Terahertz

The first bit National Household Survey is out, and aside from it’s methodological issues, there’s still lots of data to pour through.

Over the next few days I’ll be looking at lots of it in prep for a presentation to the BC Humanist’s Vancouver meeting this Sunday on this data and our recent poll. Details

But one myth I want to quickly debunk is the tendency to report Canada having a tiny fraction of atheists based on these numbers. Based on the NHS data, Statistics Canada estimates that there are 48,675 atheists in the country, a number that is utter rubbish.

The Survey asks what religion a person is, to which the answer “atheist” is illogical (unless you are religious about your atheism).

We also can’t claim that the “No religion” responses are uniformly atheist – the BCHA poll found about half of those who don’t practice a particular religion or faith do not believe in a higher power, or about 20% of BC. While people may not self-identify as atheist when asked ill-formed questions, they’re still out there not believing in god(s).

International Women’s Day is a good reminder of how far we still have to go toward gender equality.

Women represent just 11 per cent of board members on companies listed on the S&P/TSX composite index, which represents large publicly traded Canadian companies.

…

Among the TSX-composite-listed companies, 42 per cent have no women on the boards of directors, while 28 per cent had just one female board member.

While we’re doing marginally better than the United States, even the Nordic countries still lack gender parity on their corporate boards. Norway leads with 36%, Finland and Sweden each have 26%.

Meanwhile, the past decade has been increasingly harsh toward aboriginals, who make up an increasing proportion of our prison population.

The correctional investigator pointed to what he called "alarming" statistics.

"There are just over 3,400 aboriginal men and women making up 23 per cent of the country’s federal prison inmate population," Sapers said.

"In other words, while aboriginal people in Canada comprise just four per cent of the population, in federal prisons nearly one in four is Métis, Inuit, or First Nations."

Sapers found almost 40 per cent increase in the aboriginal incarcerated population between 2001-02 and 2010-11.

I guess I don’t really have any good news here. Also, this weekend is an hour shorter.

A report came out today on CBC that the federal government is taking a page from the PQ book of secularism and will be removing funding from all chaplains in prisons… except Christian ones.

But rather than focus on the obvious affront to the separation of Church and State, I want to focus on the numbers shared in the CBC article.
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There’s a story going around that a small design group is pitching a revised design of the Avro Arrow as an alternative to the Conservative’s F35s with its skyrocketing price tag.

it’s an interesting and promising idea, although its not clear that the industry is here any longer to support such a massive enterprise.

Nevertheless, this presents a golden opportunity for an up and coming federal Liberal leadership candidate to champion the idea once more. It was a Liberal government that originally introduced the Arrow, while Diefenbaker’s Conservatives killed it.

The Liberals have been without a grand vision for Canada for a while, and while this one is far from perfect, it would give them something to point to.

(Of course I realise in an ideal world such a fighter redesign should be put through an open bidding process, where the best proposal – in terms of costs, Canadian job prospects, and performance – is awarded on its merits.)

Some of my most popular blog posts remains my rejection of the iron ring posts based on the religious references that I wasn’t allowed to strike.

Every few weeks I get a new comment, typically a self-entitled engineer who feels like calling me names on the Internet. But the latest comment was something new.

Someone dug up a smaller American ceremony that was developed in 1970 and is simply called The Order of the Engineer.

The US obligation states (PDF) in secular (and dare I say humanist) terms:

OBLIGATION OF THE ENGINEER

I AM AN ENGINEER,
IN MY PROFESSION I TAKE DEEP PRIDE.

TO IT I OWE SOLEMN OBLIGATIONS.

SINCE THE STONE AGE,
HUMAN PROGRESS HAS BEEN SPURRED BY THE ENGINEERING GENIUS.

ENGINEERS HAVE MADE USABLE,
NATURE’S VAST RESOURCES OF MATERIAL AND ENERGY FOR HUMANITY’S BENEFIT.

ENGINEERS HAVE VITALIZED
AND TURNED TO PRACTICAL USE THE PRINCIPLES OF SCIENCE
AND THE MEANS OF TECHNOLOGY.

WERE IT NOT FOR THIS HERITAGE OF ACCUMULATED EXPERIENCE, MY EFFORTS WOULD BE FEEBLE.

AS AN ENGINEER,
I PLEDGE TO PRACTICE INTEGRITY AND FAIR DEALING, TOLERANCE, AND RESPECT
AND TO UPHOLD DEVOTION
TO THE STANDARDS AND THE DIGNITY OF MY PROFESSION, CONSCIOUS ALWAYS
THAT MY SKILL CARRIES WITH IT
THE OBLIGATION TO SERVE HUMANITY
BY MAKING THE BEST USE OF EARTH’S PRECIOUS WEALTH.

AS AN ENGINEER,
I SHALL PARTICIPATE IN NONE BUT HONEST ENTERPRISES.

WHEN NEEDED,
MY SKILL AND KNOWLEDGE
SHALL BE GIVEN WITHOUT RESERVATION FOR THE PUBLIC GOOD.

IN THE PERFORMANCE OF DUTY
AND IN FIDELITY TO MY PROFESSION, I SHALL GIVE THE UTMOST.

It seems like in the case of the Robertson screw, the Americans couldn’t import the Canadian invention due to copyright claims. But unlike the Phillips screw, this time the Americans improved upon the original Idea. From their website they even seem to have toned down the creepy cultish vibe that the Iron Ring ceremony gives off.

Were I a practising engineer, I might consider travelling to Seattle to attend their next ceremony.

It’s worth noting that the Canadian rings are also made of stainless steel now too since the iron wears down to quickly.

The promoters of science-based policy in Canada have a new defender.

Bad Science Watch, a new Canadian science advocacy group, has issued a challenge to the Canadian government: stick to the science in the development and implementation of important policy decisions. This group will work diligently to ensure Canadians are protected from exploitation by unscrupulous organizations peddling useless and potentially harmful products and services.

The group is being led by former CFI Vancouver executive director Jamie Williams and former CFI Committee for the Advancement of Scientific Skepticism co-chair Michael Kruse. Their advisory panel and board of directors includes a number of scientists and doctors from across Canada. I was involved early as a part of the steering committee (those responsible for vetting projects for BS Watch) but stepped out due to my other commitments (there’s just not enough hours in the day).

Noting the need for a professional advocacy organization in Canada, dedicated to finding bad science in our policies, this group hopes to only take on projects where they can make a measurable difference in Canadian’s lives. This means no tilting at windmills as they actively strive to make substantive policy changes when it comes to health, consumer advertising, and public policy.

Their first campaigns include “targeting bogus food-intolerance testing in Canadian drugstores and an intensive investigation into the state of the Canadian anti-WiFi lobby.”

Edmonton skeptic and host of Skeptically Speaking Desiree Schell did the voiceover for their fantastic kickoff video:

Please consider signing up for their Action Alerts Newsletter and making a contribution to their Peerbackers Project.

It will be exciting to watch this project grow and gain momentum as it affects real change on important issues.

Today’s good news is that the Ontario Liberals and NDP cooperated long enough to pass anti-bullying legislation which specifically supports gay rights.

Furthermore, the bill forces Ontario’s publicly funded Catholic schools to permit students to form Gay Straight Alliances.

While those Catholic schools will continue to receive public money, some of which force students to endorse anti-choice petitions, it is a step in the right direction to ensure that LGBTQ students in the Catholic system enjoy the same rights as their secular school peers.

With any luck, BC’s coming anti-bullying legislation, promised by premier Christy Clark, will aim for the bar set by Ontario.

Today the NDP surpassed the Conservatives in the polls and the Chief Electoral Officer testified to a House of Commons committee about the potential electoral fraud in 200 ridings in the last election, but all of that was overshadowed by Stephen Harper’s first majority government budget, which includes the newsworthy* decision to kill the penny.

Here’s what a majority Harper Conservative budget looks like.

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With the recent robocall scandal, upcoming budget, and NDP leadership race, it’s easy to forget some of the other controversies that Stephen Harper’s Conservatives have thrown us over the past year.

Luckily, we have representatives like NDP foreign affairs critic Hélène Laverdière, who continue to work to uncover answers. Specifically, she submitted an Order Paper question on the Office of Religious Freedoms that has been mired in mystery since Harper’s election promise and subsequent founding.

According to CBC correspondent Kady O’Malley (who you must follow on Twitter), these are designed to ask “all manner of questions on the administration of government – specifically, questions that, by their very nature, were simply too technical or otherwise unwieldy to be answered during [question period].” Basically, boring stuff that still merits some investigation. It’s less theatrical than question period but often equally important.

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Despite the random number of polls and media speculation, there’s really only one way to know who’s doing the best in a race like the NDP leadership race – the final ballot.

But until then we can make up all kinds of metrics to see how well everyone is doing. For example, Google offers their search insights which lets you track how many people are searching for different terms. By comparing the leadership contenders over the course of the race, we can see who has momentum and is generating interest.

Unfortunately, the chart limits me to only 5 terms at a time, so you’ll have to view these results in two separate graphs.

First, the “frontrunners”: Thomas Mulcair, Brian Topp, Nathan Cullen, Peggy Nash, and Paul Dewar. [Click to enlarge]

Here we can see Mulcair’ leads the search results – primarily due to a large bump back in October. We see that he and Nathan Cullen are in a tight race for first, with Cullen just overtaking Mulcair in the last week. Peggy Nash isn’t far behind and Brian Topp seems to have maintained a consistent interest, albeit lower than when he lead from November until mid-January. Finally, after a low-searched campaign, Dewar has fallen off the chart.

Google allows us to further break these results down by region (see inset). These show that Mulcair holds a lead in Quebec, while Cullen has a strong lead in BC. In fact, Mulcair is fourth in BC, behind Cullen, Nash, and Topp. Dewar doesn’t appear in Quebec or BC, while Cullen doesn’t appear in Quebec.

To get the rest of the competitors, I’m going to replace Paul Dewar and Peggy Nash with Niki Ashton and Martin Singh for comparison, keeping as many colours constant as possible.

Here we see a big jump for Niki Ashton when she launched her campaign in November, followed by a fairly quiet campaign until early March before it crashed. By raw numbers, Niki Ashton is only slightly behind Paul Dewar and Martin Singh is trailing very close behind. What’s potentially more interesting is Martin Singh’s late jump ahead of Brian Topp in at the end. Directly comparing the numbers, he still falls just behind Peggy Nash. Singh’s jump is likely related to recent allegations of a pact between him and Mulcair.

In the regional data we can see neither candidate gets a hit in Quebec, and Singh is tied in BC with Mulcair. Ahston pulls ahead of Nathan Cullen in Ontario.

Unfortunately, our country is still too sparsely populated for Google to give us much deeper information (like the other provinces). Furthermore this represents search terms, which can be conducted by anyone. This doesn’t necessarily mean NDP members are searching for these people, although it’s likely a safe bet that more NDP members are searching for the leadership candidates than anyone else.

I’ve only included clips of the automatically generated graphs here, but you can follow the links above to the searches and play around with the parameters yourself or download the spreadsheet file.