They'll Always Have Sexxxy

Partly its the craggy good looks, partly the look of steely arrogance that says "I conquered with Chretien while you sucked left hind titty with Paul Martin"--but for the most part I'd say its the awesome trench-coat that makes Peter Donolo look so sexxxy. That trench coat is worth more than my car. I asked my wife for a trench coat like that for Xmas and she said the only way we could afford it is if I died and she collected the insurance. So apparently I'm getting a George Foreman grill, and that's that. In any case, use the picture below for comparison purposes. It reeks of total non-sexxxiness:








How can the LPoC keep losing to these guys?

Finally...

THUNDER BAY - There are reports coming out from Attawapiskat that the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs (INAC) will be moving to build a new school for the community. INAC Minister Chuck Strahl has been under fire over problems with the existing school which is housed in temporary trailers.

Good news, if late in coming. Congrats to Charlie Angus, who has been plugging away at this for a long time. Although Dawg may have a bit of trouble letting go.

Elaine McCoy On The RCMP and The CPoC

The Globe's editorial writers spoke for many Canadians today when they said the 'loss of public trust is no mystery.' I am not reassured, then, when I consider that our government consistently and persistently parades its 'tough on crime' platform. If we can't trust the RCMP to carry out that mandate fairly and conscientiously, how can we have faith in any law and order agenda? This is a sad day indeed for the RCMP … and an even sadder one for Canada.

Faux Math From Fox News

Because in America, some people are allowed to have more than one opinion...

h/t

If It Were Done When 'Tis Done

...then 'twere well It were done quickly.

CRU Hacked From The Eastern U.S.?

This comment appeared on Hans Von Storch's Climate Onion blog (yeah he called it that):

Particularly interesting is the remark about the numeric IDs which identify the emails in the zipfile. The headers of the emails contain the date and time on which they were sent. If I understand the comment correctly, the numeric IDs are Unix timestamps for those sending times, but moved by 4 or 5 hours from UK to eastern US time. This suggests that the emails were given their current identifiers on a computer in North America, or one that was running on North American time - which in turn suggests a hack rather than a leak.


It references a rather more in-depth discussion at Climate Audit, of which the most pertinant comment seems to be:

So, if I understand this. Each CRU email is named (given a numeric label, like "0826209667" in the above) based on the date/time it is sent. If you know UNIX you can translate the label back into the date. That's what the "->" indicates; the label 0826209667 = 7/03/1996 14:41:07. But if you match that to the date line you see they are off by 4/5 hours, which suggests that--given the emails were taken from a U.K. server--they passed through a computer in the Eastern U.S.

Which would indicate that the hack was indeed a hack and not a leak.

PS. Or, as TiGuy points out, they might have gone through a computer in Eastern Canada.

Stephen Toulmin Has Died

Stephen Toulmin, one of the greats of 20th century English philosophy, and one of the few to bring Ludwig Wittgenstein's ideas to bear on the philosophy of science, died on December 4th after a brief illness.

The time is interesting. Much of Toulmin's work in the field was in part a reaction to Popper and the logical positivists, who saw scientific inquiry as an ahistorical, relatively bloodless unfolding of logical argument and counter-argument. In his Human Understanding (1972), Toulmin attempted to apply evolutionary concepts to the history of knowledge in an attempt to "save" the Rationality of science in the messy post-Popperian world he helped to create.

So it would be have been interesting to hear what Toulmin thought of the CRU Hack. I suspect he would have regarded the emails revealed therein to be part of the usual "hurly-burly" of scientific inquiry.

In any case, a great loss.

Gruending On The KAIROS Cuts

KAIROS (the Canadian Ecumenical Justice Initiatives) is a Toronto-based alliance of social justice coalitions. Within the past couple of days, the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA)--Bev Oda's department-- has cut all funding to KAIROS.

In his latest, Dennis Gruending speculates as to why:

Minister Oda did not communicate with KAIROS about its fate — she rarely communicates publicly with anyone about her portfolio except in the most controlled of circumstances. But the “trouble at the top” may well have had more to do with the work of KAIROS within Canada than with its overseas projects. KAIROS has questioned, on environmental and hence ethical grounds, the rapid development of the tar sands in Western Canada. KAIROS hosted a forum in Calgary in October 2008 and organized a delegation of Canadian church leaders to visit the tar sands in May 2009. The Reform Party and the Canadian Alliance, prior to their takeover of the Progressive Conservative Party, were beneficiaries of generous support from the oil and gas industry. The Harper Conservatives exist on similarly friendly terms with the carbon industry and will not hear of any proposal that would scale back rapid development – despite the environmental problems such development is causing. The implied criticism from KAIROS may have excited the ire of Conservatives at the top, even though most of the KAIROS budget is provided by the organization’s own donors and not by CIDA.

Just by co-incidence, within hours of defunding KAIROS which, among other things, helps women in the Congo who have been brutalized (often raped) by local militias, the Harper government indicated that it wanted an extra 1.7 mill set aside so that the PM can shoot video of him getting on and off military helicopters, and riding on navy vessels, and pass that off as news.

NDP Calls For Mackay's Resignation

And I don't know why the Libs aren't doing more of this kind of shit--agitating, opposing, and etc. You can't win if you don't play. What is it? Beneath the party's dignity to kick out once in awhile? It isn't like nobody's thought of the idea. But Noooo! And therefore any of the glory that might result (in the way of headlines: its not like MacKay would actually step down) will accrue to the NDP.

Although the Anywhere But Copenhagen thing is quite clever, and the results have been most entertaining.

SwiftHack

...for "reality based" news stories on the CRU Hack pseudo-scandal. Which now, incidentally, includes death threats against several of the CRU scientists involved.

Looks Like We've Got A Floor Crosser

Andrew Coyne is appalled, and his pain gives me wings. From the LPoC website, word of an International Round Table on trade being held in the runup to the Canada at 150 thinkfest.

Featuring an impressive list of distinguished speakers and presenters, this day-long conference will address the important trade relationships between Canada and the United States, China, and India as well as free trade negotiations with the European Union. Former Prime Minister Joe Clark and Canadian Council on Africa President Lucien Bradet will also co-host a special discussion on trade with Africa.

How about Joe Clark for Keith Martin? That would be a decent swap.

NDP Launch Anti-HST Radio Ads

Listen to one of 'em here. They are being run in "10 key Conservative ridings – ridings that New Democrats can win in the next election", according to Brad Lavigne. Prersumably in Ont. and B.C. All a bit tired "bail out big business stuff" to my ears, but what the hell?

Thunder From Down Under

Lasty week, Aussie MP Malcolm Turnbull was ousted by Tony Abbot as leader of the Australian Liberal Party (equivalent ot our Conservatives) and head of the official opposition. The issue that did it was his support of the government's emissions trading scheme (ETS), and indeed his ouster has put this scheme on ice for the time being.

Yesterday, a blog post appeared on Mr. Turnbull's website. I have excerpted my favorite bits:

While a shadow minister, Tony Abbott was never afraid of speaking bluntly in a manner that was at odds with Coalition policy.

So as I am a humble backbencher I am sure he won't complain if I tell a few home truths about the farce that the Coalition's policy, or lack of policy, on climate change has descended into.

[...]

So any suggestion that you can dramatically cut emissions without any cost is, to use a favourite term of Mr Abbott, "bullshit." Moreover he knows it.

[...]

It is not possible to criticise the new Coalition policy on climate change because it does not exist. Mr Abbott apparently knows what he is against, but not what he is for.

[...]

Now politics is about conviction and a commitment to carry out those convictions. The Liberal Party is currently led by people whose conviction on climate change is that it is "crap" and you don't need to do anything about it. Any policy that is announced will simply be a con, an environmental figleaf to cover a determination to do nothing.

[...]

Tony himself has, in just four or five months, publicly advocated the blocking of the ETS, the passing of the ETS, the amending of the ETS and, if the amendments were satisfactory, passing it, and now the blocking of it.

[...]

Not that anyone would doubt it, but I will be voting for the ETS legislation when it returns in February and if my colleagues have any sense they will do so as well. If the legislation is passed, incorporating as it does the amendments Ian MacFarlane negotiated with Penny Wong, then the issue will be settled. It is manifestly in the national interest and in the interest of the Liberal Party that it be so.


To put what has happened in Australia in a North American context--there has been a battle within the Australian political Right, and the teabaggers have won. For the time being. For, as a result, the movement has split into its adult vs. whackjob wings, with people like Turnbull pleading for reason and threatening to cross the floor on the next ETS vote if his party continues down the road to self-immolation.

Similar fault lines exist within the ranks of Canadian Conservatives, and can be exploited, which is why "Iggy's epiphany" on green issues is good news.

PS. Someone should show this to Angelo Persichilli--this is what an intra-party insurrection looks like.

Thanks...Assholes!

At first I thought the hacked e-mails would damage the outcome of the Copenhagen Climate Conference, but now I think these outrageous crimes may serve to bring world leaders and negotiators closer together.

Obama, K. Rudd, et. al would not show up for a failure, so you can be sure that something in the way of an agreement will come out of Copenhagen, and the world will call it a victory. Mind, alot of what was promised and what is needed will not be in this agreement, and there will stuff in the agreement that nobody promised and that really isn't needed. Everyone will get less than they think they deserve. Like marriage, in other words, and really just a first step towards something, hopefully, a wee bit better.

Meanwhile, here's a clip of head denier Marc Morano in action. For about two minutes, the tv host and guest professor Andrew Watson vainly try to stop him from babbling like a kid on a sugar high, and at the very end an exasperated Watson bestows the richly deserved epithet of "asshole" upon him.

Only in America (and, to be fair, only in certain parts) would this be called debating.

And damned if the guy doesn't remind me of a slightly less dorky-looking Ezra Levant.

On "Tricks" In Math And Science

Central to the debate over the significance of emails hacked from CRU's Servers back in late November is one from Phil Jones discussing the divergence problem--the divergence from instrumental temperature readings seen in Keith Briffa's tree ring chronologies after 1960. He writes:

Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,Once Tim’s got a diagram here we’ll send that either later today or first thing tomorrow. I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd [sic] from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.

Of course the denialists jumped on this email, at first assuming that Jones was discussing a decline in temperatures, and then modifying their charges when it became clear that this was not the case. In any case, Jones defense was to argue that the term "trick" was "used here colloquially, as in a clever thing to do...". Well, can this defense be justified or, to put it another way, is the term "trick" used as a colloquialism in the statistical/mathematical/scientific literature?

Well, yeah. Here's what you get when you run inurl:pdf "computational trick" through google:

And here's is what you get when you run "inurl:pdf "mathematical trick"" through the same source.In fact, if you look at the first link, you will note that was "invented in the context" of theoretical physics, so if there is a conspiracy, it goes much deeper than anyone has currently suggested.

PS. Just reading Desmog, I notice that someone else thought of running these searches before me.

Pull My Finger...NOW!!!

h/t

10%ers/Householders From That Flat, Rectangular Province Out West

...that I forget the name of: ...the top five big spenders are all Tories: Vellacott, Lukiwski, Scheer, Fitzpatrick, and Trost. Buncha SoCons in there too, plus Lukiswiski, whose alphabet consists entirely of As and Bs.

PS. Can someone confirm that Lukiwski's 10%ers all focus on the topic of fingernail maintenance.

Harper Booed At Montreal Canadians Memorial

From a reader who may or may not wish to identify himself in the comments:

Les Glorieux were on fire tonight. The fans were pumped. By mid-period, people were already going hoarse form the cheering. They killed a 2 minute 5 on 3 and took it down the length of the ice and scored. Carey was a wall, a reinforced concrete wall.

And then...

The Prime Minister of our beloved country, Stephen Harper, appeared on the giant screen.

Instantly, the raucus crowd turned their deafening cheers to deadening boos like someone had flicked a switch. You could not hear a single word he said from the moment his face showed itself. Loud and sustained for the whole 60-90 seconds of his English message and then his French message and his obligatory nerdy thumbs up.

This seemed to me a very surprisingly angry booing. I was really taken aback. The anger was quite palpable. I've never been a part of something like that. I don't think your ordinary Montrealer likes our Prime Minister all that much.

Booing confirmed here.

More On The UVIC Break In

...when hackers apparently attempted to steal data from the Centre for Climate Modeling and Analysis:

According to sources at the University of Victoria, two people claiming to be network computer technicians presented themselves at the headquarters of the Canadian Centre for Climate Modeling and Analysis and tried to gain access to the data servers. When challenged by an employee, the two individuals hastily left. The timing of this attempted break-in is very suspicious given that it occurred so closely on the heels of the release of hacked emails and data from a similar facility housed at the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the UK.

...which is to say that the CRU hack is starting to look like one in a coordinated series.

Does The HST Detract From Provincial Autonomy?

Ontario First Nations are losing their point of sale PST tax exemption under the new harmonized federal/provincial sales tax (or it will become more difficult to apply for; I'm not quite sure which). Dalton McGuinty is, basically, pleading with the Harper government to rig things up as per the status quo when the new tax comes into effect(ie the FNs remain exempt), and Harper et al are basically saying "no".

Since the provincial portion of the HST is redistributed from the Federal bureaucracy to Ontario under the terms agreed to in the legislation,what happens if Ontario decides to make changes to their sales tax--drop or raise it a point, add to or withdraw exemptions? Does this now require federal approval--that is, a negotiated change to the legislation? In other words, is the province handing control of this particular tax policy lever over to the Federal government?

I dunno. Not sure I like the idea, though.