Only about a third of sixth- and seventh-graders who completed an abstinence-focused program started having sex within the next two years, researchers found.

THIS IS A JOKE. I wasn’t having sex in eighth or ninth grade either, for the record. I think that if an abstinence-focused program is to be instituted, it absolutely must be combined with safety education, such as condom use. Are those two things mutually exclusive?

Ideas like these – which are more widespread than I would like to believe, and which, sometimes, enveloped in my liberal bubble, I forget exist at all except on the raving crazy edges of society – are the reason that, while feminists have won loads of territory in past decades, we are still watching things creep backwards. Like a rising tide, every advance comes with a matching recession. There are still leagues of rabid anti-feminists out there who can feel their privilege being contested and don’t like it.

But seriously, this does sound like a joke. I find it hard to believe that anyone could write this with any sincerity:

Their professors have argued, with some success, that rights should be granted not to individuals alone, but to whole classes of people, too. This has led to employment equity — hiring quotas based on one’s gender or race rather than on an objective assessment of individual talents.

Mr. Roeder has pleaded not guilty to murder, but defense lawyers had argued that his beliefs about abortion might warrant a voluntary manslaughter conviction if jurors concluded that Mr. Roeder possessed, as Kansas law defines it, “an unreasonable but honest belief that circumstances existed that justified deadly force.”

Okay. Fair. But I knew I wasn’t alone. As the movie unfolded in front of me, I found myself growing more and more irritated – by the sudden weakness of the female main as soon as she was pair-bonded with the male main, and with the obvious white-American-colonial role of the humans in the film, and with the anthropologically unrealistic customs of the Na’vi. That’s why I was so glad to find this article – thank you, I’m not alone in being critical of this film! I mean, hell, it wasn’t as bad as Twilight: New Moon (during which I actually laughed out loud at several points, and immediately went into a verbal tirade upon the start of the credits)… but my reaction – my indignance – has similar motivations.

I believe that it is ethically obligatory for big box films – acts of media that reach as many people as both Avatar and Twilight – to be conscious of their reinforcement of racist, sexist, and otherwise ignorant ass-backwards ideas. These are the indoctrinatory systems we, as a culture, use to teach our children about the world. These are very powerful messages. Of course, I’m not about to suggest censorship, either. Maybe I should aim to be an ethical/social justice consultant for big media. Sounds like a great career option.

Unfortunately, Power writes, Alberta doesn’t really have a track record that lends a lot of hope to the situation. I know; I grew up there and escaped at the first opportunity. Albertans have a holier-than-thou attitude about their economic role within the nation and some delusion that that gives them the power to do whatever they like at the expense of not only the rest of the country but the entire fucking planet.

If I’m ashamed to call myself Canadian, I’m doubly ashamed to be Albertan, and I’m glad I escaped – but the “green flight” out of Alberta is likely part of the problem. If things are to be changed, Das’ book suggests, Albertans need to make those changes – and if all the activists in the province flee to the bike- and vegetarian-friendly coast, who’s going to do the work? It is vital now that Albertan activists team up and work together to change the prevalent view in the province. And they are. They have an incredible bond, those Albertan idealists.

I feel guilty for having taken the selfish way out and come somewhere that’s already a bit more enlightened. Someone’s got to do the dirty work.

The Athabasca Tar Sands project is the dirtiest oil excavation project in the world, and it’s in Northern Alberta. It’s not even economically feasible – the gunk that is pulled out of the earth is ” a filthy mixture of bitumen, sand, heavy metals and toxic organic chemicals” (Monbiot) that’s devastating the delicate Northern Alberta ecosystem. Treehugger posted an excellent before and after photo of the Athabasca Tar Sands area. There are people working at the Sands whose job is to scrape dead birds off of the surface of the drainage ponds.

This shit is fucked up. Harper even promised the U.S.A. to increase output at Athabasca, despite the fact that it’s destroying the Canadian ecosystem, single-handedly reversing our Kyoto promises, and is (arguably) the biggest current contributor to global climate change.

Being Canadian, as Monbiot writes, used to be something we could be proud of – at least we’re not American! But I don’t really feel that way anymore. It makes me sick to be part of this machine, to know that my tax dollars are supporting things that, in my gut and in my head, I know are so wrong.

In semi-related news, I am still glad I’m not American… did you know that more Americans believe angels are watching over them, and that UFOs make stops on Earth, than that humans have a role in climate change? Seriously.