The Michael Valentine Smith Syndrome

[Virtual_Burlesque]

I recently moved to a different country with a seemingly different way of going about solving problems. These differences keep catching me by surprise.

For example: Quebec, apparently, has had an steadily increasing rate of teenage pregnancy over the last few years. I may have missed it, but I saw no vast political fight about how to try to solve the problem, but today a new policy was announced.

It is in the news, but there was little outcry. No loudmouthed protest on right wing talk radio. (Possibly because I have been unable to find a truly right wing talk radio station — for which I thank a benevolent Supreme Being.)

Perhaps there will be a backlash tomorrow. Today, every newscast was headlining the outcome of hockey star,Todd Bertuzzi's reinstatement hearing.

In any case, this is my latest citing of the Michael Valentine Smith Syndrome

 

[Huckleman2000]

I don't know who Michael Valentine Smith is, but his syndrome seems to involve an unseemly bit of common sense in public policy. In Quebec, no less! One would think the two factors are completely incompatible, and yet...

Truth is stranger than fiction.

 

[TheEarl]

Huzzah!

Of course this means that Canada will collapse into moral degeneracy with every 10 year old having sex every hour, on the hour.





Or something like that.

The Earl

 

[elsol]

There's a Garth Brooks song called 'Unanswered Prayers'...

Anyway I used to have this MASSSSSSIVE crush on a girl my freshman year in high school... it never got anywhere, but by my senior year she'd had three children.

Yeah, I owe God for that one.

So Vive Le Quebec!

Sincerely,
ElSol

 

[Virtual_Burlesque]

I don't know who Michael Valentine Smith is . . .

Hero of sci-fi classic Stranger In A Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein.

 

[Morwen]

Hero of sci-fi classic Stranger In A Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein.

I knew that, but I don't know know what that has to do with random Canadian newspaper headlines?

 

[TheEarl]

I knew that, but I don't know know what that has to do with random Canadian newspaper headlines?

VB's a stranger in a strange land. She's referring to the fact that everything's new and different to her.

Love the avatar Morwen.

The Earl

 

[Huckleman2000]

Hero of sci-fi classic Stranger In A Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein.

Ahhh, and I really liked that book too! I remember "grok", but not Michael Valentine Smith. Prolly 30 years since I read it; still, it's not like me to miss a sci-fi classic reference. The drugs and alcohol must be taking their toll.

 

[Guest]

i have a solution...maybe

when my eldest girl child was very young, she used to pick her nose. really, it was more like digging for gold with a huge bonus at the end of the line. so tenacious was she, that i was starting to be a bit worried about her going to school. nose fetish?
well, i finally told her that if she didnt stop scratching her brain, that i would send her to Asia where they had doctors who would sew up her nose.
it worked. so, she might be a bit mentally scarred but in the end, shell thank me.

so, my proposal is to use this tactic on kids who want to have sex.
"If you have sex, we'll send you to Asia where they have doctors who will sew up your hoochie!"

 

[tolyk]

WB, I read your post then the article... and the only thought I had was.. "And this is unusual why?"

Through and through canadian here We're a bunch of pacifists.. right-wing activists? I think that only applies to our environmental sticklers..

 

[rgraham666]

Oh we have a few neo-Marxists around here.

You need only read the Toronto Sun or The National Post for them. One columnist for the Sun once advocated hiring Third World mercenaries to do our fighting for us. "Hello?" I asked. "Didn't Rome do that? Just before their empire collapsed?"

Another said that newspapers had to support the lawfully elected government. And if they didn't, the government was within its rights to shut the newspaper down. And this man was a refugee from Warsaw Pact Checkoslovakia.

Never read the Post. I knew anything created by Conrad Black (a man with one of the worst inferiority complexes I've ever seen) wasn't worth the paper it was printed on.

And on the political side there's that snake eyed psychopath that currently runs the Conservative party. His suits don't really hide the fact that he wears kneepads.

Shrub II: "Blow me Stephen."

Stephen: "Slurp."

 

[tolyk]

Oh we have a few neo-Marxists around here.

The thing is, they don't have much influence, since the majority of us really just don't care

They could write an amazing article about government and what needs to be done.. It would get read by what? 10 people?

 

[impressive]

Can you just imagine the outcry if this happened in the U.S. -- especially in Alabama with all that damned gay literature being burned behind the libraries.

 

[tolyk]

Can you just imagine the outcry if this happened in the U.S. -- especially in Alabama with all that damned gay literature being burned behind the libraries.

I love my country, and I do as much as I can to show it, whilst still remaining a pacifist... (There's a good definition of patriotism for ya eh?)

 

[rgraham666]

Can you just imagine the outcry if this happened in the U.S. -- especially in Alabama with all that damned gay literature being burned behind the libraries.

I imagine a fair number of people would have brain aneurysms, apoplectic seizures or become catatonic.

So it wouldn't be all bad.

 

[tolyk]

I imagine a fair number of people would have brain aneurysms, apoplectic seizures or become catatonic.

So it wouldn't be all bad.

*laugh*

Oh, priceless Rob, priceless (makes me think of a potential Visa commercial )

 

[R. Richard]

You need only read the Toronto Sun or The National Post for them. One columnist for the Sun once advocated hiring Third World mercenaries to do our fighting for us. "Hello?" I asked. "Didn't Rome do that? Just before their empire collapsed?"

RGraham:
Yes, Rome began to use foreign mercenaries in their army just before their empire collapsed. The foreign mercenaries learned how the Roman army worked and how to defeat it. When they used the knowledge they had gained to defeat the Roman army and collapse the Roman Empire, they did not even thank the Romans. Ungrateful bastards!

 

[rgraham666]

RGraham:
Yes, Rome began to use foreign mercenaries in their army just before their empire collapsed. The foreign mercenaries learned how the Roman army worked and how to defeat it. When they used the knowledge they had gained to defeat the Roman army and collapse the Roman Empire, they did not even thank the Romans. Ungrateful bastards!

It's what always happens with mercenaries.

One day they notice two facts.

Fact 1: "We are poor, have weapons, and are willing to fight and die."

Fact 2: "Our employers are rich, do not have weapons and are not willing to fight or die."

The logic at that point becomes inescapable.

 

[Virtual_Burlesque]

As I tried to indicate, I am still new here, but several events like this have had me going. “Whoa!”

That somebody would suggest such a logical step, is not unusual, but that they did not immediately get slapped down, and have to spend the next year rehabilitating their career after such a blunder, is.

That it was passed without my hearing endless commentary about the debate – even at this distance from Quebec – is surprising, (I’m damn sure my walls would have shaken from the outcry if it were attempted in an Alabama, sort of place)

That the airwaves were not full of hysterical hand wringing about turning their daughters into (albeit, unimpregnated) sinners. No one called on God to lead the opposition, and no righteous citizen with God’s fax number informed us that before this can be allowed to take place, he is prepared t0 bomb every school nurse’s office in the country.

Maybe, now that Todd Bertuzzi will not be returning to hockey (That’s another question: Why the concern about TB being allowed to play hockey, when there is a strike on?) perhaps I will hear some nutsoid denouncing this sane new policy.

 

[Guest]

 

[LadyJeanne]

VB, I share your amazement. Frankly, I'm having a hard time believing it, though I read the story several times. No way in hell would this kind of thing be approved in the US, certainly not without a knock-down drag out fight that would make the 2004 election look like high tea at the Four Seasons, and even after everyone is dead or bleeding, it wouldn't be approved.

School nurses in the US can't hand out aspirin.

O, Canada! Go Canada!