Who’s really stupid?

The Ontario government has sponsored a new anti-smoking campaign on TV and the web. Quite simply, it labels smoking as “stupid.” All the adverts I have seen thus far have in and of themselves been pretty stupid, but the latest one really takes the cake.

We see a full bathtub with a toaster propped on the edge. Toast pops up and a man emerges from under the bathwater and begins to butter it. He looks towards the camera and says (more or less):

“Looks pretty stupid! Well, your chances of dying from something like making toast in the bath are 1 in 36,000, but if you’re a smoker, your chances of dying are 1 in 2. So what’s really stupid?”

Well, I hate to split hairs, but actually your chances of dying are 1 in 1 whether you smoke or not. Perhaps they meant “prematurely” and couldn’t find time to fit that word in, but perhaps we could have made time by cutting a second’s worth of “toaster on bathtub” footage. I suspect that it was omitted because “dying prematurely” has less impact than “dying”, and they decided to tell a little white lie.

Furthermore, the actual numbers involved definitely come under the label of “lies, damn lies and statistics.” Chances of dying from making toast in the bath are 1 in 36,000, you say? I suspect that nobody has surveyed a large group of people who make toast in the bath every day for years, so this figure probably means “chances of dying if you make toast in the bath as a one-off event.” Are your chances of dying from tobacco-related diseases 1 in 2 if you smoke one cigarette as a one-off event? This type of creative accounting makes Enron’s books look like a paragon of honesty.

And there’s the man walking around a forest during hunting season with antlers duct-taped to a helmet. “Looks stupid, huh? Well, did you know that only a few people die each year from hunting, while thousands die from smoking?” Well, my friend, did you know that the ratio of regular smokers to regular hunters is quite disparate? It’s hardly a decent basis for comparison.

Or the guy strapped to a lightning conductor. “Did you know the chances of being struck by lightning are far less than dying from smoking?” Were these statistics gathered from people who were just going about their business, or were they gathered from idiots who strap themselves to lightning rods in a thunderstorm? One expects that the likelihood of being struck for the latter group is rather higher and probably puts the likelihood of dying from smoking to shame!

To quote Patrick Warburton’s “David Puddy” from Seinfeld: “You know who’s stupid? You are. Stupid.”

See a Pattern Here?

In April 2003, the US invaded Iraq and toppled Saddam Hussein. In January 2005, the Iraqis had their first election, and right now we’re hearing about good ol’ American style bargaining among the various factions who got elected into the legislative assembly, as well as secret negotiations between US officials and insurgents who seem to want to enter into the political process.

With the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister, allegedly by Syria, and the Lebanese people staging mass demonstrations where he was killed (with nearby Dunkin’ Donuts and Virgin Superstore providing free bathroom facilities), change seems to be in the air in the Middle East. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has announced electoral reforms, while the Sauds are -ever—so—-slowly—-introducing democratic reforms. NYT’s David Brooks attributes this change in no small part to the US invasion, which has set these and related events into motion. People in the Middle East are simply asking, “why not here?” Stephen R. Sestanovich of the Council on Foreign Relations places Bush’s policy into a broader perspective on US foreign policy, comparing Bush’s “forward looking” foreign policy to Reagan when he pushed Mitterand and other European leaders to accept a united Germany: And it was Madeleine Albright’s view when she explained what she meant in calling the United States an ”indispensable” nation: ”We see further than other countries into the future.” Arrogant and hubristic perhaps, and often wrong about their prognostications. Even so, their forward-thinking seems to be right when it counts. Brooks and Sestanovich attribute this foreign policy tradition to the American “can do” attitude that so characterizes their culture. It might also have something to do with what Wilfred McClay has called “evangelical conservatism”. See also commentary at the Democracy Project.

The Joys of Public Health Care

A British girl who had been diagnosed with a strange disease that prevented her from eating solid food has been cured during a visit to the United States. Instead of having Bulbar Palsy, she simply had swollen tonsils.

Aren’t we glad we don’t have “American-style health care” here in publicly funded Canada?

Martin Forgets Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes: “Contracts without the sword are only words, Covenants without a King are useless.�

Paul Martin: “This is our airspace, we’re a sovereign nation and you don’t intrude on a sovereign nation’s airspace without seeking permission.”

As if US Air Command is going to bother phoning Mr. Dithers to make a decision about an incoming missile. Imagine how long it would take for him to consult his Quebec caucus to ask their permission for the Americans to shoot down a missile over Alberta airspace. (hat tip: Proud to be Canadian & k@chikel)

PS: k@chikel makes the excellent point that Mr. Dithers’s statement has painted him into a much tighter, and even more ant-American corner than Mr. Crouton ever did:

To say that an unauthorized violation of our air space is a violation of our sovereignty is just short of saying that such violation is akin to an act of war.

Should Gays Be Pro-Life?

Impressed by its technological know-how, our society seems to be adopting more and more biotechnologies, raising questions about the ethics of cloning, genetics, etc. Parents are increasingly told that they can manage their children’s genetic codes to secure the most desirable characteristics. If they can’t do that, they always have the absolute freedom to abort the child/fetus/embryo/piece-of-flesh-that’s-equivalent-to-having-a-wart-removed.

Yet, now there’s a Maine state legislator who’s advancing a law to make it a crime to abort a child/fetus/embryo/piece-of-flesh-that’s-equivalent-to-having-a-wart-removed if it’s known to carry the gay gene. In other words, he realizes that abortion on demand is not exactly in the interest of gays because, he fears, they could be targeted just as fetuses without blue eyes and blond hair and females are targeted.

Hey, I have an idea. Why not protect fetuses with the gay gene as well as those of both genders and all colors of eyes? (hat tip: Proud to be Canadian).

The Strongest Man in the World

In humility, strength.

First the Sea, then the Sky, then the Land?

US Ambassador Paul Cellucci today stated repeatedly that Canada’s refusal to participate in ballistic missile defence marks a diminution of Canadian sovereignty.

“We will deploy. We will defend North America,” said Paul Cellucci, the U.S. ambassador to Canada.

“We simply cannot understand why Canada would, in effect, give up its sovereignty – its seat at the table – to decide what to do about a missile that might be coming toward Canada.”

The warning was no slip of the tongue – Cellucci repeated several times that Canada’s decision had handed over some of its sovereignty to the U.S.

As readers know, the US administration, and Bush in particular, put a lot of pressure on the Canadian government to participate. Bush even chided Harper for not doing enough.

What are the reasons for Canada’s refusal? Not because it opposes weaponization of space. Not because BMD may or may not work. There are numerous cost-free reasons to join even if it ends up being a white elephant.

No, the reasons to not joining are because the Liberals are in a minority position and they want votes from the left, but specifically in Quebec.

The Canadian government has failed to protect Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic. Now it seems it’s given up its decision-making role in defending sovereignty in the air. When it comes to land, we had the sovereignty question raised in 1995. Maybe again?

Bush’s “Evangelical Conservatism”

Wilfred McClay has a fascinating speech on what he calls George Bush’s “evangelical conservatism” (not to be confused with Evangelical conservatives). In it he argues that those two terms do not easily fit together because:

As a faith that revolves around the experience of individual transformation, it inevitably exists in tension with settled ways, established social hierarchies, customary usages, and entrenched institutional forms. Because evangelicalism places such powerful emphasis upon the individual act of conversion, and insists upon the individual’s ability to have a personal and unmediated relationship to the Deity and to the Holy Scriptures, it fits well with the American tendency to treat all existing institutions, even the church itself, as if their existence and authority were provisional and subordinate, merely serving as a vehicle for the proclamation of the Gospel and the achievement of a richer and more vibrant individual faith.

This is how Bush manages to defeat Democrats. In combining the story of his personal life, and his conversion, with the broader American faith in progress and human dignity, he has created a narrative that effectively corners the Democrats into a party that finds itself having to play the pessimist that defends all the entrenched interests that weigh on the “common man.” Bush ties into the central American myth of the self-made, responsible individual who guides his own life, but under the guise of “ordered liberty,” not the romantic notion of the “expressive self.”

Forgotten in Bush’s forging of a moral/political message is perhaps the sobriety of someone like Reinhold Niebuhr, the preeminent Protestant public intellectual of the twentieth-century. Bush, Americans, and liberal democrats in general, don’t like to hear bad news, especially the bad news about human limitations and sin (to use Niebuhr’s religious langauge). McClay argues that Bush, and America in general (and liberal democrats to generalize further), could use a dose of Niebuhr. Conversely, others have argued that behind Bush’s “evangelical conservatism” stands a realpolitik that fully recognizes the darkness in human hearts. (hat tip: No Left Turns).

Boo Hoo – Lefties Can’t Help but Feel Threatened

You know your doing something right when all your opponent can do is throw childish insults your way.

Ted Rall has got his panties in a knot over the state of the blogsphere. In his recent editorial, BUT WHO WATCHES THE WATCHDOGS?, Ted claims that the majority of the political blogs in the United States are conservative and that they are creating a dangerous ideological imbalance in journalism. According to Teddy, hate speech and death threats are rampant amongst Republican webloggers and poor old Eason Jordan got a bum rap.

I love this part,

Borg-like, the various right-wing blogs simultaneously discuss the same stories, applying identical rhetoric. They create blacklists and urge their readers and fellow bloggers to threaten and harass their targets. Surfing this cheesy world of flag-draped neo-McCarthyite HTML makes it impossible to deny Columbia Journalism Review writer Steve Lovelady’s conclusion that most are “salivating morons” who form an ideological “lynch mob.” Worse, many of the right-wing bloggers are flat-out liars.

Ted then turns his vitriol back towards the angry-left’s favourite propaganda,

The mainstream media let Bush steal an election and lie his way into two wars. It allowed Condi Rice to be confirmed even though she got caught lying about the existence of Al Qaeda briefing papers given to her by the outgoing Clinton Administration. Lord knows the journalistic conglomerates need a firm boot in the butt, but the right-wing bloggers aren’t ideologically inclined to deliver it.

I’m not going to dispute Ted’s claim that the majority of political weblogs are conservative, because I think he’s probably right. However, Ted isn’t interested in examining why conservative weblogs are popular, he’s too preoccupied with peddling mistruths and clichés. I’m actually surprised he didn’t try to bring up Bush’s IQ.

Conservative weblogs are in the majority because they are speaking to a large segment of the population that has gotten tired of the type of biased journalism produced by the likes of CNN and Eason Jordan. Ted’s angry because the Left is once again being marginalized through their own inaction and incompetence.

Forced Prostitution Update

I noted yesterday that the Liberal Party Youth Wing is pushing for the legalization of prostitution, and I also noted some unintended consequences that this measure would produce. Today’s Nat Post (subscription required) notes it is being pushed by Senator Mac Harb. It also interviews the national director of the Liberal Youths:

Denise Brunsdon, national director of the Young Liberals, said the prostitution proposal is one of the convention’s five priority resolutions.

“This is one of the few resolutions brought forward by the national executive themselves,” she said.

Considering yesterday’s “all things to all people” budget, maybe my initial joke about Liberals forcing the poor to work for brothels to qualify for social assistance isn’t too far off.

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