Agh! Chemicals!

Oh, no! The Chemicals are Here!

This is the sort of analysis that led Arthur Benjamin to give a TED talk to tell us that mathematical education ought to focus more on statistics than calculus, as statistics is far more useful in everyday life.

First off, you're ignorant if you want to rid your life of "chemicals".

When blood tests showed your body's chemical load was relatively low, did you feel any better?
It wasn't low. There was a presence of chemicals that everybody has but are there acceptable levels? Frankly, I don't think so.

A presence of chemicals, huh? Like hemoglobin? Vitamin C? Vitamin D? Zinc? Calcium? How about water? Was there any dihydrogen monoxide? You know how dangerous that stuff is. It causes asphyxiation and has been used to torture people for centuries.

But it's not just the ignorance of what the word "chemical" means. It's also statements like these:

If I use any shampoo or soap on my daughter, I buy them at the health-food store and the less ingredients, the better.

Really? I believe that Ivory advertises itself and 99.44% pure. No additives. No scents. How would your health-food store match up to that?

Today we have the highest rate of childhood cancer, unprecedented levels of autism and asthma, food allergies, skin allergies – all these sensitivities that are clearly related to environmental conditions. And this idea that past generations lived in surroundings that were chemically toxic and they survived is also quite false. One in three die of cancer.

This is a really long chunk of confusion.

Cancer rates for children are not rising. They've been relatively stable for the last 25 years.

The reason you see high levels of autism is because we've been changing the definition of autism to include more people. In a bygone era, most of these people were just referred to as "retarded" and left at that. As well, there's the term "autism spectrum disorder" which refers to a wide variety of minor social problems. As much as some want to blame the "growth in autism" on vaccines and other nonsense, the biggest cause is our widening definition and better diagnostic methods.

If you want to talk about food allergies, you have to wonder how many children simply died because of peanut allergies in the old days. Now that our infant mortality rate has dropped so severely, there are more people with allergies.

And it was way, way more toxic in the old days. There were no workplace safety rules. People died of cancer from breathing in horrible quality air in all sorts of mines and factories. There was almost no pollution control on cars. Paint was made out of lead (the article mentions this and fails to note the contradiction to her own premise). Buildings were made out of asbestos.

Finally, of course more people are dying of cancer. Everyone has to die of something and once we've fixed everything else, the last few things left are going to become bigger threats. This is the fault of improvements in medicine, not chemicals in the environment.

I read articles like this, these compilations of ignorance, and I have to wonder what people are taking away from it. Am I going to end up with people trying to outlaws vaccines? Enforce circumcisions? Outlaw fluoridated water again?

Yes, there are concerns about certain chemicals. Yes, we have to perform scientific studies to figure out which ones are real problems and which of these claims is nonsense. But articles written by a clearly ignorant person who wants you to read other ignorant things on the web and then "go back to your own spine" for guidance, are worthless.

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But What If Torture Works?

I've already written about torture, but perhaps it bears repeating when I see the following video.



"...whether or not these techniques are immoral, or how immoral they are, surely depends on whether or not they work."

No. No, it doesn't.

I don't have to examine the possible uses of infant blood to realize that putting a child in to a tree chipper is immoral. I don't need to measure the property tax benefit to a city to see that bulldozing a homeless shelter is immoral. I don't need to examine the shock and awe created by a nuclear explosion to know that dropping an atomic weapon on civilians is immoral.

And I don't need to know whether or not "torture works" to decide it's wrong. It's wrong because we will make ourselves at least as bad as we pretend our enemies are. It's wrong because it dehumanizes people, both victim and torturer. It's wrong because it's the worst part of us and our humanity demands we stomp that part of our psyches out of existence.

Nothing we learn from torture could ever be worth what it does.

And that conclusion doesn't have a thing to do with whether or not it works.

h/t Red Tory

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God's Verdict

Stephen Harper, speaking on history's judgement of his term:

“To be honest with you, I am a lot more concerned by God's verdict regarding my life than the one of historians,” the Prime Minister said with a laugh, according to the article.

Er ... wow.

I suppose, if you're religious, that's the way to do things. Everlasting soul and all that crap.

But, really, it just sounds creepy coming from a politician. It makes me wonder if all this sucking-up-to-America isn't really sucking up to America. It may be part and parcel of the same belief system that led George Bush to telling people that his invasion of Iraq was a mission from god.

That's right. Harper's envy of America wasn't really envy. He wasn't really criticizing Canada for being a north-European welfare state. That was all just a cover for his jealousy of the way the United States was able to use its armies to pursue better standing at the gates of heaven.

Who cares if you ruin the country? As long as you did the will of Almighty God, I guess you're covered.

Great.

Just great.

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Terrorist or Asshole

It occurs to me, after engaging in a discussion on Morton's blog, that we have to distinguish between two types of people: the terrorist and the asshole.

It's useful to have a definition of a terrorist: a person who uses violence or the threat of violence to create political change or change in public opinion.

The subject of the discussion on Morton's blog was that of honour killings. If a man kills his daughter for wearing the wrong clothes or courting the wrong suitor, is this an act of a terrorist, or is he merely an asshole? (We take it as read, here, that he is at least an asshole.)

Does this constitute an act of terrorism?

A lot of that depends on how we weasel the definition. If this act of assholery has the effect of intimidating other women from making the clothing and courting choices they truly want, the effect is that of terrorism. But did the guy who murdered his daughter intend that effect, or did he just go off in a murderous, punitive rage and only incidentally have that effect?

If he were to take his petulant child and, as the bible advises, bring her before the town and have her put to death, we could definitely conclude that he is a terrorist. He, and any townspeople helping him, are intentionally using violence to intimidate others in to obeying their moral code. That would be terrorism.

But if we include the unintentional effects of a violent act committed by an asshole and allow that to declare him a terrorist, I would think that pretty much every violent act would have to be called a terrorist act on account of the fact that violence is always intimidating.

This is probably why the designation of "hate crime" had to be created. We judge the crime not only on the intent or the result, but on that shady region in between, where the victim was chosen because of her membership in a group (young women, possibly "young women of a certain culture") and the effect of the assault was to intimidate others of the same group. Additionally, the violence is part of a system of behaviour that intrinsically intimidates that group.

So. Honour killers are terrorists? I don't think so (though I'm not married to not thinking so). But they are assholes and deserve extra time in jail for participating in a hate crime.

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Billing Laws

Seriously, it's about time we made some rules for the people who send us monthly bills.

It seems that the goal of the billing statement is to trick you in to paying incorrectly - or on the wrong day - and charging you ridiculous interest rates.

At the very least, I expect the "payment" stub of the bill to list:
a) The amount I must pay to avoid any late fees
b) The date by which I must pay it, in long hand (none of this deceptive 07/08/09 nonsense)

Bell is polite enough to do that, although they mislead you at the top of the bill with a column of pre-tax calculations with a bolded total alongside the post-tax calculation with a bolded total.

The credit cards aren't so kind. Some list the real total (a) and the due date (b), while others only list the minimum payment and leave you to search among "Old balance", "Credit", "New Charges" and "New Balance" while leaving the date in a indecipherable numeric format.

We really ought to have laws, forcing these people - especially the credit cards - to spell things out deliberately.

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Set Phasers To Stun? Apparently Not.

That's how they think of Tasers, isn't it?

We'll just stun 'em. All sci-fi and everything.

Apparently Braidwood doesn't agree.

2. I recommend that officers of provincially regulated law enforcement agencies be prohibited from deploying a conducted energy weapon unless the subject’s behaviour meets one of the following thresholds:

• the subject is causing bodily harm; or

• the officer is satisfied, on reasonable grounds, that the subject’s behaviour will imminently cause bodily harm.

That's not the statement you make for a stun gun. That's a statement you make for an actual gun that kills people.

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Welcome to Canada ... Most of You

No, I'm not being sarcastic. I am greatly in favour of the positive attitude that Canada has for multiculturalism. We welcome people from different parts of the world, take their ideas and perspectives, examine those unique ways of viewing the world and make the best ones a part of our own heterogeneous way of life.

In Canada I can get food prepared in the style of almost any nation on Earth. I can get it from a restaurant or buy the raw ingredients and make it at home. I can go to a park and watch as the Ultimate players come off the field because it's time for Cricket. I can go to a ball and see a guy in a kilt dancing with a woman in a sari. I, an atheist, have gone to lunch and sat at a single table with a Sikh, a Muslim, a Hindu, a Buddhist and three different kinds of Christian.

I like that aspect of my country. It's a source of pride that we have managed to make a peaceful society out of people with cultural backgrounds that would have them at war.

But we also draw a line. I can't properly describe the gap between the pride in peace that I feel most of the time and the disgust and rage I feel when I read about people who come here so tied to their cultural underpinnings that they carry their history of violent intolerance with them.

I'm not talking about the local supporters of international issues staging demonstrations. I'm talking about these awful things they call "honour killings".

I can, even from my left wing viewpoint, with absolute confidence and no hedging, tell these people that their culture is wrong. I have viewed their decisions to murder their daughters, and very occasionally their sons, for what they see as dishonourable actions, and I have concluded that I don't want that in my country. My multicultural mosaic will do fine without that contribution.

In summary, and quite simply, your multicultural fist must stop swinging at someone else's face. I don't care what your culture and your religion say. If it leads to you killing your children for disobedience, tough luck. Disown them if you want, abandon them to be wards of the state (for which you will be fined), but you're not allowed to kill them.

There, I said it.

A significant portion of your culture is so stupid and dangerous that I'm willing to pass judgment on the entirety of it. Dump it at customs or don't bother coming in.

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