Russia has now prohibited both transgender people and people who wear drag from getting driver’s licenses.

The Russian officials have provided a line of “reasoning” for this measure but it’s so stupid and idiotic that I don’t want to write what it is.

Hello, Putin loving Liberals! Are you still listening or have you turned away as usual when your idol shows his true colors?

I went into a local store to buy a gift for myself, and the extremely polite Quebecois store owner was overjoyed to find out I live in the US.

“Tell me,” he said hopefully, “is it true that things are getting better economically in your country?”

So I told him about the drop in unemployment and the economic growth.

The store owner was overjoyed.

“Oh, that’s great, that’s so great!” he kept saying. “It usually takes the Canadian economy about a year to catch up, so we will see an improvement here soon. That Obama guy, he’s good. We love America!”

I left the store carrying 2 very cute umbrellas and a Peruvian alpaca wrap and feeling very patriotic.

The bright red thingy in the photo is the umbrella I bought. Cute, eh?

Technology as Nature asks an important question:

Why are all the liberals coming out of the woodwork

to insist that the Islamic-inspired terror attack in Paris has nothing at all to do with Islam?

I have an answer to this because this is something we definitely need to discuss.

The Koran is a book. A work of literature. What makes my entire profession as a literary critic possible is this interesting quality works of literature possess: they allow for as many (and more) readings as there are people on this planet. And all these readings have a right to exist. They don’t all have the right to get a passing grade in my courses but that’s a different matter.

The Koran only says what I want it to say. If I want to read the Koran (the Bible,  Don Quixote, the menu I’ve been given at the local diner, etc) as saying that I need to stand on my head, say coocooricoo ten times and wave an orange flag in the process, who’s to stop me?

Islam,  Christianity,  Buddhism, the scholarly interpretation of War and Peace, etc. exist in a bizillion and one variations. Give me 10 minutes, and I will scare up 5 Christians right on the spot who assign a completely different meaning to any chosen verse from the Bible. Of course, they will all be totally wrong because the correct reading is mine but their readings will still exist.

When Spaniards went to slaughter the indigenous peoples of the Americas, they were waving Bibles throughout the entire process. But the Bibles didn’t make them slaughter children and rip out fetuses from women’s bellies and throw them to the dogs. The Bible was just an excuse. I read the Bible and it didn’t make me want to slaughter anybody. I also read the Koran and it didn’t make me a terrorist.

The problem doesn’t reside in books. It resides in the incapacity of many people to accept that their holy books are only holy to them and that it is fine. But if books – not just these books, any books at all – didn’t exist, there would still be crowds of people who would find it hard to accept the truly radical idea that what is super important to me might seem stupid, insignificant, and ridiculous to somebody else.

The greatest step forward we can all take in our development as human beings is to understand that nobody else is me. And that’s OK. The most horrible things human beings inflict on each other stem from their incapacity to see where they end and other people begin. Abusive parents lash out at their children when the children fail to perform as the perfect mirrors of the parents’ fantasies. Rapists invade the bodies of other human beings because they can’t accept those beings’ agency. Immigrants are marginalized when they can’t blend in completely and become the mirror image of the locals. Cartoonists are gunned down when their sense of humor differs from that of somebody else.

The reason why it is so damn hard to accept that other people are not a part of me is because this idea leads directly towards a great existential loneliness and confers an enormous responsibility to become worthy of the word “individual.” And that’s such an incredible drag. Who wants to do all that when there is an easy alternative to grab some ancient tome and go bash some folks in the head with it to convince them that they are an extension of me?

I’m not nearly brave enough to defy religious fanatics like that.

But I admire people who are.

“On the one hand, religious extremists should not threaten people who offend their beliefs. On the other hand, nobody should offend their beliefs. The right to blasphemy should exist but only in theory. They do not believe religious extremists should be able to impose censorship by issuing threats, but given the existence of those threats, the rest of us should have the good sense not to risk triggering them.”

This is precisely what bugs me about many of the articles I have seen in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo massacre. “Of course, they didn’t deserve to die, but they shouldn’t have published these offensive cartoons.”

We’ve seen this a million times before. “Of course, nobody deserves to get raped but she shouldn’t have been out drinking that late at night.” “Of course, hitting people is wrong, but he shouldn’t have mouthed off like that.” “Of course, Putin was wrong to invade Ukraine but he shouldn’thave been provoked into doing it.”

“Yes, but” is a very old game where people underhandedly ally themselves with ideas they are uncomfortable expressing openly. If you allow yourself to be caught in the endless loop of a “Yes but” debate, you will never get out because your opponent is not being open and direct with you. The best way to frustrate a “yes butter” is to walk away at the first sign of yes – butting.

“Mommy and Clarissa, let’s play Africa!” Klubnikis said. “We will be in Africa and we’ll see African animals.”

“Ok,” Mommy said. “Look! There’s a kangaroo! ”

” Yes, ” Clarissa joined in. “Big beautiful kangaroos! ”

The five-year – old Klubnikis looked at us with great compassion.

” There are no kangaroos in Africa,” she informed us in a kind voice.