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Araceli Bravo, the Montreal mother who kidnapped her daughter two years ago and was just recently arrested by Police in Vancouver, has nothing really to fear when she is returned to Montreal to face the music.

Bravo is sure to get a free pass out of jail from the clique of sympathetic, female lawyers who run the Montreal Crown Prosecutor's Office and the weak-kneed and spineless male judges of the Quebec Sessions and Appeal Courts, who gave the same leniency to 58 year-old convicted kidnapper, Esther Ruehmling Eichmann in 2007 and 2008.

At the time, three male wimps of the Quebec Appeals Court sentenced Ruehmling Eichmann to an illegal and unenforceable 2 years probation in Germany and a $5,000 fine for having kidnapped her 6 year-old daughter, Alexandra Ruehmling-Schleichkorn 18 years earlier (See ADDENDUM). And this despite the same Courts having sentenced a Montreal man to 6 years in prison in 2001, later reduced to 3 years upon appeal, for the SAME crime of having kidnapped his son and taken him to Iraq for 16 years.

Talk about a ZERO-DETERRENCE factor! Instead of effectively ensuring that this crime does not occur again by sentencing kidnapping mothers to some serious jail-time as well, our pathetic and unduly sympathetic-to-females justice system virtually guarantees repeat parental abductions in Canada by women in the future.



ADDENDUM:

Esther Ruehmling, who in 1989 was about to lose custody of the 6 year-old child to her ex, Ralph Schleichkorn, kidnapped Alexandra to Germany with the help of her parents, Wilhelm and Charlotte Ruehmling, originally Germans now living in Montreal, the German Consulate General which provided travel documents, and a German, Olaf Eichmann, whom Ruehmling later married in Germany to change and hide her identity.

Then for the next 18 years, Ruehmling, her parents who visited her in Germany regularly, and Eichmann proceeded to brainwash Alexandra against her Canadian custodial father and extended...

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Compile some data about your work history so that you can be judged based on how past employers have judged you. Make it verifiable, because you can't be trusted. But put a positive spin on everything so that you can compete with more capable liars. If you make a good impression, you win the opportunity to be judged in person based on whatever a superficial, 5-minute interview can gleen. If you do well there, you win the opportunity to take a drug test and, if you pass, be awkward in a new, high-pressure setting for a month or two while utterly failing to learn people's names. Good luck!

Things are a little worse for me as a loner. I don't keep in contact with former coworkers, so coming up with work references is awkward and difficult; when I do, they tend to leave the job shortly after me. I don't know a lot of people, so I don't have a contact anywhere. My difficulty with the whole job hunting process ensures a job history full of the kind of menial jobs that overlook a job history full of menial jobs. It's a bootstrapping failure; no one will give a chance to a guy who hasn't made something of a chance before, so there's no way to get that first chance. I've been a cashier at five different jobs, but I still have to prove I can run a cash register at every new place.

I've never been lousy at anything I've put my mind to. I'm good with customers. I can figure stuff out myself. I don't balk at hard work, or miss work. I'm honest to a fault. I ask for more hours, not more dollars per hour. I actually take pride in doing the work others don't want to do. The idea of my coming in hung over or failing a drug test is just laughable. Where's space for that on the form? I'm not applying for the space program, I'm applying at neighborhood grocery stores and gas stations. Are these not virtues? Can I get some credit for any of this?...

[ Continued ]]]> http://www.canadaka.net/blog/Psudo/irrelevancy_starbursts_b-3273.html this YouTube video instead.]]> http://www.canadaka.net/blog/Psudo/live_and_learn_b-3272.html
Many of us will have children, who perhaps might perhaps be willing and able to carry on our work. Others of us will find like-minded young people to mentor. The latter method is statistically more dependable, but neither can be realistically expected continue exactly as we would have done.

If our work needs stability, it needs a recorded philosophy of it's design and operation to encourage consistency. Memories fade and flex, but records endure. It is probably wise for our successors to do the same.

May God bless me with so valuable a work to do.]]> http://www.canadaka.net/blog/Psudo/what_is_life_for_b-3271.html
Since we witness not only our own lives but also, though less deeply, the lives of those around us, life is also moral philosophy. The way we live is inherently advice to those around us, an argument that making similar choices will probably result in similar outcomes. In that sense, to live is to preach.

We all live in conditions that are less than our fondest desires. We have to make sacrifices and gambles in our attempts to avoid pain and seek pleasure, and we always come up short in some way. Sometimes the consequences are brutal, and other times they are only boring or discouraging or good but not great. We are free to choose, but not ensured positive or predictable outcomes. In that sense, to live is to suffer.

As new moments and new conditions replaces the old ones, we are continually faced with the questions of life. Answering those unanswerable questions is what life is for.]]> http://www.canadaka.net/blog/Psudo/counter_culture_b-3270.html
Anyone who has been to school has seen that kind of cliquish grouping, but in the vast diversity of global society we know we don't see them all. Each of these groups must decide how to deal with the people outside their group, people who inherently disagree and diverge from the members of the group. They must confront the fundamental psychological dilemma of the self vs. the other, not as an individual but as a society. That means laws and principles, a foreign policy of sorts, and a decision: can we be who we are and express our individuality in the presence of these others?

If they decide they cannot be themselves in the greater world, they must isolate themselves or lose their defining trait. These isolated societies have popped up and faded away all through history; some famous examples include the Greek Amazons, the Dead Sea Scrolls' society, the Druze of Syria and Lebanon, 18th Century Japan, and the Amish and Mennonite societies. Various aboriginal cultures across the world live in similar circumstances, though more often geographic and historical forces (eg, colonialism) than internal decisions. Many of these isolated cultures, such as the utopian communities of the 1840s or the communist communes and fundamentalist cults of the 20th century, were not able to endure more than a generation because they did not manage to replace their population as their founders aged and eventually died. Others have suffered severe hardship or lost their self-sufficiency and risk losing their identity due to creeping encroachment...

[ Continued ]]]> http://www.canadaka.net/blog/Psudo/html_b-3269.html most complete HTML tag list anywhere.

To the five or six people who care: you're welcome.]]> http://www.canadaka.net/blog/Psudo/feelings_b-3268.html
The most obvious analysis says, "Yes, of course you should stop suffering whenever you can." Obviously, he'd be better off feeling better than feeling worse. But if he feels better even though the facts clearly do not support his happiness, doesn't that denial make him kind of insane? Is he going to be able to find the motivation to fix his objectively lousy situation if he percieves no emotional signal that things ought to be better?

In other words, is it better to be a blissful idiot or a miserable genius? Is that a decision we really have to make?

This thought arises from a forum discussion I had with a poster named Andy. He tells me that it's fundamentally better for the poor to recieve saving alms from a rigid, unfeeling bureaucracy than from a heartfelt benefactor because the recipient doesn't feel guilty taking money from a emotionless political machine. The unemployed shouldn't have to feel bad about being unemployed, the homeless for being homeless. Is he right? Is the emotional protection of denial a positive thing?

There is some relativity in play. Being delighted about your uninsured belongings burning away to nothing is dramatic enough to be strong evidence of crazy, but so is suicide strong evidence that denial for emotional's sake has it's place. What if you only feel neutral? In good times and in bad, on your wedding day and the day you bury your child, if you feel basically the same isn't that evidence of madness? If your emotions don't reflect your actual situation, there's something wrong. Without some feeling, emotional or tangible, to cause your motivations, what's to stop you from...

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The most obvious problem with this idealistic approach is that getting all the relevant facts gets progressively harder the more important the problem is. If you're taking a math quiz, you can be pretty sure you have all the facts you need right away. If you're trying to catch a serial killer before he strikes again, it's impossible to get enough information fast enough. Most of life, especially the important parts, will be guesswork. It's important to learn how to do research, both the quick and the deep, but life is a sequence of "good enough" evidence and best guesses.

That is why other people matter. Other people know more than you about almost everything, and you know more than any specific other person about something. Even if everyone's judgement and talents were identical (which, of course, they're not), even if we didn't need social contact (which, of course, we do), we'd still need each other's expertise and experience to get the best out of life.

That's two different approaches to greatness: the specialist and the leader. Specialists study in preparation to address problems, but leaders decide when it's time. Specialists always want to debate a little longer because the worst thing a specialist can be is wrong. Leaders want things decided quickly because the worst thing a leader can be is too late.

Both groups need the other; even if the leader is a specialist, they need specialists in every other field and someone keeping up with their own field while they're distracted by leading. For any significantly ambitious goal, you have to have a team.]]> http://www.canadaka.net/blog/Psudo/the_holiday_season_b-3266.html
December is:

• International Calendar Awareness Month - The UN wants you to be aware that various cultures around the world have different calendars and just because the Gregorian (Christian, western) Calendar is the most widely accepted by far doesn't mean it is uniquely right, you Eurocentric jerks.
• Universal Human Rights Month - celebrates the anniversary of the unanimous ratification of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the UN Security Council on Dec 10th, 1948. Dec 10th is also celebrated as Human Rights Day.
• Read a New Book Month - so says the US Government. The US Government also has 10 other official themes for December, mostly used as tie-ins for various business interests or to attract interest to various causes. This one annoyed me the least.

Holidays Spanning Multiple Days:

• Nov 27th to Dec 25th - Advent - (Catholic) Celebrated for four Sundays before Christmas, it is a time of confession and repentance leading up to Christmas.
• Dec 5th to Dec 11th - Nobel Week - The Nobel Committee gives out their illustrious prizes this week.
• Dec 20th to Dec 28th - Hanukkah - (Jewish) commemoration of the Maccabean Revolt of the second century BC.
• Dec 25th to Jan 6th - Christmastide...
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