Monthly Archives: November 2012

Safe and filthy sex

Education, Religion, Secularism

I did a quick interview this morning for a country music radio station in Abbotsford, which followed up on this story that ran in Vancouver’s 24 Hours yesterday.

The story prompted the following email from a fan with an Ontario email address (a province that has recently bowed to pressure from religious conservatives to not implement a progressive and comprehensive sexual education curriculum, preferring ignorance to information).

Mr Bushfield. I just read on the internet that you think children in schools should not be taught abstinence and instead be taught safe sex.

Are you kidding me? It is people like you who are ruining our children. Please Please Please, leave our children alone, so they can grow up normal and not filled with all this filth.

I will pray for you.

I already posted this on my Facebook, where it received 44 Likes and 31 comments. Apparently people love the irony of filthy safe sex and someone praying for me.

Hacked by Hacker

Personal, Site

My blog is hosted by HostPapa, which up until now has been a fantastic host.

Unfortunately, a few days ago (and I didn’t notice until this evening) this host got hacked and many WordPress sites were replaced with the ingenious slogan “Hacked by Hacker.”

Luckily, I was able to quickly reset my admin password and discovered by blog database was intact (it was a host-wide rather than targeted attack) and replace the theme, fixing everything.

My other sites on this server: bushfield.ca and secularstudents.ca were also hit, but my home subdomain ian.bushfield.ca somehow avoided the attack.

For now, I’ve reverted to an older theme to keep the site running.

I guess I got off lucky this time but it’s still annoying to deal with at 1 am on a Saturday night after a few glasses of wine.

California Rejects GMO Labeling, and why I approve

Food, Greens, Politics, Scepticism, Science

You may have missed it, but Barack Obama won re-election Tuesday in what the media wrongly called a very close race. While Mitt Romney was able to score over 70% of the vote in Utah, he failed to achieve either the popular vote nationwide or the only one that matters – the electoral college vote.

But what I found more interesting than the presidential election that was essentially pre-determined (at no point did Nate Silver’s 508 analysis give Romney a leading chance), was the array of ballot initiatives across the USA.

Obviously, I’m happy to see a number of states approve gay marriage and the legalization of marijuana. There were many more smaller ones though. For example, Florida voters rejected two proposals, one that would have made it legal for the state to give money to religious organizations and another that would have made it illegal to provide state funding for abortions. These results also make me happy.

I’m disappointed that California upheld the death penalty and probably have to read more about the failed Alabama proposition that would have removed racist language from the state constitution, which was opposed by black legislators (I think because it would have removed education as a right as well).

But today I want to talk about GMO labeling in California.

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