When I was an undergraduate, I was always a little bit puzzled by the handout I'd receive in every class warning of what a serious academic offence plagiarism was. The same handout was provided verbatim and unattributed in each class, and I used to think myself clever, arching a suspicious eyebrow at the instructor and asking, "Did you write this yourself?" seldom bringing as much laughter as I'd hoped.
But I never felt the warning about plagiarism was very helpful in making clear just why it was such a serious offense. We were just told, "Don't do it." My naive first reading of it was based on a sort of intellectual property idea, that "stealing" someone else's work and taking credit for it yourself was essentially a violation of someone else's rights, that you were cheating someone else out of they due credit.
Of course that's one element of what makes plagiarism wrong, but respect for the original author's interests isn't the only value at stake, and actually a very small one in the academic context. How does it harm me as a writer if some kid in a philosophy of religion class in Kentucky passes off my essay on Anselm's Ontological Argument as his own? Maybe if he published it widely and diluted the market for my doing the same, but in a paper that only his professor will see?
And so if we emphasize this aspect of plagiarism, we make our dire warnings of how very very bad indeed it is to steal someone else's work ring hollow, arbitrary and forced. Seriously, who cares?
The problem is complicated, because there are actually several very different values at stake, and some of them are at odds with each other. Curiously, though, these sometimes competing values actually lead to the same conclusion, albeit for very different reasons. I'm going to talk here about three: pedagogy, evaluation, and scholarship.
Pedagogy
Pedagogy is about teaching; the objective is to impart knowledge and understanding to the student, to help them gain mastery over the subject matter. To that end, it's an extremely useful exercise to have them attempt to explain concepts in their own words. I have been a student, and I have been a teacher, and I have never learned so much about a subject as when I tried to explain it to someone else. This is why the essay is such a common form of assignment; the cognitive effort of formulating a thesis and composing sentences that actually convey understanding of the subject matter is ferociously powerful in developing and reinforcing the student's own understanding.
Sometimes, students will misinterpret the reason for an assignment, taking the instructor's question at face value as a request for knowledge. If a friend asks you for a justification of abortion that recognizes the personhood of a fetus, it's perfectly reasonable to just hand him a copy of Judith Jarvis Thomson's A Defense of Abortion, but your instructor presumably already is familiar with the subject matter of the assignment; she's not asking you to explain it for her benefit, but for yours. Merely copying out what someone else has written has almost no pedagogic value whatsoever (beyond perhaps honing one's penmanship, typing, or cut-and-paste skills). Now, maybe you do already have a keen understanding, simply from reading the text (in which case, good for you!), but if that's the case, explaining it in your own words should be a breeze. Even if it is, the exercise is still well worth carrying out, because you will improve your understanding by trying to communicate it.
So, with respect to the value of pedagogy, plagiarism is primarily an offence against the student himself, a squandering of the opportunity to learn. And, to a lesser extent, it's a waste of the time of the instructor who reads the plagiarized assignment and tries to give you thoughtful feedback on what she thinks is your own understanding of the subject matter. Admittedly, the instructor is probably being paid to waste her time this way, but give her some credit -- she's probably not just doing it for the money, and really also wants to help you learn.
Evaluation
The purpose of evaluation and testing is to grade the student's performance, whether for the beneficial purpose of diagnosing where more pedagogical effort is needed, the benign purpose of certifying that a student has met some requisite standard of expertise, or the downright pernicious purpose of weeding out those deemed unworthy of further learning opportunities. (As a teacher, I absolutely detest grading, though I understand why it needs to be done and so I grit my teeth and do it ruthlessly.) But whatever the ultimate use of the evaluation, the accuracy of the results absolutely depends on not helping the student to answer the questions. The test is meant to measure how well the student understands the subject matter, without help.
Obviously, then, a student who copies someone else's work on an evaluation undermines the accuracy of the test. (Well, not always. I once had a student cheat on an assignment in a business ethics class I was teaching. Seriously! Business ethics! The result in that case, though, was actually an extremely accurate measure of how well he had absorbed the subject matter...) To the extent that the grading serves a socially useful purpose, this kind of cheating hurts everyone.
Of course, there is overlap between pedagogy and evaluation for most assignments, since we tend to put grades on everything, including those assignments which serve a primarily pedagogical purpose. We kinda have to, because students tend to skip assignments if they can get away with it without harming their grades. This complicates analysis of individual instances of plagiarism; is someone trying to get a better grade than they deserve, or just being lazy about the exercise?
An example: I once had a student submit an assignment in which he was supposed to choose a scenario and analyze it according to a particular set of legal principles. He picked an actual case, from the published decision of the court, which by itself was not a problem. However, rather than write the entire assignment in his own words, he cut and pasted the relevant portions of the court's own analysis. Now, my first instinct at this point was to nail him to the wall for plagiarism, but then I noticed something: the original case had not addressed every issue (the defense had not contested everything), so my student had taken the trouble to compose his own (quite competent) analysis of these issues. In fact, he'd been very selective in choosing only the best and most relevant sections of the text, and so it was clear to me that he had actually worked on the assignment, reading and thinking hard about it if not actually writing so much. So the pedagogical objective wasn't really being undermined so much. And my purpose in assessing how well he had absorbed the concepts wasn't totally frustrated, though it was made rather more time-consuming as I had to compare, line by line, the original judgment with his submission. If he had just identified the parts he quoted, my task would have been much easier. (As it was, I refused to grade it as written, and gave him a stern warning about the academic integrity policy and just how very dangerous to his academic career such a mistake could be. It was a teachable moment.)
Scholarship
This brings us to the other reason for academic integrity, which is just a matter of doing good, useful work as a scholar. The whole enterprise of research and writing is to try to make some kind of meaningful contribution to expanding human knowledge. This is inherently a collective effort, involving thousands of human minds over many generations, and this creates some epistemological hurdles. If I publish a paper claiming that the Moon is made styrofoam, it's really not of much use to anyone if it's just my unfounded assertion. I should provide sources and references, cite where and how I got my data and how I reached my conclusions, to facilitate as much as possible the work of other scholars in understanding, evaluating, and ultimately confirming or rejecting my claims. As I've posted before, nobody cares what you think. What people care about is what they ought to think. And so it's important to provide all the information you can to help them make up their mind.
To that end, we have developed various conventions about how and when to cite authorities, how to identify and attribute a quote, and so on. It's also useful to give credit where it's due for ideas you didn't come up with by yourself, not so much because the original author needs the pat on the back (though that's just courteous) but because it helps your audience to better understand where you're coming from and gives them another avenue to further investigate the ideas you're talking about.
Failure to properly attribute sources in this sense isn't so much dishonesty as it is just laziness, and the chief effect is that it limits the usefulness of the finished product. Inasmuch as we're trying to teach students the habits of good scholarship, well, of course we're going to want them to include proper citations. But mere failure to do so is really more a matter of doing shoddy work, and shouldn't be confused with the grave offence of academic dishonesty.
Saturday, 24 August 2013
Tuesday, 13 August 2013
Finding Beauty
From time to time I hear about vicious and cruel tweets or comments thread posts about some woman or other being ugly. Most recently, I recall the winner of some tennis championship being the subject of hateful, nasty comments from people who figured she didn't deserve to win because she wasn't as pretty (in their opinion) as her competitor.
Quite rightly, plenty of people have condemned this behaviour, and also making the point that there is much more to any individual (female or male) than how physically attractive they are. I have nothing to add to this self-evident observation; instead, I want to suggest another reason why we ought to regard such behaviour with contempt, and that is from the perspective of an unapologetic girl-watcher.
I make no excuses. I confess that I do appreciate feminine beauty, and spend rather a lot of time in its contemplation. I do love to look at women. Not because I think that's all there is to them, not because I consider it to be any measure of their worth (even a small one), but because I just happen to be wired that way. If you're a woman, and you're talking to me, I am of course interested in what you have to say, because I value humans and their ideas and experiences, and I won't be staring at your breasts because, lovely as they may be, I value your mind much much more. That doesn't mean I'll be completely ignorant of your physical features, but they will just be one of many elements of the environment in which I might take some aesthetic pleasure. That I happen to like the music playing in the background, or the coffee in my cup, doesn't mean I'm not also paying more attention to you, your distinct human mind and your ideas.
If you happen to just be walking by, or sitting several rows down on the bus from me, or otherwise not interacting with me personally, well, then, while I know there's a unique mind in there, I don't have any access to it; all I have available to notice then is the way your hair complements the shape of your face, or the flattering contours of your jeans. That I might take some pleasure in seeing such things should be no threat to you, nor indeed of any interest to you whatsoever (unless you happen to be interested in me). It happens entirely within the head of this middle-aged married guy that you may or may not notice in a crowd, but with whose mind you are not currently interacting. A guy who happens to derive aesthetic pleasure from many aspects of the world around him, one of which is the appearance of females of his species.
Now, I say all this as a way of explaining that I sympathize with guys who pay attention to women's looks. I do too. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with that by itself. But let me tell you a little something about how I look for feminine beauty. To me, it is a kind of puzzle, an exercise in perspective, a challenge. I start from the presumption that there is beauty to be seen in just about everything and everyone, if you look in just the right way. It's very much like the famous optical illusion where you can see the image as a young woman or an old lady, just by choosing to identify a feature as either the old lady's nose, or the young woman's chin.
There is an additional pleasure in trying to solve the puzzle, to find the beauty hidden in plain sight. In many, particularly the women regarded as "conventionally beautiful", it's pretty easy to find. In others, it takes some effort, but it's there, and when I find it it's that much more of a special thrill to see. And if I can't find it (sometimes it's very well-hidden), I realize that the fault is with my imagination, not with her.
It's one of those little joys of discovery that make my life worthwhile, like solving a crossword puzzle. (And sometimes, I reverse the exercise, trying to find a way to see the ugliness in a supermodel. Not very often, though. I don't much care for ugliness, even if I know it's there. It's just a challenge, to keep my on my toes.)
And so, whenever I hear some jerk describe a woman as ugly, quite apart from my disdain for his lack of basic human decency (which I feel in my capacity as a human being), I also feel as a connoisseur some scorn for his flagrant and wasteful ignorance of the finer pleasures of girl-watching, pity for his inability to perceive and appreciate what is right in front of him. It is as if he had flung down a crossword puzzle in irritation, saying "Bah! Six letter word for lack of cash, beginning with P and ending in Y? Poverty has SEVEN letters, you stupid crossword!" I mentally pencil in "penury" and get to feel just a little bit superior.
Note: Apologies for the use of "girl-watching" instead of "woman-watching", but that's the commonly accepted phrase for the pastime, and when I started out as a boy, I actually was watching girls rather than women. Also, this piece is written from my subjective position as a heterosexual male who just isn't as interested in exploring the aesthetic beauty of the male form. In principle, my arguments should apply ceteris paribus to the appreciation of masculine beauty. But ceteris non paribus: no one ever seems to say that a man doesn't deserve to win at Wimbledon because he's less attractive than his opponent.
Quite rightly, plenty of people have condemned this behaviour, and also making the point that there is much more to any individual (female or male) than how physically attractive they are. I have nothing to add to this self-evident observation; instead, I want to suggest another reason why we ought to regard such behaviour with contempt, and that is from the perspective of an unapologetic girl-watcher.
I make no excuses. I confess that I do appreciate feminine beauty, and spend rather a lot of time in its contemplation. I do love to look at women. Not because I think that's all there is to them, not because I consider it to be any measure of their worth (even a small one), but because I just happen to be wired that way. If you're a woman, and you're talking to me, I am of course interested in what you have to say, because I value humans and their ideas and experiences, and I won't be staring at your breasts because, lovely as they may be, I value your mind much much more. That doesn't mean I'll be completely ignorant of your physical features, but they will just be one of many elements of the environment in which I might take some aesthetic pleasure. That I happen to like the music playing in the background, or the coffee in my cup, doesn't mean I'm not also paying more attention to you, your distinct human mind and your ideas.
If you happen to just be walking by, or sitting several rows down on the bus from me, or otherwise not interacting with me personally, well, then, while I know there's a unique mind in there, I don't have any access to it; all I have available to notice then is the way your hair complements the shape of your face, or the flattering contours of your jeans. That I might take some pleasure in seeing such things should be no threat to you, nor indeed of any interest to you whatsoever (unless you happen to be interested in me). It happens entirely within the head of this middle-aged married guy that you may or may not notice in a crowd, but with whose mind you are not currently interacting. A guy who happens to derive aesthetic pleasure from many aspects of the world around him, one of which is the appearance of females of his species.
Now, I say all this as a way of explaining that I sympathize with guys who pay attention to women's looks. I do too. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with that by itself. But let me tell you a little something about how I look for feminine beauty. To me, it is a kind of puzzle, an exercise in perspective, a challenge. I start from the presumption that there is beauty to be seen in just about everything and everyone, if you look in just the right way. It's very much like the famous optical illusion where you can see the image as a young woman or an old lady, just by choosing to identify a feature as either the old lady's nose, or the young woman's chin.
There is an additional pleasure in trying to solve the puzzle, to find the beauty hidden in plain sight. In many, particularly the women regarded as "conventionally beautiful", it's pretty easy to find. In others, it takes some effort, but it's there, and when I find it it's that much more of a special thrill to see. And if I can't find it (sometimes it's very well-hidden), I realize that the fault is with my imagination, not with her.
It's one of those little joys of discovery that make my life worthwhile, like solving a crossword puzzle. (And sometimes, I reverse the exercise, trying to find a way to see the ugliness in a supermodel. Not very often, though. I don't much care for ugliness, even if I know it's there. It's just a challenge, to keep my on my toes.)
And so, whenever I hear some jerk describe a woman as ugly, quite apart from my disdain for his lack of basic human decency (which I feel in my capacity as a human being), I also feel as a connoisseur some scorn for his flagrant and wasteful ignorance of the finer pleasures of girl-watching, pity for his inability to perceive and appreciate what is right in front of him. It is as if he had flung down a crossword puzzle in irritation, saying "Bah! Six letter word for lack of cash, beginning with P and ending in Y? Poverty has SEVEN letters, you stupid crossword!" I mentally pencil in "penury" and get to feel just a little bit superior.
Note: Apologies for the use of "girl-watching" instead of "woman-watching", but that's the commonly accepted phrase for the pastime, and when I started out as a boy, I actually was watching girls rather than women. Also, this piece is written from my subjective position as a heterosexual male who just isn't as interested in exploring the aesthetic beauty of the male form. In principle, my arguments should apply ceteris paribus to the appreciation of masculine beauty. But ceteris non paribus: no one ever seems to say that a man doesn't deserve to win at Wimbledon because he's less attractive than his opponent.
Friday, 12 July 2013
Thoughts on Writers and Editors and the Ego Collisions Thereof
[Note: This was originally a post I made on a writers' forum a couple of years. It's far enough removed in time that I can approach it as an editor instead of as a writer, which is kinda cool, considering the subject matter.]
Q: How many editors does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Only one, but he has to rewire the whole house.
Q: How many writers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: "But why do we have to CHANGE it?"
I've worked as a writer and an editor at various times, and so both of these jokes ring true for me. The apparent conflict between writers and editors is maybe not inevitable, but it's highly likely considering the nature of the roles, and in particular I think it's often a result of the mindset of the writer. We writers are in the business of expressing ourselves, of crafting an insightful piece of prose to delight and enlighten our awestruck audience. In the natural order of things, we expect to have people read our stuff and be better for it. However, this also tends to attract personality types to writing who are motivated by this sort of adulation: writers have voracious egos. This makes us naturally resistant and resentful to criticism, even (perhaps especially) when it is well-founded. It also makes us especially sensitive to editorial feedback, and likely to focus on personality issues. "Why can't editors understand what it's like to be a writer?"
But it's not an editor's job to understand what it's like to be a writer. In fact, it's very much the editor's job not to understand the writer. As a writer, I'm much too close to my own work; I know exactly what I'm trying to say, so I have no trouble reading and understanding it. But I am not my audience, and that's why I absolutely need a set of fresh eyes, the eyes of someone who does not understand me, to read my work and see what understanding comes off the page. Ultimately, as writers, our job is not to be understood and empathized with and admired as human beings, but to be understood through our writing alone. The text is all there is, and complaining that we aren't understood is really just an admission of failure as writers.
Since editors must also be skilled writers to some extent (i.e. they have a high degree of competence in structuring clearer sentences), they too are subject to the very same sorts of ego issues with respect to text. And all writers have their own approaches to grammatical issues and so on, so there will inevitably be conflicts between writers (including editors) over the best way to express a particular idea. There's just no getting around that; it will always happen. In many professional contexts, it's the editors who have the final say, so they have the power, and naturally we poor writers will lament about how unfair that is. But in my view, it's a very few people who get into editing because they crave power, or their egos need to be stroked by showing everyone how much better they are at writing than writers are. Yes, it does happen, but for the most part, we writers are already predisposed to see it that way, whether it is so or not.
And we editors need to take that into account. As editors, our job is to help the writer be as brilliant and articulate as she thinks she already is. The goal is to preserve the author's own voice, not to impose the editor's own. My greatest successes in editing have been those moments when I've been able to take the text, rearrange things a bit to improve clarity and flow and reduce the length by 20%, and have the author look at it in dismay and say, "But you didn't change anything!" Even when I've rewired the whole house.
Q: How many editors does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Only one, but he has to rewire the whole house.
Q: How many writers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: "But why do we have to CHANGE it?"
I've worked as a writer and an editor at various times, and so both of these jokes ring true for me. The apparent conflict between writers and editors is maybe not inevitable, but it's highly likely considering the nature of the roles, and in particular I think it's often a result of the mindset of the writer. We writers are in the business of expressing ourselves, of crafting an insightful piece of prose to delight and enlighten our awestruck audience. In the natural order of things, we expect to have people read our stuff and be better for it. However, this also tends to attract personality types to writing who are motivated by this sort of adulation: writers have voracious egos. This makes us naturally resistant and resentful to criticism, even (perhaps especially) when it is well-founded. It also makes us especially sensitive to editorial feedback, and likely to focus on personality issues. "Why can't editors understand what it's like to be a writer?"
But it's not an editor's job to understand what it's like to be a writer. In fact, it's very much the editor's job not to understand the writer. As a writer, I'm much too close to my own work; I know exactly what I'm trying to say, so I have no trouble reading and understanding it. But I am not my audience, and that's why I absolutely need a set of fresh eyes, the eyes of someone who does not understand me, to read my work and see what understanding comes off the page. Ultimately, as writers, our job is not to be understood and empathized with and admired as human beings, but to be understood through our writing alone. The text is all there is, and complaining that we aren't understood is really just an admission of failure as writers.
Since editors must also be skilled writers to some extent (i.e. they have a high degree of competence in structuring clearer sentences), they too are subject to the very same sorts of ego issues with respect to text. And all writers have their own approaches to grammatical issues and so on, so there will inevitably be conflicts between writers (including editors) over the best way to express a particular idea. There's just no getting around that; it will always happen. In many professional contexts, it's the editors who have the final say, so they have the power, and naturally we poor writers will lament about how unfair that is. But in my view, it's a very few people who get into editing because they crave power, or their egos need to be stroked by showing everyone how much better they are at writing than writers are. Yes, it does happen, but for the most part, we writers are already predisposed to see it that way, whether it is so or not.
And we editors need to take that into account. As editors, our job is to help the writer be as brilliant and articulate as she thinks she already is. The goal is to preserve the author's own voice, not to impose the editor's own. My greatest successes in editing have been those moments when I've been able to take the text, rearrange things a bit to improve clarity and flow and reduce the length by 20%, and have the author look at it in dismay and say, "But you didn't change anything!" Even when I've rewired the whole house.
Tuesday, 2 July 2013
Does God Matter?
A visitor commented in my last thread, preferring that I talk more about God than ways to reform our child support regime, claiming that at least it matters whether or not God exists. Well, does it matter?
I would argue that it doesn't, or rather, that it shouldn't matter to us in how we live our lives. That is, we may care very much whether or not God exists, and we may very much want Him to exist (or not to), but our behaviour should not be affected one way or the other. I approach this question from a moral perspective, and then an aesthetic one.
I have always been deeply troubled by the idea that God or the promise of an afterlife should be a factor in one's moral deliberations at all. Ultimately, it subverts morality in a profoundly diabolical way. I mean that very seriously: the form of "Christianity" (or Islam or any afterlife-oriented consequentialism) that emphasizes eternal reward or punishment as a reason for moral conduct is genuinely satanic.
Consider: Suppose Satan were to appear and offer you a similar deal. Everlasting pleasure, in exchange for some earthly act. Perhaps some horribly evil genocidal deed, or perhaps some simple, benign consideration. (Wearing a t-shirt praising Satan for an hour? And you could even say you were wearing it ironically. Doesn't matter.)
Obviously, if you consider yourself a Christian, you'd say no. After all, Satan's supposed to be the Deceiver, the Prince of Lies, the bad guy, so either he'd be tricking you into doing something much worse than you expected, or he'd not deliver on the reward, or both. No way could you trust such an offer.
But the same problem applies to promises that purport to be from God. Remember, this Satan fellow is not just a trickster, but the trickster; if anyone can fool you about something, he's the one. And his greatest trick, according to Baudelaire (and The Usual Suspects), is convincing you he doesn't exist, or more generally that he's not the one you're making your deal with. Why could he not, for example, dress himself up as a holy man, pretending to preach the Word of God? Lots of mortals, without divine superpowers, have done so and successfully led people astray; why would this be difficult for Satan himself?
So, disguised as piety, Satan makes an offer: "Buy into this worldview, ignoring its logical inconsistencies and moral perils, and receive everlasting life." And of course, when you buy into a worldview, you take everything that comes with it, such as (for example) the idea that you'll be rewarded in Heaven for carrying out this or that mission in the name of the church/temple/mosque/etc. You will go along willingly, since you have accepted the premises and believe you're doing the right thing because God commands it, and after all, isn't everlasting reward worth it, even if you've got some apprehension about it?
I've argued this point with truebelievers before, and the usual claim is that Satan is somehow prevented from uttering certain magic words, so he could never pretend to be God or misrepresent God's truth. Really? That sounds to me like the Greatest Trick. The possibility of Satan posing as true religion doesn't exist, so pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
The problem isn't with the identity of the person making the deal. It's the deal itself. When you base your actions on consideration of reward or punishment, rather than the good or evil nature of the act itself, you're making what is morally equivalent to a deal with the devil, regardless of who you're actually bargaining with, including if you think you're bargaining with God. A promise of eternal life, and all you have to do is believe? No thanks. The only reason you should need to believe something is that it's likely to be true, and no bribe or threat can or should change that.
The aesthetic argument is inspired by my thinking about fiction and drama. If God exists and is our Creator, it seems reasonable to think of Him as the author of the novel or play in which we are all characters. The setting He's created appears to have been painstakingly crafted to make obvious evidence of His involvement ambiguous at best. As an actor on this stage, I feel obliged to work with the scene I've been given, and it seems to me tremendously tacky for me to break the fourth wall by addressing or even acknowledging the Author while the play is going on. I'm here, I'm in costume, I'm on this magnificently believable set. I'm not going to second-guess the role I've been given; I'm going to play it. I will follow my conscience, I will engage in dialogue (inner and outer), I will strive to be worthy of treading these boards, but for me, even if the Author does exist, I would not be paying my role authentically if I were to seek a "personal relationship" with Him while the curtain's still up.
I would argue that it doesn't, or rather, that it shouldn't matter to us in how we live our lives. That is, we may care very much whether or not God exists, and we may very much want Him to exist (or not to), but our behaviour should not be affected one way or the other. I approach this question from a moral perspective, and then an aesthetic one.
I have always been deeply troubled by the idea that God or the promise of an afterlife should be a factor in one's moral deliberations at all. Ultimately, it subverts morality in a profoundly diabolical way. I mean that very seriously: the form of "Christianity" (or Islam or any afterlife-oriented consequentialism) that emphasizes eternal reward or punishment as a reason for moral conduct is genuinely satanic.
Consider: Suppose Satan were to appear and offer you a similar deal. Everlasting pleasure, in exchange for some earthly act. Perhaps some horribly evil genocidal deed, or perhaps some simple, benign consideration. (Wearing a t-shirt praising Satan for an hour? And you could even say you were wearing it ironically. Doesn't matter.)
Obviously, if you consider yourself a Christian, you'd say no. After all, Satan's supposed to be the Deceiver, the Prince of Lies, the bad guy, so either he'd be tricking you into doing something much worse than you expected, or he'd not deliver on the reward, or both. No way could you trust such an offer.
But the same problem applies to promises that purport to be from God. Remember, this Satan fellow is not just a trickster, but the trickster; if anyone can fool you about something, he's the one. And his greatest trick, according to Baudelaire (and The Usual Suspects), is convincing you he doesn't exist, or more generally that he's not the one you're making your deal with. Why could he not, for example, dress himself up as a holy man, pretending to preach the Word of God? Lots of mortals, without divine superpowers, have done so and successfully led people astray; why would this be difficult for Satan himself?
So, disguised as piety, Satan makes an offer: "Buy into this worldview, ignoring its logical inconsistencies and moral perils, and receive everlasting life." And of course, when you buy into a worldview, you take everything that comes with it, such as (for example) the idea that you'll be rewarded in Heaven for carrying out this or that mission in the name of the church/temple/mosque/etc. You will go along willingly, since you have accepted the premises and believe you're doing the right thing because God commands it, and after all, isn't everlasting reward worth it, even if you've got some apprehension about it?
I've argued this point with truebelievers before, and the usual claim is that Satan is somehow prevented from uttering certain magic words, so he could never pretend to be God or misrepresent God's truth. Really? That sounds to me like the Greatest Trick. The possibility of Satan posing as true religion doesn't exist, so pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
The problem isn't with the identity of the person making the deal. It's the deal itself. When you base your actions on consideration of reward or punishment, rather than the good or evil nature of the act itself, you're making what is morally equivalent to a deal with the devil, regardless of who you're actually bargaining with, including if you think you're bargaining with God. A promise of eternal life, and all you have to do is believe? No thanks. The only reason you should need to believe something is that it's likely to be true, and no bribe or threat can or should change that.
The aesthetic argument is inspired by my thinking about fiction and drama. If God exists and is our Creator, it seems reasonable to think of Him as the author of the novel or play in which we are all characters. The setting He's created appears to have been painstakingly crafted to make obvious evidence of His involvement ambiguous at best. As an actor on this stage, I feel obliged to work with the scene I've been given, and it seems to me tremendously tacky for me to break the fourth wall by addressing or even acknowledging the Author while the play is going on. I'm here, I'm in costume, I'm on this magnificently believable set. I'm not going to second-guess the role I've been given; I'm going to play it. I will follow my conscience, I will engage in dialogue (inner and outer), I will strive to be worthy of treading these boards, but for me, even if the Author does exist, I would not be paying my role authentically if I were to seek a "personal relationship" with Him while the curtain's still up.
Monday, 17 June 2013
Idle Thoughts on Child Support
I recall feeling vaguely unsettled by one of the legal principles of child support in Canada, when I was taking Family Law in law school. The basic idea is that parents are supposed to contribute financially to the support of children while the children are in the care of the other parent, and the amount of this financial support is prescribed in the Federal Child Support Guidelines, based on the income of the contributing parent.
Now, I have no problem with the idea that a parent's duty to contribute should scale with the parent's income. What I felt uncomfortable about was the fact that, under the law, the child of a wealthy parent has a right to more support than the child of a poor parent. It's not that I begrudge wealthy children being well-provided for, but that it strikes me as unjust that poor children aren't seen as being equally deserving. Wealthy parents will naturally provide more for their children than poor parents, and that's a private matter that we can't do anything about. Nor should we want to, even if we could. But it's different when the law gets involved, and the courts officially rule that child A is entitled to only this much a month in support, while child B is entitled to that much.
It's obvious, of course, how this came to be. After all, the money for these support payments is coming FROM the parents and going TO their own children. In the individual case, you can't get more money from a poor parent just because you think that child needs or deserves or even has a right to more support; the poorer parent just won't be able to provide, and that's that. I understand that the courts in child support cases are only dealing with the case at hand, not the income disparity between cases. I suppose it's a question of the rhetoric involved. If we limited ourselves to talking about the parents' obligations, then I'm perfectly comfortable with saying a wealthy parent has an obligation to pay more in child support than a parent of more limited financial means. But we do talk about the rights and interests of the children; indeed, in family law, the best interests of the child are of paramount importance. So when we admit the interests of a child as a matter to consider (as distinct from the obligations of the parent), the conflict arises: Why does this child deserve more support than that child? Is it not inhuman to say that a child living in poverty has less need for support than a privileged child? And we're talking about children here, not the adults who earn the money. Of course wealthy people who earn their money are entitled to lavish as much of it on their children as they like. But the children themselves have not earned this income, and it's a little harder to argue that they are morally entitled to it as against each other. And if a wealthy parent chooses to run a frugal household, spending no more on piano lessons or ski trips than a poorer family, the state will not generally interfere, and no one would argue that the wealthy parent's child is entitled to a more luxurious childhood simply because the means exist. But even if we have a sense that the children of wealthy parents in some sense deserve to benefit from the good fortune of their birth, are we prepared to accept the converse: that the children of poor parents in some sense deserve to live in poverty?
So while deliberating over this, I had a crazy thought. It's not something I could ever see happening in the current political climate, and I'm not quite sure how to square it with my own general philosophy on taxation, but the idea is this: What if a portion of every adult's income were paid into a general child support fund, which was then distributed equally among all children? That is, what if we simply applied the principle of child support universally, without regard for whether or not there was a divorce or separation? Parents who were still together would pay out their child support tax, but they'd receive back child support payments that would in all likelihood be more than they paid out (thanks in part to the contributions of adults without children of their own), thus ensuring that all parents with children in their care would receive some resources to take care of those children.
Such a system would have costs, to be sure, but probably not much on the balance, since the administrative infrastructure for taxation already exists, and here in Canada we've a long history of providing various subsidies for child care, what my parents referred to as the Baby Bonus. It would also have the benefit of removing the issue of child support completely from family court and reducing caseloads accordingly.
One of the objections I can imagine to this approach would come from adults who don't want to have children. I've heard in the past advocates for the "child-free" community argue that the choice to have children is a personal one that shouldn't impose costs on others who choose not to have children. I think we can dismiss this sort of whining by simply recognizing that while having children may be a "lifestyle choice", being a child is not; every single member of the "child-free movement" is a former child. There is nothing in the least bit discriminatory in providing a benefit that applies equally to all children, except in the sense that some of us were unfortunately born too early to benefit from it.
The other likely objection, of course, is that this is just plain wealth redistribution, and of course it is. That's not a point in its favor, but neither is it necessarily a point against it; redistribution of wealth is only a wrong if you assume that the current distribution of that wealth is more just than the proposed redistribution. As a default position, we should generally assume that people have earned their wealth lawfully through informed and voluntary trades, and so we should be reluctant to interfere unnecessarily, but that assumption does not hold here; children do nothing to earn or deserve being born to either wealthy or poor parents.
Now, I have no problem with the idea that a parent's duty to contribute should scale with the parent's income. What I felt uncomfortable about was the fact that, under the law, the child of a wealthy parent has a right to more support than the child of a poor parent. It's not that I begrudge wealthy children being well-provided for, but that it strikes me as unjust that poor children aren't seen as being equally deserving. Wealthy parents will naturally provide more for their children than poor parents, and that's a private matter that we can't do anything about. Nor should we want to, even if we could. But it's different when the law gets involved, and the courts officially rule that child A is entitled to only this much a month in support, while child B is entitled to that much.
It's obvious, of course, how this came to be. After all, the money for these support payments is coming FROM the parents and going TO their own children. In the individual case, you can't get more money from a poor parent just because you think that child needs or deserves or even has a right to more support; the poorer parent just won't be able to provide, and that's that. I understand that the courts in child support cases are only dealing with the case at hand, not the income disparity between cases. I suppose it's a question of the rhetoric involved. If we limited ourselves to talking about the parents' obligations, then I'm perfectly comfortable with saying a wealthy parent has an obligation to pay more in child support than a parent of more limited financial means. But we do talk about the rights and interests of the children; indeed, in family law, the best interests of the child are of paramount importance. So when we admit the interests of a child as a matter to consider (as distinct from the obligations of the parent), the conflict arises: Why does this child deserve more support than that child? Is it not inhuman to say that a child living in poverty has less need for support than a privileged child? And we're talking about children here, not the adults who earn the money. Of course wealthy people who earn their money are entitled to lavish as much of it on their children as they like. But the children themselves have not earned this income, and it's a little harder to argue that they are morally entitled to it as against each other. And if a wealthy parent chooses to run a frugal household, spending no more on piano lessons or ski trips than a poorer family, the state will not generally interfere, and no one would argue that the wealthy parent's child is entitled to a more luxurious childhood simply because the means exist. But even if we have a sense that the children of wealthy parents in some sense deserve to benefit from the good fortune of their birth, are we prepared to accept the converse: that the children of poor parents in some sense deserve to live in poverty?
So while deliberating over this, I had a crazy thought. It's not something I could ever see happening in the current political climate, and I'm not quite sure how to square it with my own general philosophy on taxation, but the idea is this: What if a portion of every adult's income were paid into a general child support fund, which was then distributed equally among all children? That is, what if we simply applied the principle of child support universally, without regard for whether or not there was a divorce or separation? Parents who were still together would pay out their child support tax, but they'd receive back child support payments that would in all likelihood be more than they paid out (thanks in part to the contributions of adults without children of their own), thus ensuring that all parents with children in their care would receive some resources to take care of those children.
Such a system would have costs, to be sure, but probably not much on the balance, since the administrative infrastructure for taxation already exists, and here in Canada we've a long history of providing various subsidies for child care, what my parents referred to as the Baby Bonus. It would also have the benefit of removing the issue of child support completely from family court and reducing caseloads accordingly.
One of the objections I can imagine to this approach would come from adults who don't want to have children. I've heard in the past advocates for the "child-free" community argue that the choice to have children is a personal one that shouldn't impose costs on others who choose not to have children. I think we can dismiss this sort of whining by simply recognizing that while having children may be a "lifestyle choice", being a child is not; every single member of the "child-free movement" is a former child. There is nothing in the least bit discriminatory in providing a benefit that applies equally to all children, except in the sense that some of us were unfortunately born too early to benefit from it.
The other likely objection, of course, is that this is just plain wealth redistribution, and of course it is. That's not a point in its favor, but neither is it necessarily a point against it; redistribution of wealth is only a wrong if you assume that the current distribution of that wealth is more just than the proposed redistribution. As a default position, we should generally assume that people have earned their wealth lawfully through informed and voluntary trades, and so we should be reluctant to interfere unnecessarily, but that assumption does not hold here; children do nothing to earn or deserve being born to either wealthy or poor parents.
Tuesday, 4 June 2013
Crossing the Border: Answering a Xenophobic Chain Letter
A few years ago, before we set her up with an iPad and her own email address, my mother used to give out one of my email addresses to her friends and business contacts in case they needed to get a message to her by email. Since we no longer live under the same roof, it wasn't particularly fast, but we have dinner together once a week, so it wasn't prohibitively slow, either.
In any event, I am now on the contacts list of a number of elderly internet users, one of whom frequently forwards emails of a political and supposedly humorous nature. Most of the time I ignore them, though occasionally I will reply to refute the ones I feel really need to be refuted. The following, however, is one so exceptionally daft I feel a need to share. I've cut the clip art, but left the text verbatim.
First of all, facts: No, you don't get any of that stuff for crossing the border illegally into Canada. To get a drivers license, you still have to apply, take a test, pay a fee and so on. Same applies for all that other stuff. Oh, and to vote, you need to be a Canadian citizen, and it's rather harder to apply for Canadian citizenship if you're in the country illegally. It's harder to get any of those things if you're here illegally.
Second, I think you've confused illegal immigrants with immigrants in general. Illegal immigrants do not generally have a great deal of political influence, and no one who can afford a lobbyist needs to sneak across the border. Printing government documents in a variety of languages is not done, for the most part, for the benefit of illegals; there are lots of people legally in the country who aren't fluent in either official language, and in any event it's often in our interest to ensure that they're informed about things like, say, communicable diseases and traffic rules.
But let's forget about facts and focus on the truthiness of this complaint: that other countries treat illegal immigrants as criminals and punish them harshly, while Canada treats them mildly and even generously. While the precise details of the email are at best distortions, the fundamental truth is that yes, we are nicer to immigrants than the other countries listed. Is there something wrong with that?
"But they're ILLEGALS!" one might protest. "They ARE criminals, so why don't we treat them accordingly, like those other countries do?"
`
Well, for one thing, I don't know what you've heard about the living conditions in North Korea, but you probably shouldn't rely too much on the official propaganda about how gloriously peachy life is under the Dear Leader. The North Korean authorities know perfectly well that their standard of living is not the envy of the world, and they quite rightly are suspicious of the motives of anyone sneaking into their country. Probably, if you're sneaking into North Korea, you are a spy and an enemy of the state.
Contrast this with Canada. Sure, someone sneaking across our border may be a spy or perhaps a terrorist, but more likely they're desperate people who just want to live here. (Spies and terrorists, if they're at all competent, will usually enter the country legally.) So there's a qualitative difference between your typical illegal immigrant in Canada and in despotic countries: Our illegal immigrants come here because they like us and want to join us.
Now, why might that be? The short answer is that we're a rich country. We may not feel rich, but we've got cars and houses and cell phones and lots of food and public health care and clean water and it's generally safe to walk the streets at night. We are fabulously well-off by global and historical standards.
And that's not just a coincidence. Sure, we may like to believe that our wealth is a result of our being hardworking and resourceful, but that's only part of it. People everywhere are hardworking and resourceful. The difference is that we, like the rest of the developed liberal democracies, have embraced the Rule of Law and the basic idea of human rights. That, among other things, makes it more worthwhile being hardworking and resourceful.
It also means that we apply these notions of human rights and such when we deal with lawbreakers, and that includes people who cross the border illegally. We don't, indeed can't, make distinctions between people with rights and people without rights; humans have rights, period. If we did make exceptions for this or that class of people, because they're foreigners or they speak the wrong language or didn't happen to fill out the right paperwork before crowding into a shipping container to escape brutal oppression overseas, well, they wouldn't be human rights anymore. They'd be "people we like" rights. And that's unprincipled, and incompatible with the rule of law and the reason we're so prosperous in the first place.
Seriously, O Anonymous Chain Letter Author, do you really mean to suggest that we should be more like North Korea?
In any event, I am now on the contacts list of a number of elderly internet users, one of whom frequently forwards emails of a political and supposedly humorous nature. Most of the time I ignore them, though occasionally I will reply to refute the ones I feel really need to be refuted. The following, however, is one so exceptionally daft I feel a need to share. I've cut the clip art, but left the text verbatim.
LET'S SEE IF I GOT THIS RIGHT!!!
IF YOU CROSS THE NORTH KOREAN BORDER ILLEGALLY YOU GET 12 YEARS HARD LABOR.
IF YOU CROSS THE IRANIAN BORDER ILLEGALLY YOU ARE DETAINED INDEFINITELY.
IF YOU CROSS THE AFGHAN BORDER ILLEGALLY, YOU GET SHOT.
IF YOU CROSS THE SAUDI ARABIAN BORDER ILLEGALLY YOU WILL BE JAILED.
IF YOU CROSS THE CHINESE BORDER ILLEGALLY YOU MAY NEVER BE HEARD FROM AGAIN.
IF YOU CROSS THE VENEZUELAN BORDER ILLEGALLY YOU WILL BE BRANDED A SPY AND YOUR FATE WILL BE SEALED.
IF YOU CROSS THE CUBAN BORDER ILLEGALLY YOU WILL BE THROWN INTO POLITICAL PRISON TO ROT...
IF YOU CROSS THE CANADIAN BORDER ILLEGALLY YOU GET;
A JOB,
A DRIVERS LICENSE,
SOCIAL SECURITY CARD,
WELFARE,
FOOD VOUCHERS,
CREDIT CARDS,
SUBSIDIZED RENT OR A LOAN TO BUY A HOUSE, FREE EDUCATION, FREE HEALTH CARE,
A LOBBYIST IN OTTAWA
BILLIONS OF DOLLARS WORTH OF PUBLIC DOCUMENTS PRINTED IN YOUR LANGUAGE
THE RIGHT TO CARRY YOUR COUNTRY'S FLAG WHILE YOU PROTEST THAT YOU DON'T GET ENOUGH RESPECT
AND, IN MANY INSTANCES, YOU CAN VOTE.
I JUST WANTED TO MAKE SURE I HAD A FIRM GRASP ON THE SITUATION!!!
A firm grasp on the situation? Where to begin?
Second, I think you've confused illegal immigrants with immigrants in general. Illegal immigrants do not generally have a great deal of political influence, and no one who can afford a lobbyist needs to sneak across the border. Printing government documents in a variety of languages is not done, for the most part, for the benefit of illegals; there are lots of people legally in the country who aren't fluent in either official language, and in any event it's often in our interest to ensure that they're informed about things like, say, communicable diseases and traffic rules.
But let's forget about facts and focus on the truthiness of this complaint: that other countries treat illegal immigrants as criminals and punish them harshly, while Canada treats them mildly and even generously. While the precise details of the email are at best distortions, the fundamental truth is that yes, we are nicer to immigrants than the other countries listed. Is there something wrong with that?
"But they're ILLEGALS!" one might protest. "They ARE criminals, so why don't we treat them accordingly, like those other countries do?"
`
Well, for one thing, I don't know what you've heard about the living conditions in North Korea, but you probably shouldn't rely too much on the official propaganda about how gloriously peachy life is under the Dear Leader. The North Korean authorities know perfectly well that their standard of living is not the envy of the world, and they quite rightly are suspicious of the motives of anyone sneaking into their country. Probably, if you're sneaking into North Korea, you are a spy and an enemy of the state.
Contrast this with Canada. Sure, someone sneaking across our border may be a spy or perhaps a terrorist, but more likely they're desperate people who just want to live here. (Spies and terrorists, if they're at all competent, will usually enter the country legally.) So there's a qualitative difference between your typical illegal immigrant in Canada and in despotic countries: Our illegal immigrants come here because they like us and want to join us.
Now, why might that be? The short answer is that we're a rich country. We may not feel rich, but we've got cars and houses and cell phones and lots of food and public health care and clean water and it's generally safe to walk the streets at night. We are fabulously well-off by global and historical standards.
And that's not just a coincidence. Sure, we may like to believe that our wealth is a result of our being hardworking and resourceful, but that's only part of it. People everywhere are hardworking and resourceful. The difference is that we, like the rest of the developed liberal democracies, have embraced the Rule of Law and the basic idea of human rights. That, among other things, makes it more worthwhile being hardworking and resourceful.
It also means that we apply these notions of human rights and such when we deal with lawbreakers, and that includes people who cross the border illegally. We don't, indeed can't, make distinctions between people with rights and people without rights; humans have rights, period. If we did make exceptions for this or that class of people, because they're foreigners or they speak the wrong language or didn't happen to fill out the right paperwork before crowding into a shipping container to escape brutal oppression overseas, well, they wouldn't be human rights anymore. They'd be "people we like" rights. And that's unprincipled, and incompatible with the rule of law and the reason we're so prosperous in the first place.
Seriously, O Anonymous Chain Letter Author, do you really mean to suggest that we should be more like North Korea?
Thursday, 16 May 2013
How I Defeated the Hornets
Today, a friend linked to a story about a Swedish man stung to death after attempting to mate with a hornets' nest. Having been stung by a yellowjacket myself, I found it difficult to imagine anyone actually inviting such a painful experience in such a sensitive area, but hey, there are crazies out there, right? Of course, this particular story is likely a hoax, according to this site.
Nonetheless, the tale reminded my of something I'd been meaning to write up since last summer, when I discovered a thriving hornets' nest under our deck. While I am by no means an expert on extermination, perhaps my experience will be useful if you find yourself in a similar situation.
It first crossed my mind that there might be a nest there when I noticed a yellowjacket land on the deck and then crawl down between the boards. As I pondered this, another landed in almost the same spot, and also disappeared between the 2x6es. Not wishing to be stung, I fetched a little mirror-on-a-stick gadget I have in my toolchest, and knelt down on the sidewalk next to the deck, a good two meters from likely location of the nest, based on the wasps' entry point.
This was the only time I was stung during the entire operation, and at first I thought I had just bumped my wrist on an exposed nail or something. But there was no blood, no obvious sign of a puncture wound, only the characteristic swelling and pinkness that goes with a sting. And it hurt like crazy.
The sting established a few things. First, it confirmed that there was indeed a nest present, and second, it was probably closer to this end of the deck than I thought, if I was so promptly attacked way over here. But it also established the commencement of hostilities between myself and the Vespulan colony, a war that would end with their utter destruction.
Phase I: Recon
I considered what I knew of my enemy. Yellow jackets, like true hornets, bees and ants, are eusocial. That means the individual workers are more than happy to sacrifice themselves to protect the hive, but there's no benefit to the hive if they throw their lives away attacking something that isn't a threat. So presumably, even when they get all riled up, they probably won't chase you too far. And so I planned a raid to probe their defenses.
I have a nice long stick with a natural hook at the end I use for picking apples. I wrapped cardboard around the end of it to make a kind of giant flyswatter, and approached the deck, after making sure there were no human noncombatants in the area. I saw a yellowjacket returning from foraging, and slammed it to paste with the swatter before retreating to the other end of the yard to observe. Almost immediately a dozen or so angry insects emerged and buzzed around in a combat patrol over the deck, their numbers growing as others presumably made their way from deeper in the nest. But they didn't stray much farther than two or three meters from base, and didn't seem to identify me, five or six meters away, as a target.
I carried out a few more probing raids, standing a little closer to observe each time, but fleeing whenever a Vespulan got too close to me. In this way, I learned just how far they would pursue before breaking off the chase, valuable intel to inform the next phase of my campaign.
Phase II: Harassment and Attrition
Interesting thing about yellow jackets. They are primarily predatory, bringing back insects and chewed up bits of carrion to feed the larvae, who secrete a rich sweet sugary fuel for the adult workers. Later in the season, when they focus on fattening up the breeders instead of feeding new larvae, the adults tend to shift their feeding habits to sweet stuff like fruit, which is why you'll sometimes see them buzzing around your root beer at picnics.
Flying is a pretty energy-intensive activity, which is why the adults need more sugar. This was mid-July, the raspberries weren't falling off the bush yet, and the hive was still growing lots of new workers, so most of the Vespulans' flight fuel was still coming from larval secretions. Strategically, then, they were highly dependent on foraging. This became my target in Phase 2, the war of attrition.
Each day, I made several harassment raids on the Vespulan colony, whacking the deck loudly with my swatter, retreating to just outside of their usual pursuit range, swatting targets of opportunity as they presented themselves. On a typical raid I might kill half a dozen workers, but that was just icing. Six dead workers meant six fewer foragers, but more importantly, forty angry wasps buzzing around defending the hive meant forty angry wasps delaying their foraging trips, burning up fuel, and needing to tank up again before going out to collect protein for the larvae.
The attrition phase took a week or so, and eventually my persistence began to pay off. Fewer and fewer defenders emerged to meet each attack. Even so, I could not assume I had simply killed them all; presumably the higher fuel demands had caused more workers to be diverted to foraging, keeping a smaller combat reserve to defend the hive. But in any case, the groundwork had been laid for the final phase of the campaign.
Phase III: The Ground War
The time had come to finish off the hive. By observing the Vespulans over the course of the campaign to date, I had a fair idea of how long it would take for them to be able to regroup after a raid. I also was fairly certain that the hive was attached to the underside of one of three adjacent 2x6es on the deck, which would need to be removed in order to carry out the final assault. I assembled the gear I would need: crowbar, swatter, a can of Raid (which in hindsight I probably didn't need). I also suited up with my fencing mask, a leather jacket, and work gloves, to reduce the likelihood of being stung.
The assault began with a swatter raid, just like previous attacks, except that at this point my objective was to kill all of the defenders, not merely to harass them. There were few enough at this point that I was able to do so.
Once I was satisfied there was no Vespulan in a position to sting me, I grabbed the crowbar and pried up the middle plank, where I hoped the nest would be attached. I had to move fairly quickly, as I wanted to finish this before returning foragers were able to join in the defense. Alas, the plank I removed was clean; the nest was attached to the next one over. I sprayed a goodly dose of Raid directly into the nest's entrance.
As I said, in hindsight, I probably didn't really need to use chemical weapons. At the time, I didn't know how many adult workers might yet be inside the hive as a last reserve against intruders, but I assumed there would be some. Indeed, there were a few, but I probably could have squished them without being stung, with sufficiently aggressive tactics. Alternatively, I suppose I could have put duct tape over the entrance. I shall always have to live with having made that decision.
In any event, I next grabbed the hoe and used its blade to scrape the nest free from the underside of the adjacent plank, and it fell to the ground under the deck where I couldn't conveniently reach it with my gloved hands. So I trotted to the garage and got a spear-like implement we have for weeding dandelions, and skewered the hive, bringing it out onto the sidewalk. Now it was just the mopping up.
Aftermath
A couple of adult wasps did crawl from the entrance to the nest, but they were in no condition to attack me. The insecticide was already doing them in. With the nest on the sidewalk, some distance from its original location, any returning foragers were likely to go into a confused "Where the heck is my house?" search mode, rather than angrily seeking vengeance. (Insect brains are very small.)
Still clad in my anti-sting armour, I began to dismantle the nest, which was a fascinating and beautiful structure. There were several layers of cells, many with larvae in them. I felt a pang of regret, but only a little. The hive was in a bad place, and as the summer progressed, it would become more of a nuisance, so close to our main thoroughfare to the garage. Besides, one of them STUNG me! They started it!
That said, I am not a sworn enemy of all yellow jackets. They're actually fairly beneficial creatures, preying as they do on many insects we consider pests. They don't seek out people to sting, tending to conserve their venom for when they need to defend the nest. As alarming as it is to have one buzzing around your plate in late summer, I don't think I can remember ever being stung by one that was out foraging, nor seeing someone stung under such conditions. Had they built their nest a bit more remotely, say, behind the garage, out of pursuit range from human routes, we could have peacefully coexisted. Alas.
Nonetheless, the tale reminded my of something I'd been meaning to write up since last summer, when I discovered a thriving hornets' nest under our deck. While I am by no means an expert on extermination, perhaps my experience will be useful if you find yourself in a similar situation.
It first crossed my mind that there might be a nest there when I noticed a yellowjacket land on the deck and then crawl down between the boards. As I pondered this, another landed in almost the same spot, and also disappeared between the 2x6es. Not wishing to be stung, I fetched a little mirror-on-a-stick gadget I have in my toolchest, and knelt down on the sidewalk next to the deck, a good two meters from likely location of the nest, based on the wasps' entry point.
This was the only time I was stung during the entire operation, and at first I thought I had just bumped my wrist on an exposed nail or something. But there was no blood, no obvious sign of a puncture wound, only the characteristic swelling and pinkness that goes with a sting. And it hurt like crazy.
The sting established a few things. First, it confirmed that there was indeed a nest present, and second, it was probably closer to this end of the deck than I thought, if I was so promptly attacked way over here. But it also established the commencement of hostilities between myself and the Vespulan colony, a war that would end with their utter destruction.
Phase I: Recon
I considered what I knew of my enemy. Yellow jackets, like true hornets, bees and ants, are eusocial. That means the individual workers are more than happy to sacrifice themselves to protect the hive, but there's no benefit to the hive if they throw their lives away attacking something that isn't a threat. So presumably, even when they get all riled up, they probably won't chase you too far. And so I planned a raid to probe their defenses.
I have a nice long stick with a natural hook at the end I use for picking apples. I wrapped cardboard around the end of it to make a kind of giant flyswatter, and approached the deck, after making sure there were no human noncombatants in the area. I saw a yellowjacket returning from foraging, and slammed it to paste with the swatter before retreating to the other end of the yard to observe. Almost immediately a dozen or so angry insects emerged and buzzed around in a combat patrol over the deck, their numbers growing as others presumably made their way from deeper in the nest. But they didn't stray much farther than two or three meters from base, and didn't seem to identify me, five or six meters away, as a target.
I carried out a few more probing raids, standing a little closer to observe each time, but fleeing whenever a Vespulan got too close to me. In this way, I learned just how far they would pursue before breaking off the chase, valuable intel to inform the next phase of my campaign.
Phase II: Harassment and Attrition
Interesting thing about yellow jackets. They are primarily predatory, bringing back insects and chewed up bits of carrion to feed the larvae, who secrete a rich sweet sugary fuel for the adult workers. Later in the season, when they focus on fattening up the breeders instead of feeding new larvae, the adults tend to shift their feeding habits to sweet stuff like fruit, which is why you'll sometimes see them buzzing around your root beer at picnics.
Flying is a pretty energy-intensive activity, which is why the adults need more sugar. This was mid-July, the raspberries weren't falling off the bush yet, and the hive was still growing lots of new workers, so most of the Vespulans' flight fuel was still coming from larval secretions. Strategically, then, they were highly dependent on foraging. This became my target in Phase 2, the war of attrition.
Each day, I made several harassment raids on the Vespulan colony, whacking the deck loudly with my swatter, retreating to just outside of their usual pursuit range, swatting targets of opportunity as they presented themselves. On a typical raid I might kill half a dozen workers, but that was just icing. Six dead workers meant six fewer foragers, but more importantly, forty angry wasps buzzing around defending the hive meant forty angry wasps delaying their foraging trips, burning up fuel, and needing to tank up again before going out to collect protein for the larvae.
The attrition phase took a week or so, and eventually my persistence began to pay off. Fewer and fewer defenders emerged to meet each attack. Even so, I could not assume I had simply killed them all; presumably the higher fuel demands had caused more workers to be diverted to foraging, keeping a smaller combat reserve to defend the hive. But in any case, the groundwork had been laid for the final phase of the campaign.
Phase III: The Ground War
The time had come to finish off the hive. By observing the Vespulans over the course of the campaign to date, I had a fair idea of how long it would take for them to be able to regroup after a raid. I also was fairly certain that the hive was attached to the underside of one of three adjacent 2x6es on the deck, which would need to be removed in order to carry out the final assault. I assembled the gear I would need: crowbar, swatter, a can of Raid (which in hindsight I probably didn't need). I also suited up with my fencing mask, a leather jacket, and work gloves, to reduce the likelihood of being stung.
The assault began with a swatter raid, just like previous attacks, except that at this point my objective was to kill all of the defenders, not merely to harass them. There were few enough at this point that I was able to do so.
Once I was satisfied there was no Vespulan in a position to sting me, I grabbed the crowbar and pried up the middle plank, where I hoped the nest would be attached. I had to move fairly quickly, as I wanted to finish this before returning foragers were able to join in the defense. Alas, the plank I removed was clean; the nest was attached to the next one over. I sprayed a goodly dose of Raid directly into the nest's entrance.
As I said, in hindsight, I probably didn't really need to use chemical weapons. At the time, I didn't know how many adult workers might yet be inside the hive as a last reserve against intruders, but I assumed there would be some. Indeed, there were a few, but I probably could have squished them without being stung, with sufficiently aggressive tactics. Alternatively, I suppose I could have put duct tape over the entrance. I shall always have to live with having made that decision.
In any event, I next grabbed the hoe and used its blade to scrape the nest free from the underside of the adjacent plank, and it fell to the ground under the deck where I couldn't conveniently reach it with my gloved hands. So I trotted to the garage and got a spear-like implement we have for weeding dandelions, and skewered the hive, bringing it out onto the sidewalk. Now it was just the mopping up.
Aftermath
A couple of adult wasps did crawl from the entrance to the nest, but they were in no condition to attack me. The insecticide was already doing them in. With the nest on the sidewalk, some distance from its original location, any returning foragers were likely to go into a confused "Where the heck is my house?" search mode, rather than angrily seeking vengeance. (Insect brains are very small.)
That said, I am not a sworn enemy of all yellow jackets. They're actually fairly beneficial creatures, preying as they do on many insects we consider pests. They don't seek out people to sting, tending to conserve their venom for when they need to defend the nest. As alarming as it is to have one buzzing around your plate in late summer, I don't think I can remember ever being stung by one that was out foraging, nor seeing someone stung under such conditions. Had they built their nest a bit more remotely, say, behind the garage, out of pursuit range from human routes, we could have peacefully coexisted. Alas.
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