Monthly Archives: August 2008

The Journal on private school funding

Politics, Religion

In a time when the press in Alberta can often be found highly in support of the religious status quo, it’s enlightening to see an opinion article in the Edmonton Journal on how the province needs to end funding 70% of private charter schools budget, especially those that promote intolerance and ignorance in the form of religious education.

The Journal’s editorial staff writes:

If the province has extra cash, it should first ensure the public system has the funds it needs. Public schools don’t get to pick and choose their students and they don’t have the option to increase fees like private schools to meet their needs.

The provincial government is the only significant well that public and Catholic school districts can turn to to cover their bills.

The government’s first obligation is to make sure there is a top-notch public school system that meets the needs of all school-aged Albertans. The decision to increase funding to private schools fails to help fulfil that obligation.

In response I submitted the following letter:
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Photonics Briefs I

Photonics Briefs, Science

As a desire to make a new regular feature on this site, I’m launching the first Photonics Briefs, featuring new articles, research, and news on the field of photonics. For the first couple issues most of my news will likely come from Nature Photonics, although in the future I’ll try to look around a bit more. So hopefully every Sunday from now on you should be able to see a new edition of Photonics Briefs.
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A Battle Cry for secularism

Atheism, Religion, School, UofA Atheists and Agnostics

This is a battle cry (no, not that Battle Cry). This is a cry for secularism at the University of Alberta.

There will be over 9,000 new undergraduate students starting orientation at the University next week, and they will notice a couple things.

First, like most universities, we still have a school of theology, and second, that we’re generally a open and secular school. Unfortunately, the second half of that is a lie.

When some of those undergrads finish their degree they will undergo the convocation ceremony. This ceremony contains an admission from the chancellor of the university which requires new graduates to use their degrees “for the glory of God.”
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Did You Get Your Mumps Vaccine?

Links, Religion, Science

Well apparently, it won’t help much.

I have a tiny bit more contempt for anti-vax retards than creationist retards. I could deal with explaining natural selection and that the world is really 4.55 billion years old to my kid, but explaining that they are going to die of something as stupid as mumps or measles is insane.

Its the 21st century, we should be worrying about our kids getting fat and whether they are going to college, not kindergarden.

BC has been given a one-two punch of religious insanity and hippie inanity and now has almost 200 cases of mumps. yeah mumps. Thanks to Science I’d never heard of it as a kid (I was asthmatic and loaded full of vaccines, and I’m not autistic, suck it Jenny mcCartney. I also went to a small school so people didn’t get sick much) , but your parents probably had friends get it. Ask them, they will probably tell you that mumps will do all kinds of wonderful things to you. It looks like this next generation will get the chance I missed out on. lovely.
Anyone know who this deadly dumb nameless christian sect is? It’d be annother wonderful example of how belief isn’t just dumb, its harmful.

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Edited August 30/’08
Original post was written in a bit of a rage. cleaned up and errors corrected.

What do I do?

Personal, Research, Science

I get asked the question a lot, what do I do? Now anyone who works in a scientific and technical field knows the problem with this question. And that is that half the time we don’t even know what we do!

For the short answer, I reply “I shoot [tag]lasers[/tag] at stuff”. But that doesn’t really say anything at all, does it?

For people with a little more technical knowledge, I might talk about how I make wire grids that are a tenth the width of your hair in the University of Alberta’s [tag]Nanofab[/tag] and then shoot them with lasers. But that’s still not really saying anything.
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Ummm, Hello Internet!

Site

My name is Alan, and in what is probaly some kind of publicity stunt, Ian has asked me to start writing here. Maybe THZ will eventually be some kind of press empire. Someday. World Domination and stuff.  In the mean time, a little about me: I’m an Atheist and an Engineering Physicist (and about as much of a nerd as the two usually seem to imply, of course).  Unlke Ian, I dig on the engineering side of the discipline, specifically Nanotechnology. Expect some erratic posting on the subject. It might even be educational!

Not a motivational poster

Atheism, Fun, Links, Motivational Poster

Hemant’s newest contest asks:

Atheists were not invited to the Democratic National Convention’s Interfaith Gathering.

What other events are atheists not being invited to? Why not?

My first answer was:

Ray Comfort’s birthday party, because he still doesn’t think atheists exist.

But knowing his soft-spot for motivational posters, here’s an alternative answer:

[tags]motivational poster, atheism, friendly atheist, hemant mehta, contest, heaven[/tags]