Gee Whillickers

Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas to all! A little Christmas music for those that celebrate and enjoy. By a Canadian Teenager, Sean Quigley. This lad arranged this himself, played all the instruments, and sang. His friends are the others in the video, and helped with the cameras and all that. Enjoy.

This is rather huge everywhere here in Canada right now. The story of an Afghan-born immigrant who, furious at the "Canadian" behaviour of his three teenage daughters and wife, and with the help of his twenty year old son, killed them in a so-called "honor killing." His daughters apparently were "guilty" of the crime of hugging boys at school, dressing inappropriately, and flirting with boys. He has pleaded not-guilty, but has stated publically that his former family, “...committed treason from beginning to end, They betrayed humankind, they betrayed Islam, they betrayed our religion and creed, they betrayed our tradition, they betrayed everything.” Of course, everyone's talking about all the angles of this. The Muslim faith, freedom of religion, respecting laws, etc, etc. Here's a link: http://www.globalpos...-killings-trial

Okay, science fiction fans, get ready for Battle School. The cast for the Ender's Game movie adaptation has been finalized, with the addition of Harrison Ford as Colonel Graff and Abigail Breslin as Valentine Wiggin. I desperately hope they don't eff this up, there's so many ways they could do so. I still can't believe a book by a homophobic bigot can be so good. Like many, I tend to think he's seriously closeted. It would explain so much about that book, and others.

Sounds eerily similar to the Progressive Conservative Party vs. the Liberals, or, even more so, the New Democrats, in this country.

I'm just going to add, the idea that we possess a black and white "age of reason" is not accurate. In terms of moral decision making, how and why we make decisions about "right" and "wrong," this is a multi-faceted sliding scale based on many factors, mostly age and maturity, but others as well. A fellow named Lawrence Kohlberg did considerable research in this very area several decades ago. He summarized, for convenience, this decision making into six stages (actually three sets of two stages). What's important here is why we make the moral decisions we make as much as what that decision is. The stages are as follows: Level One (Pre-Conventional Moral Reasoning) Stage One: Obedience and Punishment Orientation (Might makes Right - How can I avoid punishment) - at this stage what is right is simply who's strongest and what hurts less. Stage Two: Self-Interest Orientation (You Scratch My Back, I'll Scratch Yours or What's In It For Me?) - at this stage what's right is what you can get out of it. Most sociopaths are here. Also pretty much all two year olds. Level Two (Conventional Moral Reasoning) (Most adults are here) Stage Three: Interpersonal Accord and Conformity (What is "normal", The "Good Boy/Girl" attitude, Peer Pressure) - Most middle schoolers sit here, and many, many adults. What's right is, quite simply, what most of your buddies do. Or think. Stage Four: Authority and Social Order Maintaining Orientation (Law and Order Morality - If it's legal, it's right, if it's illegal, it's wrong. Period.) - This is where most average adults are, and people who enter stages five and six beyond this are somewhat rarer, though not by any means insignificant. Level Three (Post-Conventional Moral Reasoning) (Only a relatively smallish, but still significant, percentage of people reach this. But some teens can and do think on this level even before adulthood) Stage Five: Social Contract Orientation (Justice, Dignity, Common Good thinking. We do what's right because it's better for society and humankind, not just ourselves) Stage Six: Universal Ethical Principles (Principled Conscience, Univeral Principles based on Equality and Worth of Life) We don't get to a stage and stick to it. We move up and down. Depending. Even from day to day depending on our mood. We can even be at one stage in one area of morality and another in another area. So where does this young man stand on this chart? Almost certainly not above stage one or two. As does the vast majority of the prison population. What does this mean? If we do things that would be effective to people on stage four and beyond and expect them to work with people at stage one and two, we're fooling ourselves. Badly. We can, however, help people to grow beyond the stage they're at. In fact, we do it all the time with kids when we're raising them, we just don't think of it in those terms. I know, this still doesn't really give any clear answer, but it might help us think about it a bit better.

I could take a quick look at it if you like, but it would have to be today, tomorrow or Friday early, as I will be unavailable after that until the 27th. I can't promise for my thoroughness in a short time frame, but I could certainly give it a whirl.

If we knew exactly how to deal with these situations, and knew precisely what worked and what didn't, then these things wouldn't happen. But, we don't. So we try to do the best we can, with what we know. The thing is, we really need to watch our assumptions. Making decisions on poor or unfounded assumptions is unwise at the best of times. When people's lives hang in the balance it's even worse. We know both boys came from poor backgrounds, exacerbating the already poor decision making and judgement skills of many teens. We know people need to be held accountable for their actions. We know human beings have some ability to do that as soon as they can walk and talk, but they can't do it fully until midway through their third decade of life. We know this is much harder for people raised in environments where the people around them can't or won't do so themselves. We also know, fairly accurately, how well prisons work. If our stated goal of "punishing" people is to stop them from doing such things again, then we simply measure the rate of released prisoners committing similar crimes. Those statistics speak for themselves, and they aren't happy statistics. If our goal is to "punish" people regardless of what they do once released, then we need to question our own motives. If our goal is to stop other people from doing the same, using those incarcerated as an example, then we have a serious ethical dilemma on our hands, not to mention questions about the success of that method. The very idea of "punishment" is at the core of this debate. Before we ask, "What is the appropriate punishment," we need to ask, "What is punishment? What do we want to achieve? What outcomes are desirable for the victim and their family, the perpetrator, and society at large?" From a strictly behavioural standpoint, we know simple behaviours can and are modified by reinforcement and punishment. These words have specific meanings in behavioural terms, and they aren't quite what the general public perceives them to mean. Likewise, the terms "positive" and "negative" in behavioural terms do not mean at all what many people perceive them to mean, and have nothing to do with "good" or "bad." We also know behaviours are influenced as much or more by their antecedents (what happens before the behaviour) as by their consequences (what happens after - reinforcement or punishment). Behaviour is influenced by consequences (ignoring antecedent) in four ways: Positive Reinforcement, Negative Reinforcement, Positive Punishment, and Negative Punishment. Those terms don't mean what you likely think they do. The words "positive" and "negative" are the mathematical application of those terms, meaning adding or removing something. Reinforcement is anything that tends to made a behaviour happen more often, and punishment is anything that tends to decrease the frequency of a behaviour. So therefore, positive reinforcement means adding something desirable, for example giving somebody something, like money, after a desired behaviour, like doing your job at work. Negative reinforcement means pretty much the opposite of what most people think it means. Negative reinforcement means to increase the frequency of a behaviour through removing something. For example, getting a teen to finish the dishes by agreeing to turn off the jazz music you like but that he hates. Positive punishment is what most people think of as "punishment," namely adding something unpleasant to a person, like spanking a child for misbehaviour. Negative punishment is removing something pleasant or desirable after a behaviour. For example when you speed in traffic you often have money removed from your wallet. Out of all that, we know that reinforcement is roughly four times more effective at affecting behaviour than punishment. Punishment works, but not very well. We also know that punishment's effectiveness is extremely sensitive to the length of time between the behaviour and the consequence. The less mature the subject, the more this is true. Giving a six year old a time-out for making a mess the day before yesterday is worse than useless. Court dates and jail time months and months after the crime doesn't work very well. Punishment works best when it occurs immediately (seconds, or minutes) following a behaviour. Not days, weeks, or months later. This is mitigated somewhat by maturity - the more rational and patient you are, the more likely it will have an effect later. The problem is, most criminals aren't particularly rational or patient. All of this completely ignores antecedent events. The things that happen that lead us to behave a certain way (including the way we're raised, social and cultural influences, etc, not to mention the immediate precursor). More importantly, it ignores the fact that regular life is not a controlled laboratory setting. Innumerable factors contribute to behaviour. Subtle and not so subtle things become antecedents and consequences. Thousands upon thousands of them. It also ignores the fact that we are not mice or rats. Our behaviour, thanks to rational symbolic thought, is infinitely more complex. So what do we do with all that? Damned if I know. Except that what seems to work best is look for the models that seem effective and copy them. We need to do what works, not what we think ought to work, or what we wish would work. What institutions, groups, countries, etc have the least problem with violent crime? What are they doing right? Let's copy that.

That's funny. I've done the same thing. Two ways around this are to ensure that the search/replace is case-sensitive, or, instead of replacing "Hank", use " Hank" instead. With a space. Of course, that still causes issues when a line begins with the name, and you still have to be careful with possessives, pluralization, and whatnot at the end, but it helps.

We have it so good, us modern-day writers. We use computers, instead of typewriters, ink, and paper. I've had occasion where I needed to change a name, well into writing a story. Because I discovered it had an association that I definitely didn't want attributed to my character. So, in two seconds, thanks to global search-and-replace, the task was done. Imagine the same thing prior to a couple of decades ago. Sometimes I have names I like before I have a story to put 'em in. Sometimes that works. And sometimes it doesn't.

Just going to add, seeing blue's reply while I was writing mine. The crime is heinous either way. There's no debate about the horrendous results. But there is debate about how we deal with the causes. Are there adults who act just as impulsively? Sure there are. We all know, sadly, that there are. But, they don't get that "brain development" pass. We expect that they're acting that way for different reasons, and therefore should learn to control them. Of course, even with adults, there's exceptions. Lots of mental illness includes poor impulse control and poor judgement in the symptom mix. Still, it seems to me that attempting to deal with the crime by painting every perpetrator with the same brush is disingenous. It's too easy, and not thought through. Not "civilized".

Cole is correct. Thanks to the modern miracle of MRIs we now know far more than we did a couple of decades ago about brain development. It used to be thought that the human brain was essentially finished when we hit puberty. We now know that is not factually correct. Not even close. In fact, significant changes to the prefrontal cortex happen until age 25. You have one guess for what the prefontal cortext does in the human brain: That's right. It's responsible for judgement, decision-making, impulse control, organization, planning, etc. All that stuff we know from experience that teens struggle with. The second area that continues growth and change well into early adulthood is the corpus collosum. That's the bundle of nerves and neurons that connect your left brain with your right brain. Most of you have probably heard the stories about the things done as a result of "left brain" and "right brain" thinking. Some of that is old wives tales, but there's some truth to it. If those two pieces aren't communicating quickly and clearly yet, it can cause a few issues. That's why we teach, and deal with, teens the way we do. Repetition, clarity, predictability of routine, encouraging (but not expecting) sober thought before action, with increasing challenges as they succeed. That's us, without knowing we're doing it, helping those neural connections grow and solidfy. Here's a couple of articles on the phenomena, found with a quick google: http://teenagebrain.blogspot.com/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/teenbrain/work/adolescent.html

I agree. If they're responsible enough for their actions that they can be punished as an adult, then they should have the privileges of an adult. To vote, sign contracts, drive, drink, etc. One without the either is true hypocrisy. Dammit, we can't have it both ways. Adult punishment for kids is just wrong.

Those sound very much like how I get ideas for stories too. Small things, tiny things, inconsequential things. Then another one. And another. And maybe combine them, and shake a bit. Who knows what will blend? For example: Sitting on my desk, right here in front of me right now as I type, is an old Blockbuster Video membership card. I was cleaning out junk from my wallet a few days ago, and forgot this was in it. Since Blockbuster went bankrupt, I took the card out and instead of tossing it in the trash, set it on my desk. So I was looking at it earlier today, and that made me think of the still empty store near my place, and that made me think of all those empty buildings, infused with the souls of all those movies, empty and yet maybe not so empty. What if all those movies, all those plots, all those heartbreaks and car chases and explosions and sex scenes somehow left an imprint on the spacetime in those buildings? What if some poor sap wandered in there, maybe a real estate agent, or a utility company guy, or even a homeless skateboarding teen looking for shelter. Then, what if something happened..... Stories can come from the most innocuous things. Even a wee bit of flat plastic with printing on it sitting on a computer desk.

I'm in. This could be a lot of fun, and sounds like a great way to build a story.

Okay, okay. Fine. You guys win. Tea and crumpets. Without further delay, here it is: The Bonus Chapter: (Don't read unless you've actually finished the story first) __________________ “You'd better hurry up boys,” said Mom M. “We have a plane to catch.” I looked at Dillon and he grinned back at me. We'd only been home for two weeks. I was just starting to try and get settled back into some kind of routine. That wasn't easy, since neither of us could go anywhere without being recognized. We'd only said goodbye to Sam the day before yesterday. He was on his way home. His parents were exactly how I figured they'd be, and the outpouring of emotion when Sam greeted them at the airport had everyone in tears. The airport was able to ensure we all had some private space for the reunion. Of course, we'd learned that the public doesn't have a lot of patience, so after the teary reunion there was a short public appearance so that the reporters could do their silly human interest story. Then Sam flew home, with all of us making plans and promises for when we'd get together next. Hopefully as soon as next month. Then, right after Dillon and I had come home from the airport, and only two hours into our homework, the vid call came. Just before I get to that, I need to say something. Because I can't believe they could be so cruel. My teachers I mean. You'd think I'd have an excuse. You'd think they'd understand. You'd think, seeing as everyone on the planet seemed to know personal details of my life, they'd know exactly why I was late on my homework and assignments. But they didn't care! “That's no excuse, Jeffrey,” they all said. “You'll still need your education. Maybe now more than ever.” Even worse, Mom and Dad M agreed. So, yeah, more homework. Sigh. Mom M came into my room, where Dillon and I were laboring away. She was grinning. “What's going on, Mom?” asked Dillon. She just grinned wider. “I hope you both got all your laundry done. Because you'll have to start packing again. We're going on a little trip.” I was having the oddest reaction to that little pronouncement. Half excitement and half fear. After my last trip I thought a long extended stay at home was a nice, comfy idea. Say, around a hundred years or so. Still, I was a big excited. And it was hard to ignore Dillon's reaction. He loved travelling. “We've had an invitation,” Mom M said. “All of us. Due to your work, both of you, not to mention the rest of us, in helping so many people.” “Invitation to where?” I asked. Mom M's grin was infectious. “To meet the Queen.” I looked over at Dillon, and he looked back at me. Our incredulous looks were identical. Dillon looked at his mom and stood up so fast he knocked his homework pad onto the floor. He ignored it. “Really? The Queen? Like, in London?” “Yes indeed,” answered Mom M, still grinning. “It seems we've been invited for tea.” Dillon's grin was now somewhere north of 100%. “And crumpets?! Maybe?” “Yes, I think crumpets might be involved as well,” said Mom M, laughing. * * * Buckingham Palace was amazing. There's really nothing else I can say. All that history, all that artwork. The floors, the ceilings, the furniture. I took a step backwards during the tour, looking at some artwork, and my foot bumped an ugly old chair, which I then leaned on heavily. It creaked menacingly, as if it was about to break. “Do be careful, young man,” said our private tour guide. “That chair is 850 years old. And has considerable royal history. It would be a shame for it to be broken now.” I jumped away in fear. Not daring to go near it again. Dillon just laughed at me. I can't imagine why it was a big deal though. The old thing looked horribly made, awfully boring, and like it might fall apart at any second. I could tell from our guide's look though that he had other ideas, so I made sure I didn't kick any more furniture. The room where we sat down for tea wasn't all that special. I mean, sure it was fancy. Fancy doesn't begin to describe it, but it was just a room. The tea service was pretty freak though. I wondered how old it was. I'll bet it had been present for a few interesting conversations over the past few hundred years. How exactly do you talk to a queen? I was able to stammer out a greeting, barely remembering what we had been told, and then we sat down. Of course, you don't pour your own tea when you're having tea with the Queen. Nor do you fill your own plate. The service was so prompt that I actually found it a bit annoying. Dillon obviously had no such thoughts. I could tell from his expression that he thought it was just great. And that's when everything got weird. I looked down at my plate, and picked up my crumpet for a bite. Then I looked up again. The Queen was gone. No big deal, I thought, she's probably awfully busy. The problem was, when I turned to ask Dillon if he noticed when she had left, he was gone too. For that matter, so was everybody else. Mom and Dad M, the servants, everyone. Then I noticed the room. I mean, it was almost the same, but the table was bare. And dusty. So was the floor. And the chairs, and pretty much everything else. The air had a stale, dusty smell, like a room that had been cooped up for far too long. I stared around me, wondering if some kind of a trick was being played on me. I pulled out my vidphone to call Dillon, or my foster parents, but it didn't have a signal. I was just beginning to feel the first twinges of panic when I heard a noise. Oh good, somebody was here after all. Maybe they could tell me what was going on. I stood up and walked towards the door, intending to find the source of the noise, leaving dusty footprints behind me. A boy, roughly my age, maybe slightly older, walked into the room. A very odd looking boy. I mean, his face wasn't anything special. He was cute, but he was just a boy. It was his clothes that really stood out for me. For a couple of different reasons. First, they were old-fashioned. Like, eighty year old styles. Like, just before I was frozen styles. Second, they weren't exactly the kind of thing you wore to visit Buckingham Palace. He wore sturdy, heavy looking beige combat boots. Long canvas pants, grey in colour, with the pant legs tucked carefully over the laces of the boots. He had a t-shirt on, plain white, but covering that was some kind of heavy vest with tons of pockets, all of them bulging with god knows what. His arms were bare. In stark contrast to his smooth, youthful face, they looked, well, older. They were more muscular than most kids his age, but that wasn't what I noticed at first. It was the scars. Despite his age, he'd seen more than a few interesting times from the looks of it. On his hips, he wore a thick, wide black belt. Hanging from the belt, among other things, was a fearsome looking knife. I think that last time I saw a knife like that was in that old movie about the Australian outback guy that goes to the US and scares away the mugger. I mean, it was huge. The other thing on the belt was even more scary. It was a holstered gun. I don't mean a stun-gun. Or anything even remotely modern. A real honest-to-god shoots-bullets-with-gunpowder kills-you-with-blood-and-pain type of gun. Again, just like the kind from just before I was frozen. I think I startled him. I don't think he realized anybody was here. As soon as he walked into the room, he saw me, and his hand instantly, and believe me, I mean instantly, went to his hip. To the butt of that evil looking firearm. I almost had a very embarrassing accident. But, he seemed to realize it was just some scared kid, and he stopped, his hand still on the butt of the pistol, and stared wide-eyed at me. As if I was some kind of a ghost or weird monster or something. As if it were me that looked weird and out of place. Still staring at me suspiciously, he said, “There's not supposed to be anybody here.” Okay, how did I answer that? I mean, I was invited. By the Queen. What the hell was he doing here? So that's what I said, “Yes I am. I was invited by the Queen. For tea and crumpets. 'Cause of all those people they think I helped. You know. But, what are you doing here? Who are you?” He answered, “People you helped? Who are you? What people?” I noticed his hand still was resting firmly on that gun. I had a hard time believing he didn't know who I was. I hadn't met anybody that didn't know since we got out of the Protectorate. It was a bit of a relief actually, though I could do without the suspicion. And the hand on the gun. “I'm Jeffrey. Jeffrey Chamberlain. Who are you?” He opened his mouth to answer, but was interrupted but yet another boy walking into the room, talking as he did so. “Any luck so far, Craig? I can't find it. I don't think it's here. This was a stupid....” He tailed off upon seeing me. He was dressed very much the same as the other boy, and now his hand, too, was on the butt of a scary looking gun. Now it was his turn to ask, “Who the hell are you?” His voice wasn't nearly as polite as the other boy's. The first boy answered for me. “He said his name is Jeffrey." He nodded towards the other boy while looking at me, "He's Joel. I'm Craig. Craig Jamison. Why are you in this Universe? This one is supposed to be empty.” I sat down heavily in the nearest chair. A puff of dust making me cough slightly. I had absolutely no idea how to answer that question. And neither of their hands looked like they were going to move off those guns until I did. The End

That's a really great idea, and sounds like it could be a lot of fun. As for drawing, painting, or really anything graphical, I'm absolutely useless. Just ask The Dude as he pulled his hair out trying to get me to give him some idea what graphics to use for the title page of my stories. After politely turning down my first couple of ideas, I think he's learned his lesson, and doesn't even ask me anymore. Good call.

This is amazing. I'm not particularly a fan of bluegrass, but it's hard not to enjoy this, those brothers so obviously enjoy what they're doing. On a more important note, did you see the cool giant model of the Millenium Falcon and the kid's bedside table?!

I seem to know more about American history and its constitution and Bill or Rights than many fundamentalist Americans. And I'm not even American.

Flash mob dance number. In an airport. Take a look.

A taste of sweet justice. The original video has just become the 2nd most "disliked" video ever, in youtube history, behind Justin Beiber's "Baby." Even more staggeringly significant, it wins hands down in terms of dislikes per view. It's not even close. At 750,000 views and 300,000 dislikes, this video reaches an incredible 40% of viewers disliking. It's extremely rare for even 10% of viewers of most videos to even bother logging in and voting, either like or dislike, so this is hugely significant. And probably a serious error on the part of Rick Perry's campaign. There's still hope for the world, and this goes a long way to making me feel optimistic about the future.

One of those regional language use issues rears its ugly head. "Engineering Faculty" meaning "Those students who are enrolled in the engineering faculty (meaning 'department')." So, the students taking engineering were the hardest partiers.

What I remember most about the engineering faculty where I went to school was that they were inevitably, by far, the biggest partiers of the entire school.

How can anybody possibly get away with this?! Seriously. How can this happen anywhere? Let alone that beautiful country to the south of me. And to think, this man is a governor. Sheesh, my stories are supposed to be fiction dammit! There's good news there though, folks. Look at the number of likes vs. dislikes for this video. Also, I clicked the little "report abusive content" button and flagged it as hate speech. I encourage others to do the same. Maybe that will get some attention. His last sentence speaks volumes, does it not? "I'm Rick Perry, and I approve this message." Well, Ricky. If you can possibly be a pitiful enough human being that you can "approve" of any such thing, then I certainly know exactly and precisely how I feel about you. I'm all for free speech. I'm also all for letting people who can spew disgusting vile tripe know exactly what the world at large thinks of such intolerant small-mindedness. Please, please reassure me, all of you AD americans, that this man has no chance at all of becoming the guy with his finger near the "blow up the world" button.

Thanks for you comments, blue. There was actually a thread for the story from when it was being posted originally, but it may be down a few pages now. That's fine though, it was nice to see it being talked about again. I'm not sure why your links were turning up different colors. It wasn't anything to do with the story itself, they were all linked identically, so I suspect it's your browser. As for how Joel ends up in the world, he was in the original field along with Craig. When the original experiment happened Craig was outside on the highway, in range of the field, and Joel was out on a boat in the lake while fishing with his dad. Same thing, inside the field. So he was therefore "linked" to that universe as well, and Craig's wish for company brought him there. Anytime anybody moves universes, including when Craig and Joel get pulled back home the first time, there was a preceding, "I wish...." somewhere shortly prior to that. Look for it. Thanks again for the comments. I'm really glad this story has and continues to be enjoyed by so many.

Since this video went viral I've seen a few stories about it today in online newspapers. I, too, was a bit worried because in the original video he never claims he was gay, just that people were insulting him. Yet, the stories I've read had headlines such as, "Gay bullied teen makes touching video." I feel a bit better now that I've seen the follow up video. But he never comes out and states his sexuality in that one either, just hints at it. In any case, it looks like (hopefully) that will be a non-issue. I'd hate for this kid to have it even worse thanks to well meaning but unthinking internet bloggers and news media who either unintentionally or inaccurately outs him. As to how it went viral, I'm not quite sure where it started, but somewhere in the early part of it yesterday it got tweeted by George Takei. I think that had a lot to do with it.