CSotD: Sunday Short Takes
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You have to be up on Quebec politics to get this Gary Clement cartoon: Quebec has passed a law forbidding people to have their faces covered while receiving public services, which includes things like riding a bus or checking out a library book.
The law, its sponsors insist, is not aimed at Muslim women who wear the niqab or burka but could also include masked protesters which is why it is named "Bill n°62 : An Act to foster adherence to State religious neutrality and, in particular, to provide a framework for requests for accommodations on religious grounds in certain bodies."
Because masked protesting is a religious act.
Prime Minister Trudeau the Younger says that it's not the government's business, while others have, like Clement, noted that sunglasses and scarves would be a violation of the ban.
To which the supporters of the law scoff, saying that, of course, they wouldn't apply the law to that sort of face covering. Which shows that, however they feel about revealing faces, they're very much in favor of revealing motivations.
I am curious about conservative Muslim dress, not just parsing through the various types, but parsing through, on the one hand, the people who insist it is repressing women and, on the other, people who say it is a way to preserve modesty.
I was passing through an airport a few months ago when I encountered a group of women in what I think were probably al-amir hijabs, such that their faces were exposed but their hair and bodies were obscured, kind of like old-school nuns but without the starched white frames.
They were laughing and talking and I thought how attractive they looked and then realized that this kind of went against the idea that covering up would keep strange men from ogling you.
But at least I was only seeing their dark eyes and laughing mouths and focusing on how much fun they were having and thinking it would be nice to know them, which is not the same as staring down the front of someone's dress or contemplating her ass.
I'm not sure if that's an argument in favor of the niqab or one in favor of accepting that men will look at women.
Yes, even on public transit or when they are checking out library books.
I'm also not sure what is covered by an asshat, but I suppose the people who passed this law ride in limos and not on buses.
Juxtaposition of the Day
(I've just switched from a somewhat aging desktop to a new laptop, which means that I have had to go back and re-learn all my passwords.
And, yes, I know you're not supposed to let your browser remember them.
Also you're not supposed to write them down.
Also you're not supposed to use Q-Tips to clean your ears.
And I should have a Mac, which I don't think has anything to do with this, but anytime you talk about an annoyance with a computer, someone will inevitably explain that you should have bought a Mac.
Anyway, I went to a site which I need for work and couldn't remember the password, so went back to my desktop, brought it up and requested a re-set, at which point it instructed me that my password needed to be at least 12 characters long.
The one I was thinking of was 16 characters, but if I took the "go" off the front and changed "yourselves" to "yourself" at the end, it came out precisely to 12, or 13 if I add an "!" which is a special character.
SYSADMINs love special characters.
But it doesn't matter, because we're all switching to face recognition and fingerprint recognition and retinal recognition and since computers never ever screw up, that's gonna solve all our password issues.
As seen in Reality Check.
Guy should have bought a Mac parachute.
God Am I Old
Today's Tank McNamara shows an old guy harking back to his childhood and his transistor radio.
I knew Bill Hinds was younger than I am, but I didn't realize his father is, too.
We didn't have transistor radios until I was a teenager. I had … oh, jeez, I don't have to describe it because here it is!
It's older than I am, but that's how it eventually ended up in my room. Yes, we had hand-me-down electronics then.
There was some problem with grounding because I had to keep a finger on it or it would squawk with static, but it pulled in stations pretty well.
Those little radios the size of a pack of cigarettes were useless, by the way, unless you lived next door to the transmitter. When I finally did get a transistor radio, it was one of those mini-briefcase ones where you could add a wire and fling it out your bedroom window and up on your roof to act as an antenna.
Dagnab it.
Cartoons With A Cause
The original art for today's Non Sequitur is up for auction through Elayne Boosler's Tails of Joy organization, where you can find a little explanation plus an interview with Wiley Miller.
Wiley writes:
There will be joint effort with her and the syndicate in promoting it on social media in an effort to raise as much as we can. The minimum bid will be $500, which is what I charge for an original Sunday edition. 100% of all funds donated to Tails of Joy go to animal rescue.
And if you prefer to support hurricane and fire relief, or if you'd like to support both efforts, the National Cartoonists Society is currently asking cartoonists — not just their members but all cartoonists — to join in a fundraiser that will also auction off original art, this being the work from November 23.
I'll post again when that one's ready to start.
Meanwhile, my dog's best friend is a greyhound rescue who runs his legs off just for the fun of bringing him down a peg, so here's a moment of zen for her:
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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