President of University of Toronto Receives Order of Canada

 
David Naylor is the President of the University of Toronto. He's one of the best Presidents we've had for several decades. A few weeks ago he received the Order of Canada in recognition of his work in Medicine and the University.

That's our Governor General Michaelle Jean beside him in the picture. As the Queen's representative in Canada she is our Head of State. The awards ceremony was at her house, Rideau Hall, in Ottawa.

It's comforting to know that Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper can't do a lot of damage to the country as long as Michaelle Jean is Governor General and the Rt. Hon. Chief Justice of Canada is Beverley McLachlin.

What Kind of "Intelligent" Am I?

 

Your Dominant Intelligence is Logical-Mathematical Intelligence

You are great at finding patterns and relationships between things. Always curious about how things work, you love to set up experiments. You need for the world to make sense - and are good at making sense of it. You have a head for numbers and math ... and you can solve almost any logic puzzle. You would make a great scientist, engineer, computer programmer, researcher, accountant, or mathematician.

What Kind of Intelligence Do You Have?

Jan Betker Loses to Kelley Scott

 
My (distant^*) cousin Jan Betker from Saskatchewan just lost the final of the Scotties Tournament of Hearts to last year's champion Kelly Scott of British Columbia, playing as Team Canada.

Too bad. Well done Jan and good luck next year.

Jan is a three time Canadian champion (1993, 1994, 1997), a three time World champion (1993, 1994, 1997) and an Olympic Gold Medal winner in 1998.

^* Jan's grandfather was my grandmother's brother. Does this make her a second cousin or a third cousin?

More on the Marcus Ross Case

 
Read what Janet Stemwedel has to say in Scientific and unscientific conclusions: now with pictures!.

It's going to take me a while to figure out how to respond but I think she's make a big step toward clarifying the issue. What it boils down to is this. Is it possible to be a scientist and hold "beliefs" that flatly contradict scientific evidence? Janet suggests that it is possible because your "beliefs" can be entirely separated from doing good science.

But, it seems to me that the aim of the scientific enterprise is to find ways to draw inferences that move beyond the beliefs of any individual scientist. Leaving the "belief" boxes out of the flowchart doesn't seem to remove any of the steps required for building sound scientific conclusions. Scientific conclusions may well affect the belief structures of individual scientists, but that's a matter of their own personal growth, not required step in the construction of the shared body scientific knowledge.

I wonder if this point of view can be extended to philosophy? Janet talks about Popper in her posting. She doesn't mention Kuhn. Lets imagine a philosophy student who is preparing a thesis in epistemology. Assume that the student writes all the right things about Popper and Kuhn in her thesis. Assume that this students then gives public lectures where she claims that Popper advocated scientific revolutions and Kuhn was really a proponent of falsifiability. In other words, points of view that are contrary to fact.

Is it fair to ask this student about her "beliefs" during her Ph.D. oral? Is it fair to say that she is a good philosopher as long as she keeps her strange contrary-to-fact beliefs separate from the work she does on campus?

What Kind of English Do YOu Speak?

 
Canadian doesn't seem to be one of the choices. (I wonder which 10% of my English is "Dixie"!)

Your Linguistic Profile:

45% General American English

35% Yankee

10% Dixie

5% Upper Midwestern

0% Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

Canada's Supreme Court Strikes Down Anti-terror Law

 
Reuters reports that Canada's top court strikes down anti-terror law. It's all over the radio stations and in all the newspapers (Toronto Star, Globe and Mail).

The decision was unanimous. As Thomas Walkom puts in it the Toronto Star,

Canada is on its way to becoming a civilized country again. The Supreme Court has ruled that if the government wants to lock up people indefinitely without charge, it has to at least let them muster a defence.

In the post-9/11 world, this counts as progress.

Yesterday's court ruling deals with what are known as security certificates. These are ministerial orders that allow the government to jail non-citizens without charge and then deport them.

But it's worth noting that the court did not invalidate the entire security certificate regime. It just told the government it has to be more respectful of the Constitution. More important, the top court has yet to address the most controversial element of Canada's immigration laws – the question of what to do to those that the government wants to deport as security risks even though it knows they will almost certainly face torture in their homelands.

That question is due to be addressed by a lower court, probably later this year.

Still, yesterday's decision does go some way to clearing up a law that has become a searing embarrassment for Canada.

Since 2001, it has allowed the government to jail any foreigner, whether legally or illegally in the country, that it deems a security risk.

The reason this decision is important is because the Americans are holding Canadian citizens without charging them. Canada has been in a weak position to criticize this practice since we have also been violating the rights of foreigners.

The Supreme Court declared that the six terrorist suspects who are now in detention must be allowed their day in court. Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin wrote the unanimous decision, which said that the present law violates the fundamental right to a fair trial that's part of Canada's constitution.

The First Americans

 
 
In an article published in this week's Nature, Heidi Ledford asks Who Were the First American?.

For decades many archaeologists have believed that the first Americans belonged to what is called the Clovis culture — hunter-gatherers who lived in parts of North America roughly 13,000 calendar years ago.

A new study counters this notion by showing that the Clovis culture is nearly 500 years younger than previously thought, and may have lasted for as little as 200 years. There is evidence of other cultures in the Americas well before this new date.

Wait a minute? I thought America was a Christian nation? Now we're told that it was founded by primtive stone age hunter-gatherers who weren't even as advanced as the Clovis culture?

Hmmm ... makes sense to me.

Can Your Dog Die of Chocolate?

 
Friday's Urban Legend: PARTLY TRUE

Will your dog die if it eats chocolate? No, not unless it eats a lot of chocolate. It's true that chocolate contains theobromine and in high doses this can be lethal to dogs. However, according to an article in Scientific American (Fact or Fiction: Chocolate Is Poisonous to Dogs) ...

A small dog should be belly-up after eating a handful M&M's, at least according to conventional wisdom. But watching "Moose," a friend's five-pound Chihuahua, race around a living room after his sweet snack makes one wonder: Is chocolate truly poisonous to dogs? ....

The hazard, however, is probably overblown, says Tim Hackett, a veterinarian at Colorado State University. Chocolate's danger to dogs depends on its quantity and quality. Large dogs can usually handle a small amount of chocolate whereas the same helping could cause problems for Moose and his pint-size kin....

Around every confection-centered holiday—Valentine's Day, Easter and Christmas—at least three or four dogs are hospitalized overnight in the animal medical center at Colorado State. But in 16 years as an emergency and critical care veterinarian, Hackett has seen just one dog die from chocolate poisoning, and he suspects it may have had an underlying disease that made it more vulnerable to chocolate's heart-racing effect.

It's probably better to be safe than sorry. If you have a dog then it's a good idea to remove all chocolate from the house. If you have a dog and a wife/girlfriend then you have to make a hard choice.

PZ Myers Slept Here

 
Milton is a small city not too far from where I live. Jennifer Smith of Runesmith's Canadian Content lives there. I've just discovered her blog.

On January 30th (the date is important) she wrote about Small Town Tax Dollars At Work. Apparently the powers that be in Milton decided it was time to replace the welcome sign.

The new sign is one of those fancy electronic pixel boards that can scroll text, blink on and off, simulate fireworks, and do all kinds of other cool effects. Unfortunately it’s only half the size of the old sign, making the glowing letters difficult to read from across the intersection. And even with the letters that small you still wouldn’t be able to fit in as much text as before.

This doesn’t look like it’s going to be a problem, though, since all the new sign has said since it went online a month ago is… ‘Happy New Year!’ Then the date. And the time. And the temperature. Then ‘Happy New Year!’ again.

I suppose we should just be grateful that it isn't blinking '12:00'.

Jennifer probably doesn't realize that Milton is famous because PZ Myers slept there in the summer of 2005.

Baghdad Burning

 
Would you like to read about the government of Iraq? You know, the one Dick Cheney props up as a beacon of freedom and democracy in the Middle East?

See Baghdad Burning, a blog written by an Iraqi woman.

As expected, Al Maliki is claiming the rape allegations are all lies. Apparently, his people simply asked the officers if they raped Sabrine Al Janabi and they said no. I'm so glad that's been cleared up.

[Hat Tip: Canadian Cynic]

Canadian Cynic

 
Check out Canadian Cynic.

Random thoughts from an unarmed (but reality-based) Canadian. These views are not necessarily the same views held by Canadians in general. But they should be.

More on "24" Torture

 
Steve Watson alerted me to a column on the CBC News website from last Monday. Heather Mallick discusses the torture scenes in "24" (see Less Torture in "24").

The column is wonderful. Here's are some excerpts.

Eventually I quit 24 cold turkey. It wasn't hard; I just couldn't take the same plot device 48 times. It's the "ticking time bomb" scenario where all of California will be deleted by a nuclear bomb unless Sutherland's Jack Bauer, the smartest agent in American counterterrorism, can torture the password out of an unnervingly calm, prescient Muslim madman about to destroy the American landmass with a team of three.

The problem, as Jane Mayer pointed out in the New Yorker this week, is that ticking time bombs almost never happen in real life. How embarrassing then that it occurs once a week every season of 24, which means 24 weeks of presenting the case that torture is necessary and indeed good.

It wasn't as easy for me to give up "24". I couldn't quit "cold turkey." In fact I still watch a bit of some episodes—at least until the torture starts.

Joel Surnow, the creator of the show, is a right-wing, torture-approving "patriot" who thrills to parties with Rush Limbaugh, Lynne Cheney, Karl Rove, Tony Snow et al. He's a strange, cold man who attended Beverly Hills High, a notoriously cruel collection of stars' and billionaires' children. Surnow's dad was a travelling carpet salesman. The family lived in a crappy apartment and Surnow slept on a cot. His schoolmates knew that.

Back to Orwell, who also once wrote "probably the greatest cruelty one can inflict on a child is to send it to school among children richer than itself." Orwell came out of school with a hatred of others' suffering, while taking a bleak enjoyment in his own. Surnow came out of school with a black heart.

I was at a fundraiser with the wonderful actress Shirley Douglas, whom I know and adore. Her face in profile is flat yet perfectly formed. She is a genuine beauty. Her mouth is the mouth all women should have. She is the daughter of Tommy Douglas, father of Medicare, and the man I thank when I stagger into emergency saying "Oooooh, it hurts." Good socialists all. She is the mother of Sutherland, who earns $10 million a year playing the torturer Bauer.

Sutherland is a left-wing dual-citizenship Canadian and a truly great actor. But he is the Republican Party's performing flea. Imagine that.

American Justice in Italy

 
Steve Watson was kind enough to supply me with two links that I otherwise would have missed. The first is to a column by Neil Macdonald on the CBC News website [Exceptions are U.S.]. Macdonald makes a point that Candians and Europeans are very familiar with; namely, the fact that America has little respect for the laws of other nations.

Here's the outline of the case. You'll have to read the rest of the column to see the outrage.

Nobody in the Italian government thought Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr was clean. The Italian police had for some time been building a case against the Islamic cleric for spreading extremism.

Prosecutors in Milan believed he was a jihadist who had fought in Afghanistan and Bosnia, and, further, that he was in Italy recruiting fighters for radical Islamic causes. They intended to bring him to trial.

But the Americans were watching, and they had no patience with the pace and procedures of Italian law enforcement.

On Feb. 17, 2003, a squad of agents grabbed Nasr off a Milan street as he walked to a nearby mosque. He was, allegedly, taken to the U.S. air force base in Aviano, Italy, and flown to Germany, from where he was transshipped to his native Egypt. There, prison and the tender mercies of Egyptian interrogators awaited.

Nasr says he was tortured during his four years behind bars. Given the Egyptian government's pitiless attitude toward the radical Muslim Brotherhood and its many affiliates, that is not a claim many people doubt. The Nasr case was, say critics of the Bush administration, yet another case of America quietly subcontracting torture to deal with its enemies.

But two things happened last week to move this case out of the shadows: An Egyptian court freed Nasr, saying his imprisonment was "unfounded." And in Italy, a democratic U.S. ally, a judge indicted 26 Americans, most of them agents of the CIA, for kidnapping the cleric. The spies will almost certainly be tried in absentia. They've all left the country.

Genetics of ABO Blood Types

Now that we understand the biochemistry behind the ABO blood types [ABO Blood Types] it's time to look at the genetics. Recall that the human ABO gene on chromosome 9 has three common variants of the gene. Different variants are called alleles. The A allele encodes N-acetylaminogalactosyltransferase and this enzyme makes the A antigen that confers blood type A. The B allele encodes a variant enzyme that makes B antigen and gives rise to blood type B. The O allele encodes a defective enzyme that doesn't make either antigen. In the absence of both A antigen and B antigen your blood type will be O.

Vestigial Structures Are Evidence of Evolution

 
Bill Dembski writes in Vestigial Structures by Design ....

Vestigial structures in biology are commonly cited as evidence for evolution, and it may well be that they did evolve. But if it is evidence of evolution, it is evolution in the wrong direction — it’s not the sort of function enhancing/innovating evolution that is supposed to give evolutionary theory its bite. Vestigial structures, after all, are structures that have lost their function. If all of evolution proceeded in this fashion, we’d quickly descend to a world of nonfunctionality.

Dear IDiot,

You can't have your cake and eat it too.

Either vestigial structures are evidence of evolution or they aren't. You don't get to pick and choose whatever fairy tale version of evolution you like whenever it takes your fancy. The fact that some whales have tiny pelvis bones and tiny legs buried deep under their skin tells us something about evolution. It tells us that whales are descended from ancestors that had hind limbs. The fossil record confirms this.

How does the wonderful scientific theory of Intelligent Design Creationism explain this?