Global Sherwood

At a recent UN summit meeting, French President Mikolas Sarkozy and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero have suggested a "global financial tax on all transactions."
Apparently as many as 60 nations have stood up in support of this; but for some reason, there is (somewhat expectedly) some heavy opposition, even though it is an excellent idea.

Now I'm not an economist by any means, but it doesn't take a whole lot of brainpower to understand that there is something severely wrong in the world when 80% of the world's wealth is owned by only 20% of the world's population, or that there is a problem when over a billion people (15% of global population) is expected to live on less than a dollar a day. One man somewhere can literally afford to wipe his ass with a wad of $100 bills, while millions live on the streets, unable to afford a roof over their head.


But nobody wants to help, everyone looks to someone else to fix the problem.
Sure enough, the major corporations in the world are the ones who are in the best position to make a positive change, and are unfortunately the last people who are ever going to do so, because its all about profit, "every dollar counts". A company reeling in billions in profit "can't afford" to part with a few hundred thousand dollars to help those who can barely scrape together a bowl of rice for dinner.


But its not just the big companies; for as little as $40 a month ($1.30 a day), John Everyman can sponsor a child through World Vision, which contrary to what many believe, doesn't just help one child out of a billion, but help the entire community, and everyone who as anything to do with that child.
(I learned about how World Vision actually helps thanks to Alex Day's vlog, more specifically this post: Cabbage. Watch his other stuff as well, though, he is hilarious, and an all around excellent bloke.)
Aside from World Vision, there are thousands of other charities to whom John Everyman can donate whatever he can spare, and unlike businesses, this is a situation where every dollar does count.
Even without an organised charity, John Everyman can simply drop a few loose coins into the hat of the homeless guy he usually just ignores. Money that he'll forget about, and find a week later at the bottom of the washing machine could be the difference between the homeless guy having a meal or not.

But John Everyman has no money to spare, because it's "the big corporates' job."

Now I ain't even gon' act holier-than-thou.
I didn't go to Jacob with 25-thou', but I do generally conform to John Everyman's thought process that "I can't spare the money," or "helping one child won't make a difference." I don't donate to any charity, and I usually just shake my head when someone comes to me and says "spare a dollar?".
The reality is everyone living above the poverty line can afford to help those who don't.


And so, to have a real impact, we need something to be enforced, beyond our control.
We need France/Spain's suggested Robin Hood Tax.

Now I don't know how they plan to implement it; all the sources I've read have only suggested "a tax on every financial transaction," which to me suggested that employers get taxed when they pay employees (no doubt they'd look for a loophole to pass the tax onto the employee, but I digress), and the employee is taxed when they spend their income.

For the ease of argument, lets assume that everyone spends all their income in some way or another (spending, investing, whatever.) So the tax they give can simply be calculated as a % of their income.

Okay, now lets use an easy tax of 0.5%. This works out to 1% tax per person, 0.5% taxed from the person, and 0.5% taxed from the company that employs them (or bank that pays them interest, or tenant that pays them rent, etc, etc.)

The average income in Australia is $50,000 a year (rounded). So, that's $500 of tax per person per year, but only $250 taken from the person.

If you earn $50,000 a year, having $250 less PER YEAR is not going to impact on your quality of life at all. You won't even notice it.
$250 a year is $20.83 a month, $4.80 a week, $0.69 a day.
NOBODY earning $50k a year will notice have 70 cents less each day. And of course, earning less means losing less. I earn $36,000 a year; I'll be out 50 cents a day.

On the other hand, lets look at how this affects how much money is raised.
Australia has a population of 21,431,800 people. $500 is raised per person (based on average salary, $250 from employee and $250 from employer).

21,431,800 x 500 = ....

Australia, alone, will raise $10,715,900,000 per year.

Almost 11 billion dollars per year, at the expense of less than 70 cents a day for the people it affects. And that's just from Australia, a relatively small (population-wise) country compared to the likes of America, Japan, and Russia.


$10,715,900,000 for people who are lucky to have a bowl of rice for a meal. At the expensive of 1/5th of a coffee each day.

Tell me that's a bad idea?

Dear Those Trying to Prove the Existence of God:

I'm afraid you've missed the point. So well and truly missed the point, that you've found yourself in a parallel dimension, where everything is perfectly circular.

Now I myself am an atheist, but I have many friends and family who are religious, with varying degrees of extremity. Despite my atheism, I very strongly acknowledge the power of faith.
Now for clarification, in this post (and in any other religion-oriented ones, and just in general in my everyday speech), when I refer to faith I refer to the belief in God(s) and it's/their ability to make our lives better; while by religion I am referring to a community or organisation of people who share the same or similar beliefs.

The power of faith is the power that you gain as a result of their belief in (a)n omnipotent being(s) and it's/their vested interested in your personal welfare. It's most strongly present in particularly hard times, when you feel completely at loss and incapable of dealing with the issue, so you look to a higher power for guidance. This creates hope, a tiny spark of light in a tunnel that was previously completely black. And small as it may be, you can see that light, and so you know it can be obtained.

Faith begets hope, begets strength.

Whether or not this is in fact an interference from a higher power, or simply the accessing of a hidden well of strength within you, is unimportant, but the unimportance of the source is important. Confused yet? I'll explain.

Faith is illogical by it's very nature. Faith is defined as a belief in something despite a lack of empirical evidence to support this belief. If a friend who's opinion of film I have faith in tells me that something is good, I will believe them, and go see it. Until I've seen it myself I don't know whether or not I like it, but I have faith in their opinion.
You have faith in God, for whichever reason, even without evidence of his/her/their existence.

This is different to believing something that you know, through experience, is true. I know that if I buy a pair of Nike's, I need to buy size 11.5s. I know this because I have tried on and subsequently bought that size, so I have evidence to support this belief. Therefore, it isn't faith.

This illogicality is precisely what gives a faith in God it's potentially life changing power.

God is an abstract concept: we don't know what it looks like, what it's purpose is, how or when it was created, we don't even know if it exists. We know nothing about God. All we have to go on are faith and scripture. The scriptures, though generally claimed to be "the word of God", are written by men who we've never met, and so for all we know they could be as real as the idea that there isn't actually such a thing as "space" and what we see when we look at the sky are just a bunch of very large TV screens. To believe in the scriptures is to have faith in them.
Thus, any concept an individual has of God is a projection of their faith.

This abstractness means that you can (and will) create an image of God that suits your needs to get through whatever it is you need to deal with. If you've lost a loved one, you have faith that they've gone to a better place, and God is a loving looking after them. If you're scared of terrorists, you have faith that God is a righteous, vengeful god who will protect the good and smite the wicked.


Which brings us back to the point of this post: if you're trying to prove the existence of God, you've missed the point of believing in God.

What happens if someone actually does prove, with empirical evidence, that God exists, then God loses its abstractness.
God becomes something definably real; everyone knows exactly what it is and isn't capable of, and we lose the strength gleaned from faith in what "could" be real.

"Gay is Unnatural" Round 2: Gay Animals

Reading the comments section of a newspaper the other day, I was reminded of another popular pseudo-argument that homophobes throw about, without realizing how stupid they sound. It's very similar to the "Being gay is unnatural" rubbish, and the reasoning for why it's so ridiculous is similar too, but I felt I needed to raise it.

"No other animals have same-gender sex, so why should people?"

The first reason it's so flawed is that it is totally wrong: List of Animals Displaying Homosexual Behaviour
"Homosexual behaviour has been observed in close to 1500 species, and is well documented in 500 of them."


Secondly, humans are a species of animal. Every animal is different, and a lot have unique traits which aren't shared by any other animals. Praying mantis females eat the male's head after sex, starfish have no brain, dolphin calves and their mothers don't sleep at all for months when the calf is first born. These are all unique traits, and are in no way wrong because of that. Even if homosexuality was peculiar to humans, it would simply be a unique homo sapiens trait. One of many:


Lastly, humans are very different to other animals, and we have a lot of unique qualities. Civilization, advanced language, and consciousness to name a few.
If you're going to suggest that being gay is wrong because no other animals do it, then everything else we do that is unique to us is wrong too.

The only way you can stand by that argument and not look like a complete fool is to give up everything else that separates humans from animals.

Having a penis does not a good Prime Minister make

A week ago, as a result of some internal politics, the Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd, stepped down from his post and was succeeded by his deputy, Julia Gillard.
Just like that, Australia took a major step toward being a truly equal society; Gillard marks the first female Prime Minister this country has seen.
Now we still have a long way to go: around the same time that this was happening in Australia, Iceland's lesbian PM was legally marrying her girlfriend. But still, this is a step in the right direction, and every step is a victory.

Perhaps I shouldn't be, but I've been surprised by all the backlash and bigoted comments that have surfaced as a result of this event. I guess I knew on some level how prevalent sexism still is, even in the 21st century; but you don't often see it rear its ugly head so blatantly.

Such comments as, "I for one will by voting for Tony Abbott in the next election, as I feel more confident having a man in charge."
Now for those who don't know, Tony Abbot is, essentially, an Australian George Bush, complete with apelike appearance and inability to string a series of words into a coherent sentence. He believes that a woman's place in the kitchen making sandwiches, while a man goes to work. He believes that homosexuality is wrong, and that gay couples are less deserving of the rights that straight couples are privilege to. He believes that everything in the Bible is true, and that if you're not a Christian, you're a heathen.
If he should ever become Prime Minister, he will set the country back 50 years. If we're lucky.

Now it really does concern me when people, and otherwise Labor supporters at at that, would choose this, over having a woman in charge. How can anyone hold this opinion and not see the ignorance in it?
Just to be clear, I'll say this now, loud and clearly in bold text:

Having a penis does not qualify one to run a country.

Nor does having a uterus, or breasts, or a vagina impair one's ability to do so.

Intelligence, charisma, decisiveness, passion, strength of character, sense of morality: these are the characteristics that count as a leader, and these have absolutely nothing to with one's gender. These are also characteristics that Gillard has in spades; and things that Abbott wouldn't know the meaning of if he was a senior editor at Oxford.

I'm also not saying that being female automatically makes one suitable to run a country; Sarah Palin has quite clearly demonstrated this during her time in politics.

At the end of it all, candidates for Prime Minister, or indeed any seat in government, should be voted for or appointed based solely on their suitability for the job. The only way this is going to happen is if minorities in politics - females, non-whites (less of an issue in Australia than in, say, USA, but an issue nonetheless), and out-of-the-closet homosexuals - continue to do as Julia Gillard has done, and fight through the discrimination to secure these positions. This opens the door for others to follow suit, and eventually we will reach the point that the likes of Iceland and India are at; where female rulers are not even newsworthy because of how ordinary they are, and have legitimately equal footing with their penis-owning adversaries in the fight for positions of influence.

Motor Accidents and Censorship

Every country has has media banned for being offensive, to a greater or lesser extent (Australia is particularly bad for a developed nation). The question is always asked by defenders of free-speech: "If you find it offensive, why are you exposing yourself to it?"
Any sensible, free thinking adult should be able to make a decision for themselves about what they read, watch, look at or play, based on their own thoughts and feelings as to what is offensive. Claiming that something should be banned for being offensive is like walking out into the middle of a busy road, getting hit by a car, and then calling for motor vehicles to be banned. Insanity; logical thought dictates that if you don't want to get hit by a car, you shouldn't step out into the road in front of one.
So why would you expose yourself to something that you know will offend you, or make you uncomfortable?

I can choose not to watch it, but other people will.
This is equivalent to seeing someone else step out and get hit by a truck, and then calling for a ban on vehicles; and thus, is an invalid argument.
People are different, with different thoughts; so what they consider as offensive may (usually will) be different to others. By the time a person reaches adulthood, they should be able to make their own educated decisions about this. Situations where they can't, as a result of stunted mental development, lack of upbringing, etc. are anomalies, and are in no way grounds for a decision affecting the majority.
No person should ever be able to make decisions for another individual who is equally capable of making that same decision, which affects only them.

And of course, every anti-free-speech contenders favourite "ace up the sleeve":
Think of the children.
I'll bite. A lot of what people attempt to get banned is, generally, unhealthy for a child who's mind isn't fully developed, and their access should be restricted (as it is, in situations where it doesn't actually fall victim to the ban-hammer.)

So why are the children getting access to this "offensive" material; where are the parents?
No semi-competent parent would let their child haphazardly play on the streets, at the risk of getting hit. Why isn't the same care put into restricting what their children are being exposed to? Lets look at the various stages:

(PRE-MEDIA): As a baby, pre-crawling, the child has no control whatsoever of where it goes. Likewise, it shouldn't be exposed to any media, really. Not to say the G-rated kids shows and the like are going to have a negative impact, but the child really isn't gaining anything aside from looking at pretty colours (baby toys satisfy this requirement) or listening to the voice of a guardian reading them a story (talking to the child, even making stupid baby noises satisfies this requirement.)
The child has no control whatsoever of what its exposed to; just as it has no control whatsoever of whether or not it gets hit by a car.

G-RATED: As a toddler, the baby is now able to crawl/walk. However it still doesn't really have much forethought as to where it is moving to, beyond "that toy looks nice, I'll go pick it up." Aside from blatant negligence on the part of the caretaker (which is an anomaly), the child will still have no means whatsoever of getting itself onto a road. By the same token, the child is now mentally developed enough to take in very basic media; simple books, toddler's TV shows, etc. However, they still should/will have very limited choice, if any, as to what they watch. "You can choose between 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' and 'Gruffalo'", as opposed to "We're in a book store, pick anything you want me to read you."
The child is starting to get the ability to take in information in the form of media, just as it has the base requirement, as primitive as it is, to relocate itself onto a road (in the form of crawling/toddling). The parent still should be restricting heavily what the child can actually be exposed to, like they would restrict the ability to leave the house and head onto a street.

PG-RATED: The child is now older, coming towards the end of its single-digit years. A qualified parent will give the child somewhat more freedom with regard to being on the street than before; it may be allowed to play in the driveway, or go out walking along quiet roads, but the parent will constantly enforce the correct crossing "method" (look left, then right, then left, then cross), but will still keep an eye out, and hold the kid's hand across busy/semi-busy roads.
As such, the child is developed enough to take in more complex information than before, and will have free reign to watch or read what the like, within the range of "PG" material. The parent still should have a heavy involvement in what the child is choosing to expose itself to, and ensure no more mature material (the "busy roads") are slipping through.

M-RATED: The child is a young teenager, and is now pretty much capable of navigating the streets by itself. The parent will still, however, remind her/him to "be careful on the roads". The teenager will be able to walk sidewalks of essentially any road safely, but will still be heavily encouraged to only cross at designated crossings, as they probably will still not be able to accurately judge distances/speed of oncoming vehicles. If the parent catches their child being unsafe, they will get involved and explain/remind the child about road safety.
The teenager now is pretty much open to any media aside from Restricted R16/R18 material. Although some content in M-rated stuff will go over their heads, nothing will be detrimental to their mental development. They will be able to choose for themselves what to read, watch, or play, and have access to it on their own. The caretaker will still have a (more distant) involvement in the teen's exposure, to monitor and make sure no R16/R18 material is slipping through.

R16: The child is almost an adult. Trying to navigate across a main road without the aid of a crossing, but up to this point, they are fully able to maintain their safety in the street. If they get into any accidents/near accidents though, the parent will intervene, and more-so if this becomes a trend.
Aside from strictly adult material (R18), the teenager is free to expose themselves to whatever they please. Still, the parent is still involved, and will ensure no R18 media is getting to them, unless they deem it acceptable. If breaches of this become a trend, the parent gets more involved.

R18: The child is now an adult. It is solely responsible for what happens on the road, and is solely responsible for what it exposes itself to. Assuming proper raising, and with the assistance of regulatory warnings (traffic signs/indicators, and restriction labels noting what content may be offensive) they can make their own informed decisions about how to be safe in the street, and what they are exposed to.
They are responsible for themselves.


This brings us to the final topic: Restrictions.

First of all, certain, very select things should be banned outright: Anything involving child pornography, anything involving rape (real, not acted), or violence to people or animals (real, not acted). These should be banned on the grounds that as a requirement for their development, they will infringe upon the basic freedoms expected in society.

As for everything else, if it is acted, described in writing, or drawn, it shouldn't be banned, but it should have restricted access to certain age groups depending on the severity of the material.
In order for this to work, the ratings need to be objective, representative of the masses, and enforced properly. Ratings boards need to also be rotated frequently, to avoid corruption.
Ratings boards should be like a jury: made up of regular adult citizens, chosen at random, and with enough people to be able to come to a conclusive decision. Of course, unlike juries, it should be optional, otherwise people might be forced against their will to view something they find objectionable. The letter of summons includes a description of the material they are being called on to rate, so they can decide if it might offend them.
Once a decision has been made, all decisions are subject to re-evaluation, by public nomination. A government forum is created and made open to the public, listing all the ratings and reasons, and feedback may be submitted by anyone, agreeing or disagreeing with a decision. If enough disagreements are submitted, the material gets re-rated.
As far as enforcement goes, harsher punishments for people selling to younger viewers, along the lines of what is in place for people selling liquor, cigarettes to minors.

What we need is less censorship; in its place we need parenting, we need objective ratings representing the majority, and we need harsher punishments for people who intentionally expose minors to content which may be affect them.

"Gay is unnatural" is a redundant comment

A lot of anti-gay types will make this statement: "Homosexuality is unnatural." That's the entirety of their anti-gay argument. "Unnatural". I'm not going to talk about about whether or not that's true (its not); but rather demonstrating why it really is irrelevant to the greater issue of gay rights, and why homophobes who use it need to at least come up with something a bit more original.

Lets pretend for a moment that being gay is in fact a personal choice, or a product of environment; that its unnatural. By using this as a reason for why homosexuality is wrong, you're making the (incredibly bold) statement that "unnatural = bad". Very little of what we utilise on a daily basis is natural. Computers, calculators, abacuses; all are man-made. Video games, television, books; the majority of our entertainment is a result of human ingenuity. Aeroplanes, cars, trains; any form of transport aside from walking is unnatural. Anything that makes use of a wheel is not in tune with nature. All of these unnatural developments have contributed so much to our society, that any typical modern person would be at a complete and utter loss without the effects of humans challenging nature. Thats just the tip of the iceberg of what fits into both the "unnatural" and "good/beneficial" categories.

And those are just products. Humanity as a whole is, by nature, selfish and competitive. At the very core, the basic primal goal of any creature, not just people, is to continue its existence. And yet, throughout history there have been countless examples of people going against this natural instinct and sacrificing themselves for the betterment of their peers. Often people who they have no connection with beyond sharing the same opinion on a matter. The aims of a movement supersede the natural instinct.

Of course, this is a direct result of humanity being granted, by nature, the blessing of sentience. However, if you're going to claim that this renders all of the above as being a result of nature, then you'd have to agree that any choice or social conditioning which leads to being gay is also resultant of nature.

By claiming that "unnatural = bad", you're also suggesting that "natural = good".
One only needs to look over the major news headlines of the last few years to see that this is completely false. Tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes; all of these are terrible occurrences as a result of nature (they're called "natural disasters" for a reason.)
And no one can argue that nature is exclusively bad, given that at the very least it provides the essential requirements for life; and a lot more on top of that.

Clearly, then, the naturalness of something has absolutely no influence on whether something is right or wrong; the only factor in that is the end result of the product, characteristic or behaviour in question.
From this, I think we can safely assume that anyone who pulls out the "gayness is against nature" statement (I refuse to call it an argument) is simply a bigot for the sake of bigotry, relying on empty clichés because they have no legitimate argument to back up their claim.