CASS: Skepticism FTW

I don’t claim to understand the climate science. I am not a climatologist, I haven’t cracked the literature, and even if I did I lack the training to fully parse truth from falsehood. I am confident in accepting the scientific consensus, however, because of the advocacy by people whose opinions I have come to trust and whose credibility has been demonstrated to me. When I read the work of someone who clearly has a grasp on critiquing evidence and weighing claims based on the facts rather than elaborate conspiracy theories about a New World Order plot to ban incandescent lightbulbs, I have no difficulty accepting the fact of the human contribution to global warming. Folks like Orac, or Darksyde, or Mano – they keep my head straight when I get confused, and they’re who I refer inquisitive friends to.

There’s another group that I rely on heavily when I need some expertise outside my own background:

A group of scientists is raising alarm about “incorrect science” in a course at Ottawa’s Carleton University that was taught for three years by a climate change skeptic. “We describe a case in which noted climate change deniers have gained access to the Canadian higher education system through a course taught at Carleton University,” the Ottawa-based Committee for the Advancement of Scientific Skepticism said in a report this week.

But the course instructor, Tom Harris, denies there are any problems with the science he taught. CASS, which says its goal is to “critically [examine] scientific, technological and medical claims in public discourse,” said its audit of video lectures and course materials for the second-year course called “Climate Change: An Earth Sciences Perspective” found the course to be biased and inaccurate. [Read more…]

Domo Arigato, Mr. Robocallboto

Some of you may be following the “Fauxbocalls” scandal that is the latest offering in the Republican North Party’s campaign to demonstrate that they are no different from their southern ideological cousins. Essentially, voters in a number of ridings around the country (including mine, apparently) received calls from people claiming to be from the Liberal Party of Canada. These voters were then advised that their polling place had changed, which was an outright lie.

While it is usually my habit to comment on a political story of this magnitude, I am intentionally avoiding doing so. My primary reason for doing this is that we don’t have any answers yet about how widespread this practice is, or how much of it is simply anecdotal. What we do know is that more than 31,000 complaints were made to Elections Canada in this past election, which is more than 4 times the margin of victory for the Republicans in the last election. We also know that complaints in the previous election was in the area of hundreds, not tens of thousands. What we don’t know is whether or not anyone in the political wing of the Republican party knows anything whatsoever about this practice.

My official take: I believe them when they say they don’t know what happened. I think they’re a bunch of scumbags for basically out-and-out stating that they do know what happened, and that it was a tricky ploy by the Liberals to manufacture a controversy. I think that anyone who says this “isn’t a big deal” is talking complete nonsense (yes, I am looking directly at you, Rex Murphy). I think that any response other than “we need to determine who did this, and what their intent was” is unnecessarily bet-hedging or worse, an attempt to promulgate a fraud far worse than the one that toppled the previous Liberal government.

That being said, until I have more information (or a particularly slow news week), I am not going to comment beyond that. Below the fold are some articles that I have found interesting and/or useful in parsing this whole issue.

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What kind of week has it been? Round 2

Once again, our esteemed federal government has handed us a veritable flood of exciting politics news. This isn’t the kind of excitement that I usually get happy about – it’s the type that makes the adage “may you live in interesting times” a curse rather than a blessing. We’ll skip my usual preamble and just get right to the good stuff.

Mom without medicare gives birth in hotel

A Scottish woman married to a Canadian wound up having their baby in a hotel room — across the street from a Vancouver hospital — after she couldn’t get provincial health-care coverage. “Luckily it all went OK and I was able to cope with the pain,” said Lynne Aitchison, who delivered baby Ziggy in the hotel bathtub, without medication or complications.

(snip)

However, the province told her she couldn’t have any medical coverage because she couldn’t get a letter from the federal Immigration Department verifying her application. She said Citizenship and Immigration refused to give her anything in writing because her application was sitting in a pile with thousands of others, unopened.

So first of all, I need to state unequivocally that I am opposed to naming your child ‘Ziggy’. No child, no matter how untimely, deserves to be stuck with that name. That being said, obviously the greater crime is that someone who, for the want of a letter from the government, was refused medical coverage and had to deliver Ziggy in the bathtub of a hotel overlooking the hospital. Perhaps all of the relevant information is contained within this graph: [Read more…]

In which I blur the line unacceptably

I try to keep a more-or-less sharp division between what I do for a living and what I do on this blog. I am not ashamed of my job (in fact I’m quite proud of it), nor am I aware of any official department policy prohibiting me from sharing my opinions online. I enforce this ‘rule’ about keeping my worlds separate simply because at some point there may be a conflict, or I might piss off the wrong political nutjob, and there will be an exploration of my personal life and my professional life. I’d prefer to give that kind of witch hunt as little ammunition as possible. In fact, if you read the FAQ, I specifically disavow any connection between Crommunist the snarky-yet-perennially-delightful blogger, and Ian Cromwell the person who exists and has a job in meatspace.

That being said, I received some very good news today that I am going to share here because it pleases me to do so:

Dear Ian Cromwell,

Congratulations!

On behalf of Dr. Susan Porter, Dean pro tem, I am pleased to notify you that you have been offered acceptance by the UBC Faculty of Graduate Studies into the PHD program In Population and Public Health for the 2012-2013 Academic Year with the start date of September 2012, pending the dispatch of our official paper admission letter.

So this fall, I will be joining my illustrious colleague Jen McCreight in the happy throes of grad-studentdom (although, obviously, not at the same school). Unlike Jen, however, my blogging interests and my academic interests have very little overlap, so you will be sadly deprived of the blow-by-blow of the minutiae of life as a student (to the same extent that you are deprived of the facts of my professional life). Indeed, should I manage it correctly, my life will not be changing that dramatically. This may indeed be the last time you hear about my degree plans until I have the thing in my hands.

Anyway, self over-disclosure time is over. Here is a gif that approximates my current mood:

A level of celebration that can only be described as 'excessive'

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Kiva Project: Update, and third donation

Hey Cromrades, I was slacking a bit last month and did not make any contributions to our Kiva project. I’ve since taken the liberty and the initiative, and picked two loans for us to support:

John from Kenya

John, 39 years old, is a mixed crop farmer. He is married to Susan, also a farmer, and they are blessed with two children. He has farmed for the past ten years, earning 7,000 KES a month, and uses his income to support his family. John is applying for a third loan after repaying his previous two loans successfully. He will use the 43,000 KES to buy fertilizer and seedlings for his farm. With the anticipated profits from his farm he will educate his children. His hopes and dreams are to buy a piece of land and build rental houses.

Flor De Quinua Group

The Communal Bank “Flor de Quinua” (Quinoa Flower) is starting its second loan cycle with Pro Mujer as part of the Juan Pablo II Community Center. This group consists of eight members and is led by a Board of Directors headed by Sra. Pascuala. The members of this Communal Bank engage in various businesses in order to get ahead such as selling shoes, knitting sweaters, selling toasted foods, washing cars, making crafts from plaster, selling woven articles, and knitting blankets.

Sra. Pascuala says that she started working Pro Mujer one year ago and joined the organization upon receiving an invitation from a member. She currently has a business producing crafts out of plaster (stucco) where she has worked for some time. Pascuala learned this trade from her son-in-law. The loan she is receiving now will be used to increase her capital for purchasing stucco that she acquires from the distribution shops. She will later sell the products she makes in her community. Working in this manner enables her to generate income to support her family. Pascuala is separated from her spouse and has three children.

Both of these projects were loaned $25.

Also, pay for December came in, so it’s time once again for you to help me spend our money. You’ll notice that $2.50 from the first loan was paid back, so that’s back in the pot. Please take some time and poke around the Kiva.org website, and make a recommendation. I’ll make a decision for 2 loans and announce it on Friday.

For the month of October (the first month this site went live), we made $46.38, and loaned $50.
For the month of November, we made $65.81, and loaned $50.
For the month of December, we made $44.76

Total amount loaned so far: $100
Total loan funds repaid: $2.50
Fund balance: $55.57

Let’s keep it rolling, folks!

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To have to have and to have to hold

I have more or less given up on expecting that religious folks will recognize the inherent contradictions between their secular morality and their religious instruction. We all have blinders about our own bad behaviours and illogical thoughts, but religion is particularly protected from introspective self-scrutiny. Matters religious are supposed to be believed “just ’cause”. Faith demands that we suppress our instinct to reject those things which are logically impossible or unsupported by evidence and simply accept a particular dogmatic instruction. Thus is a capacity for doublethink built, and with it a resistance to see hypocrisy as in any way problematic.

That being said, I am repeatedly fascinated by the way in which many “moral” principles that are described along religious lines come into conflict with secular moral principles that can be derived philosophically. Human beings use a variety of sources to determine right from wrong, and we’ve developed methods of decision-making when circumstances present us with a novel situation or a contradiction. How do we do the right thing in a circumstance we’ve never encountered before? Can we draw a parallel to something we’ve seen before? What happens when rule X and rule Y come into conflict? Do we discard one rule? Both? Is there some nuance we can find?

Such ethical wheeling and dealing is a necessary fact of life in a world that throws all kinds of challenges our way. Bound within certain ethical frameworks about the definition of ‘the good’, we can find ways to make decisions that satisfy our innate desire to feel good about ourselves. However, this kind of nuanced thinking is denied to us when we adhere to regulations that we see as inerrant. If we must follow the rules, we have no recourse when, for some reason or another, we find the rules in conflict with each other. [Read more…]

Movie Friday: Bill O’Reilly makes sense

Not USUALLY, not GENERALLY, but in this clip he actually sounds like he’s payed attention to the arguments from the other side:

There are people out there who, despite having had something explained to them a metric fuckton of times, still profess not to understand the issue. I ran into this with Mallorie Nasrallah a few months ago, where she claimed to have read the criticisms of her obsequious love letter to the patriarchy, but couldn’t understand why people were so upset. I have devised a clever scheme for such circumstances: ask your opponent to summarize your argument, and offer to do the same in reverse. That way, the propensity to strawman can be identified early, and dealt with.

So it was with some surprise that I watched Bill O’Reilly offer what is a pretty cogent defense of the pro-gay-marriage position. So cogent, in fact, that he appears to stump faith-head Kirk Cameron, such that he (Kirk) has to derail his own line of ‘reasoning’ and claim not to have a position. Which, of course, raises the question of why Bill seems ever-eager to bring up the same canards when it suits him to do so. Then again, in order to be surprised by Bill O’Reilly being a hypocrite, you’d have to assume he’s a normal person with scruples.

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Have to laugh, or I’ll cry

Strictly speaking, there’s nothing funny about racism. The existence of racism in our society means that black people are paid less, have poorer health outcomes, are more likely to be harassed or murdered by law enforcement, are less likely to be educated or employed… the list goes on. None of that is a laughing matter, which is why I really don’t care for racist ‘jokes’ that make light of the issue. I think we can derive a lot of humour from pointing out racism, in the same way that we can find humour in pointing out hypocrisy or vice or any other folly of the human condition. It helps us learn about ourselves, and draws attention to issues we might otherwise ignore or misunderstand.

That being said, reading this story made me laugh my ass off:

Chief U.S. District Judge Richard Cebull on Wednesday admitted to sending a racially charged email about President Barack Obama from his courthouse chambers. Cebull, of Billings, was nominated by former President George W. Bush and received his commission in 2001 and has served as chief judge for the District of Montana since 2008. The subject line of the email, which Cebull sent from his official courthouse email address on Feb. 20 at 3:42 p.m., reads: “A MOM’S MEMORY.”

The forwarded text reads as follows: [Read more…]

Can you spell ‘shackles’? I knew you could…

I am not a teacher in the scholastic sense. While I aim to make this blog an instructive environment (for you as much as it is for me), what I do is a far cry from the responsibility that is given to actual teachers at actual schools. For one, I deal almost exclusively with adults, many of whom are in fact older than I am. Nobody is entrusting the minds of the future to my care. Second, I am not (nor do I pretend to be) an authority figure in the way a teacher is. I have no power over any of you. The most drastic way in which I could punish you is by refusing to blog, which would be far more damaging to me than it would be to even the most fervent Cromrade. Third, aside from the handful of you that I know personally (or interact with in any meaningful way outside the auspices of this website), I do not exert any influence over your personal life.

All this is by way of saying that teachers have an awesome level of responsibility. Many members of my family are teachers (as well as a number of my friends), and I know how tough their jobs are. In a brutal dictatorship ruled by the iron fist of Crommunist, teaching would be a well-salaried position that people compete hard to get into, and that attracts the best and most capable candidates. Because, and we have to be honest about this, not everyone is up to the challenge and profound duty that comes with being a teacher: [Read more…]