When TAs Go on Strike

 
York University is the "other" large university in Toronto. The university has been closed since November 5th when members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 3903 (CUPE Local 3903) went on strike.

The situation is a bit complicated because the union has three different groups and there are separate contracts for each group, even though the contracts are all part of the same negotiation package. The three groups are:

Unit 1 if they have a teaching contract (note - teaching includes demonstrating, tutoring, and marking) and they are a full-time graduate student.

Unit 2 if they have a teaching contract and are not a full-time graduate student.

Unit 3 if they have a graduate assistantship or research assistantship and are a full-time graduate student.

What I'm mostly interested in is the graduate students in Units 1 & 3.

After several months of fruitless negotiations, the university exerted its legal right to call for a ratification vote when the union negotiators turned down the latest offer. The vote will take place later this week and, as you might have guessed, the CUPE 3903 leaders are urging their members to "Kill the Rat."

What is the role of a faculty union in situations like this? It's really not complicated. Sister unions will invariably support the right to collective bargaining and demand that both sides negotiate in good faith. Faculty unions tend to tilt in favor of the TA union simply out of solidarity but also because both groups often have common grievances against the administration.

Here's where things get messy. As reported in several newspapers, a group of 300 faculty members recently signed a letter urging CUPE 3903 members to ratify the latest offer by the university administration. Here's how it was reported in the National Post.

Another group urging the union to vote yes is nearly 300 faculty members who signed their names to a letter urging CUPE to accept the current contract proposal.

The signees of the letter are also members of the York University Faculty Association (YUFA).

YUFA president Arthur Hilliker said while he does not endorse the letter, he does not condemn it or believe it to be illegal either, according to Eric Lawee, a York humanities professor and one of the letter’s signees. YUFA maintains it wants a fair and equitable offer for CUPE.

“We, the undersigned retirees and full-time faculty members of York University, urge our colleagues in CUPE 3903 who have been on strike since November 6, 2008, to end their labour action by accepting the current contract offer of the York University administration,” the letter begins.

The letter addresses specific concerns if the strike were to drag on, including the potential loss of the summer term, which not only would hurt the school’s undergraduate students, but would affect CUPE as well, with possible job losses due to the elimination of the summer term.

“In their own interest and that of the entire university community, we urge CUPE members to end their labour action and help the university resume expeditiously the provision of its full academic programs,” the letter concludes.

Mr. Lawee said that there were two main reasons behind the letter. The first was due to “a strong sense that the strike has dragged on too long and that the rights and needs of students must now take priority over all else,” he said. “And ... that this should be an easy settlement to endorse because the offer is very fair.”

Why is this a problem? Well, for one thing, it's a problem because these 300 faculty members are going against the advice of their own union.

The York University Faculty Association (YUFA) issued a press release today in which they reiterated their position.

Press Release

These are our principles with respect to the CUPE 3903 forced ratification vote. They are motions passed unanimously at the YUFA Executive meeting of 12 January 2009:

1. YUFA Executive re-affirms its support of free collective bargaining and does not endorse a ratification vote of CUPE 3903 members as forced by the Employer.


2. YUFA Executive strongly urges all YUFA members to respect individual CUPE 3903 members’ rights in the forced ratification vote to vote freely and according to their conscience. We urge all YUFA members to respect CUPE members’ rights to vote freely.


3. YUFA Executive, recognizing the power relations implicit in the roles of YUFA members and CUPE 3903 members, does not endorse any YUFA member attempting to influence how a CUPE 3903 member might vote in the forced ratification vote.

We recognize the serious problems the strike is causing for the students and for York. We also recognize that the issues of this strike need to be resolved for the future of York University.

The second and third points are very important. Faculty members are often the bosses of teaching assistants and they need to be very careful to remain neutral in situations like this. Because they are in a position of authority over graduate students they should not be urging these students to vote one way or the other. You can see why this is a problem. If Professors tell their graduate student to vote for ratification when the student wants to vote the other way, then this sets up a dangerous conflict for the student. What can be gained by doing that?

This is not a new problem. It's been around for decades and faculty unions in dozens of countries have learned to deal with it by urging individual members to avoid taking sides. I'm surprised that there are nearly 300 retired and active Professors at York University who don't get it.

Some of these faculty members have been writing letters to the editors of various newspapers in defense of their position. Here's one from Bernard Lightman, a Professor of Humanities. It appeared in today's Toronto Star.

Professor Berland has claimed that the open letter by full-time faculty and retirees to striking members of CUPE 3903 is in direct defiance of motions passed by the faculty union's executive. The signees have never claimed to speak on behalf of, or to represent, the faculty union.

Professor Berland interprets the motions of the faculty union's executive as saying that faculty are not free to express their opinions on the strike. I do not believe that that is the correct interpretation. However, if Professor Berland's interpretation were correct, then I would have to defy the faculty union.

It is not the business of a faculty union to gag its own members. One of the most important priorities of a university is to encourage free discussion and expression. That priority is not suspended during a strike, especially when the fate of more than 50,000 students hangs in the balance.

Let's be clear about one thing. YUFA was offering advice to its members based on decades of experience. The advice was to keep your mouth shut because you are in a position of authority over your graduate student TAs.

Every Professor has the right to ignore that advice and try to influence the decision of their graduate students. That's what academic freedom is all about. Whether it's a smart thing to do is another question.¹ I don't think it is.

Graduate students are smart enough, and mature enough, to make up their own minds. They don't need advice from their supervisors and bosses.

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1. It may be illegal as well, but that's another thing entirely. I doubt that any Professor would be prosecuted for pressuring their graduate students unless that Professor holds a prominent administrative position where the potential for retaliation against a student is much more likely.

Evolution News & Views

 
From time to time I mention the Disco site called Evolution News & Views. It has a lofty purpose that's prominently displayed on every posting.

The misreporting of the evolution issue is one key reason for this site. Unfortunately, much of the news coverage has been sloppy, inaccurate, and in some cases, overtly biased. Evolution News & Views presents analysis of that coverage, as well as original reporting that accurately delivers information about the current state of the debate over Darwinian evolution.

Here's a posting from Robert Crowther dated yesterday afternoon.

So, Darwinists are admitting that up until Friday, Jan. 16 2009 @ 4:10PM, evolution was “mostly theory.” Interesting. I am now certain that dogs adapt to their environment, too. Last night my dog kept barking and I shook my finger and spoke very firmly to her and made her sit on her bed. She stopped barking. So, at 7:10 pm I had a perfect example of evolution. Or was it adaptation? Or was it bad parenting? Whatever, we now see that dogs evolve, which previously had been believed to be “mostly theory.” My peers, who were there reviewing the moment, are skeptical because they think my dog is asexual. Regardless, this is all speculation — except for poor Kali. She still lacks an opposable thumb.

We may need a better word than IDiot to describe these people.

Is there an atheist bus campaign in Seattle? I'd like to donate.

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Canadian Atheist Bus Campaign

 

Donate to The Canadian Atheist Bus Campaign and get those atheists signs on Toronto buses and subways.

The campaign is sponsored by the Freethought Association of Canada. They've raised over $10,000 in just a few days.

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BioGPS

 
BioGPS is billed as a "Biology Gene Portal System." It's another database. You can read the review on genomeweb but you will have to register [GNF Team Rolls Out BioGPS Gene Portal for Users and Contributors].

The brains behind BioGPS is Andrew Su at the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation (GNF) in San Diego (USA). According to the genomeweb article ...

As scientists move forward in analyzing experimental results, they generally consult up to a dozen "standard web sites" Su said, such as Entrez Gene, Ensembl, UniProt, or the Mouse Genome Informatics site. Each site delivers "partially overlapping gene annotation," so users must visit each, enter their search, learn the interface, and learn how to find each of the genes of interest on that site, he said. "Often that is a quite daunting process."

The idea behind BioGPS, Su said, is to avoid that process as well as reveal to researchers smaller and less-known gene portals that scientists might have missed.

Call me skeptical. The author of the article, Vivian Marx, contacted me and asked me to check out BioGPS. I have a long-standing interest in biological databases dating back to an early attempt to improve and update GenBank by adding annotation. That attempt was a failure—for very sound reasons [Errors in Sequence Databases].

I looked at my favorite genes on BioGPS. Here's the link to their homepage: BioGPS. The first thing you notice is that that database is restricted to rat, mouse, and human genes. The second thing you notice is that there's no value added. The data appears to be copied from other databases. This includes all of the errors, omissions, and misinterpretations found at each site. The emphasis is on expression data—that's what overwhelms the visible record of each gene.

Here's an example. This is the human HSPA1L gene. It happens to be a member of the HSP70 gene family. HSP70 proteins are the major chaperones of the cell. The HSP1AL version is specifically expressed in testes.


The expression data is correct but none of the databases mention that this gene is a developmentally regulated member of the HSP70 gene family even though that information has been in the literature for almost twenty years. You don't learn anything from visiting BioGPS that you wouldn't learn from visiting most other databases and, more importantly, you don't learn the information that might be most important to your research because it isn't in any of the databases. Anyone looking at this record would be puzzled by the lack of connection between the correct expression profile and all of the other information.

It gets worse. If you check out the rat HSPA1L gene you won't even learn that it is developmentally regulated because the expression profile doesn't include testes. The links to this genes suggest that it responds to stress, but it doesn't.

This is just one example of the problems with biological databases. Collecting together links from a variety of databases doesn't help. It just ensures that the errors from each database will be combined, creating maximum confusion.

I'm quoted correctly in the article ...

Larry Moran, a biochemist at the University of Toronto, told BioInform by e-mail that he had looked at a few of his "favorite genes" in the portal. "I don't think it's a very useful database," he said, since it is a summary of information gleaned from other databases with "no attempt at annotation."

In addition, he said, "much of the information is wrong or misleading," such as some of the expression profiles, which "seem to be incorrect; probably because the data is for another gene and not the one in the database record."

Users "who would rely on that sort of expression data would be making a very serious mistake," he said."

Reacting to these comments, Su said, "I think it is a good thing, in terms of making those errors more widely seen. The more eyes that see it, the more likely that that error will be fixed."

Being able to detect errors, however, has to be connected to the ability to fix it, he said. "This is the wiki principle, everybody can edit it, everybody can fix it, everybody has the responsibility and the power to make sure it's correct."

In an ideal world, researchers will fix errors in the databases and a Wiki-like system seems like a good idea. The experiment is already underway [A Gene Wiki]. But, as it turns out, this approach is incredibly naive as I discovered from attempts to fix GenBank a few decades ago. Nobody's going to do it. It's way too much work and there's no motivation to share information on public databases.

I received an email message from one of the authors of the expression data. As you might expect, the expression data profiles that are so prominently featured in the BioGPS database records are from the team at The Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation (e.g. Su et al., 2004). Much of it may be correct—it certainly succeeded with the HSP1Al gene—but I think it's wrong for HSPA1A.

My correspondent pointed out that his expression data has been widely used by hundreds of researchers and the papers have tons of citations.¹ He described several studies that have made important discoveries based on the expression profiles that have been published. I don't doubt that this is true. That's not the point. The point is whether taking the expression data and adding links from other sources makes BioGPS a valuable resource.

Not as far as I can see.

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1. The idea that just because a paper is widely quoted means that it must be correct is something that troubles me greatly. It seems to be part of the new way of doing science.

Su, A.I., Wiltshire, T., Batalov, S., Lapp, H., Ching, K.A., Block, D., Zhang, J., Soden, R., Hayakawa, M., Kreiman, G., Cooke, M.P., Walker, J.R. and Hogenesch, J.B. (2004) A gene atlas of the mouse and human protein-encoding transcriptomes. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. (USA) 101:6062-6067. [PubMed]

Apple Software Update

 
Every few weeks I have to sit patiently and watch while Apple updates my iTunes and QuickTime software.¹ Since I use three different computers (home, work, laptop), this becomes quite a pain and it gives me plenty of time to think about Apple software and it's update policy. They are not happy thoughts.

Maybe someone can answer the questions? Why are the update files so big and why does it take so long to install them? It seems as though I am reinstalling the entire suite of programs each time. Why are there so many updates? Is the software so bad that it needs constant fixing?

Is there any way to turn off the notices? I don't use iTunes but I don't want to uninstall it. Can't I just update it when I want to use it? Same for QuickTime; how important. really, are the updates? Does anyone know?

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1. To be honest, I can do other things as long as I don't mind a very slow internet connection. The updates are huge and the installation takes up a lot of RAM.

What Homeschooling Can Do for your Children

 
Normally I don't make fun of spelling mistakes because I make lots of them myself and I don't think they're funny. However, from time to time the irony is just too delicious.

Leonard has a blog called Stand Your Ground. Who's Leonard, you might ask? Here's the answer ...

A Socially Conservative Don Quixote from Moncton. Strongly pro-life. Strongly pro-family. Strongly opposed to any attempts to turn my nation into something shapeless, cultureless, childless, gender-neutral and politically correct.

Here's the heading from Leonard's post on homeschooling [Homeschooling Is On The Raise].

More and more parents prefer to take control over their children's education, rather than trusting them to a public school system. ....

Sounds much better than a system which has become more about indoctrination (or at the very least - about merely keeping the kids busy from 9 to 3) than about education, doesn't it? Back in 1999, the CBC aired a short report on homeschooling in the National. I don't recall the exact number they mentioned, but there were between 20,000 and 25,000 homeschooled children in Canada back then. Since then we had the courts ruling that excluding books about homosexual cohabition from elementary school libraries is "discriminatory"; that a perverse graduate should be allowed to bring his partner in perversity to the high-school prom - even if it's a Catholic school.

Since then we had the BC government allowing militant homosexuals to monitor all the school curriculum to ensure it's "gay friendly". We had Quebec government introducing a mandatory "Chinese buffet" course in "world religions" which is nothing but a virtual indoctrination into social and moral relativism. How many parents have since resorted to homeschooling as the only way to save the children from becoming guinea-pigs in lefty's social experiments? I dare to assume it's in the 6 digits now.

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Mississippi Act

 
Here's how separation of church and state works in America. There's a bill before the legislature in Mississippi that requires the following disclaimer in public school textbooks [House Bill 25].

The word 'theory' has many meanings, including: systematically organized knowledge; abstract reasoning; a speculative idea or plan; or a systematic statement of principles. Scientific theories are based on both observations of the natural world and assumptions about the natural world. They are always subject to change in view of new and confirmed observations.

This textbook discusses evolution, a controversial theory some scientists present as a scientific explanation for the origin of living things. No one was present when life first appeared on earth. Therefore, any statement about life's origins should be considered a theory.

Evolution refers to the unproven belief that random, undirected forces produced living things. There are many topics with unanswered questions about the origin of life which are not mentioned in your textbook, including: the sudden appearance of the major groups of animals in the fossil record (known as the Cambrian Explosion); the lack of new major groups of other living things appearing in the fossil record; the lack of transitional forms of major groups of plants and animals in the fossil record; and the complete and complex set of instructions for building a living body possessed by all living things.

Study hard and keep an open mind.

This is similar to the language in Cobb country Georgia. Their sticker was ruled unconstitutional in 2005 (Selman v. Cobb County School District).

It's bad enough that there are elected officials in Mississippi who oppose evolution but even worse is the fact that they propose legislation that is unconstitutional. Isn't that treason?

They don't see it that way. They don't really believe that the public schools should be free of religion and they'll keep fighting to put it back in the schools in spite of what any court might say. It's one thing to have something written down in a constitution and it's quite another to get people to live by it. This fight between science and superstition isn't going to be won in the courtroom. It requires changing hearts and minds.

For the time being, let's ignore the fact that the disclaimer contains lies and misrepresentations of science. The main issue is the idea that evolution suggests, "... that random, undirected forces produced living things." This is where science and religion conflict and people who believe in God are quite right to be fearful of what critical thinking and an open mind might do to the faith of their children.¹

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1. The disclaimer pretends to support open-mindedness but in fact it's the exact opposite. It's a form of censorship.

Why Michael Ignatieff Is better than Stephen Harper

 
Here's Michael Ignatieff, leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, speaking to young liberals in a Vancouver pub. He may not have been my first choice as leader but he's a lot better than Stephen Harper.

This is a man who can get along with, and be respected by, Barack Obama.

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[Hat Tip: Jennifer Smith]

Take a Stand Without Taking Sides

 
On Tuesday night I went to a meeting of Liberals in my riding and heard Michael Ignatieff speak.

It was a small gathering (250) so there was plenty of opportunity to get to know the new Liberal leader. Many of the questions were challenges to his statements about the Gaza conflict. Ignatieff is careful to blame Hamas and defend Israel and this did not sit well with many of the constituents in my riding who are from the Middle East and South Asia.

There has to be a way to stand up for principles without taking sides. Today's column by James Travers in the Toronto Star makes a good case [Don't take sides but do take a stand].

Canada, with its polyglot population and its military fighting fundamentalism in Afghanistan, is more interested in Middle East conflicts than it is able to influence them. At best it can exert pressure on all sides not to reduce future peace prospects by making the immediate situation worse.

What's possible is relatively straightforward. Canada should be as forceful in holding Israel accountable for its actions as Hamas. And when the shooting stops it should invigorate honest-broker efforts to address the inequities and injustices that inevitably spawn violence.

While no panacea for a conflict layered in complexity, it would at least reaffirm values and principles that in the past informed Canadian Middle East policy. Beyond Israel's security, they include its legitimate expectation to live without fear and the countervailing requirement that Palestinians be released from decades of bondage in their own land.

Not taking sides does not mean not taking a stand. Unequivocal support for Israelis and their safety does not require equivocation on Palestinian human rights and political freedom.

Canada can best serve Israelis and Palestinians by finding its voice when it's time to say "enough."

Sounds good to me.

Jennifer Smith of Runesmith's Canadain Content makes the same point in her letter to Ignatieff [Dear Mr. Ignatieff].

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What Is Science?

 
This video does an excellent job of explaining the difference between science and superstition. The world would be a much better place if everyone took the advice shown here.

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Arlo Guthrie: City of New Orleans

 
While poking around on YouTube I stumbled across this performance by Arlo Guthrie of one of the best songs ever. I just had to share it with the one or two other people who might agree with me. The song was written by Steve Goodman in 1970.

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Meat Loaf: Would you let your daughter listen to "Paradise by the dashboard light?"

 
I have a confession to make. I've been fan of Meat Loaf ever since Rocky Horror Picture Show.¹

It was fun watching Meat Loaf on this FOX news clip—thanks to Greg Laden for posting it.


At six minutes and ten seconds into the video the moderator says that he doesn't want his daughter, when she become 14, listening to "Paradise by the dashboard light." Them's fighting words.

Would you let your daughter see this video and listen to the lyrics? If not, what are you afraid of? Do you think that 14 year old girls (and boys) don't know about sex?


Here's one of my favorites ("I Would Do Anything for Love"). I seem to recall that it was my daughter—when she wasn't much older than 14—who first started playing it on our car trips. Incidentally, Ms. Sandwalk isn't a big fan of Meat Loaf. She has a stack of 20 or 30 CDs that we play on our car trips and I don't think there's a single song by Meat Loaf. There are lots of songs by dudes I never heard of, like Tchaikovsky and The Rolling Stones.

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1. I'm also a fan of Susan Sarandon

Nobel Laureates: Sir Henry Hallett Dale and Otto Loewi

 

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1936.

"for their discoveries relating to chemical transmission of nerve impulses"

Sir Henry Hallett Dale (1875 - 1968) and Otto Loewi (1873 - 1961) won the Noble Prize in 1936 for discovering the role of chemicals, especially acetycholine, in transmitting nerve impulses.

Today we take it for granted that chemicals are involved at the synapses but in the beginning of the 20th century this wasn't obvious. The impact of this work is apparent from the Presentation Speech.
THEME:
Nobel Laureates

It was generally thought that impulses in the nerves act directly on the muscles or glands bringing about a change in their activity. But as early as 1904, Elliott presented a different interpretation. From the medulla of the adrenal glands, which, as embryonic development shows, is related with the sympathetic nervous system, a substance can be produced, i.e. adrenaline, the effect of which is remarkably similar to that produced by increased activity in the sympathetic system. Elliott therefore supposed that the impulses in the sympathetic nerves produced a release of adrenaline in the nerve endings which would then be the real vehicles of the stimulation effect. Ten years later, Dale published a comprehensive investigation of another substance, acetylcholine, for which he found a corresponding conformity with the effect of the parasympathetic stimulation. As, however, at that time acetylcholine had not been met with in the body, there was not sufficient basis for a discussion as to whether it normally transmitted impulses.

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The images of the Nobel Prize medals are registered trademarks of the Nobel Foundation (© The Nobel Foundation). They are used here, with permission, for educational purposes only.

[Photo Credits: Henry Hallett Dale: Jamd; Otto Loewi: ©Copyright Encyclopedia of Austria]

Dr. Larry Moran Flunks Philosophy

 
It wouldn't be fair for me to ignore Michael Egnor's devastating put-down demonstrating my ignorance and bigotry [Dr. Larry Moran Flunks Philosophy].

I especially like being called a Darwinian fundamentalist.

The "discussion" is all about Mary's Room. Here's the synopsis from the Wikipedia site.

Mary is a brilliant scientist who is, for whatever reason, forced to investigate the world from a black and white room via a black and white television monitor. She specializes in the neurophysiology of vision and acquires, let us suppose, all the physical information there is to obtain about what goes on when we see ripe tomatoes, or the sky, and use terms like ‘red’, ‘blue’, and so on. She discovers, for example, just which wavelength combinations from the sky stimulate the retina, and exactly how this produces via the central nervous system the contraction of the vocal cords and expulsion of air from the lungs that results in the uttering of the sentence ‘The sky is blue’. [...] What will happen when Mary is released from her black and white room or is given a color television monitor? Will she learn anything or not?

The answer, by the way, is "yes." Mary will learn something when she actually experiences how photons of different wavelengths impinge upon her retina and are interpreted by her brain.

Isn't that profound?

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Falling into a pit

 
Falling into a pit may be a much better analogy for evolution than adaptive peaks and climbing Mt. Improbable. To find out why read Chris Nedin's blog Ediacaran [Climbing Pit Improbable].

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