Terahertz

Yesterday was the 2010 Vancouver Pride Parade.

There was a total of 146 entrants, of which the 135th scheduled entry was the BC Humanist Association. With the BCHA marched the SFU Skeptics and CFI Vancouver.

I had previously marched in the 2008 and 2009 Edmonton Pride Parades with the Society of Edmonton Atheists and they marched again this year with a great FSM sculpture (write up and photos). Our first year there was a bit tame, but we had a table and showed some spirit. It looks like they’ve gotten really good at parades since then.

I’m proud to say that yesterday’s turnout was fantastic. We had almost 20 people out, facepaint, banners and lots of dancing. We unfortunately weren’t quite organized early enough to get a table (I brought this idea to the BCHA in early June and the entry deadline was June 30).

(video and photos below fold)

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After some prodding from friends who read my initial post on the possibility of creating a political party for the 2011 Vancouver civic election, I’ve realized that there is a growing demand for a grassroots secular-based political group.

So with that I’ve created a Facebook goup and WordPress blog (for those not on Facebook), to act as gauges of interest in the project.

The responses that I’ve gotten have fallen into two categories.

First, there’s the people already active in politics who are worried that any new political party will split the vote and give united conservative or religious groups the advantage.

Second, there’s people who are entirely disenfranchised with existing options and see this as a project that they could actually get interested and involved in.

While the first group’s concerns are valid, I have a few responses. First, at the Vancouver civic level, we don’t have to worry as much about splitting the progressive vote, since it represents a large majority of voters. Even further, if we run one (or any number less than a full slate of) candidate(s) for council, then we can still have a progressive voice while also bringing our issues into the discussion. In many cases, third (or fourth) parties are created often as single issue parties just to get their voice to the table (see the Nude Garden Party or the Work Less Party). So I believe there is value in creating these parties.

Of course, even if we don’t create a political party, we can always transform this group into a political lobby group that advocates for secular issues at various levels.

Finally, as I’m already the secretary for both CFI Vancouver and the BC Humanists, the VP External for the Freethought Association of Canada, and the treasurer for the SFU Skeptics (on top of being a full-time masters student in physics), I don’t currently have the time to launch this full time, and will be relying on volunteers coming forward who want to see this project get off the ground.

So with that said, join the Facebook group, check out the blog (and offer to write for it), or email me to help out.

A small crowd of about 8 people showed up for the CFI Vancouver volunteer meeting that was held this morning, but a lot of great ideas and plans were generated.

A few key committees and positions were formed, including my new role as secretary (which now has me taking minutes at both BCHA and CFI now).

There’s some great speakers coming up including PZ Myers, Christopher diCarlo and Harriet Hall.

Further, Sonia and I will be launching our freethinker book club on August 14th at The Grind Cafe on Main St. We’ll be discussing Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s first book Infidel, so grab a copy from a bookstore or the library soon. We’ll follow this up with Nomad in the future, but Physics of Star Trek (spare copies available through CFI Vancouver) will likely be for September and potentially The Armageddon Factor in October leading up to a potential talk by author and journalist Marci McDonald.

Things are definitely looking promising.

Secularists are fond of complaining about politicians over-endorsing religion and school boards not defending evolution against creationist onslaughts.

So perhaps it’s time to for those who want to preserve church-state separation to go on the offensive.

Actually, Australians have already beat me to it and created the Secular Party of Australia.

However, while national politics involves many pressing issues (including natural health product regulations in Canada), many of the greatest effects are seen at the local level. So perhaps it’s time for a Secular Party of Vancouver.

Vancouver is one of the few cities where municipal politics involves political parties, so it’s prime level for a group of like-minded people to run a slate of candidates for the city council, parks board and school board.

At the council level, Secular councillors can advocate for an end to property tax exemptions for churches which only proselytize. There is already precedent in the BC town of Gibsons for ending such exemptions, and it’s time for Vancouver, with a non-religious population of over 40% to follow suit.

The next civic election in Vancouver is in November 2011, so there’s time to get things organized (provided there’s interest and money). Anyone with me?

Apparently it’s Chevron, not BP, that has been seeping oil from a Burnaby refinery into the Burrard Inlet for the past month without really telling anyone.

And I guess its not really clear what the Conservatives really think about offshore drilling. I think Prentice wants to sound like moratoriums exist (at least in the Arctic) but doesn’t really want to rule out any drilling once the fuss over a little spilt oil subsides.

I’m sorry Joyce Murray, you just lost any chance to get my vote to stop the Cons from taking Vancouver-Quadra.

Here’s her latest statement in the House of Commons, dissected:

Ms. Joyce Murray (Vancouver Quadra, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, each year during the first week in May, the Canadian Association of Naturopathic Doctors leads a national awareness week in support of naturopathic medicine.

Naturopathic physicians are primary health care professionals with a minimum of seven years post-secondary education.

Nope. Only BC, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, Ontario and Saskatchewan actually license naturopathic doctors, everywhere else in Canada they can just go by ND with whatever training they feel like. It’s also worth noting that any number of years studying pseudo-scientific ideas does not make it any more legitimate. You can go to clown college, astrology school, or take UFO classes, but none of those qualify you to effectively treat diseases.

They practise naturopathic medicine, which is a distinct primary health care system that blends modern scientific knowledge with traditional and natural forms of medicine. The naturopathic philosophy is to stimulate the healing power of the body and treat the underlying cause of the disease.

From the first line in Wikipedia: “Medicine is the art and science of healing. It encompasses a range of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness.” The unique thing about naturopathy is that it blends real, evidence-based medicine, with pseudo-scientific ideas that have been debunked repeatedly. There is no reason to have a separate section of medicine where bogus treatments are included, except to rip people off. Apparently Ms. Murray supports a two-tier health system, only rather than at least getting cured for their money, people are being scammed by under-regulated snake-oil salesmen.

Each year during Naturopathic Medicine Week, naturopathic doctors hang up their lab coats and teach communities across Canada about naturopathic medicine, how naturopathic doctors can be valuable additions to health care teams and how they work with patients to identify the most effective solutions to individual health needs.

My biggest issue here is that even real doctors and scientists rarely wear lab-coats. This just paints a false picture that NDs are equivalent to real doctors. They’re not. If they were, they would be MDs and have completed real medical school.

Naturopathic Medicine Week is an excellent opportunity for all Canadians to learn more about achieving optimum health and I encourage Canadians to visit local naturopathic physicians in their communities.

I encourage you to stop shilling for Big Natura and stand up for evidence-based medicine. Our health care system is fragile enough as it is from years of Liberal and Conservative incremental cuts, it doesn’t need a woo-infestation to further discredit it.

For more debunking of Naturopathic Medicine Week, see the blog Skeptic North.

Because the Catholic Church hasn’t had enough negative press recently, out comes a story that a Catholic school teacher has been asked to finish the semester working from home. I’m not exactly sure how she’ll manage that but the idea is that her contract won’t be renewed next year.

So what is so wrong with this teacher that she has to avoid the school?

If you think that it’s action on pedophilia in their ranks, you’d be wrong.

It’s the simple fact that when this teacher goes home to her family, she is greeted lovingly by another woman and child.

And no, this isn’t the Southern USA or the third-world. This woman was discriminated against in Vancouver, her school is only a few kilometres from where I live!

But even worse is that as a Group 1 Private School [pdf], the BC government funds 50% of this school’s per-pupil budget. That’s right BCers, your tax dollars are going to fund religious-fuelled homophobia.

Same-sex marriage is legal in this country. Gay couples are allowed to adopt and have children. It is downright wrong that this discrimination can be funded by everyone.

The government does stop partially-public-funded private schools from discriminating on a few grounds (from above PDF):

"Before issuing or renewing a certificate of group 1, group 2, group 3 or group 4 classification to an authority the inspector must be satisfied that
(a) no program is in existence or proposed at the independent school that would, in theory or in practice, promote or foster doctrines of
(i) racial or ethnic superiority or persecution
(ii) religious intolerance or persecution
(iii) social change through violent action, or
(iv) sedition.”

So no racism or religious discrimination, but I guess sexism and homophobia are still cool.

The other ironic thing about that document is how it brags about “diversity” while segregating large chunks of the population into their religious groups. Even further, almost all of the private schools are Christian!

At least the good news is that our heroine is getting a position with the public Vancouver School Board in the fall where she won’t have to put up with the child-abusing bigots.

I had an idea today. Like most ideas, it’s not original, and builds a lot on work that others have done, but it’s one that hasn’t been applied within the freethought movement yet, to my knowledge (at least in Canada).

The idea is, as I’ve now learned, based off the growing social enterprise movement which seeks to have companies run for financial, social and environmental gain – the triple bottom line. In many cases the corporation is actually a non-profit or charitable organization which runs a business to fund its work and expansion. A highly successful model of this sort of idea is the Salvation Army’s Thrift Stores which finance much of their missionary and religious work.

So the idea that I had today was sparked by a desire within the Vancouver skeptical/freethought community to have a place of our own, that is a venue where we can routinely host out discussions, meetings and set up an office or two.

Currently CFI Vancouver meets sporadically in cheap or free spaces that are provided by campus groups or rented at reduced rates (through its charitable status) and the BC Humanist Association meets weekly at the Oakridge Senior’s Centre through a deal they have there.

CFI is committed to seeing something more permanent in the next few years be established and while the Senior’s Centre is a great venue for the BCHA, there is the justified concern both inside and outside the organization that the word “senior” in the venue’s name is a deterrent.

So the idea I had was that these organizations ought to found a coffee shop/cafe, which during regular hours can be open to the public for coffee, cookies, and what-have you, with an extra influence of humanism and skepticism present (such as a resource library for the curious and some science-inspired artwork or something). Then, during evenings, weekends, or whenever it is needed, the shop can close up, move the tables aside (or not) and serve as a meeting venue for the invested groups.

There’s a few bonuses in this format. First, the coffee shop serves as an advertisement and fundraiser for the associated charities. Second, the venue would accommodate the majority of the events being held (the larger lectures and debates will always require large campus lecture halls), and would have coffee and snacks available, and could even be potentially licensed.

The drawbacks are the large initial investment required (likely a few $100,000 which none of these organizations have), and the requirement that someone will actually have to manage the business end of things.

However, with a strong business plan and the right people, it should be possible to raise the requisite funds via government grants, personal donations, and loans if necessary.

It’s also worth noting that under Vancouver’s basic commercial zoning laws [pdf], most of these types of spaces can be used for the categories of cultural and recreational (including clubs and community centres), institutional (schools), offices, retail and services. So there should be no difficulty with this portion.

Now, who has some entrepreneurial experience and wants to get this started?

There’s just 36 hours until the start of Vancouver’s third Skepticamp – the unconference for skepticism and critical thinking.

I’ve heard over 90 people have registered to attend already, with space for 150. The speakers list has also been announced:

Fred Bremmer – A demonstration of Charpentier’s Illusion

Ian Bushfield – 13.7 billion years in 90 seconds (or The Evidence of the Big Bang)

Dr. Steve Wiseman – No Pleasure Cruise: The Troubled Relationship between Psychiatry and the Church of Scientology

Brian Lynchehaun – Edge Contrast and You

Ginger Switzer – Secrets of the Language Code

Greg Bole – Defending Darwin

Lars Martin – Introduction to the Theory of Relativity

Shannon Rupp – Rational Journalism

Matthew Linsdell – Personal Training and Woo

Radio Freethinker – Radio Freethinker

Jaymie Matthews – Who Needs Paranormal?

James Bernath – Private programs for "going into space".

Jacob Vohs – Myths about Child Abuse

Gerry Armstrong – Scientology

Yves van Gennip – The Role of Mathematics in Science and Skepticism

Fred Bremmer – Charpentier’s Illusion

The entire conference is going to be filmed, so hopefully we’ll have YouTube feeds of everyone’s presentations. At very least I’ll try to adapt my talk for the internet at some point, which hopes to give a basis for which to defend the big bang theory in an elevator speech.

I think there’s a couple key things to think about while CTV shows Harper at every Olympic event they see him at:

1. This a good reminder that the NDP gave their free Olympic tickets back to VANOC because they didn’t believe they were entitled to something average Canadians were having a difficult time getting their hands on any. Meanwhile Harper and the Conservatives had no problem reaping the perks (even he donates our tax dollars back to the Olympics).
2. Seeing Harper at the Games should be a good reminder that he’s not at work right now.
3. In Harper’s interview with CTV he stated his support of Canadian athletes, but that support apparently doesn’t extend to include the Own The Podium program that most of our athletes have been crediting to our record setting medal count.