Longer David Emerson :

" I wanted it so I took it so let's just pretend you willingly gave it to me in some other election in some other riding where the Cons didn't place a distant third behind the Libs and the NDP."

Link

Diploma mill scam spam

Ever since I wrote about diploma mills back here, my spam from them has increased sufficiently to prove that at the very least their own reading comprehension skills were obtained from a diploma mill.
But this latest is the best one yet :

A PhD in two weeks with no study required. Plus fully verifiable certified transcripts.

You know, I'm thinking of writing back to see if they could help me complete my BDSM...

Electoral system pop quiz

Here's two lists of selected countries. One group elects their government using a first-past-the-post winner-takes-all system and the other group uses some variation of proportional representation. Which group do you think Canada, the US, and the UK fall into?

Group 1
Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Botswana, Congo, Dominica, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Kenya, Malaysia, Mongolia, Nepal, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Swaziland, Syria, Uganda, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

Group 2
Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Cambodia, Chile, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Denmark, El Salvador, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Venezuela.

Yup, our first-past-the-post system puts Canada, along with the UK and US, in Group 1.
We really need to get on this before 2008.

Update. To the person who emailed me to complain that I had cherry-picked the two groups to highlight a black countries vs white countries bias : No, the two groups highlight a generally right vs left bias.
I just got tired of hearing it said that if we have a similar electoral system to the US and UK, we're probably doing alright.

Trailer Park Boys vs Anne of Green Gables

Julian, Ricky, and Bubbles to host East Coast Music Awards on CBC at 8pm tonight.

Hilarious complaints greeted this announcement, as one letter writer suggested that "foul-mouthed drug-using petty criminals" were poor representatives of the music industry - ?!?!? - and another wrote that "trailer trash" should not be representing Atlantic Canada on television.

Coz, you know, up till now, whenever we thought about Atlantic Canada, we envisioned a spunky orphan who brought joy into everyone's lives.

Will PM Stephen Harper be snapping open a brown buddy tonight and kicking back to watch his distant cousin?Personally I'm hoping for a shit-faced guest appearance by Mr Leahy and his rotund lover Randy.

Does this poll make my ass look big?

Enough already with the "Harper's approval ratings are really quite good so far...."

Two weeks after the election and in the Feb 9 2006 SES Poll he's running neck and neck with the party that's just been turfed from office and doesn't even have a leader? How is that not tanking? And then there's this :

Note that "West" presumably includes Alberta. Now that is tanking.

Click on graphs to enlarge. Click link below for polling data.

Link

The Loop Road. Again.

One year ago the Bowen Island Taxpayers Association took out a full page ad in the Undercurrent in which they stated : "no other single issue has as much impact on the quality of life on this island as the quality of ferry service..."

Really? 'Quality of ferry service' is the No.1 'quality of life' issue here?

Bigger even than say, preserving our parkland? . Well apparently so.

Yesterday in the Undercurrent this same group wrote that they have unanimously concluded that we need to whack a 150' strip off the parkland north of Government Rd from the gas station to the library. Why? So we can sell it to raise enough money to put a two-lane ferry marshalling road through what would be left of it.

Note to Bowen Island Taxpayers Association : We didn't move here for the parking or the shopping or the ferry marshalling. We moved here for what anyone outside your organization would reasonably describe as 'quality of life'.

Uh oh, Toto, NaPo's gone to Kansas

"Canadian scientists want out of Darwin's rut" says the National Post headline.

What, all of them?
Well no, but one scientist did say that and, along with another eight, they signed a petition at the Discovery Institute, a right wing American think tank promoting Intelligent Design.
(For those of you who go outside from time to time instead of sitting here fretting about such things, here's an easy one to remember :
DI = ID, or Discovery Institute equals Intelligent Design.)

"A handful of Canadian scientists are speaking out against evolution as an explanation for all of life as we know it, saying the complexity of living things simply cannot be attributed to biological chance.
Nine university professors and others with science or engineering PhDs have added their names to an American petition that voices skepticism about the theory of evolution."

So who are these Canadian scientists?
The "Darwin rut" one who says "science must look beyond evolutionary theory" is a biochemistry and molecular biology prof at U of Calgary.
As he's in a relevant field here, we do have to take him seriously.
Oh look - he is also the one who states he "does not believe Intelligent Design is the answer".

Um, ok, so what about the others?
Two of them teach at Christian universities. Check, check.
One "runs an organization dedicated to the links between Islam and science". Mmm.
One is an ex-creationist and "a geophysics PhD and software developer who compares genetic systems to languages created by humans" and states (laughably) "There is no way I could create a code like this [DNA]". Meaning what...???
One is an electrical engineering PhD at IBM.
And the other three are a chair in chemistry at Lethbridge, a UBC anthropology emeritus, and a Waterloo U biology emeritus.

So, not exactly a revolution in the Canadian scientific community then.
Care to revise your bullshit headline, NaPo?

Link

"Rubbish, noxious, offensive, and unwholesome"

is a pretty good description of the Unsightly Premises Bylaw that passed first reading at Bowen council.
From the Undercurrent:
"The proposed bylaw stipulates that residents could be fined for allowing their property to become untidy, unsightly, or for causing or permitting "rubbish or noxious, offensive or unwholesome matter to collect or accumulate.
[Officer Leahy] defended the need for the bylaw, stating that it could and should apply to buildings in a perpetual state of construction. Additionally he said, "Some people just don't understand that their junk upsets their neighbours." "

Certainly this is the kind of junk that upsets me. Welcome to West Van Lite.
We all remember that long thread on the Forum castigating a young couple undergoing a personal tragedy for having other things on their minds than picking up 2x4's at the site of their home reno. And how some posters suggested leaving them alone or else offering to help.
So how about a bylaw proposing a fine for every day you complain about but don't offer to help out a neighbour whose reno has gotten bogged down due to financial or personal difficulties?
I'm sorry, what was that? Your neighbour's difficulties are not your problem?
Good call. Shut the fuck up then.

And way to go, Councillors Lisa B, Lisa S and Dave for raising objections.

Nope, this one isn't about Stockwell Day

Good guess though.

Last Sunday we had a look at SpongeDob and his spawn 'Focus on the Family Canada'.
FotFC had just announced the launch of what they refer to on their website as their new initiative - a think tank in Ottawa called the 'Institute of Marriage and Family Canada' to "research and suggest new legislation". (shudder)

I dropped by their website again today to see how the Feb 16 launch had gone, fully expecting glowing reports of how tens of people had shown up, and right there on the front page is an article promoting none other than Kent "Dr Dino" Hovind. On a Canadian website.

It's easy to make fun of Dr Dino and what he calls his "Creation Science Evangelism" : the dinosaur theme park to promote the idea that humans and dinos coexisted on an earth that's only 6000 years old, his belief that they still do, his assertion that the Grand Canyon is the result of the Great Flood and that UFOs are apparitions of Satan. When he isn't pushing 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion', Dr Hovind's folksy speaking style could even be described as charming, but alas the 'doctor' part is also a joke, having been obtained from a diploma mill.

Even other young-earth creationists generally consider him an embarrassment so what is he doing on the front page of the Focus on the Family Canada website?
Well just listen to what he says (bold - mine):

"Hovind, who believes the Bible is literally true and scientifically accurate, says the Dover Area School Board in Pennsylvania was “barking up the wrong tree” when it attempted to require that intelligent design (ID) be taught in its classrooms.
“To me,” Hovind suggests, “the much better approach is don’t mention creation, don’t mention evolution, don’t mention intelligent design” – but instead push for textbooks that simply tell the truth. There are 50-some lies in the average textbook that are used as evidence for evolution. Get them out. End of story.” "

Not mentioning any of the controversial buzzwords - neither ID nor evolution - and going quietly about their business would be the much better approach for them at this point.
We should be watching for it.

A more thorough take on this at The Galloping Beaver

Intelligently Designed pillows

Yes, this lovely ID Mount Rushmore Throw Pillow can now be yours for only $22.99. "Stylish fun" and "easily laundered" pretty well covers the whole ID experiment, wouldn't you say?

A link from Canadian Cynic leads to The Intelligent Design weblog of Bill Dembski who provides this blurb to go with your new pillow :

“Intelligent design begins with a seemingly innocuous question: Can objects, even if nothing is known about how they arose, exhibit features that reliably signal the action of an intelligent cause? ...What if humans went extinct and aliens, visiting the earth, discovered Mount Rushmore in substantially the same condition as it is now? "

What would the aliens think of us carving our human likenesses onto Mt Rushmore? I'm guessing it would be something along the lines of : " Now here's a species who projects and imposes its own image onto nature and then worships it."

But that's just my inner alien. Dembski's inner alien is probably quite different.

Further down the Intelligently Designed Apparel and Merchandise Page we come to this unexplained figure:

Is he:

1. an atheist mole signalling us from inside the ID site?
2. on step#1 of the 12 Step ID Anonymous Program?
3. enacting some sort of intelligently designed religious auto-eroticism?

You be the judge.