A metaphysical interview with Vladimir Putin’s mom

In recent weeks Vladimir Putin has invented a new sort of Russian reversal. This is where you send troops to Crimea and take control of the government and media, then hold a vote on whether you should send in troops and take control of a region’s government and media. The notion of consent involved here – as in “Crimean voters consented to annexation” – is a little bit peculiar. But it turns out that this sort of behaviour is a Putin family tradition.

This morning I had the opportunity to conduct a metaphysical interview with Maria Ivanova Putina, Vladimir Putin’s mother.

"I don't think every sweater you get from Goodwill has demons in it"

No posts recently; I was busy writing for a while. Then I got sick with bronchitis for nearly two weeks. Then I didn't have anything interesting to say.

I still don't, but somehow this morning I ended up reading the Christian Post for a while. Luckily, Pat Robertson has interesting things to say. The quote above is from him; the full article is here.

(Just so you don't think I'm maligning the Christian Post, the article does call Robertson "controversial".)

There was also a fascinating op-ed by Rachel Alexander on a recent gun control law in Connecticut. The new law allows for "the confiscation of weapons". It makes "between 50,000 and 350,000 gun owners felons....which could result in a prison sentence." According to it, "innocent gun owners would be put in the same category as sex offenders." The law is "insanity"; it is "foolish legislation", passed by legislators who "do not represent the will of the people who elected them". 

Oh, no! What sort of totalitarian horror is this? 

Passed last year in response to the Sandy Hook shooting, SB 1160 bans so-called "assault weapons" - certain rifles, more recently known as AR-15s, that have been singled out based on purely cosmetic criteria - and magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition....The only way to legally retain one of these newly banned firearms or magazines in Connecticut now is to register it - but most gun owners do not want their name on a government list.

Huh? Sorry, I think I misheard you - could you repeat that last bit?

The only way to legally retain one of these newly banned firearms or magazines in Connecticut now is to register it - but most gun owners do not want their name on a government list.

So the law "bans" weapons and categorizes gun owners along with pedophiles because it...puts their name on a government list? Like the lists of car owners or property owners? Like the list of registered voters? One of those lists?

Alexander compares the brave gun owners who are risking felony charges to support their constitutional right to not have their names on a list to the Spartans at Thermopylae. The image it brings to mind is Leonidas at the head of a phalanx, blocking a narrow mountain pass from a bespectacled, balding Persian clerk armed with a fierce clipboard. 

"Sorry to bother you," says the secretary. "Your name is 'Leonidas', right? Is that 'Leonidas the First' or a later 'Leonidas'?"

"I WILL NEVER TELL!" bellows the mighty Spartan.

"Could you at least confirm that your name is 'Leonidas'?"

"MOLON LABE!"

The clerk sighs and wipes the sweat off his forehead. "I'll just go with 'Leonidas the First', then."

More Friday morning lightbulb jokes

How many philosophers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

Lazy Friday morning lightbulb joke

How many Ph.D. students does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

Return of the Jedi, with commentary by a three-year-old

This is a few years old, but I didn’t have a blog at the time, so it ended up as a very elaborate status update on Facebook. (Which I don’t use much anymore, owing to privacy concerns.)

Watching Return of the Jedi with my son Milo, who was then three, I decided to write down what he said about the movie:

On names

Before I get complaints from any more relatives, I should explain: yes, I misspelled my own name.

My last name is officially spelled Lepock, pronounced LEE-pock. It’s some immigration officer’s attempt to render the Croatian Lipak, which I’m told means rosehip. My great-grandfather was from Glina, a small town in Krajina, a majority-Serbian region of Croatia. I visited Croatia once, but I stayed on the gorgeous Adriatic coast and skipped a pilgrimage to Glina.

When Croatia seceded from Yugoslavia, Krajina seceded from Croatia and most of the Croatian residents fled in fear of ethnic cleansing. A few years later, the Croatian army retook the territory, destroying everything in their path, and most of the Serbian residents fled in fear of ethnic cleansing. The generals who led the invasion were convicted of war crimes at the Hague, but acquitted after appeal. You may be wondering: if the Croats fled, and then the Serbs fled, who lives in Krajina now? Apparently: not very many people. Wikipedia lists Glina’s population as having fallen from 23 000 before the war to 10 000.

Glina was also the site of a series of massacres during the Second World War. And people wonder why I’m suspicious of nationalism.

I’m rather fond of the name Lepock, but people find it hard to pronounce. Most of them think it’s French and convert it to LePock – except, in my experience, for the French. They know a French name can’t end in ‘ck’, and just find it weird.

Calling myself Christopher L’Époque would be awesome, but maybe a teensy bit pompous. Going back to Lipak has its merits, but it’d be mispronounced “Liepack”, which would be unfortunate and not at all an accurate description of half of what I say.

Canadian literary types often misspell my name Leapock anyway, probably thinking of Stephen Leacock. (I occasionally get people who call me “Leacock”. I also get people who call me “Lepcock”, which makes me spend the next forty-five minutes trying to suppress the impulse to misspell their name by adding “youreadick” to the end.) So Leapock it is. 

Justin Trudeau and the Chamber of Secrets

I’m often struck by how much Canadian politics resembles genre fiction. You have the evil villain, the friend-betraying science-hating electoral-playing-field-rigging development-aid-into-corporate-welfare-turning Stephen Harper. (But don’t let that suggest that I think he’s a purely malevolent force. He’s the only politician who hates my cellphone company as much as I do.) And you have Justin Trudeau, the scrappy hero who, like Frodo Baggins or Harry Potter, must save the country from certain doom with only his courage, his wits, and a motley band of plucky friends.

I wish it didn’t seem that way, but there are too many parallels. Trudeau is the scion of a noble house, anointed by fate to return the nation to the pride it enjoyed under his father’s benevolent rule. Yet his early life was humble – he was a mere schoolteacher. Even after entering politics, he was reluctant to take up his quest, preferring to canvass Papineau on foot until Michael Ignatieff’s self-immolation left the elders of the party begging, “Help us, Justin! You’re our only hope.”

He’s adopted radical new tactics (like Ender) chosen with disarming honesty. (“Well, let’s just legalize marijuana. Heck, I smoke a little myself. Why is everyone staring at me like that?”) The agents of the enemy are never far behind him, falling on his every misstep like screeching Nazgul. Sometimes Trudeau only escapes by the skin of his teeth (like that time when he accidentally praised China for having a nice efficient dictatorship). His hair is unruly no matter how much he brushes it.

Last week Trudeau expelled all Liberal senators from the party. The Senate has been embroiled in corruption scandals - two senators were charged with defrauding the government with fictitious expense claims earlier this week, and two more are under police investigation. For anyone not familiar with the Canadian constitution, our unelected Senate also doesn’t do anything except for providing a world-class retirement plan for party hacks. Trudeau declared that the Senate should be nonpartisan, and started it on its way by booting all his partisans.

(I figure what he has in mind is something like the House of Lords. But constitutionally our Senate is much more powerful than the Lords. So it’s unclear whether that would work.)

This strikes me as the moment when the hero finally sets off alone into the wilderness, giving up all support except for a trusted friend or two. Trudeau has severed ties with the old fundraisers and strategists of his party, just as Frodo left the Fellowship of the Ring and Harry snuck away from the Order of the Phoenix. The parallel’s made even stronger by the rumours coming out of Ottawa that Trudeau made this decision without consulting anyone.

Godspeed to you, Justin Trudeau. Our fate is in your unlikely hands. I hope Hermione remembered her purse.