For part 12 in our continuing series, click here.

Today we look at who some of the more famous UFC fighters resemble.  I’m not the first to notice these ones.

First up: Forrest Griffin and Alfred E. Neumann.  But which is which??

Next we have Rich Franklin and Jim Carrey.  More precisely, Carrey’s Ace Ventura persona.  In fact, this is how Franklin got his nickname, “Ace”.  And yes, I know the Carrey pic below is not of Ace Ventura, but of whats-his-name in Dumb and Dumber.

Now, this last one is so close that I honestly sometimes have a hard time telling photos of these two men apart.  In fact, in the example below, I only know the one on the left is Rashad Evans because he’s standing in front of a UFC banner.  The other fellow?  Cuba Gooding, Jr.  The lesson?  Based on resemblance alone, Cuba Gooding, Jr, can probably kick your ass:

My love for combat sports is well established, as is my eternal defence of the nascent sport of MMA.  This weekend is the finale of this season’s The Ultimate Fighter, the UFC’s reality show. This year, the main event is the showdown between the coaches, Michael “The Count” Bisping and Jason “Mayhem” Miller.

I don’t like Michael Bisping.  I think he’s a bully, asshole and douchebag, all rolled into one.  In fact, if someone unfamiliar with vernacular American English wishes to know the definition of “douchebag”, simply point him to any interview with Michael Bisping.  Check out how this ass treats an interviewer who is much smaller:

It’s classic bully behaviour. It’s ironic considering that his opponent is Mayhem Miller, who is best known as the host of MTV’s Bully Beatdown, another reality show in which Mayhem arranges for supposed real life school bullies to get their comeuppance.

Mayhem, on the other hand, is seemingly thoughtful and very funny.  To me, he embodies much of why I love the martial arts in general, and MMA in particular.  He expounds eloquently about the role that structured fighting plays in his life and the world, and, despite his comedic antics, is very much a complete martial artist, with all the personal growth elements that that title suggests.

But the reason the world will soon love Mayhem, as he finally re-enters the biggest MMA stage in the world (the UFC) on Saturday, is his famous ring entrances.  UFC has a policy against flashy entrances, but something tells me they may give Mayhem Miller a little leeway.  Each of his entrances is tailored to his opponent, his mood and the setting (or so he claims).  All I know is that I want to see more of THIS:

Item #1

Taught my first statistics class today.  I had prepared examples of sampling the class to make generalizations about the university population as a whole.  Specifcally, I’d intended to use the class’s sex ratio as an estimator of the sex ratio for the entire campus population.  Then I walked into class… and found a room filled with 120 students, about 6 of whom were men.  Hey, I’m not complaining, but how does one get an almost all-female statistics class?  Weird.

Item #2

Remember this?  And its follow-up?  Weird things seem to happen to me at night.  Two nights ago, I went to bed at 4:AM (as is my wont) and woke up at 9:AM.  I live in a tiny, spotless condo, and I hate and avoid clutter.  So you’ll imagine my surprise when I woke up to find a mysterious object lying on my living room floor.  It was most definitely not there when I went to bed:

The next night, I went to sleep at 5:AM and woke up again at 9:AM. This time, I was greeted with a strange red line on my floor:

(The quarter was added for scale.)

So what’s happening?  Well, after 30 minutes of scratching my head, I figured out that the weird object was in fact part of a clock that had silently exploded overnight.  Mind you, why a clock would just explode is another mystery.

No clue yet about what that red line means.

I’ll let you know in the morning what the aliens do to me tonight.

Item #3

In today’s class, I talked about the revolution of statistics.  About 200-300 years ago, the modern science of statistics was born.  In the subsequent centuries, the science matured very fast indeed.  Since the 1950s, with the advent of computers, a veritable new revolution has occurred, with mass computations and the evolution of subtle new techniques.

And that got me thinking about other revolutions.  So I ended up congitating on the evolution and revolution of the martial arts.

Quite a segue, no?

As has been well established, I’m a huge MMA (mixed martial arts) fan.  For those not in the know, MMA arose only about 2 decades ago, with the rise of the UFC as a going concern.  The UFC was itself created by Brazil’s Gracie family as a showcase for their style of Jiujitsu (now called Brazilian Jiujitsu, or BJJ), showing how it can be used to defeat any other style of unarmed combat, in a no-rules tournament format.  What the Gracies did not anticipate was that they would inadvertently create a whole new sport, and possibly even a whole new martial art.

The history of what we consider to be the martial arts goes back many centuries.  Legend has it that the Buddhist Indian monk Bodhidharma was the first to combine spiritual moving meditation with the physical act of boxing for fitness, and thus created the first Oriental martial art.  Of course, fighting systems have probably existed literally for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years.

The modern arts evolved as Bodhidharma’s teachings spread from India to China, then to Korea and Japan, and eventually to Europe and the Americas.  At the same time, in parallel, each nation was developing its own indigenous arts; for example, savate in France and Capoeira in Brazil.  Wars spawned masters who had to refine their skills to simply survive.  In those climates, different schools arose to embrace different fighting philosophies and technologies.  The arts splintered into disparate styles.  The most obvious break was between the stand-up striking arts, like karate, and the ground and grappling arts, like judo.

Literally, centuries of refinement passed, which allowed some techniques to be perfected, and others to become arcane and wrapped in obfuscating nonsense.

But since the rise of MMA 20 years ago, the revolution of practicality has transformed the martial arts yet again.  What took centuries to do originally has been recreated in mere decades, a single lifetime.

Some say it began with Mitsuyo Maeda, the so-called “Count Combat”, a Japanese judo expert who made his home in Brazil.  Maeda was among the first to point out the different phases of a fight: the striking phase, the grappling phase, etc.  Most notably, Maeda taught Carlos Gracie, stressing a philosophy of practicality: do what works.  Carlos and his younger brother Helio would go on to found Brazilian Jiujitsu, which became the bedrock of the UFC and thus triggered the revolution of MMA.

But others say it began with none other than Bruce Lee himself.  Lee famously founded Jeet Kune Do, “the way of the intercepting fist”, which was an expression of his interpretation of the writings of Krishnamurti and others through combat.  Lee always insisted that JKD was not a martial art, but a fighting system.  Its philosophy was simply to do what worked, what ended the fight the fastest, and what maximized your own body’s abilities.

This was a philosophical revolution in the martial arts.  It essentially stated that one should ignore centuries of dogma and embrace modern training techniques, the lessons of competing arts, and to embrace most fully those techniques best suited to one’s personal situation.  JKD was the first organized attempt to bring together the best of karate, kung-fu, jiujitsu, American boxing, wrestling, etc., into one combat system.

This approach seems obvious to us today, but at the time –the early 1970s– it was both revolutionary and heretical.  The masters of the status quo were quite offended by it.  Indeed, even in my own youth, my first masters would be violently offended if I introduced a technique I had picked up in the gym or from sparring with practitioners of other arts.

JKD is convincingly the precursor to MMA, and as thus represents a dramatic paradigm shift in the way we view the martial arts.  The rate at which its refinement has occurred these past 20 years has been simply phenomenal.  Today’s fighters are generations beyond those who fought in the first UFC tournament.  It’s sort of frightening to consider what amazing skills sets await us fans in just 2 or 3 years.

Remember my ongoing issues with mysterious somnambulant injuries?  I reported on my demonic back scratches here and here.  Well, they’re back.  The most recent mysterious and bloody injury is the following gash and bruise on my right bicep, which greeted me yesterday morning:

I will remind the gentle reader that my fingernails are bitten down to nubs, so are poor tools for unconsciously inflicting this sort of injury.  As well, my separated shoulder makes the angle quite painful.  Spoooooky.

In other news, the most hilarious and embarassing thing happened to me recently.  As a professor, I must write frequent research papers and submit them to journals for publication.  The journals send them out for anonymous peer review before deciding whether or not to publish.  I send out a fair number, so some get accepted and some get rejected.

Recently I sent an admittedly poor one to a big name journal.  It was rejected.  But the best part was the external reviewer’s comments.  To paraphrase, he/she said that the paper was poorly written, but that the topic was important.  Therefore, he/she recommended that though the paper should be rejected, the journal should solicit its rewrite from a true expert on the topic.  Then he/she recommended that that expert be…. me.

As a friend commented, it’s a lot like Charlie Chaplin coming third in his own lookalike contest.

In even more news, in response to a special request from a neighbour who has always been curious about the form, I have agreed to put together one last game of Dungeons and Dragons, a good 27 years since the last time I played.  Yes, this is the darkest heart of hardcore geekotry, and not for the even marginally cool.  In preparation for said game, I took a trip to Toronto’s Silver Snail gaming shop and scoped out some of the figurines.

What I found were figurines for UFC fighters:

Then it occurred to me… why not have actual UFC fighter characters play the game?  One’s party could be made up of Tito Ortiz, Randy Couture and Anderson Silva, all choking out kobolds and trolls, and eventually each other.

Hmmm.  Time to pitch this to Hasbro….

Penultimately, as an author, I know how crippling it is to see one’s own books on the bargain shelf of a bookstore.  So this is not meant as a dig, but as a celebration.  My friend Andrew from DC once wrote a great book featuring satellite images of the Earth, called The Earth From Space, which was unfortunately priced rather highly.  I recently saw it on sale.  All this means is that more of you can now afford to own a copy:

Lastly, I copped this article from The Hindustan Times in India (June 4, 2011), relevant to this post.  I don’t agree with a lot of it, but some of it rings true.  Just throwing it out there (click to enlarge):

Last year, a former student of mine sent the following letter about me to the Dean of my faculty.  I told her I would blog it, but sort of hemmed and hawed about it for several months.  Aw heck, why not?  It’s pretty cool.  How many times in life does one actually get a record of such praise?  Thanks, unnamed student who I know is probably reading this

The Superstar.

Quite the special one. Says whatever comes to his mind and voices the things people would never say but are definitely thinking. Definitely has the guts to do it all and will do it all. He’s not a professor but sort of like a superhero – professor by day, complete fool by night! Jokes aside, he is definitely one of a kind. It’s almost impossible to evaluate someone who you think of as your friend, mentor, and role model. I really don’t think he needs an evaluation at all. Just come sit in on one of his lectures. And you will walk out amazed, shocked, adrenaline filled, and absolutely smiling.

Now that my ego is satisfied for the day (and it really doesn’t take much), I’d also like to invite you to the McGill University Colloquium on Health and Law this coming Sunday, where yours truly will be one of the speakers:

In Other News…

After watching UFC 128 and Jon “Bones” Jones’s destruction of one of my favourite fighters, Mauricio “Shogun” Rua, I really enjoyed this small vignette from the post-fight press conference (the good bit starts at 27:50):

I am an unabashed fan of mixed martial arts, as evidenced by my many posts on the topic.  A big part of the success of the UFC, in my opinion, is the very intelligent commentary of one Mr Joe Rogan.  In fact, one of my favourite time-killing past times is watching various Joe Rogan commentaries on YouTube.  The man knows his stuff.

Another fantastic MMA commentator is Ariel Helwani, whose entire career is on the internet, but who is a much better sports broadcaster and interviewer than pretty much anyone I can think of on mainstream television.

Here are two clips of Helwani interviewing Rogan, backstage at one of Rogan’s comedy shows:

And I just love this ten minute rant of Joe Rogan talking about Brock Lesnar.  If you’re an MMA fan, you’ll love it, too:

In other news, this past week I was interviewed by Rashi Khilnani of Radio Canada International’s “Indo Canadian Report“, on the topic of reproductive tourism and surrogate motherhood in India.  To access the show, click here.

Also, I’m a little late on linking to this, but over at Skiffy, I have a review up of the first season of the fantastic new British series Sherlock.

It’s worth pointing out that as I write this, I am watching Fighter In The Wind, the stylized biography of one of the toughest martial artists of the modern era, the great Mas Oyama.   (It seems to be a pretty cool movie, by the way, though that’s probably because it’s based more on a comic book than on Oyama’s actual life.)

E.K. Hornbeck just sent me this article, titled “Doctors call for ban on mixed martial arts.”

Now I’ve written about this before.  But I guess I have to do it again.  Here’s the thing: the doctors in the article readily admit that the injury rate in MMA is no greater than that found in boxing or other combat sports.  As well, a study cited in the article found that the knockout rate in MMA is lower than that found in boxing.  The doctors’ objection to MMA is based solely on the sports’ minimal rule format.

But is that really a rational stance?  When it comes to combat sports, the most concerning factor has to be the threat of death or severe disability, i.e. brain injury.  The two known MMA deaths in North America both came from internal cranial bleeding, after all.  But it seems to me that MMA, as a sport hat allows a competitor to end the fight with means other than blunt trauma (i.e., submissions) is intrinsically safer than, say, boxing, which pretty much requires a knockout –especially now that judges’ decisions in boxing have become so questionable.

The thing about boxing is that it’s an extended session of gloved hands pummeling someone’s head.  The thick gloves prevent a quicker end to the fight; but I wonder if they also prolong the low level damage.  In comparison, MMA’s thinner gloves allow strikes to be felt more potently, and perhaps serve to end a fight earlier. Regardless, I think the fact that an MMA fight doesn’t rely on knockout punches to the head, but more often becomes a grappling match, makes MMA overall safer than something like boxing.

This is all speculation, of course, as there are no statistics to back up any perspective.  Ultimately, to me the issue is one of choice.  If we value the nature of our liberal democracy, we must also value the right of autonomous adults to accept the risk of injury and death in the pursuit of their chosen activities.  There are limits, of course, but I don’t see how MMA –which is controlled, monitored and which involves extremely well trained and serious participants– comes close to reaching, let alone exceeding, those limits.

In Other News

Someone once told me that we should all keep an “inspiration file”. It’s something like a collection of news clips, images, sons, performances, etc, that make us happy. So when things are down, just access that file and change your mood. I don’t keep such a file. But I did find the following image that, without a doubt, certainly makes me happy. And I think it will make some of you happy, as well:

Oh, I am definitely happy now.

Today is my 43rd birthday.  I just celebrated with a massage to help quell my early hangover (the celebration started last night).

Today is also the anniversary of the death of Basquiat, the birthdays of George Hamilton and Terry “Red Rooster” Taylor and a day before Hulk Hogan’s birthday.  It’s also the birthday of my old friend and (retired) greatest hair stylist in the world, Rosa Aguiar.  And the birthday of one Mr Jon Donald.

Jon Donald was a special soul.  Sadly, he died of an illness more than a decade ago.  One day I will take the time to write a complete post about Mr Donald, whose mysterious weirdness was nonetheless just icing for the complex and fascinating character that lay beneath.  Trust me, his is a story worthy of a few minutes of your time.  Every year on our shared birthday, I have a solitary drink in his name.  Do not rest in peace, Mr Donald; rather, continue your weird and wacky adventures in whatever dimension you now reside.

On a completely different note, this past weekend was UFC 117, which frankly left me gobsmacked.  As my MMA hero Anderson Silva entered the ring, I immediately emailed a friend, “Uh oh, he doesn’t look good.  Shit.”  Sure enough, Silva received the beatdown of his life, but pulled off a miraculous out-of-nowehere submission in the final minutes of the final round to retain his middleweight championship.  Holy shit indeed.

Suddenly I’m reminded of UFC 116, which featured on the undercard a Stephan Bonnar fight.  I was never  a big Bonnar fan… until he also pulled off a miraculous last minute victory by mercilessly pummeling his opponent in the final seconds of the final round, to win via stoppage.  But the best part of Bonnar’s victory was the martial pose he gave the camera afterwards.  It was something in between a traditional kung fu greeting and a tough guy stance from the video game “Streetfighter”.  Here’s an animated GIF of the pose:

The best part is the whole bloodied up look.  Freakin’ cool!

I hereby proclaim Blood and Bone to be the finest direct-to-dvd martial arts movie of the last 30 years, and Michael Jai White to be the most underrated action star in the world.  Chop-socky fans will particularly enjoy a lightning-brief cameo near the end of the film by Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris compatriot Bob Wall, who is actually referred to in the movie as “O’Hara”, which was his name in the legendary kung fu classic, Enter The Dragon.

Jai White, as my new on-screen martial arts hero, has the added benefit of being exactly my age.  If he can maintain this age-defying physique, then why can’t all we old folks?

Blood and Bone famously has creepy cameos by professional fighters Kimbo Slice and Bob Sapp, both of whom are a decade younger than White.  Interestingly, a conversation on the set of the film has become a popular internet meme.  Check out Jai White teaching Kimbo how to throw an untelegraphed karate punch:

Now this is all to segue into today’s real topic, which is copyright reform.  See, Michael Jai White recently created a nice little satire called Black Dynamite.  Like all movies these days, the film was leaked onto the internet in advance of its theatrical release.  Jai White’s response was instructive, and is yet one more reason that I’m a fan of the man.  He didn’t claim “piracy” and demand legal action against downloaders.  Instead, he simply (supposedly) asked people to give the movie another shot in the cinemas:

“Dear Black Dynamite fans:

I can tell by watching the activity on the Internet that people around the world are eager to see Black Dynamite.

It is our fans who have helped us get the word out thus far, and we greatly appreciate the love and support they have shown us.

As I am sure you know, an early cut of the movie has leaked on the Internet, and seems to be quite popular. Last I checked, the comments on Twitter and Facebook have been only positive. I love that the buzz on the web is so good, and that we have so many new fans. But I would like to stress that the version of the film online is NOT the final cut.

The final cut of Black Dynamite, which is currently in theaters, is the way director Scott Sanders and I envisioned the movie. It is the film we are proud of, and the one we want to share with audiences worldwide.

Believe me, if you or people you know like the rough cut of Black Dynamite you saw online, you will love the final cut of the film that is in theaters now. For a current list of showtimes and theaters, check out The Official Black Dynamite website (http://www.blackdynamitemovie.com/movie_listing)

If you love the version you saw online, then support the film and buy a t-shirt (http://www.blackdynamitemovie.com/store-main).

My sincere thanks.

Best regards,

Michael Jai White (Black Dynamite)”

A while back, a student interviewed me (in the capacity of professional writer) for a project she was doing on the advent of electronic book readers, like the Amazon Kindle, specifically about its supposed challenge to copyright.   The other writers she had interviewed (including some big names that I will not mention here) apparently were aghast at the prospect of e-books cutting into writers’ incomes.

I, on the other hand, had another take.  I’m all for copyright reform and the expansion of free access to more content for more people.  At the end of the day, the question all of us who provide content need to ask is… why are we here?  Is it to make money, or is it to be enjoyed by an audience?  Obviously, the answer is a little bit of both.  But too often in the discussion of piracy is the role of artist conflated with the role of businessperson or moneymaker.  The irony is that the loosening of copyright restrictions would allow the creators’ primary goal, that of being experienced, to be more fully realized.

It would be nice if my books actually made any money.  But I never expected that they would.  It’s more important for me that someone actually reads them and knows that I wrote them.  That’s why writers support libraries, right?  We don’t make any money when someone checks out our books from the local branch, but no one accuses the public library of promoting piracy!

Now, with rich media, like movies and music, it’s a tad more complicated, since these products can be copied and shared more easily than a book.  There are a few points to consider here, though.  First is that the technology for file creation and sharing is with us and will only get better.  Trying to ban it is simply a losing proposition.  Second is that, in the case of both industries, we the consumers have been force-fed over-priced crap for so long now that, in strict economic terms, piracy might have been an unavoidable development to allow the average out-of-pocket expense to become equalized.  And third, what exactly is a user of so-called pirated material supposed to have “stolen” anyway?

What do I mean by this?  Well, if a musician writes and performs a song, what is it that he or she actually owns?  In modern legal parlance, I suppose it’s argued that the musician owns the song and the immediate performance and all recordings of that performance.  But is this really rational?  If I hear a song on the radio and then sing it, am I violating the writer’s copyright?  If I sing it and charge people to hear me sing it, am I in breach of copyright?  The lawyers among you, I’m sure, will explain in minute detail why I am or am not.  But I don’t care about the legal specifics.  What I care about is how we, as a human society, choose to define ownership.  Let’s take it out of the hands of the lawyers for a moment.

If someone were to pay for one of my books, read one of my stories,  then went on to tell that story to a friend… that would be just fine.  A more formal way of doing it would be for that person to photocopy the story and give it to the friend. Yet somehow the act of photocopying is considered an illegal act.  Why?  It’s not the font and typesetting that are the valuable components of the product, but the story itself.  Moreover, when I buy a book or a CD, do I not own that thing?  Is this not what buying it is supposed to mean?  And if I own it, can I not copy it or share it?

Yes, yes, I know about “intellectual property”.  But what the fuck is that supposed to mean, anyway?

Obviously, the reason that a photocopy is illegal but a re-telling isn’t is that the monetization of art products, like books, is in the selling of the medium, not the content.  So the medium must be controlled in order to define and control the cash flow.  But is this not utter foolishness?

If I may include myself, as an author, among the group of people called “artists”, then I declare that it’s an artist’s job to create cultural content.  Period.  The most I can hope from that act of creation is that others will acknowledge that it was I who created it.  And I hope that society will give some protection to the creation so that it cannot be corrupted or claimed by someone else.  But even the corruption requirement is a bit stodgy, since it impinges on the culture’s ability to use cultural content to create more art.

What this means is that I, as an artist or creator of cultural content, don’t care if you pay for my stories and books.  I don’t care where you get them from.  All I care is that you read them, share them, and acknowledge that it was I who created them.

Now, it’s a totally different matter if someone tries to profit from one of my creations.  That, to me, violates the social contract of this creation process.  That, to me, is real piracy.

Have I made some sense here?  I can’t tell.  It’s late and I’m tired and hungry.  But I’m sure that your comments (either angry or supportive) will let me know if I’ve been the least bit lucid.

New Delhi, 8:pm

1. Brock Lesnar

Just finished watching UFC 116. (Yes, in my hotel room in Delhi; I’ve been trying to download it on this slow wifi connection for DAYS now).  I stunned even myself when I found myself screaming out loud, as Shane Carwin pummelled Brock Lesnar in the first round, “Kill the fucker!!!”  Yes, that’s exactly what I exclaimed.

Clearly, I don’t like Brock Lesnar.  His antics, which I described here, ruined the good name of the martial arts.  However, the beast managed to beat Carwin in the second round, and even showed some class at the end of the fight.  So maybe he’s learned something about appropriate behaviour.

2. Old Delhi

Today I took a few morning hours for a stroll through Old Delhi, specifically along Chandni Chowk, the “moonlight” walk of classical Mughal times.  It is thus named because at its imperial peak, a canal ran along the centre of the street, reflecting the moonlight at night.

Even Old Delhi has changed.  It’s still the heart of bustling Delhi, still the place to see working camels towing wood and equipment around the rail station, and still the place to dodge bicycle rickshaws that dart out of the various mosques and mandirs that pepper the main and side streets.  But even here, people tend not to notice or bother the tourists anymore.

Now, a caucasian visiting India for the first time, may disagree with this assessment.  But trust me, five years ago you would have been molested on all fronts by touts and beggars.  Today, not so much.

I find it further interesting that in previous visits, I was clearly identifiable as a brown man of foreign origin.  The locals would immediately try to speak English to me.  This time, I’ve lost count of the number of times someone has struck up a conversation in Hindi with me, only to back away confused when faced with my toddler-like abilities in the language.

Now, I’ve said some nice things about the Delhi subway system.  Did I mention the trains are built by the Montreal company Bombardier?  Technologically, it’s quite an impressive system.  But India has yet to develop a subway culture.

Ever seen the Tokyo subway during rush hour?  Delhi is ten times worse.  The doors open, and an army of people surge forward, elbows up, without letting the deboarding folks off first.  Today I was literally lifted off my feet and into the press of flesh within the car.  I witnessed an eight year old boy similarly crushed.  It was really quite disgusting.  In this floating sea of compressed humanity, a good third continued yapping away on their cell phones. People, if you wait 30 seconds for the exiting passengers to deboard, there will be twice as much space for you!

But that’s not the way for a city of 13 million, where people have learned the hard way that you need to take what you need, and take it now, before the opportunity is plucked from you.

As the subway expands and as usership increases, the crowds will become a huge issue, especially in terms of safety.

At this point I need to explain something to those of you who’ve never travelled to India.  The Indian men of the northern cities are a skinny lot.  I’m a small man by North American standards, but am of average height in Delhi.  I’m also twice as old as the average man here, but… and believe me when I say this… I’m also easily twice as muscular.  The dudes who work with their hands here are tough as nails, don’t get me wrong.  But the office workers are soft and light.  I do not exaggerate when I say that I could bench press most of them, and would probably burst out of most of their shirts.  And I’m a petite girly man!  Among the middle class, there is not a culture of gym fitness, something that occupies a good fifth of my personal time, though there is a fair bit of vicarious living through laughable action stars and their fake martial arts.

I mention this because at two points today, while lining up to buy subway tokens, a “gentleman” has jumped the queue in front of me, completely disrespecting my place in line.  Both times, I grabbed the miscreant by the collar and yanked him back, at one time even baring my teeth in the process and probably unintentionally uttering a loud expletive.  The interesting bit is that in both instances, the men just went limp in my hands, neither resisted and neither protested, and neither changed his facial expression when thusly physically admonished.

What this tells me is that in both cases, the fellow knew he was being transgressive and was taking advantage of the yokel (i.e., me).  Lesson learned.

The new New Delhi is a place profoundly lacking in social graces and common courtesy, as rush hour subway travel accentuates and illustrates. If you step aside to make way for an oncoming person, he will not thank you, nor will anyone else do the same for you.  On the plus side, no one seems to get mad when others cut them off or fail to give them opportunity to merge into pedestrian traffic.  The furstrating part is that it is all so inefficient.

I’m usually of the “when in Rome” school of travel.  If this is the way they want to live, then so be it; I can do it, too.  The exception is when someone cuts in line in front of me.  Sorry, that’s when the teeth come out.

3. The Canadian Census

Now I’m going to take a break from my regular India travelogue to comment on a recent development in Canada, specifically the elimination of the mandatory nature of the long form of the Canadian national census.  The census of this country has traditionally consisted of two components: the short form, which is mandatory and which applies to everyone (though perhaps not Aboriginals), and the long form, which has also traditionally been mandatory, but only applied to a subset of Canadians.

There is no question that the data is useful for researchers like me.  But is usefulness a sufficient positive to outweigh the negative of compelling citizens in a liberal democracy to share personal information to their government?  I’m not so sure.

A senior colleague of mine is organizing a formal response, through the university, to the Canadian government, to argue for the reinstatement of the mandatory long form.  His argument is that failure to add the force of law to this information will cripple valuable information-gathering attempts by researchers and policymakers alike.

This person gives a thorough argument for keeping the longform survey mandatory, though I think he (I think it’s a he) understates the privacy concerns.

Personally, I think that unless we’re looking at an emergency situation (e.g., a disease outbreak or intense national security situation) civil liberties and privacy always trump the government’s desire to collect information.  The need for quality data is not sufficient impetus to apply the sledgehammer of criminal law to compel the vitiation of such privacy protections.

For one thing, there is no such thing as a guarantee of privacy where the government is concerned.  We learned this the hard way in the wake of 911, when the Bush government raided all federal databases to find terrorism links, including those that were collected under the precepts of complete privacy and confidentiality.  In short: there is no such thing as privacy; all it takes is a shift in government, government policy or the greater political landscape to make all extant data open or at least semi-permeable.

The extreme Libertarian view is that the census is innately an oppressive governmental tool.  I would not go that far, but the potential for abuse is always there.  And such potential suggests that compulsory participation, especially in this era of renewed distrust of government, may not be appropriate.

I wrote about this back in 2006, back when the government was weilding its sledgehammer in an irresponsible manner, threatening criminal action if I didn’t mail back their ridiculous census form.

Not only is this tack offensive, it’s also inefficient.  What is the goal here?  To compel maximum participation in the census?  Easy.  Instead of threatening citizens with the hammer, cajole them with the carrot.  Instead of spending tens of  millions on the criminal enforcement of census compliance, spend a single million on a national lottery: everyone who sends back their longform survey is entered, for free, to win that million dollars.  Trust me, this would be cheaper and much more effective.

And then let’s make the shortform survey voluntary, as well, okay?