“Looks aren’t everything, you know.” – Madonna

Life has its ups and downs, its highs and lows. Sometimes the highs are splendid. Sometimes the lows are truly dreadful.

The dinner party Casie (my wife, for any new readers) and I had in honour of her birthday Saturday fits snugly into the splendidly high category.

My head buried in the toilet bowl a few hours later, vomiting up the meal I’d prepared for our guests that night, takes it place among my most dreadful lows.

It was 5 am and my third trip to the washroom. The previous two trips had gone undetected by Casie, who was passed out on the couch in the living room. On my third trip, she happened to be washing up, getting ready to finally go to bed.

“Hi sweetie,” she said as I bolted into the washroom.

“Oh, sweetie!” she exclaimed as I got into position for another wretched series of gastric convulsions.

“What’s the matter, did you do shots?”

“No,” I gasped, drooling into the rancid bowl. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

In fact, I was convinced I had food poisoning – worse, that I had given food poisoning to all of my guests. I haven’t thrown up from drinking for almost a decade, and, as a later inspection of my one-third full vodka bottle proved, that night was not among my most valiant alcoholic efforts.

The dread that I had inflicted the awful nausea I was experiencing on 15 other people and the humiliation I would surely endure (who would eat my food ever again?) had me at absolute rock-bottom.

Or so I thought, until Casie decided to flush the toilet while I was still in mid-spew.

Numerous studies, some of which were likely quite costly, have shown that each time a toilet is flushed, minute particles of water and waste are sprayed upwards and dispersed throughout the washroom.

A great deal of money would have been saved had these researchers simply suspended their faces mere inches above the surface of the water and then flushed, since I came to the same unmistakeable conclusion quite unexpectedly.

“It smelled,” Casie later explained. No doubt.

As it turns out, it wasn’t food poisoning or a vicious hangover, but some kind of stomach bug that also felled my neighbour and two of his kids on the same day. I’m still getting over it, which is why I haven’t posted much this week.

All I know is that if the next high matches this low, it’s going to be spectacular.

Claire and I visited Denmark in 1998. We spent three days in Copenhagen and three days in Slagelse. Our host in Slagelse was the cousin of a friend who had visited Canada some five years earlier. He was more than happy to welcome Claire to Denmark that summer.

We called from Germany to announce our arrival and Lars promptly agreed to pick us up and have us stay at his house for a week. Upon arrival at the train station, I could sense he was rather disappointed to see Claire arrive with a man. I couldn’t blame him. If some Danish woman I met as a teen called out of the blue one day – well, you get the picture.

Danes tend to speak at least three, if not four languages – English and German being the most popular after Danish. They pay so much in taxes that there are no ads on TV. They’re not terribly witty. They drive sensible, small automobiles and they don’t eat out much. Danes love their monarchy, håndbold, Peter Schmeichel, Hans Christian Andersen, Tuborg, and in Lars’ case, Western heavy rock.

We went to Lars’ parents for dinner on the pretense of requesting a traditional Danish meal. We ate new white potatoes and meatballs. Lars’ mother, Ulla, told us how new white potatoes are quite expensive during certain months of the year and that they are considered a delicacy in some Danish homes. Lars’ father, Urgin, played us ditties on his hunting horn. We got drunk and rode a few of the families several bikes to a nearby field to see the world’s second largest suspension bridge, Storbæltsbroen.

All in all, the various Danes we met were affable, simple folks who appreciated the quiet dignity of a life well lived. They did not impose their politics on us or try to describe any philosophically Danish view of the world. They were nice, if not boring. Am I generalizing? Well, perhaps. There are 5,432, 330 other Danes we didn’t meet, but I’m sure they all love Peter Schmeichel too. Seriously though, cultural generalization is not helpful, even in anecdotes, and that is why I’m getting it out of my system before I move on to the subject of this post.

The Danes are in the news quite a bit these days. A small Danish newspaper with a circulation of 45,000 – the Jyllands-Posten – published a series of naughty cartoons, some in fact quite political, and they raised the ire of their satirical target. The cartoons are considered inflammatory solely because they are critical, if not mocking, of Muslim religion. One depicts the Prophet Mohammed wearing a turban with a bomb inside it. The implication is clear. The cartoons have been labeled offensive and insensitive. They have provoked debate. They have been reproduced in other European newspapers. These are the facts.

So, why are these cartoons so important? Why have some Arab governments, and other organized Islamic groups, been so critical of this artwork/commentary? On Thursday, the Jyllands-Posten reported that two illustrators who produced the cartoons had received death threats. Embassies have been closed in Denmark. The European Union flag has been burned, its ambassadors threatened in Arab States. Some countries are advocating trade sanctions against Denmark. It now appears that the Danish government itself is preparing a response. Over cartoons.

Arguably, this issue reached a tipping point at the moment the cartoons were reproduced in major French and German media. The Muslim Diasporas of these two nations are significantly large and vocal. Then newspapers in Spain, Switzerland, and the Netherlands published the cartoons. The western European media were in a feeding frenzy and for all intents and purposes they were feeding on European anti-Islamism. Not a pretty picture on Aljazeera.

In any political dust-up of this nature, there are always several competing agendas. In one that involves Islam there are vast and complicated nuances to these various agendas. I want to carefully avoid the kind of generalizations that I made earlier, so I will be blunt instead. There are certain political circles that want this to be a bigger issue than it is. I encourage responses to this post to address that fact directly.

I am equally surprised by two other components of this issue.

First, that the western model of free speech must apologize. While it is now imperative that the Danish newspaper owns up to its mea culpa, saying that this publishing choice was perhaps insensitive to its own audience of Danish Muslims, the apology is being framed as a broader capitulation on behalf of western global media. This perhaps says more about the nature of our global interconnectedness than it does about free speech, or modern criticisms of religion, but it is worth exploring further.

In this case, a local action had profound global political consequences. This is important because it calls into question the way in which generalizations (political and cultural) are made. This case illustrates an argument reduced to the lowest common denominator, resulting in false dichotomies of understanding that are wholly incapable of moving beyond an us-versus-them mentality. While I loathe interpretive uses of the term global village, I think we may want to consider it in this case.

Second, I suspect that free speech is not at the center of this debate at all, at least not in a meaningful way. If it were, then the same western global media that are chronicling the aftermath of the publication of these cartoons would be debating the pretense under which the cartoons were made. The same papers that make commentary on this issue have a vested interest in deciding if these cartoons were hateful, misanthropic or incite violence. This is the current test for limiting free speech, and I am not hearing that debate unfold.

Further, I think it is worth noting that few, if any, Canadian newspapers have published these cartoons for public discussion. I am dismayed that we may avoid a meaningful discussion of expression in order to uphold a vague understanding of cultural sensitivity.

A political cartoon is nothing new, nor is satire. Religion and politics should endure ridicule and criticism. Such provocations are a healthy test of the values implicit in any political or religious doctrine. It could be argued that a less-than-progressive interpretation of free speech is just as dangerous as a less-than-progressive interpretation of religion. I am afraid that this issue is a clash of both.

———

This article was written by alevo.

Today we’re going to focus on three different strategies. Each is different in terms of sophistication and potential consequences, but all have been proven to be successful. And each has the important benefit of being extremely unlikely to land you in jail.

We will also consider a case study for each strategy to help you apply them in the real world.

The Legitimate Loan Shark

Risk of jail-time: low
Profit potential: high
Sophistication: low

There are about 1200 payday loan operations across Canada. These businesses provide small, short-term loans at high interest rates. Canada’s criminal code prohibits charging more than a 60% annual interest rate, but these companies get around this by charging the maximum legal rate (Money Mart charges 59%) and then tacking on “fees”. With the fees viewed as interest, the rates for these loans skyrocket past the legal limit.

Goal: Make a lot of money illegally.

Strategy:

1. Don’t try to hide it. Secretive criminals look sneaky. If you want to break the law, register a business and advertise.

2. Service a niche market that depends on you. Payday lenders say their service is necessary, because banks don’t lend small amounts of money, and sometimes, people just need to survive until their next cheque.

3. Rename the parts of your business that are illegal. It’s not interest, it’s fees.

4. Claim you’re only breaking the law a little bit. “If I was to loan an individual $100 for five days and charge that individual $1, that is 107 per cent on an annual rate,” says Canadian Payday Loan Association spokesman Bob Whitelaw.

Case Study: Building and Growing a Human Trafficking Ring

Yuri Ropov wants to import poor Romanians so they can clean and provide companionship for single, lonely middle-aged men (see 2). Yuri has studied the payday loan industry carefully and he knows what steps to take – and what mistakes to avoid.

First, Yuri registers a business called Exotic Migrant Cleaning Charity and establishes a downtown storefront (see 1). He immediately starts advertising that he provides cleaning services performed by Romanian volunteers for minimal amounts of money.

By advertising, Yuri gains an immediate advantage over the police, who assume his business must be legitimate. And by calling his imported Romanians volunteers, he no longer needs to abide by employment laws such as the minimum wage (see 3).

When Yuri is confronted by an irate citizen who uncovers his business practices, Yuri points out that he only has a few illegal immigrants working for him, and most are quite diminutive (4).

The Unflappable Patriot

Risk of jail-time: zero
Profit potential: moderate
Sophistication: moderate to high, depending on locale

President George Bush is embroiled in a controversy over his administration’s illegal domestic wire-tapping activities. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) makes it clear that spying on an American citizen requires a warrant from a court set up for that purpose, but thousands of Americans were spied on without these legally-required warrants.

Goal: Do whatever you want regardless of legality.

Strategy:

1. Assume a position of authority.

2. Hide your illegal activities. No one has to know what probably isn’t hurting them if they’re not Arabs or liberals.

3. When your illegal activities become public knowledge:

a) Immediately acknowledge you are responsible for the activities
b) Deny that you’ve done anything wrong
c) Hire a lawyer (preferably the Attorney General)

4. Repeat the following words and phrases at every opportunity: “terrorism”, “war on terror”, “terrorist activities”, “protect democracy”, “Osama bin Laden”, “September 11”.

5. Deny the law says what it says, and even if it did say that, it doesn’t apply to you. See 3 c).

6. Rename your illegal activities (see Legitimate Loan Shark, step 3). The Bush administration and its supporters have renamed the domestic spying program the “terrorist surveillance program“.

7. Go on a public-relations offensive.

Case Study: Selling Cocaine to High School Students

Willy Wilson has a reliable supply of high-grade Columbian cocaine. He knows that teenagers love to party, and if he can get them hooked while they’re young they’ll probably be life-long customers. Luckily for Willy, he has closely followed Bush’s career, so he knows what steps to take – and what mistakes to avoid.

First, Willy applies for the position of guidance counsellor at his target high school. He knows that in this role he will be trusted and he’ll also have access to the school’s most troubled students, a key market niche for coke dealers.

After two-and-a-half years of profit, word gets out during a PTA meeting that something isn’t quite right. Allegations of improper behaviour are levelled at Willy.

Willy keeps his cool and immediately acknowledges that he is a coke-dealing guidance counsellor. However, since the primary reason students fail in school is a lack of concentration and attention in class, his supply of a powerful stimulant to students helps improve their grades.

“In the war against terror,” he tells a local television crew, “it’s vital that all of our citizens, including our teenagers, guard vigilantly against Osama bin Laden. The cause of democracy is not advanced when our citizens can’t stay awake.”

Finally, Willy registers a company called Slightly Stronger than Coffee and advertises his All-Natural Coca Crystals in the local paper.

The Questionable Memoir

Risk of jail-time: zero
Risk of negative public perception: high
Profit potential: very high
Sophistication: low

The untruthfulness of James Frey’s book A Million Little Pieces is now undisputed, but he’s still sold millions of books and made millions of dollars. However, because of the damage to his reputation, this strategy is not recommended.

Goal: lie to people for personal gain.

Strategy:

1. Lie.

2. Promptly cash all cheques received as a result of 1.

3. When confronted by accusations of dishonesty, mull on the nuances of human perception and the uncertainty of memory. Suggest a truth-to-lies ratio in percentage terms that indicates you are mostly truthful.

4. Relax in the renewed glow of the approval of your peers.

5. When confronted by accusations of dishonesty for a second time, recast your lies as “ideas” and “alterations”, but admit you have made mistakes. Mutter helplessly.

6. Retire with your millions in shame.

Analysis

This strategy is potentially profitable, but due to its costs to personal reputation and dignity, it is not recommended. Other strategies are almost as profitable with fewer negative consequences. Thus, a case study will not be presented.

Instead, it is worth examining the reasons this strategy is a failure. First, this strategy is obviously completely legal. This might seem like an advantage, but is actually to its detriment: criminal strategies snarl people up in endless discussions over their legality, which neatly removes the need to consider their morality. Adopting a legal strategy means people will immediately judge you on ethical and moral grounds, which is rarely in your benefit.

Second, the consequences for the people you’ve taken advantage of are minimal, which means people are less likely to assume you were acting to protect their interests. Payday loan companies make poor people poorer by giving them money to help them out of their poverty. Bush violates the freedom of Americans in order to safeguard their freedom.

Frey, on the other hand, fabricated parts of his book so people would pay $25 a piece for it. And that is truly unforgivable.

———

This post was partly inspired by Jon Stewart’s commentary.