Terahertz

I always have a number of long-term projects in my head. Reaching out via different mediums is one of them, and practice speaking and editing is always important for me.

To accomplish this I’ve started an intermittent video blog/podcast supplement to this blog. Only two episodes are up so far – the first on Fusion: Hot and Cold and the second on GMO Labelling – and it’s only available through YouTube for now (I may look into the technical aspects of how to iTunes it next week). You can subscribe to the RSS feed here or follow the YouTube playlist here.

My goal is to produce quality, short, informative and interesting videos. It will take a few before I hit my stride and I don’t promise a consistent release schedule (which means it may drop off the radar for a while).

Here’s the first two episodes:

Episode 1: Fusion Hot and Cold

Episode 2: GMO Labeling

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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A bunch of shameless self promotion.

Back in August I was invited to join Don McLenaghen on Radio Freethinker, the skeptical podcast of CiTR radio (the UBC radio station). Ethan was away that week, so we spent the entire hour talking about Humanism.

You can listen to that interview here (mp3).

Last week, I took a road trip to Edmonton, via Kamloops.

While in Kamloops I dropped by a meeting of the Kamloops Centre for Rational Thought and gave a (somewhat impromptu) short speech on Humanism before going into an extended discussion. I posted my brief presentation on YouTube:

Then, in Edmonton I gave my speech on communicating evidence for the Big Bang, entitled 13.7 Billion Years in 90 Seconds for my old group, the University of Alberta Atheists and Agnostics.

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.

Richmond’s city council recently approved a motion to ban genetically-modified crops from being planted in their municipality. Richmond is likely the largest municipality in BC to pass such a ban and is one of the few with a large area of agricultural land. The motion was largely symbolic, as crop seeds are regulated federally.

Last night, the council held further hearings on the issue and by the reports from a couple skeptics who attended, the presenters were predominantly misinformed and anti-GMO. Two people spoke against the motion (in favour of GMOs), out of more than twenty. One of the pro-science advocates was a farmer, but by the reports it sounds like their pleas for rationalism fell on councillors that had already made up their mind.

Most of the anti-GMO crowd conflated their disgust at some of the extreme and unethical business practices of Monsanto with genetic engineering technology, which unfortunately disposes of all the advantages offered.

I don’t have much more to add to this story. It would have been nice to have had more warning that this issue was coming up but given the recent disarray of Centre for Inquiry Vancouver, the local skeptic movement has lost much of its organizational ability. While I strongly believe that skepticism is a vital branch of Humanism, to date the BC Humanist Association has not had much involvement in these types of campaigns. Furthermore, moving into this realm would be an expansion of our mandate, which may water down our core mandate – i.e. trying to be all things to all people.

I was sent this neat info-graphic that discusses the need for comprehensive sex ed in the USA. We can be a bit more smug here in Canada, but we must remain eternally vigilant that our education system relies on the best available information.

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According to a new paper in the International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, where you vote may influence how you vote.

The suggestion is that visual cues of churches or religious buildings lead people to vote more conservatively, “and the effect seems to hold, whether you’re Christian, Muslim or agnostic, progressive, independent or conservative.”

This is an intriguing suggestion because if you’re anything like me, you always resent when they hold a poll or public forum in a church.

This is also a very testable hypothesis, outside of psychology. Elections Canada publishes poll-by-poll results, so one merely has to cross reference which polls were held in churches with those that weren’t. There’s 308 separate electoral districts to run the analysis for, and in each district there should be a decent number of religious and secular polls to contrast. With this much data, it should be possible to see if church voters are more likely to vote Conservative than NDP, Liberal, or Green.

Perhaps if I get really bored while job hunting, I may try to do the numbers for my own riding.

I’m not found of believing in miracles, but imagine for a second that one happens and after 2015 we have either a NDP or Liberal majority, or even some coalition arrangement of the two.

Either case will be better then what we have now, obviously, but in either case we’re still stuck with these schmucks in our chamber of “sober second thought.”

Some of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s newly-appointed senators are emerging as global-warming skeptics in the wake of aggressive government positions to abandon the Kyoto Protocol, slam environmentalists and downplay potential damage caused by Canadian oil and gas exploration.

“I felt like it is kind of an insult to be a denier for a long time,” said Sen. Bert Brown, last month at a parliamentary committee studying energy policies. “It feels pretty good this morning.”

…

“I have to admit that what I read tells me that there is not a consensus among scientists,” [Senator Nancy] Greene Raine, another senator appointed by Harper, told the committee when it heard from Environment Minister Peter Kent, earlier last fall. “There are many different points of view and different kinds of research happening out there. One of the things that I am starting to see now is quite a few studies showing that we may be heading into a period of global cooling, which would maybe be a lot more problematic for Canada than global warming. Our country is on the cool side.”

Imagine for a second that a progressive government gets in to the House of Commons and passes the Jack Layton Climate Change Accountability Act. Once again, we’ll have to suffer through this ineffectual body blocking the legislation that could actually put some science-based targets on our emissions.

The only thing that may save our country is Harper’s own Senate-reform legislation that may force these senators to resign after 9 years.

Of course, then we may run into the situation where the senators realize the law has no teeth without a constitutional amendment and they refuse to step aside.

I don’t have much else to add. Basically we’re screwed.

This afternoon I defend my masters thesis, after which I will hopefully have only a few minor corrections and then I will have earned my masters in physics. I also hope to be done school for a while, so if you know of any good job openings…

But the busy life won’t end this afternoon.

This weekend I will be one of the Vancouver-Point Grey delegates to the BC NDP’s 50th Anniversary Convention. I won’t be live-blogging it, but I will try to tweet updates. There’s a federal leadership townhall on Saturday from 4:30-6 PM, so those tweets will be under #ndpldr while general convention tweets will be under #bcndp50. I’ll try to make it to one of Brian Topp’s meet-and-greets at The Lion’s Pub (either Friday or Saturday night) and we’ll see if I can find any other leaders.

After the convention I will have my corrections and then holiday parties begin. Then I head to Alberta for Christmas, but will be back in Vancouver by New Years.

In other words, I will try to get some blogging in next week, but otherwise it might be quiet around here until January.

Inspired by the success of the No HST campaign that saw British Columbians of all stripes push back against a government bent on implementing policies against the popular will of the people an with no mandate, some fear mongers are hoping to repeat that success in the hopes of banning smart meters.

I almost want them to succeed in getting enough signatures so that we can really put this to a vote and we can have a clear demonstration of how intelligent our province really is. Although, I’m not quite willing to risk it against the ability of a vocal minority of quacks to sway a large number of people.

What’s more disappointing than the attempt to get a petition going is NDP energy critic and past leadership candidate John Horgan’s position

Meanwhile, NDP energy critic John Horgan plans to present another petition against smart meters, called Occupy Smart Meters, in the legislature. Horgan did not respond to Straight messages by deadline.

The Straight also notes that BC Hydro’s smart meter program spokesperson didn’t respond to calls by deadline, which makes me wonder how quickly they pushed this story through. Regardless, Horgan and the NDP’s position (further elucidated on Horgan’s website) may be one of criticizing the costs and heavy-handed implementation rather than unfounded technophobia.

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