I Prefer The Term Heathen

But if Manitoba PC leader Brian Pallister wants to wish "infidel atheists" a happy Xmas than I'm OK with it.  Remember, his bunch used to burn our bunch in pyres and throw us in rivers to see if we'd float.  So...definite progress.

Great New Game For Holiday Shopping Season!

Waiting in Line 3D!  Jump up and down!   Look from left to right!  Punch yourself in the face to stay awake (or when you think to yourself "I could be watching football right now!").  A stunning recreation of the holiday shopping experience.

Help Me, I'm Trapped At Tim Horton's

...while the wife fights for scraps at a Black Friday sale.

I don't frequent Tim's, ever since our repressive Conservative government made them a symbol in the Canadian culture wars. Basically, every cup you drink is like voting for Hitler.

And I remember its being on the bitter side; this stuff is not 100% awful.  Although I hear the '36 Olympics were pretty fab too.

Socialism: Your' Spelling It Wrong

From the envelope of an NDP fundraising letter:

You know, when the NDP became official opposition they raided their provincial and municipal machines to staff their federal office.  So this is the work of their best and brightest.  Probably got approved personally by Mulcair.

And they call Justin Trudeau dumb.

Buddies In Bad Times Denied Federal Funding

The Department of Canadian Heritage has decided to stiff  'em

This is not the first time that Canadian Heritage has withheld support from us. It happened once before. However, when this occurred, we received specific indications from the department on where our application fell short. What is troubling this time is that we have not been given any clear indication as to why we no longer meet their criteria. This has left us surprised and confused. Why do we no longer meet the program’s objective? We did not propose any significant shifts to the festival in our application. There has been no announced change in policy or priorities. The only source of new priorities that we can see at Canadian Heritage is the appointment of the new Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages, the Honourable Shelly Glover.

This will become news, but hasn't yet.  Just for fun, here's another thing I wrote about the relationship between Harper's Tories and the LGBT community.  It's"tortured", to say the least, though in using that metaphor I certainly wouldn't wish to offend any S&M fetishist who might want to vote LPC.  My apologies in advance.

H/t

There's Another Forum Poll Out

But I'm not going to link to it or even tell you what its about.  Because why bother?  I will just say that the one media outlet that's picked it up seems ashamed of the fact.  At least, they're not promoting it anywhere.

JRAN On Canada's Refugee Policy

In the resurrected Canadian Jewish News:

On Dec. 1, the Jewish National Fund will be holding an event to raise funds for the Stephen J. Harper Hula Valley Bird Sanctuary Visitor and Education Centre in Israel. The facility itself sounds like a wonderful place to visit and an important and safe refuge for migrating birds. Yet it is ironic that a prime minister who is responsible for making it more difficult for families to find protection in Canada would have this facility named for him. 

Read the whole letter through the link.  Coincidentally, Canada the day this letter was published, The Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinic (HIRC) released  Bordering on Failure: Canada-U.S. Border Policy and the Politics of Refugee Exclusion.  From the executive summary:

...this report finds that

1.Canada'is'systematically'closing'its'borders'to'asylum'seekers'and'avoiding' its'refugee'protection'obligations'under'domestic'and'international'law;''

2. Through' the' Safe' Third' Country' Agreement,' Canada' jeopardizes' asylum' seekers’'ability'to'obtain'fundamental'legal'protections'by'returning'them' to'the'United'States'despite'clear'deficiencies'in'the'U.S.'asylum'system;''

3. The'Safe'Third'Country'Agreement'has'prompted'a'rise'in'human'smuggling' across' the' CanadaFU.S.' border,' making' the' border' more' dangerous' and'disorderly,'and'raising'security'concerns'for'Canada'and'the'United'States.!!'

So there you have it.

Giant Sloth: Its What's For Dinner

From The Archaeology News:

Most scientists agree that humans began arriving in the Americas between 13,000 and 15,000 years ago, and the Clovis people of North and Central America are generally considered the "first Americans." But new fossil evidence from a streambed in southern Uruguay could challenge such theories.

Results published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B suggest the presence at the site of human hunters who may have killed giant sloths and other megafauna. That itself isn't odd, but the site, called Arroyo del Vizcaino, has been radiocarbon dated to between 29,000 and 30,000 years old—thousands of years before people were thought to be there.

My favorite bit of the article is this:

The date of Arroyo del Vizcaino may make some archaeologists cringe: South America's earliest human settlement at Monte Verde in Chile dates to only 14,000 years ago. 

Because this ignores the fact that a deeper layor at the MV site was dated to 33,000 BP.  But Tom Dillehay, who has done most of the work at Monte Verde, had so much trouble getting the earlier dates accepted that he never really pushed the apparently older material.

In any case, here's what the folks at Arroyo del Vizcaino actually found:

(c) Surface modification of bones

No carnivore tooth marks were identified. Nearly 59% of the bones collected show modifications with features identifiable as trampling marks [26], with over one-third of the bones exhibiting trampling abrasion on more than 25% of their surface area (see electronic supplementary material, figure S7). Furthermore, 40 elements (nearly 5% of the identified specimens, a percentage similar to the proportion in human sites [23]) show marks that have macroscopical features consistent with human agency (figure 4; electronic supplementary material, figures S8–S13). Ten of the bones that showed little or no trampling abrasion in the studied area of the anthropogenic-style marks were examined under greater magnifications. A total of 15 marks were analysed from the selected bones. Congruent with previous preliminary findings [27], most of these marks show microscopical features described in cuts made by human stone tools, such as shoulder effects, Herzian cones and even microstriations [12] (figure 4a–e; electronic supplementary material, table S6), the latter being very rarely preserved in prehistoric material [11,26]. 

Turns out I've written about Giant Sloths on previous occasions.  Here, for example.

BREAKING NEWS: By-Election Results Offer No Compelling Narrative!!!

Status Quo.  Close in Brandon.  Whumped 'em in T.O. Center and Bourassa  LPC increased its vote share, so that's nice but no big thng.  Didn't I tell you so?  I did!

PS.  Dear Forum Research, your crappy polls were only off by like 30 percent in Brandon.  You officially suck.

Darrell Bricker, CEO of Ipsos Public Affair, On Recent Forum Polls

The occasion is this story in the Winnipeg Free Press:

Forum released its latest round of polling late Sunday night following calls into the riding during the day. The survey has a relatively small sample size but suggests Liberal Rolf Dinsdale enjoys 59 per cent support, a commanding lead over Conservative Larry Maguire’s 30 per cent.

But, several Brandon-Souris residents report being polled multiple times throughout the campaign as Forum conducted several waves of polling using random, automated robocalls, where voters indicate their candidate preference using their touch-tone phone.

Brandon resident Anne Ross has received six calls from Forum since the campaign began, raising questions about the poll’s reach and its randomness. Ross was called for each of the five polls released so far, including the latest one. She also received a call on Saturday as part of a poll that has not been released.

"I don’t know why I would keep getting called," said Ross, a Liberal.

Ross is the mother of Free Press opinion columnist Deveryn Ross, who said he has been called by Forum Research six times during the campaign, including three times since Friday night.

Two other voters who spoke to the Free Press Sunday, including one Conservative, said they also received multiple calls from Forum Research.

There are 62,000 registered voters in the riding.

Forum president Lorne Bozinoff calls interactive voice-response polls "amazingly accurate." He said while it’s unusual someone might get called six times in a random poll, he doesn’t believe that undermines the poll’s results.

This inspired a series of skeptical tweets from Bricker:

Anybody else receive multiple calls from these guys? In "random" survey this would be almost impossible. http://t.co/tKNln2G1XF
— Darrell Bricker (@darrellbricker) November 25, 2013

And:

REALLY? Somebody was hit 6 times randomly? Twice, maybe, but 6 times? And multiple people multiple times? http://t.co/tKNln2G1XF
— Darrell Bricker (@darrellbricker) November 25, 2013

And especially:

Journos here's the question to ask - are you empaneling respondents and calling them multiple times? http://t.co/tKNln2G1XF
— Darrell Bricker (@darrellbricker) November 25, 2013

I think what he's getting at is easy enough to follow, but here's a definition of "empaneling". I assume he's wondering if they are not recalling the same list and tracking how voting intentions change during the run-up to the by-election.  Not that doing it this way would make the polls wrong, but presumably you would evaluate them differently from a random truly sample.

If that's what Forum is doing.  Nobody knows what they're doing.  Just that this kind of thing shouldn't happen.

@Bigcitylib2 Saying that responsible pollsters clearly communicate how they do their polls. They wouldn't leave anyone confused like this.
— Darrell Bricker (@darrellbricker) November 25, 2013

By-Election Prediction

No seats change hands and everyone spins the status quo.  With a small chance that Rolf wins out in Brandon, which would be a real victory, and a true sign.  Otherwise wake me when the pontificating dies down.

The Plot To Overthrow Stephen Harper

"I'm saying status quo is always in jeopardy. Ambitions rise as problems mount. And right now Mount Duffy has become insurmountable, The PM is throwing everyone under the bus. It is time for self-preservation. Time to pick sides. Time to look to the future."

Sometimes I think Bourque imagines these encounters, but this one seems downright hallucinatory, so maybe there's something to it.

Group of 7 In The News

Apparently, Canada is getting back the so-called "Arthur Lismer Collection", comprising hundreds of personal items accumulated during the life of this obscure Group of 7 artist.  So obscure in fact that I haven't even heard of  him, and as you might know, I study these guys.

So lets analyze one of his pics, shall we?

Yeah...*SIGH*...with the Group of 7 its always rocks and trees time.  Tree (center left)?  Check!  Rocks (beneath tree)?  Check!  There's water, which in this case is green, and I imagine counts as a minor formal innovation in the 7's oeuvre,  because mostly they painted water  its traditional blue colour.  And the wind appears to be blowing from right to left.  Or Lismer painted the thing at an angle.  A lot of these guys drank, you know.

In any case, that's really all there is to it.  Of the Group of 7, this guy finishes a distant 7th.

On The Arrival Of Target In Canada

Or Tar Ssshay, as the richy-rich 1%er  types like to pronounce it.  

Basically, the stores I've been to look like an abandoned Walmart.  No product on the shelves, no staff in sight.  Babies crying.  Although you get that last bit at Walmart too.  So, nothing that would make you switch from shopping at Walmart. 

Tory Candidate In Provencher Talks Anti-Gay Bullying: Maybe They're Faking It

Steinbach Regional Secondary School student Evan Wiens attracted national attention as he stepped forward, identifying himself as a gay student, and advocating for gay-straight alliances. In a television interview, as the debate over the bill grew, Wiens was interviewed in front of the high school as other students walked past lobbing verbal abuse at him. While [Tom] Falk acknowledged homosexuals do face bullying, he also suggested that particular incident may have been manufactured.

"Whether that was staged we don’t know," Falk said.

Asked if he meant the teens had staged the scene, Falk agreed.

"By the organizers, yeah," he said.

Hate Speech in C-13

Indeed, the Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act does contain several "tweeks" to Canada's hate speech laws.

(4) In this section, “identifiable group” means any section of the public distinguished by colour, race, religion, national or ethnic origin, age, sex, sexual orientation, or mental or physical disability.

To me the only noticable change I can see is the addition of "national origin" to the list of identifiable groups. This is a holdover from when the bill was called the  Investigative Powers for the 21st Century Act, and had no pretence to being cyber bullying legislation.  I once wrote about that particular change being somewhat sinister, but was told to chill

There is also this:

320.1 (1) If a judge is satisfied by information on oath that there are reasonable grounds to believe that there is material that is hate propaganda within the meaning of subsection 320(8) or computer data within the meaning of subsection 342.1(2) that makes hate propaganda available, that is stored on and made available to the public through a computer system within the meaning of subsection 342.1(2) that is within the jurisdiction of the court, the judge may order the custodian of the computer system to [delete the material]

...which looks like a rehash of Clause 5 in Investigate Powers, which would mean that linking to hate speech becomes a crime.  Although how that would be workable post Crookes would be an interesting question.

Well, IANAL so that's the best I can do with it.  A real lawyer discusses the various issues raised by the new bill here.

Update: Laura in the comments notes that

The addition of age, sex, and mental or physical disability is also new. The inclusion of "sex" is particularly significant; women face gendered hate speech all the time, particularly online, and since the hate speech provisions of the Canadian Human Rights Act were removed earlier this year, there's been nothing in law to address this.

Trudeau "Gaffes" Killing Party In Quebec

The same stability marks the federal level. The Liberal Party of Canada (DFC) Justin Trudeau won five percentage points in a month, the New Democratic Party (NDP) Thomas Mulcair has lost three, but the two parties are tied among Francophones, where the majority of seats in Ottawa.

Depending CROP during general elections, the PLC has obtained 36% of the votes in Quebec, followed by the NDP (28%). The Bloc Quebecois Daniel Paille will attract 16% of voters, and the Conservative Party of Canada Stephen Harper would have closed the way with 13%.

Tee hee.  Just kidding.

PS.  Original is in French and this is an auto-translation, but you get the point.

Kory Teneycke Talks Ford Nation Cancellation: The Secret Draft Statement

The verdict is in!  Ford Nation sucked monkeys!  Kory Teneycke has made an official public statement, but I have been given a secret recording, which I believe to be genuine, of what is purported to be  a dictation of the first draft of this statement.  As you can see, it is quite different from the amended version.

The Fords are "great TV but not necessarily great TV hosts," [Sun News vice-president Kory] Teneycke said.  "Also, Canadian "Crappy" Tire just told me if their ads were associated with this pile of chicken shit they would send in their lawyers pronto.  I am so fucked.  Just...so...totally.  Mom and dad, out there in Theodore Sask where I grew up and tried so hard to get out of...where cow-tipping is not an urban myth.  It looks like I'm coming home and if you need me to sleep out in the barn, than I'm OK with that.

You read it here first.

Wind And Health: A New Study?

From Garth Manning,  Chairman of the County Coalition for Safe and Appropriate Green Energy (CCSAGE), Prince Edward County, Ontario, writing in the T.O. Sun:

Toronto human rights lawyer Julian Falconer argues that the GEA and the government’s approval of wind projects “implicates their right to security of the person” as guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights, in view of potential health impacts.

These health impacts were noted on Oct. 17, 2013 when the Ontario government’s Research Chair for Renewable Energy Technologies and Health at the University of Waterloo reported a statistically significant correlation between proximity to industrial wind turbines and sleep deprivation, tinnitus and vertigo.

What he's talking about is this.  Some of the short-comings are discussed here in The Chatham Daily News.  I'll just summarize from that piece with a few notes of my own.

1) As you can see from the link title, Wind Turbine Noise, Sleep Quality, and Symptoms of 
Inner Ear Problems is a poster, not a paper, and it was presented at a symposium by grad students (Each event will include brief presentations, Q&A, speed mentoring sessions, poster presentations by graduate students, and a cocktail to mingle with the experts and decision-makers.  It may or may not ever make it into the literature.

2)  But of course grad students are capable of fine work.  Unfortunately, in this case they had very few responses to the survey which served as their study's basis:

...the overall response rate of under 10% is "very problematic and we recognize the opportunity for bias that would invalidate the findings."

In fact they mailed out 4,876 surveys, and were able to use 396 of the 412  questionnaires returned.

Surveys on the health effects of wind turbines are at best difficult to conduct.  It's almost impossible to keep the purpose of the questionnaire secret, which is needed to ensure that answers are not preconditioned by what the subjects may have heard in the news or read on-line re such topics as Wind Turbine Syndrome (WTN).  Perhaps a healthy response rate might have eliminated this problem, but with under 400 replies the scientists at Waterloo are likely hearing from those particularly motivated to answer in a negative fashion.  And it is indeed the case that readers of the anti-wind NIMBY site Ontario Wind Resistance knew about the survey  well in advance of its distribution. They were even offering advice on how to field the questions contained in it.  So the project might have been doomed to start with.

It's worth noting how stringent the Health Canada study of the same issue (not yet released) is trying to be.  Their questionnaire work will be supplemented with extensive on-site testing. Participants have been asked to wear an  actimeter and give hair samples to be tested for signs of chronic stress.  No such precautions were in place with the research from Waterloo.

Former Head Of CHRC Jennifer Lynch Passes

Something I didn't know about her:

As the last President of the National P.C. Women's Caucus, Jennifer was an advocate for the involvement and advancement of women in politics. She was proud to serve as Chief of Staff to the Right Honourable Joe Clark, then P.C. Party Leader. 

Pity.  The woman took alot of crap from MSM journalists who should have known better but who, their jobs become thankless drudgery before inevitable lay-offs, chose to atack Canada's human rights apparatus in a rawly self-interested attempt to make their profession  even less accountable.

In any case, Rest In Peace Ms. Lynch.