Small steps
About 3 months ago I posted my criticisms about the leadership of CFI Canada. A little debate ensued and then the issue essentially died as I ran into school and focussed less on it.
In mid-October Justin Trottier issued his formal response on behalf of CFI Canada, by means of his blog ironically (considering it isn’t CFI affiliated, but I’ll admit the optics are better putting it there than on the front page of http://cficanada.ca).
The best news out of this is the following (long overdue, but that’s Canada’s system of red-tape):
As proof of how far we have come, I am pleased to announce the Centre for Inquiry is now a charitable organization in Canada and ready to issue tax receipts.
He also removed his blog postings from his Facebook profile, which further separates CFI from his men’s rights views.
Unfortunately, my concerns about the democratic nature are left unaddressed, however, it’s well worth noting that each CFI branch in Canada tends to operate as a self-directed organization. This means that CFI Vancouver (or Calgary or Montreal) almost entirely run themselves, and have access to the resources of the CFI umbrella.
CFIs board remains unelected, and I see that remaining as is for the foreseeable future. Meanwhile Humanist Canada’s elected board has undergone some internal strife recently that culminated in the resignation of board president Pat O’Brien (who spoke at the BC Humanist board meeting a couple weeks ago). I’ll avoid the gossipy details since I didn’t take notes.
Humanist Canada has kept an elected board for years, however, with declining active membership, their board essentially becomes election by acclamation (which is hardly different then appointments anyway).
In the new year I’ll likely be actively involved in both Humanist Canada and CFI Canada, and advocating for greater cooperation between both groups for the good of freethought in Canada.
Harper’s stance explained
A few days ago I brought up how no one really cares to point out how atrocious China’s human rights record is, and how Harper half muttered it again under his breathe after visiting the country for a spanking.
Soon after I saw Murray Dobbin had posted a hypothesis about why Harper is willing to attack the human rights record in China while overlooking atrocities in Afghanistan and other countries:
One of Harper’s most important constituencies – the anti-abortion movement – has China at the very top of its hate list. If you believe abortion is murder then there are more babies killed in China every year through abortion than in all the rest of the world combined.
Now, Harper’s association with the religious right, while somewhat quiet, is well established and you can easily find evidence of how much pro-lifers hate the Chinese government (and not just because they’re dirty Communists). So perhaps it does all make sense now.
Remember when the Carbon Tax ruined BC?
Almost two years ago the naysayers were coming out:
To launch a carbon tax now in the face of a potential recession would be foolhardy. Those gouged by it would be forced to cut spending on other goods and services, aggravating the slowdown and triggering further unemployment.
While I don’t like Gordon Campbell and his party, and Carole James attack of the tax was very misguided, you have to admit the tax hasn’t crippled BC. BCs GDP hasn’t dropped any more than the rest of Canada, and it looks like BC will actually be doing quite reasonably next year.
Now, the actual environmental effects of this tax may take a while to see, but it is good to point out that you can have both an economy and an environmental platform.
It’s also worth noting that some of the arguments against the HST (that it will slow spending) were the same as those against the Carbon Tax, and I’ll agree that they’re likely alarmist arguments. But I still oppose the HST since it fails to do anything for the people of BC and Ontario. Since tax cuts are just being straight shifted to large businesses, and is costing every Canadian $200 ($6 billion in handouts from Ottawa) before the tax is even in place. Further, the tax comes with a load of strings, limiting the ability of BC and Ontario to exempt products from the tax in the future. While harmonization may make sense, using it as a method of tax structure shifting is wrong.
Away from the manger?
While walking in downtown Vancouver yesterday, I passed St. Paul’s Hospital in downtown Vancouver and noticed their nativity scene on display:
But someone seemed to be missing…
Actually, that seems right, 2009 years ago a bunch of nomads met in the Middle East and nothing special happened.
If you want a gun ban, say so
With today being the anniversary of the tragic Montreal Massacre, in which a misogynistic extremist took a gun to 14 women before himself, many are repeating their calls to not end the long gun registry.
As I’ve said before, the arguments seem almost entirely emotional based, but this time I want to offer a piece of advice to the good-intentioned:
You don’t really want the gun registry, you want a long-gun ban.
Registered guns can kill people just as easily as unregistered ones (especially when the sociopath kills themselves after committing their atrocity).
So let’s actually make this debate about what it really is: Whether or not we want guns at all in our society, and not skirt the issue with ineffective, feel-good legislation.
War on Science – the Climate front
Because denying evolution is the fundamental basis for evolution isn’t enough for some, it seems the climate change denialists are ramping up to an all out war.
Now, I’m not talking about such violent wars as the “war on Christmas” or “militant atheism,” but an actual, increasingly illegal and violent effort to attack, discredit and threaten real scientists.
The first big break the villains had was their release of hacked emails from the Climate Research Group of East Anglia University. Ignore the fact that these emails contain little more than the honest concerns and relays of human beings, it gave denialists the belief that they’d uncovered the TruthTM what they’d always known – that anthropogenic climate change is an international plot to make Al Gore the supreme leader of a new Communist dictatorship.
These denialists come in every form, some are ardent atheists that I share some common ground, others are Christian. Almost all tend to also believe in lazy-fairy capitalism though.
On a Facebook post about how Canada could actually be doing something to save the environment right now had the coalition actually achieved government a year ago I got these gems:
how is it possible to NOT be skeptical over climate change when it has recently become apparent that there is no pure science on this? The data have been manipulated and in some cases, completely fabricated. The "scientists" conducting these studies do not do so in the interest of gaining knowledge, but because they have an agenda.
I'm not saying that it's all bullshit, but I am saying that it is irresponsible of the government to act on bad information, especially when doing so will cost taxpayers a metric shitload of money, and some people their jobs. [emphasis added]
I don't believe in global warming with the data available at the moment and neither do most people. Thats why its been changed to "climate change". Ian, as a scientist or soon to be one, you should be appalled over the disgrace that has fallen over some of the scientific community. This is a disgrace to the "peer-reviewed" procedure. After all, what's the point if your peer holds the same political and cultural agenda and is willing to cross scientific barriers to see it through.[Refuting links added]
If the emails really discredit all science accumulated over the past thirty years on climate change, then show me how and where they say that. Otherwise shut the fuck up.
But I guess stealing emails wasn’t enough.
Now, the University of Victoria is being broken into and sketchy “technicians” are wandering the halls at the Canadian Centre for Climate Modeling and Analysis. These are actual criminal acts.
I like this comparison of the increasing violence:
Unless we're prepared to rewrite history so that the real villains of Watergate were the Democrats for having a hotel room worth breaking into.
I’m really worried about this conflict though.
In the evolution vs. creationism conflict, you have overwhelming evidence dogmatic ignorance.
In this debate though, you have overwhelming evidence, except now the dogmatic ignorance has big oil funding behind it.
What no one seems to want to say
China is pissed at Harper and Canada?
Good. May we piss them off more!
China has an abhorrent, dictatorial record as a human-rights abuser and deserves to be called as such.
Someone has to stand up to China. The Liberals don’t want to, the NDP is makes minor mutterings about human rights concerns but still focuses on good relations, and now even Harper’s realized he needs to suck up to get the Chinese money.
How many people need to go silent before we take notice?
Update: It looks like Harper will do the right thing and continue to press for human rights from other regimes:
“In relations between China and Canada, we will continue to raise issues of freedom and human rights, and be a vocal advocate and an effective partner for reform, just as we pursue the mutually beneficial economic relationship desired by both our countries,” he declared.
Now, if only he would stand up for those rights within his own empire-lite.
ExperienceFestival.com
In trying to do my graduate quantum mechanics homework, I’ll Google a lot of obscure terms hoping to get insights. But something odd started happening this past week when the website experiencefestival.com (I’m not going to link to them, beware spyware if you visit it) started popping up on the first page of Google.
The search chiral dirac matrices returns experiencefestival.com as the 4th hit, with 7 or more sites within its domain. Most contain verbatim copies of Wikipedia entries.
I tried to search on this obscure website with an reasonable Google Page Rank of 5 (my own is 4). The only article I could find on it comes from the equally (or more so?) obscure “Hindu Website” that describes experiencefestival.com as “Pirates of the Internet.” Oddly enough the article is littered with scientology.org ads (is there a large Hindu to Scientology crossover?)
One more concern is that over 400 Wikipedia articles use experiencefestival.com as a reference. Not even expected articles, i.e. ones that deal with “Experience Festival,” but ones like Frank Zappa in popular culture, Basket toss and the band The Mars Volta. The person who added the reference to the latter page did added it with more mundane links to fill in references. I haven’t checked if the same user added each experiencefestival reference, but that might lead to something.
What’s really bad is that the Wikipedia reference for The Mars Volta article links to the experiencefestival.com site which in turn is just an “adaptation” of the Wikipedia entry. It’s a circular reference! (Note: I removed the ef reference from the Mars Volta, but you can see the old version here)
A WhoIs search of the domain reveals that the registrant lives in Stockholm, Sweden and gives religious and “enlightenment” labels for the site.
Hopefully this brings out some information on what this site is about. When I tried to visit their FAQ, Chrome popped up a phishing warning and AVG blocked a threat, so I’m very wary about searching around their main site on my personal computers.
It really looks like their ripping off Wikipedia content, getting references from Wikipedia to boost their page rank and then hoping to promote what? Spam and viruses? Enlightenment through coercion?
At least by posting this I can hopefully hear from others who are seeing this website pop up in their searches. My post on Foundation for a Better Life is still a top five on the Google search for the organization and gets a reasonable number of hits from curious searchers.
Skeptical dentistry
Why is there so little quackery in dentistry?
I’m not saying this is a bad thing, but as I look around, even in Vancouver (woo-capital of Canada), it’s hard to find “wholistic” or “naturopathy” dentists. There are some, who complain about mercury in amalgam fillings, but even they admit the fillings work!
Perhaps it’s because real dentistry so obviously works.
You have tooth pains, the dentist pokes, jabs and hurts your mouth for an hour, then after a bit of healing, your teeth are fine. It’s hard to question the results.
There’s also very few cases of chronic dental pain, whereas undiagnosed chronic pain issues abound in normal medicine.
I think this also helps that dentists are quick to embrace recent scientific findings, like the discovery of Recaldent, a compound that actually helps rebuild tooth enamel. In only the last few years, this has been discovered, researched, and commercialized in both dental paste and a special brand of Trident Gum.
Despite the general quality of dentists, you still get activists pushing for de-flouridation of water, and naturo-nuts selling fluoride-less toothpaste (which amounts to breath freshener I guess).
Nevertheless, good work dentists.
“Shock and horrors” to come in BC?
The [BC] government has warned that a prolonged HST protest could result in -- shock and horrors -- an NDP government.
Restaurants like “McDonald's, Tim Hortons, White Spot, {and] Cactus Club.”
They claim that the HST will cost their businesses $750 million and 10,000 ($8 minimum wage, the lowest in Canada) jobs.
Remind me why this is “good policy?”
Remember that it’s costing the federal government almost $6 billion that the Liberal and Tory dissenters are passing onto the shoulders of the provincial governments. Even the Bloc is going to push this on provinces where it has no sitting members (they should really abstain from this debate).
Finally, remember that this new tax raises no additional funds, as both provinces are implementing it as a “revenue neutral” tax. This means they drop corporate taxes and raise taxes to consumers.
Recent Posts
- The Atheist Census–obnoxious and obscure marketing?
- No, I don’t
- CFI Canada skips critical thinking
- State of Albertan Politics
- Successful in Ottawa, Religious Right turns to Edmonton
Recent Comments
- Ian on The Atheist Census–obnoxious and obscure marketing?
- Per Smith on The Atheist Census–obnoxious and obscure marketing?
- Per Smith on The Atheist Census–obnoxious and obscure marketing?
- Ian on The Atheist Census–obnoxious and obscure marketing?
- Per Smith on The Atheist Census–obnoxious and obscure marketing?
Categories
Politics Religion Links Atheism Media NDP Elections Personal Science Conservatives Alberta Secularism Edmonton School Scepticism Canada BC UofA Atheists and Agnostics Creationism Vancouver Liberals Economics Site Parody Fun Video CFI Global Warming Evolution Humanism Bible Capitalism SFU The Peak Free speech Anti-choice Philosophy Gay rights Books Companies Computers Random USA movies
Subscribe to posts