 5? You should, because both Rocket Robin Hood and Spider-Man traveled to Dementia 5, had the same acid-inspired adventure and in the process terrified two generations of children. Lame lame lame! Canadians did that.

9. Lord Black of Crossharbour
What's better than a rich, criminal media-baron? A rich, criminal media-baron who also happens to be an arrogant windbag, that's who. And it's Canada's very own Conrad Black. Or, I should say, was Canada's own, because he's renounced his citizenship to become a British Lord.

Hating free-speech seems like a strange trait for a newspaperman, but that's our Conrad. He and his supervillain wife, Barbara Amiel, have been a pair of howler monkeys in Canada's tree, annoying Canadians with their right-wing views for over twenty years. Black was so widely-hated that when Queen Elizabeth II wanted to make him a Lord, then-Prime Minister Jean Chrétien intervened and argued that a Canadian cannot be made a Lord. That's when Black renounced his citizenship. Yay! Later, of course, he was convicted for fraud and obstruction of justice in the US. More good stuff. I hope you're enjoying Lord Black, Queen Elizabeth II. We don't want him back.

8. The Heavy Metal Movie
Have you ever wondered what would happen if a stupid glowing green ball called the Loc-nar was the cause of all evil in the universe? I didn't think so. And judging by the significance the Loc-nar plays in each of the short films in Heavy Metal, neither did the creators.

Yet the Loc-nar provides "unity" to the rambling tales that comprise Heavy Metal. It forces a little girl to watch scenes of ultimate evil which frighten her. Yet the ultimate evil she beholds include a bald barbarian congregating with topless chicks, some aliens getting high on a substance named Nyborg, a dastardly space captain and some more topless chicks. Scary stuff. Now, if the Loc-nar's evil plan was to bore us to death, I'd believe it.

No, really. Somehow the movie manages to make blood-spattered topless warrior chicks boring. The animation is painfully slow. The plot is constantly interrupted by "music-video" segments which might be appealing if you're stoned. SCTV alumni and Harold Ramis as voice talent could not save it. It's one of the most famous movies to be produced in Canada and it sucks Nyborg.

7. Apartheid
Bwah? Well, rumour has it that during a trip to Canada, visiting South Africans observed our system of Indian Reserves. "What a great idea!" they said, "We should do that to our black people!" They took it a step further. Several steps, in fact, leading to one of the most racist and evil policies of planet earth.

Only #7, you say? Surely this is worse than Celine Dion? Yes, but Canada doesn't get full credit. Our exclusionist policies only inspired Apartheid, after all. Realistically, Canada need only feel guilty about confining our aboriginal peoples to the least-wanted farmlands available to teach them agriculture, stealing the food we promised them and refusing to give them jobs for a hundred years.

Nah, let's just ignore that issue. It's easier.

6. Tom Green
Okay. I'll admit it. I did not see the manifestation of Tom Green's true talent, a little film called "Freddy Got Fingered". By the time it was released, I knew better. Reports that it was one of the worst movies ever made confirmed my prejudgments.

I had previously watched the Tom Green Show. I knew his shtick. The usual show would go something like this: Awkward onstage banter. Tom drinks some kind of bodily fluid. Cut to Tom with something stupid on his head irritating people in a public place. I change the channel.

Don't get me wrong. From a comic perspective, there is nothing wrong with taboo humour, whereby social norms are broken. I've watched and enjoyed enough Sacha Baron Cohen and Kenny vs. Spenny and know what it looks like when it's done well. Tom's brand of taboo humour was limp, aimless and poorly executed. When he pretended to hump that roadkilled moose, he could have created no more potent a symbol. The moose represented Canada's reputation. Or perhaps comedy. I haven't decided yet.

5. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police
I will receive disagreement from many quarters for this one, but I fervently believe in my choice. Things have changed since the image of the dutiful Dudley Do-right were formed in the consciousness of the world. The RCMP has since forgotten that it is a national police force and not a political entity or a business.

Like most police forces, it has the usual array of brutalities against protesters, questionable taserings and invasions of privacy. What makes the RCMP special is that starting about 50 years ago, it has an odd history of being naughty with fire and explosives: stealing dynamite, burning down barns, and if Wiebo Ludwig is to be believed, staging an attack on a pipeline to frame him. Then there's the time that the RCMP let the Americans know that a muslim(!) Canadian, Maher Arar, was on board a flight in New York. The Yanks quickly bundled him off to Syria to get tortured. That's some nice treatment of our citizens abroad, boys.

Next, the RCMP has been forgetting that it is supposed to be an impartial police force and behaving like a partisan political entity. They used taxpayer money to pay individuals to write negative opinion pieces in newspapers attacking Vancouver's safe injection site in 2008. Then there was the RCMP researching people applying to appear at Prime Minister Stephen Harper's gatherings during the 2011 election, giving helpful tips on who he might not like, and assisting Conservative goons in escorting CITIZENS away from the PUBLIC gatherings! That is not helpful. That is some authoritarian bullshit.

And a final strike against them. We all know the redcoated image of the mountie smartly saluting with his black pants and boots. Did you know that the RCMP sold the rights for this image to the Walt Disney Company for five years? That's great, fellahs. While we're at it, let's license the Canadian flag to Time-Warner. All this adds up to an organization whose brass have forgotten the meaning of the symbolic Mountie: dutiful, friendly, helpful and ready to serve all citizens.

4. Celine Dion
She is one of the most popular Canadian musicians of all time. Of the top ten best selling albums of the 90's, two are hers and a third, the "Titanic" soundtrack, was popular only because of her featured Oscar-winning song.

Her music is the epitome of bland. The second her albums left the charts, we began to hear them piped over the sound system in supermarkets. I know I've heard her music a million times, but for all that, I couldn't name you a single tune except for the one about the big boat and it goes, "Ooooo".

Yet I know there is this invisible class of persons who love Celine Dion, subscribe to the National Enquirer, can be seen shuffling out of scrapbooking shops in sweat pants with weary eyes focused on the pavement, collect animals made out of glass crystal and have no greater joy than when Ellen DeGeneres dances. The following statement is made not on their behalf but from the rest of Canada to the world: We are sorry. We're so, so sorry for Celine Dion. If there's anything we can do, anything at all to atone, please call us when you stop being angry.

3. The Alberta Oil Sands
As the world's oil supply burns into oblivion and prices rise to levels undreamed, you'd think that Canada would be trying to find an alternate fuel source for the future that doesn't cause global warming. Nope. Instead, Canada has encouraged a more expensive, more filthy, more inefficient, more environmentally damaging way of extracting oil from the earth. It requires large amounts of natural gas and alarming amounts of water to do so. Sadly, from a price perspective, it's totally worth it.

It's almost impossible to describe an oilsands development area unless you've been. I haven't visited, but my wife has and it horrified her. I've only seen pictures: vast expanses of sand, filth, machinery and tailings ponds. They dump their industrial waste into these open water pits and position sound cannons around the perimeter to scare waterfowl away. But sometimes mistakes happen and northern Alberta has been witness to many dead, tar-covered ducks and workers.

Oilsand extraction is big business. It makes billions of dollars per year, yet for some reason the Harper government keeps giving them more than a billion dollars a year. They don't need the money, dumbasses! They were going to develop those oil sands anyway because it's extremely lucrative. Quit it!

And lastly, Fort McMurray, which was an awful town to begin with, has grown into a sprawling, poorly-planned blight upon the forest with ONE ROAD connecting all the neighborhoods. Ever seen a traffic jam in the forest? Young people are drawn to the oil sands for the money, find expensive homes in Fort McMurray, get depressed because they're separated from their families and working twelve-hour days, spend their money on abundant booze, drugs and hookers, then get fed up and move home just in time for their partners to ask for a divorce. Fort McMurray, by all rights, should have its own entry on this list, but I've chosen to amalgamate it into the oilsands entry because it is merely a symptom of the oilsands problem.

People are people and we only change during crises, so we will not be rid of oilsand development until the last drop of oil is extracted and civilization is left scratching its head and wondering, "Now whadd'r we gunna doo?" Cheer up! Canadian scientists are busy, busy working on ways to extract oil from oil clay, a method that promises to be even more expensive and harmful than oilsand extraction! Yay!

2. Usage-Based Internet Billing
Netflix has shaken media as we know them. One day it shifted its focus from mail-order rentals to streaming videos on the internet. It offered this service to Canadians for a low price of $8.00 a month. And Canadians were very happy.

They were so happy that they stopped paying stupid amounts of money for on-demand movie and television with their local service providers. Rather than lowering their prices and "competing", as it's called by capitalists, the big internet and television companies whined to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (a government body which would deserve its own entry if it wasn't a local Canadian thing) and asked it to allow them to charge the small companies who rent their internet lines according to how much data they use. Streaming video, such as that offered by Netflix, uses a lot of downloading capacity.

This has opened the door for an idea called UBB, or Usage Based Billing. Basically, internet companies have put an arbitrary cap on the amount of data Canadians can download. If they go over, they get charged large amounts of money. This led to a storm of complaints toward the the CRTC and the big internet companies. Prime Minister Stephen Harper promised to open an inquiry into the CRTC decision and the Minister of industry threatened them, but so far nothing has happened. Bell and Shaw are planning to make the switch to UBB and have hired their propegandists to turn the Canadian public against itself, claiming there are "problem users" who download massive amounts of data and raise the price for everybody, trying to convince us that people should pay for the amount that they use.

Here's the thing. Let's put aside issues like the facts that UBB is an obvious ploy by monopolists to destroy their enemies and a cheap grab for more money without doing any work. Usage Based Billing is contrary to the vaunted ideas of our Information Age. It might even be contrary to civilization. The internet has always been exalted as a repository of information and entertainment accessable to everbody. With caps on data usage, it means that people will use the internet less to save money. That means that we will be less informed and less entertained. It means that market innovators like Netflix are being punished. But it's not just Netflix that will be affected. The video game industry is relying more heavily than ever on online components to their games and having to worry about download limits will simply make Canada less fun. As computer technology expands, our downloading needs too will expand and I am skeptical that UBB providers will be nice about raising the caps. Also, none of the internet providers have been able to provide a reliable meter that shows exactly how much we've been downloading. In other words, there is no accountability. If Bell says you've downloaded a certain amount, you have to trust them.

UBB is not just one of the worst Canadian things ever, it is one of the worst ideas ever. It is lame beyond imagining. It represents everything that is wrong when monopolism gets confused with capitalism and our own damn government is helping the bastards. I get the sense that the rich and powerful are watching Canada right now, testing UBB on an alternate market like its ketchup-flavoured potato chips before they unleash it on the United States. For the good of civilization, crush, annihilate, destroy UBB before it gets there.

1. "Mister Tambourine Man" as performed by William Shatner
It starts with a classical opening with harpsichord and flute, pizzicatto in the strings. Then the brass and trap set join, transforming the performance into jazz. Then, relentless thumping... a glorious chorus of tambourines! A quiet, tentative voice almost whispers, "Mister tambourine man?" It's Canada's own Bill Shatner, chanting the musical performance that would define him.

It's so bad it's good, then it's awful, then good again and then sublime when Shatner howls the final words, snuffing the music. Shatner's protagonist is a deranged lunatic in the midst of a psychotic break with reality, obsessed with an unfortunate tambourine man, longing to hear the sweet instrument's rattle and clatter. He is rebuffed. He is driven to madness.

Mister Tambourine Man stands as the absolute worst thing any Canadian has ever done, conceived or been.

So, there stands the list. I may come back and edit it if I think of anything else in the future. As it stands it is a fine example of the worst Canada has to offer. May foreigners look upon it in anger and fear, may we view it with shame. For within it lies the secret to our identity. I'd rise and sing O Canada at this point, but to be honest it's a pretty crappy national anthem.

http://pharoahphobia.blogspot.com/

My Daughter's Eyes

As I drive home a new moon hangs unseen in the sky. The highway is dark, save for my feeble headlamps and distant farm lights twinkling in the blackness. Road noise and the voice of a victorious Prime Minister fill my cabin.

I cannot bear to listen anymore. I depress the power knob on my radio. Again I am alone. But not for long. My old companion, Despair, flits into the passenger seat.

There are many things that Despair could tell me. He could remind me that once again I backed the losing team. He could explain again how every time I dare to hope the universe punishes me. He could tell me I didn't do enough. But this time he shows me an image. He shows me my daughter's eyes.

Those round, staring blue-grey eyes watch and wonder. The lids crinkle when she smiles and bulge in surprise. They hide nothing and betray every emotion. So innocent, so unknowing.

Despair shows me those eyes aged and worn with hardship. He shows them narrow with cynicism. He shows them downcast and red-rimmed, weary with disappointment like her father's.

I see her fretting because she can't pay a medical bill. I see her exhausted, working two jobs. I see her begging. I see her huddled in a locked van with other terrified people, driven to a fate unguessed. I see her treading through unknown, barely-imagined burning landscapes where trees once grew.

Tonight her elders edged her toward one of those futures. They traded her health for lower taxes. They rewarded contempt for democracy. They chose to leave vast sandy expanses of waste and black tailings ponds for her generation to clean. They cared more about unregistered long guns than her. They sold her fate to Lockheed Martin. Tears blur the highway.

I wipe my eyes. Still Despair lurks next to me. There are two ways to banish him. I can battle him or I can ignore him.

If I choose to battle Despair, it will mean patience, vigilance and dedication. It will mean that I must lend my voice, my time and my life to prepare for the next campaign. I will speak, I will protest, I will write, I will persuade. And maybe, after voters see four years of the true, brutal agenda of these cynical opportunists they will hunger for change.

But I tire of yearning for change. Change will happen, regardless of my actions. Canada has survived worse debt and greater tyranny. Canada can wait for me in four years. If I ignore despair and live my life as a happy and free man, my daughter will see my example and learn the same. I love my family and joy lies in nurturing them, not righteous anger.

The decision of action versus inaction, yin versus yang, Confucius versus Tao weighs, but it can wait for tomorrow. Thirty-two kilometres away, my family slumbers in my soft bed. My daughter's eyes are relaxed in sleep. I want to embrace my wife and feel my baby's hand grip my finger. If peace and love cannot be found in government, at least I know they await me at home.

http://pharoahphobia.blogspot.com/