My, what a big pile of ammonium nitrate they have. The better to blow us up with, I imagine. If so, they must be stopped, by persuasion where possible and by force where necessary. Do not dismiss the latter option too lightly. Persuasion fails if a machete through the neck impedes the smooth flow of your argument. The last words of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh were apparently: “We can talk about it. Don’t do it! Don’t do it!” But they couldn’t talk because his Islamist assailant shot and stabbed him before pinning an abusive note to his mutilated corpse to which no reply was feasible.

Do not dismiss the long-term importance of ideas too lightly either. In 1911, G. K. Chesterton wrote: “About half the history now taught in schools and colleges is made windy and barren by the narrow notion of leaving out the theological theories ... Historians seem to have completely forgotten two facts – first, that men act from ideas; and second, that it might, therefore, be as well to discover which ideas.”

It has not become less true since, in either sense. Islamists are our enemies because they believe in a perverse interpretation of the Muslim faith. And they will be until they are stopped, either from thinking that way or from acting on their ideas.

The police and intelligence services have done a good job thus far of preventing them from acting. But in the long run we must also win the war of ideas.

One important task, convincing potential radicals that the extremists have the wrong interpretation of Islam, falls primarily to reasonable Muslims who, I’m pleased to see, are speaking out a bit more clearly in this country. Of course, an infidel can point to passages in the Koran that advocate peace or say: “There shall be no compulsion in religion.” (And extremists can point to others that unmistakably do not.) But if you have not converted to Islam, you will have trouble convincing a Muslim audience you have grasped its essential truth.

Here we get into grave difficulties in a post-modern society. For typical well-meaning liberals have not embraced Islam not because they don’t think it is true, but because they don’t really think anything is true. In these “non-judgmental” times Roman Catholic politicians support abortion, the Constitution is a “living tree” whose Charter says one thing one day and the exact opposite the next, deconstructionism pervades academia and Pontius Pilate’s “What is truth?” is the slogan under which we don’t go forth to battle because like, whatever man. It will not do.

Those of us who are not Muslims cannot possibly prevail in a battle of ideas unless we have something positive for which we stand. We must be willing to say that our way of life is better than others and give logical reasons why. Even if it causes hurt feelings. For if certain beliefs about how one should behave are correct, then others that contradict them are not. Idiots may denounce this proposition as insensitive. But it’s elementary logic and you can’t wish or mush it away.

Nor will it help to try, because what most offends Islamists about our society is not what we believe, but that we do not believe. That’s why radical multiculturalism and the moral relativism behind it are not the answer to their hatred but a primary cause of it.

I don’t just mean that a lame-brained “different strokes for different folks” attitude toward clitorectomies, anti-Semitism and political violence blinds us to the fifth column in our midst. I mean that no amount of assuring Islamists it’s fine if they want to believe their silly old religion while we make out on the waterbed will mollify them. It is at the core of what infuriates them.

Forget the Afghan mission we joined or the Iraq war we didn’t. They despise us as decadent less because we fornicate while intoxicated than because we do it sadly and without conviction. Only those who stand up for something can talk back to them at all. Or have any real reason to fight back if they won’t listen.

As for the fourth option of grovelling appeasement, there is a peculiar marriage of convenience between western multiculturalists who don’t want to face the problem and anti-western radicals who don’t want us to face it. Let us divorce them forthwith. I’m all for exotic cuisine. But not sex-selective abortion (see the June 5 Western Standard) or a belief that you should blow up infidels or, when convenient, behead them slowly on camera. Multiculturalism must no longer be a cloak of invisibility for hatred, violence and evil.

We either convert our enemies or kill them, or they do it to us. I vastly prefer persuasion to force. But persuasion requires belief.

And that’s no pile of fertilizer.

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

To: The Hon. Michael Bryant, attorney general of Ontario Dear Sir:

In a recent letter to my friend Dennis Young (reference #M06-01001) you explain that you asked the federal government to impose a total handgun ban because criminals may steal handguns from legitimate owners and, I quote you here, “No hobby is worth a life.” I wonder if I might prevail upon you not to babble in this fashion.

Surely you realize many more people drown in Ontario than are fatally shot by criminals. And most drownings result from hobbies such as swimming and boating or (says a Canadian Institute for Health Information press release) “walking near water,” whereas many firearms murders don’t involve collectors’ or sports shooters’ stolen weapons. If you seriously believe “No hobby is worth a life,” consistency requires that you seek a ban on these other recreational activities first. If not, why did you say it?

Cynics might claim that, as a politician, you were simply seeking a plausible formulation to seize the rhetorical high ground in defence of a policy you hadn’t really thought through but it polled well and every cool person you knew instinctively supported it. Not me. I charitably grant that you are as confused as you sound. As Henry Hazlitt complained 60 years ago, government policy frequently lags behind Adam Smith.

So let me explain to you the concept of “tradeoffs.” In life, including public policy, every course of action involves both benefits and costs. If nothing else, a decision to spend time doing something we enjoy means that same time cannot be spent doing something else we also enjoy. And most pleasant activities, even golf, not only consume valuable time and money but are also more risky than, say, cowering in our basements. Forget skydiving or white-water rafting. Do you have any idea what might happen if someone were hit in the head by a croquet ball? Or ran into a tree chasing a Frisbee?

Before banning all such reckless pastimes because “No hobby is worth a life,” you might need to chat about tradeoffs with your colleague Jim Watson, the minister of health promotion. He may regard moderate physical activity not just as a pleasant diversion for persons under the care and supervision of the benevolent state, but also as useful in reducing premature death due to being a big fat slob, thus saving the public health system much lovely money. He may even mention the “jogger’s dilemma” that while people who exercise tend to live longer, at any given moment the risk of death is higher while working out than not.

Possibly some state facility could be established at which low-risk aerobics could be conducted in close proximity to advanced medical equipment and far from lakes, ponds and other death traps. And there are plenty of hobbies that look safe. Like stamp collecting, where lethal paper cuts are rare. Or chess: Who ever choked on a rook? So it might seem that a ban on any hobbies mathematically shown to increase fatalities would not impose an undue burden of boredom on the good people of Ontario.

Alas, it is not that simple. Do you have any idea how many car accidents involve people travelling to and from chess clubs, yoga classes or smokefree social gatherings, as well as really scary things like recreational softball where heart attacks, concussions and food poisoning from the potato salad cannot be ruled out entirely? And forget banning automobile travel for frivolous or alarming recreational purposes. Pedestrians can be run over, succumb to heat exhaustion, be stung by bees or otherwise perish on their way to art class. It’s an abattoir out there.

Of course, if we take tradeoffs seriously, we might also have to ask Mr. Watson whether high tobacco taxes, which undermine border security by increasing smuggling, are worth the frisson of virtue from stamping out the sin of smoking. For regrettably one tradeoff in thinking more clearly about policy is realizing some cherished nostrums don’t work. But a trade-off in avoiding clear thinking is doing and saying dumb stuff. Trade-offs are everywhere ... except in your letter.

Finally, stress is a significant factor in premature death. And the modern world has reduced previously significant sources of anxiety, such as frenzied Huns sweeping suddenly over the horizon, but has created others, from the frantic pace of work to people driving while cellphoning to politicians who meddle with law-abiding citizens because they can’t control predatory thugs, then rationalize their conduct in foolish ways.

Even if silly statements are a traditional politicians’ hobby, they are bad for my blood pressure. And remember: No hobby is worth a life.

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

Read it in Fraser Forum.

The Old Man called me into his office and smiled his wintery smile. “Got a case for you,” he said and handed me an empty folder. “Here’s the McGuffin, kid. Kyoto. Missing.” He put a quick stop to exotic visions of an elusive Oriental seductress on the lam from some gang she’d double-crossed. “It’s this big plan to put the chill on the economy,” he explained. “But we got no details. Nothing at all. Never seen anything like it.”

“Any suspects?” I asked. “All the usual,” he replied. “Right-thinking persons. The whole lot of ’em. Get out there and find out what they’re up to.” So I put on my coat, turn up my collar and head out into the raw wintery May morning, past the dying tulip festivals.

Word on the street is there’s a hit out on carbon. Forget six feet under. They’re gonna put it a klick and a half down. Lower than Hoffa. And “The Premier” was talking tough about taking out the coal plants but that turned out not to be very current. Folks got browned off, or out, or something.

I need someone to emit something, fast. So my next stop’s a hideout on Wellington, the house they call The House. I’m set to creep in all careful and quiet but there’s no need. There’s so much yelling going on six people could mug an oil company executive in broad daylight and get away with it. You might expect these yeggs to draw the curtains and lay low for a bit after the sponsorship-racket shmozzle. But the ruckus makes some kind of sense. When ya got no cards ya gotta play ’em big. And that’s just what the Red Gang done.

Billy the Chin and his crew puffed themselves up and cornered their chief rival, the man they call Big Steve. Really Big Steve. They looked him right in the eye and said give us back the plan you stole. Like they’d had it and were all set to go when Three Lunch Steve muscled in on their turf. Pure bluff. Adding to the confusion, Little Jack’s there too, all eager, trying to bust his way into the action, never knowing he’s the patsy. Yeah c’mon the plan, he says, and his henchman gets all blustery about “misrepresentations” and “untruths” and “a government that has the will to do so.” Yeah yeah, the gaudier the patter. Keep on riding me and they’re gonna be picking methane out of your liver. While “Bugsy” Duceppe is eyeballing everybody like he wishes he was in some other country.

The Ambrose broad tries to stall ’em with a tough act. Plans? We don’t need no stinking plans. But the Global Gang ain’t buyin’ it. Strong Mo and Fig Leaf Dave and Big Al are threatening to come up town and make some serious noise. Or not, since the Gang that Couldn’t Register Straight don’t let no one throw lead in this town. Gold, sure. But not lead. Plus you can’t dump bodies in the river ’cuz of water quality and safe-boating regulations. So no one gets fitted for any concrete galoshes but the Blues wind up in a back room knocking off benzene and bourbons.

So far it’s still the no-paper caper. Seems like everybody’s left fingerprints on this thing but nobody’s ever got it. I call up my buddy in the ink trade, Syd Izzen. He tells me Priority Paul, who once thought he was a player, was big on “the plan” but was left holding the windbag when the Shawinigan Strangler blew town. Maybe the Strangler knows something, maybe not. Doesn’t sound like it. “A proof is a proof.” Huh? When you have a good plan, is it because it’s planned? Anyway, I heard he got into the oil racket. And when I start trying to trace him everyone just holds up a golf ball and smirks.

I’m gettin’ nothing but unshaven here. Then I hear they’re blowing more smoke across the river. Some Andy Clearwood dude says Quebec should follow the plan and this mug they used to call Curly says sure, we’re gonna follow the plan. Fact it’s already workin’ so we’re gonna do it more. But I check it out and they ain’t got the plan neither. Lotta big talkin’ small-timers mixed up in this case, that’s for sure. All wind and no power, if you get my drift.

Lot of times some kid joins the agency thinking detective work’s gonna be a gas. It ain’t. Sometimes it’s a gas-electric. While I’m on stakeout in an unmarked hybrid kinetic energy vehicle looking at a broken hockey stick across the way, a flatfoot I know, Lou Tennant, slouches by. Seems he’s after some of the same mugs I am on a related charge: impersonating a statesman. He asks me what’s in the folder and I tell him, “Its, uh, the stuff that speeches are made of.” Nobody shows. A cold wind blows. I light up a smoke and the riot squad descends.

I wind up back in the Old Man’s Office, tired and sore and hungry, and nothing to show but the same empty folder I left with. “Whatcha got for me, kid?” Sorry boss. Blame it on Rio.

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

Last Sunday Citizen Arts editor Peter Simpson wrote: “There are certain titles that should be on every list of the best rock albums of all time, and if the titles are not there the list should be dismissed with a theatrical flip of the wrist.” He then cited “Televisions’s 1977 debut Marquee Moon” and Ow! My wrist! Never heard of it. Never want to. But don’t you mess with my blue suede shoes. Peter may have better musical taste than I do. It has been done. But here’s a scary thought: The origins of Rock and Roll lie in the early 1950s. So even if we stretch its golden age all the way to 1977, that’s still closer to its origins in the Truman era than to kids deafening themselves with iPod technopop today. Holy Vanished Historical Era, Batman. Which points us back, not forward, if we are to savour its classics. How did we get from swing to rock … while Smokin’ in the Boys Room?

OK, not Brownsville Station. Nor, despite Louie Louie, Richard Berry. What is really interesting, beyond my personal arrested development, is how this remarkable new musical form came into existence, developed, and matured. And once you get started on a “best of” list, the problem isn’t finding things to add but things to remove. (Unless it’s punk, I mean.) So I generally try the space-alien method.

No, not listing Ziggy Stardust first. I imagine a Martian hopping out of his little saucer, saying “We mean no harm to your planet … so we won’t be playing any punk” but he’s doing an essay for Human Culture 101 at the University of Mars, Valles Marineris, well, to be honest it’s due in three days so could I please quickly give him the 10 CDs that will let him fake it for a B. Which means “records,” every one of which had thousands of people, including other artists, saying I never knew music could be like this.

Okey dokey. Here we go. First, precursors. Black precursors. You must know producer Sam Phillips’s oft-repeated comment, before he discovered Elvis Presley, that if he could find a white boy with the “Negro sound” he could make a million dollars. Moreover, groundbreaking DJ Allan Freed got into rock partly because a recordstore owner convinced him to play some black artists he claimed white kids were buying (and, thanks to Freed’s show, they started to). At the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame they sold me a terrific Louis Jordan double CD so he’s my choice, but you could go with Fats Domino (Freed did) or others.

Next ain’t nothin’ but a hound dawg. No Elvis no rock. End of argument. But not of the 1950s. You need Buddy Holly, because nerdy-looking and - sounding (Peggy Sue) white kids were picking up this new sound and making it racier. Call me Squaresville, Daddy-O, but I find a certain charm in bobby-soxers and boys in stovepipe jeans listening to juke boxes. Sure, the audio quality was awful. But something exciting was happening, artistically, sexually and culturally. So we can’t leave the 1950s without your choice of Chuck Berry (Johnny B. Goode) or Little Richard (Long Tall Sally).

Great Balls of Fire, I don’t mean to slight other practitioners. But next we skip to four mop-tops from Liverpool. Then the anti-Beatles, one of whom just fell from a tree. Now Hendrix? Or Joplin? No. My OD entry is Jim Morrison, with The Doors’ L.A. Woman. Next Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, 15 years on the charts and still among the best-selling albums ever. I may be influenced by hearing Stairway to Heaven at the end of every high-school dance, but we need something from the metal genre and glam rock so let’s get both from Led Zeppelin 4.

Finally, for my money Genesis’ The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway is the all-time “concept album,” and Peter and I probably at least agree on that. By the way, I’m trying to avoid fogeyish complaints about the ever-faster beat in pop. But I was once told that punk would bring “more energy” to rock, which I hadn’t realized had gone languid, so if you insist on a punk precursor #11 is Alice Cooper’s School’s Out.

There’s a lot missing here. So if I get a second page I’m adding 12 Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus. Oh, and I once saw an interview where Hank Williams III said some people call Rock Around the Clock the first rock ’n’ roll song but it’s basically identical to his granddaddy’s Move It On Over. So what about CCR? Then there’s the folk strand: Dylan, Neil Young …

That I own almost no new music is, I grant, a badge of fogeyhood. That to me “new” means after Pink Floyd’s Animals doesn’t help, though my growing collection of even older stuff gets me some points in that new Lifelong Learning thingamajig. But honestly, classic rock albums don’t include fading attempts to revive the magic, let alone it getting mugged in an alley by punks. Marquee Moon a rock classic? Listen, Buddy, That’ll Be The Day.

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

Perhaps I seem cranky when I glare resentfully at a Hydro Ottawa pamphlet telling me I can use less energy by turning up the thermostat on my air-conditioning unit. If you think I’m so dumb I don’t know that, what makes you think I’ll understand it when you tell me? But my problem isn’t too much black coffee. It’s a government that truly thinks its citizens need constant guidance to function at all. It doesn’t help that, thanks to computer technology and public arrogance, the pamphlet starts out “John, Become more energy-efficient with these special offers and tips.” I bet they do that in the old folks’ homes too. Look, it’s Mr. Robson and I’m not an imbecile. But they just pat me on the head.

Inside, the chief energy conservation officer of the Conservation Bureau, Peter Love (or “Pete,” as I like to think of him) says: “Using the enclosed coupons will help reduce your electricity consumption — and helps us adopt a culture of conservation!”

If you think it’s just gaseous government verbiage, you’re half right. On the website of the Conservation Bureau (“Con,” I call it in mailings), www. conservationbureau.on.ca, Pete says: “Building a culture of conservation is essential and I strongly believe that it is achievable. But not without the support and active participation of all Ontarians.” All?

Bosh. If we had the active participation of everyone but a few hermits hoarding newspaper against lean years, their non-support wouldn’t matter a hoot. But this perky camp-counsellor rhetorical style is not random. It reveals a conception of the state’s relationship to citizens that is consistent, mistaken, dangerous and offensive. Not bad for a day’s work.

The sentiment about how it “helps us” (who’s we, by the way?) adopt a culture of conservation isn’t even honest. The Ontario government wants us to reduce electricity use primarily because it has so egregiously botched the supply that even if it doesn’t randomly shut down all the coal-fired generators, the ongoing decay of its badly designed, built and maintained nuclear reactors will soon plunge us all into the very cold soup. (The pamphlet also says: “While new options are being explored, it can take years to build new power sources.” Gotta love the passive voice when responsibility is being dodged.) Sure, they care about pollution, but the environment is one of those high-minded later things. Brownouts are very here and now.

So somehow it’s all part of this fun effort where we get to do the work of fixing its mess and it gets to take the credit. But wait. There’s more. A culture of conservation? My great-grandfather had a drawer labelled “bits of string too short to be saved.” I put leftovers in plastic containers because I consider food wrap extravagant. When I met my wife, my bookcases were the only furniture I’d ever paid for. Now government, with millennia of waste under its belt (hey, let’s build pyramids with slave labour or, as we like to say, a culture of construction) is telling me to stop being wasteful and get religion like them? I’m not the one running multibillion-dollar deficits.

Pete’s website message adds: “I am issuing a challenge — The Conservation Challenge — to individuals in all sectors of the province — to reduce their energy consumption 10 per cent by 2007.” Ooooh. I love a challenge. I challenge you to see if the government reduces its energy consumption 10 per cent by 2007: light and heating in office buildings, vehicle fuel use, etc. Do you think Pharaoh staggered up the ramp with a bigger load when things fell behind?

Finally, the government thinks I’m too dumb to know that drawing the blinds on a hot day helps keep the house cool. OK, it’s worse in Dundee, Scotland, where a National Health Service trust just issued a pamphlet complete with diagrams telling citizens how to poop. Back straight, feet up, mouth open. (I am sorry to say that I am not making any of this up.) But the underlying mentality, that ordinary people can’t perform even simple tasks without little arrows and tips, is precisely the apotheosis of technique against which philosopher Michael Oakeshott and others warned. “Plant trees to provide shade,” the pamphlet says. Really? Is that darkness on the other side from the sun cooler? I never knew. Though I always did get this sort of heat-abatement sensation when I stood in it.

The pamphlet includes coupons to save money on efficient light bulbs, which I like because every time an incandescent gives up the filament we replace it with a compact fluorescent anyway. The state giving me your money to save my own is not something I approve of in principle. But at least a patronizing bribe beats a gratuitous insult.

Actually I wish it wasn’t the only choice government, or “Gov,” offered me. But then, I’m a bit cranky.

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

After the Holocaust, enlightened people around the world said “Never again.” They lied. I think they’re lying again on Darfur. And hallucinating. It’s apparently been agreed that we’re going to blast our way into Sudan and slap the natives silly until they adopt peace, order and good government plus, I suppose, gay marriage. After all, Hollywood stars including George Clooney are demanding action. Maybe they should make a movie about a brave president who doesn’t mind invading Muslim countries that oppress their own people and foment terror. Oops. Wrong George.

The Globe and Mail editorialized that “The international community now faces a question. Is it going to back down and let the suffering in Darfur continue because a terrorist villain and the leader of a rogue regime tell it to, or is it going to do the right thing and act? The question answers itself …” Yeah. But not the way you think.

The “international community” has ignored, or actively abetted, a number of genocides since 1945. Remember Cambodia? And Democratic Senator George McGovern, a key player in forcing the U.S. to abandon Indochina in 1975, reacting to the Khmer Rouge slaughter three years later with: “Why don’t we send the Marines to do something about it?” This combination of fatuous arrogance and tragic incompetence would have humbled a lesser man. Stop the Vietnam war because Communists aren’t tyrants. Start it again because they are. Or not. All in an afternoon’s work for a liberal idealist. Or a narcissist.

Narcissism is the key here. Start with this “international community.” I see nations, often in disagreement. But I see no such community. Nevertheless I am frequently assured it exists and, curiously, shares precisely the values and priorities of the speaker. Hence the bizarre faith liberals place in a mythical United Nations that occupies the same real estate as the actual one but is unified, decent and ready to act, without a Security Council paralyzed by Russian and Chinese mischief and French sulking about glorious projects for world domination they would have gotten away with if it weren’t for those darn Anglo-Saxons. This mythical UN would never ever acclaim Iran a vice-chair of its disarmament commission. Yes, we’re-building-nukes-death-to-Israel Iran.

Also the Iran whose president has said “Our revolution’s main mission is to pave the way for the reappearance of the 12th Imam, the Mahdi.” Mahdi. Sounds familiar. Not just Moqtada al-Sadr’s militia in Iraq. The late 19th-century uprising against British imperialism led by the supposed Mahdi in … wait for it … Sudan. Want to go there again? Let’s. Yay. Peace, love and home in time for tea. Nothing to it, really.

Well, one small thing. The Globe concluded the editorial cited above: “Outside countries can’t let Sudan’s squawking abut sovereign rights and sacrosanct borders stand in the way of a muscular mission of mercy for Darfur.” I see the mercy. But who brought the muscle? The UN World Food Program just cut handouts to Darfur refugees to 1,050 calories per person per day because governments donated too little cash. Think those same regimes will spend billions, and soldiers’ lives, rescuing Darfurians, then policing the resulting mess for decades? Which only leaves Uncle Sam.

I have in the past warned liberals to be careful what they wish for in Iraq, because a U.S. administration, military and populace bloodied and demoralized by failure there, will hardly welcome a chance to do it again elsewhere under less favourable circumstances. Sudan’s neighbours aren’t likely to host a Western invasion force. We’ll have to do the whole thing from the air. With whose planes?

Liberals talked about the duty to protect. But they ignored the capacity. So now the pitch to those-awful-macho-Americans in sunglasses and body armour is, we didn’t join you in Iraq but you should join us in Sudan. Well not exactly join. More let’s you and him fight.

Ahem. Dear President Bush, remember all that joshing about how you lied and were a war criminal and the worst president in a century and an imbecile and stuff? Ha ha. Just kidding. Actually we share your idealism but um forgot to have an army, navy or air force so could you maybe just totally invade and occupy an oil-rich Muslim country for us a bit? If trouble erupts elsewhere, like Korea or Taiwan, and you’re overextended because you took on Darfur, well, you can count on us to rely on you. But we’ll cheer … until something goes wrong. Then we’ll denounce you as an insensitive imperialist and start muttering about Halliburton. Maybe Jean-Daniel Lafond will make a film starring George Clooney.

I mean, would people as splendid and caring as ourselves do nothing in the face of another Holocaust?

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]

Singapore researchers just showed a Montreal conference their “Poultry.Internet” system whereby you can give your pet chicken an intercontinental cyberhug. O Brave New World, that hath such gadgets in it. At last we can begin to live. Where does one even begin? I suppose by saying chickens are common household pets in Southeast Asia. It’s not as strange as it sounds (how could it be?). I mean, the average cat’s occasional gift of a damp dead mouse does less for your breakfast options than a steady supply of fresh delicious eggs. And what’s with pet snakes? True, a chicken that bounds into your lap carrying your slippers if you ever return from business travelling awaits further cybernetic advances. But hey, a “Poultry.Internet” prototype is here now. Where was this in the science fiction from my teens?

One lingering annoyance is you have to travel with a wireless-enabled chicken doll, which might raise eyebrows at customs. The chickens, pending upgrades, also have to wear special jackets (or, for penguin fanciers, tuxedos), creating an opening for pettifoggers to suggest if someone has to be there to dress the chicken, they could just pet it at the same time. Also, why not program in a petting sequence so the jacket periodically strokes the bird without the tedium of you having to not be there?

Now, while fetishists towel their damp brows, I should note that, according to the Citizen story, chickens deprived of human contact lay fewer eggs and experience more stress. And who wants tense chickens? Moreover, “Despite the possible confusion of being stroked by a disembodied hand,” a fleet of test chickens spent 73 per cent of their time in the area where they got cyber-petted after a month to figure it out. Which isn’t too bad given that chickens are, I’m led to believe, so dim that, frankly, even confusing one strikes me as a daunting task.

Not so with dogs. The makers of “Poultry.Internet” say a production model might cost $100. And what price happy chickens? But a similar system for more intelligent animals would also require two-way web-cams and voice capability so your dog wouldn’t get freaked out by this technology. Dogs are smart. So smart they’d rather go for a real walk.

Some cynics might suggest we are running out of useful things to invent. Maybe further advances in technology aren’t really going to save our economies, our societies and our souls. But just when a satirist is working up a good head of ridicule, along comes a practical use. Such a system would help handlers guide rescue dogs into tight spots, or let kids with allergies pat animals. (Technology described in another story, to let people monitor sonar readings with their tongues, holds promise not just for the military but also the blind. And, I say, youths deafened by years of listening to iPods instead of birds and conversation, who can in their declining 30s taste whatever ghastly music is popular then.) But just when you’re prepared to drop the sarcasm the inventors add that another advantage is it would let people interact with dangerous animals in zoos. When I was a boy the wonders of nature didn’t include it being OK to pat a crocodile in an electric shirt provided you did it online.

Then there’s their proposed “Pyjama.Internet” so you can hug kids you’re too busy travelling the world to visit. With the added wrinkle (or not, given advanced fabrics) of a GPS link to let Interpyjama change colour as you get closer to home. You can’t buy that kind of memory. And if they change back again as your plane whooshes right past overhead on your way to another technology conference, the resulting trauma could generate a lucrative modern dysfunctional autobiographical novel. So you can’t really lose.

Not even your luggage, thanks to a Rhode Island inventor’s “Fido Luggage” combining voice-recognition technology with remote control so it heels on command. Ah, the faithful suitcase, bounding down the ramp and into your lap carrying your slippers. Curiously, the Globe and Mail’s Social Studies says Fido Luggage has received hostile feedback online, including “Consider what would happen if everyone had one of these.” I think that would be great. While waiting for your flight you could stage mass impromptu luggage demolition derbies right there in the departure lounge.

Another critical comment was, “Man, when the machines rise up to destroy us, it’s going to be pretty embarrassing to get killed by your luggage.” Would you prefer some unusually clever chicken managing to turn “Poultry.Internet” on you and pecking you to death remotely in your hotel room in revenge for you never being home?

Another martyr to the march of science. Though the resulting video would be a huge hit in the vlogosphere. Especially with bored lonely chickens.

[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]