As for the latter though, wouldn’t it be interesting if we, for one moment, got truly investigative and turned the tables on the all too comfortable Darwinians who have become yet another group to hijack our education system for their own self-preservation and motives? After all, in the noise of bitter reviews, intimidating threats and exhaustive and bewildered requests to anti-Darwinists to just shut up, I think the evolution debate has failed to examine a key component: whether the theory of Charles Darwin is truly something worth wasting time on in the science class to begin with. After all, a physicist who learns anything from F=MA to the hydrogen fusion reaction that is continually taking place at the centre of our sun to even string theory is able to take that knowledge and apply it to the benefit of mankind in a strictly physical sense. Even if the highly controversial string theory proves to be a dead end, what it would tell us about how elementary particles don’t interact would help us to zone in on other understandings and ultimately give us a better way to understand the very microscopic. In turn, that would allow us to apply our knowledge one day to advancements that might, for example, allow for microscopic computers that write data onto quarks, just as F=MA gave us the first building blocks we needed to put a man on the moon. Chemistry need only need mention of companies like DOW or Pfizer to prove its contribution to our modern society and even a late-comer to quantitative analysis, biology, will soon prove invaluable to an entire generation of baby-boomers who are in the midst of retiring from the workforce currently. In fact, the driving force behind science is not just getting to have a better understanding of the world around us, from the very small to the very large, but also being able to apply that knowledge in some fashion.

When it comes to the necessity to teach Darwinian evolution in a grade 7 classroom, or high school, or even university, what is the purpose? I mean, we can keep clubing each other over the head about how detrimental it is to society for the other side to get a voice in on the debate, but as I noted above, the debate always ends up in the realm of the meta-physical; things pertaining to the existence, or lack thereof, of God! Has evolution allowed us to come up with any great invention or advancement? Is it so essential to our understanding of biology or chemistry that twelve year-olds need to understand it if they are going to pass their high school biology or chemistry courses? Or are we all fooling ourselves here, using findings that more properly belong in the hit-or-miss fields of archeology and social science to indoctrinate young minds with what is practically nothing more than a contemporary, social statement?

The fact is that evolution is still very much stuck in in the past, and will continue to be until it can offer actual testifiable evidence of one species giving way to another over the course of two or more generations. It’s all about the findings in the dirt, the rock layers and the pretty pastel pictures that appear in text books. The funny thing about history is that as it becomes more remote, the possibilities of the imagination grow exponentially. It’s also the truth that if evolution was so essential for our children to learn, I should have never graduated from university, nor anyone else who currently walks to Earth and believes that evolution deserves a more skeptical analysis, since the understanding of that knowledge should have been essential in understanding everything from RNA-DNA reactions to the immune system. Evolution should have to be to biology what F=MA is to physics if the official story is to be believed, wherein a student that fails to acknowledge the very foundations cannot comprehend or excel while studying the more advanced topics.

So as Expelled comes out this weekend in a fraction of the theatres it did in the US back in April, you’ll probably see a few fireworks fly as the Darwinians campaign to remain the only kid on the block. What the movie will continue to do though is extend a debate that has lasted for over 150 years and certainly isn’t going away; a debate where a lot of questions could be and should be asked. Ultimately, the most dangerous of those question for Darwinians isn’t “Can you prove it?”, although they certainly hate that one. Rather, if they want to spend valuable class time teaching my son or daughter about their great theory about nothing, the worst thing they could hear back from my kid is “So what?” The runner up might sound something like “Why are you so concerned about us hearing from the competition?”

McCain said such a device should deliver power at 30 percent of current costs and have “the size, capacity, cost and power to leapfrog the commercially available plug-in hybrids or electric cars.”

If the battery actually works, the savings in gasoline should be enough incentive to the customer. This proposed $300 million prize is just a subsidy from the poor, i.e., people who can not afford the car, transferred to the rich, i.e., people who can afford the car plus benefit from the gasoline savings.

The cynic in me tells me that this magical electric battery has already been invented.

As would be expected, people earning $80,000 a year or more are cutting back the least (37 per cent) on daily driving and taking fewest steps (36 per cent) to increase gas mileage in cars.

Conversely, more than two-thirds (69 per cent) of drivers earning less than $20,000 a year said they’re cutting back on daily driving, while 64 per cent were trying to increase gas mileage in their cars.

Meanwhile, two-fifths of drivers in the lower middle income range of $20,000 to $40,000 said they’re more frequently turning to other means of travel than their car - the highest among various income groups.

When they start trying to tell you that high gas prices don’t hurt the poor, remember these statistics.  When they start saying that only the rich will be hurt because they drive hummers, remember this.

Any action by any party to raise gas prices hurts the poor.  Do not let them tell you any different.

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The very fact that this site is designed for children makes what would be an outrageous site even worse, especially when you consider that your carbon-fattened pig explodes into a pile of blood at the end of the quiz(see image). It is also the latest evidence that the movement spearheading the climate change cause simply does not value human life and in fact sees each human as a virus leeching off the planet’s life source.

When you throw in the comments by a Elizabeth May confidante earlier this year that it would’ve been less tragic for seal hunters in Newfoundland to die and another story from Australia that I reported on earlier this year in which a doctor down under wants to tax families for every precious child they bring into the world, a clear pattern starts to emerge among those for whom the Earth is of chief importance. I don’t suppose that the original claim by environmentalists that we had to protect the planet for future generations of children holds much water anymore as they either want to tax said children out of existence or blow up the ones that slip through anyway when they reach age 8. Let’s just hope for everyone involved at the ABC that no child decides to be a good little trooper and take one for the Earth!

(welcome Newswatch readers!)

HOWARD KNOPF in the Hill Times states the ill-advised bill would:

Put digital locks on our computers, cellphones, iPods, other gadgets and tools, and, ultimately, our culture and make it an infringement and maybe even a criminal offence to try to circumvent the sometimes malignant and much-maligned technology known as Digital Rights Management (DRM) and Technical Protection Measures (TPMs).[…]

Make it possible for the big four foreign record companies to sue ordinary Canadians whom they suspect of file sharing. […]

Head on over to Digital-Copyright.ca for more details on why this Bill is a bad idea.

First, to understand the blatant hypocrasy and moral inconsistency (or “intellectual dishonesty”, as our seculatarian friends like to say) of the YFS, you need not read the pages of the National Post, Michael Coren’s column, or the Blogging Tories; just head on over to the Federation’s website, where a big red button titled “Denial of Free Speech at McMaster” which links to this — a letter attacking McMaster for banning “Israel Apartheid Week”. That’s right, the YFS which is making national headlines this month for trying to oppress diverse views on its campus, was the same group that was also making headlines back in March for vigorously defending a campaign that wasn’t just about free speech but was also known for a history of violence and harassment of an prominent ethnic group on campus.

This inconsistency might go a long way to explain why, in the months and years ahead, when Canada starts to examine whether a primitive primate can “argue” for human rights, the YFS will probably be there, strongly backing the cause and at the same time oppressing groups which speak out for unborn humans which can also not speak in a court of law but can, unlike chimps, meet the biological argument for species validation in that all non-genetically defective fetuses have the capability of breeding with humans and producing sustainable, fruitful offspring. Save the primates, scourge the people, as it were. Don’t expect facts to get in the way of York’s student leaders or their cheerleaders on The Left as the entire abortion argument for them has long been one about passion and emotion, but not much beyond the principle that guilt-free sexual incidents should be an absolute right that trumps all others.

Their argument, founded around the reality that men can walk away from affairs without the risk of pregnancy while women cannot, betrays this in that their natural conclusion is that women should have the freedoms that men do in this regard, instead of examining whether men should have the responsibilities that women do for a pregnancy instead. Nor does the rights and realities of the growing child become a discussion point during this whole debate either. Wouldn’t you expect more from scholars, charged with examining all aspects of the issue at hand?

Update:Steyn’s insight into the future of abortion, and a small tip ‘o’ hat to the York affair…

A fundamental component of the debate has been ignored so far though and that is whether a tax on the sixth element of the periodic table is really such a good idea after all. For example, I relayed a report late last year on how an obsessive academic from Australia proposed the sick ideal of putting a carbon tax on each baby born into the world and a yearly tax on children for the first years of their lives. As we have our national government apologizing for the Chinese head tax of almost 100 years ago, calling the practice a shameful blemish from our past, eco-liberals are gearing up to add a tax that doesn’t discriminate on race necessarily but on simply existing. The professor was never quite clear on what would happen if families either refused or could not afford to pay the tax, although he was certainly joyous in announcing how this would effectively womens’ (and mens’) right to chose to have their babies (something liberals often love to do except when they know the choice will result in one less life in the world).

On the other end of the age spectrum though, Stephane Dion’s carbon tax threatens the well-being of our society. While details haven’t been offered by many pundits so far, I’m sure more than a few of them have been sharing my imagination of a Conservative attack ad picturing an elderly old lady, huddled in the corner of a dark, snow-squalling room; as the picture pans out from the detailed sadness of this lonely old woman, a caption will read something to the effect that the retired lady wouldn’t afford heat because that nasty Scrooge of a Liberal, Stephane Dion, is taxing coal so high that she can’t afford to keep warm this Christmas/winter. Whether or not we end up seeing an ad like this run, the fact still remains that some fixed-income Canadians will be hit hard by a carbon tax, often in the case where they slaved away their whole lives under an income tax system that punished them when they were making more money. Now they wouldn’t make as much, which should reduce their burden under income tax, but would be sideswiped by the Dion carbon tax at a time in their lives where going out to make more money simply wouldn’t be an option.

Finally, we have to realize just what a ridiculous notion it is for the Liberals to propose that a carbon tax would be tax neutral. Take the mathematical equation ax + by + cz = 100, where a, b, and c are the percentages of total tax that three hypothetical taxpayers, x, y, and z, would pay into the system. If a tax shift were truly neutral (and Canadians have good reason to believe that no political party that proposes a new tax will EVER deliver on the neutrality promise), that 100 would have to stay the same since it represents 100% of the taxes the government collects now.

On the one hand, it may go down for x because he doesn’t buy as much carbon in a year, but z’s burden might go up because she lives on a rural farm where oil heating and a truck are the necessities of a farmer, not the luxury that we might think. Will *big oil* account for some of the z’s out there who will see their tax bill increase? Most definately, but who do you think will pay for it in the end? The fat cat execs who The Left is always telling us about, or the common Canadian who goes to fill up at the pump?

On the other hand, we have to ask just why the Liberal spin doctors are already playing up the tax neutral element of such a carbon tax? After all, either the government isn’t going to be collecting the same amount of money because carbon usage will go down (in which case, we have to ask how Dion plans to fund his national daycare and other new spending projects), or they will and we will be essentially using the same amount of carbon. Thinking further, what isn’t carbon out there? Bread? Wrong. Clothes? Try again. Wood? Look elsewhere. In fact, the only things I can think of off the top of my head are computer chips and software programmes that are downloaded off the internet. Not exactly the bare necessities but I’m sure the tech industry is already thrilled that our government already presumes that we’re pirates and thieves every time we buy a CD/DVD and is itching to get into the flash drive market as well (think of it as a silicon tax — maybe we should just harmonize it with Dion’s carbon tax and have a tax on all IV A elements!).

Ultimately though, if the Liberals are willing to fight for this one in an election, I say go for it. After all, it wouldn’t take long for someone to point out the obvious: if all this environmental posturing we’re doing now is meant to save the Earth and, ultimately, our existence as a species, why would we impose a tax that would be so destructive both to our children and our elderly? Isn’t the point about making our quality of life better? And once the debate is framed that way, Dion’s already ill-advised plan will be toast and we won’t have to hear any more about eco-radicalism, or at least until the summer of 2024 when we have a couple more days over 30 than usual!

As a Christian, I won’t ever own the game and highly doubt whether I’ll ever play a friend’s copy, although GTA IV did strike up some curiosity last week when speaking to one of my gaming friends who holds no allegiances to God but is pretty observant. He mentioned that the game, with fancy next-gen graphics and a deeper, longer story was different than its predecessors since, in this new, more detailed version, the wounds you inflicted were actually graphic and not fuzzy, pixilated renditions; the game code was more realistic so that people didn’t just keel over and die but actually begged for their lives, cried out in agony and added a sense of victimhood that never existed before; and the game was more open-box (a challenge given the freedom this game gave you before) where as the anti-hero, you are now charged with making moral decisions as you go about your life of crime and immorality.

Yesterday, while visiting another friend, I got a chance to see the game in action by watching a mission through which the hero, Neco, was sent to kill the biker-boyfriend of the mob boss’s daughter. The mob boss, my other friend observed while we were chatting, was messed up — there was a strong correlation between his drug habits and the deteriorating relationships he had with friends, family and *business colleagues*. Later on, during online mode, the game spit out “player 1 2nd amendmented player 2″ after the former shot and killed the latter in an airport. It seemed to me like the rumours of hidden messages in this game were true, even to the point where I now wouldn’t be surprised if I was told that Nico could get STDs from some of his dating activities that take place in the game (and which caused the infamous “Hot Coffee” affair in the last GTA game). Could it be that publisher Rockstar games is actually trying to explain to young and impressionable gamers that bad choices in life have consequences?

While it’s still a little premature to say, it might also be suggested that just by striving to give gamers that more realistic experience — right down to going to a bar to play pool — Rockstar is inadvertently making its games so life-like that the ugly side of crime, promiscuity and general ungodliness are all seeping out of the woodwork. If it is this intense, the publisher of GTA IV might have also found a way to reach out to a demographic law enforcement, governments and churches have struggled decades to make contact with. Ironically, Rockstar’s realism might just have the unintended consequences of making the acronym GTA a cultural fossil, given enough upgrades to gaming hardware.

If you scroll through the article (and just a warning, there is vulgarity used), you’ll find that he doesn’t mince words when talking about how the actual abortion procedure “killed” the unborn child or how he doesn’t skim over the details of his then-girlfriend’s painful day in a London hospital executing her control over her own bodily functions. In fact, I figure that if Emery’s piece were published in something like, say, the Toronto Star or the Globe, there’d be letters of protest screaming about not needing to know the ugly science behind abortion so long as it works — ignorance is bliss to the nth degree.

Of course, I think Emery is closer to the heart of the abortion issue than he knows when he questions whether sending literally hundreds of thousands of men and women to prison for murder (a scenario that would have to occur if we pursued every woman who had an abortion and every husband/boyfriend/fling who was an accessory); it’s true that if we did that we would have an amazingly guilty society. However, while I respect and understand where Emery is coming from on this one (he is, after all, the man who wants to overcome narcotics laws by viral marketing), I doubt our society would be nearly as nice if we didn’t pursue a society just as infiltrated with thieves; there is a reason we have justice systems in civilized societies.

Furthermore Emery’s admission that something died in the womb of his girlfriend 20 weeks after it came to be there is revealing in itself and a mature observation that many today are simply not capable of making. It is, for me, the thing Emery writes that is only trumped in significance by the bit Emery writes on having to name his dead child Ben.

When I read that part, I honestly got thinking and I wonder just how many abortions would go through in Canada if we made the mother give her “collection of cells” a name before the little bundle is escorted out of her. I don’t think that it will stop more abortions because people feel it is wrong, but rather because those who would find the simple act too much to bear wouldn’t be convinced that it was undoubtedly right. And that, my friends, makes the notion all the more significant when we realize that choices are the domain of adults, and not children who want to play grown-up.

Today’s events have given me that something, as a couple of friends and I hopped in my car and spent the day (fittingly “Earth Day”) traveling 2.5 hours to Buffalo to see the movie because the powers that be here in Canada feel us Canucks are too fragile to be introduced to dangerous, untested ideas that aren’t directly from former Democratic VPs or Michael Moore. It was a fine day with pristine weather, and as much as Buffalo isn’t exactly the Emerald City, it also has a certain charm for me dating back to frequent trips with my grandparents during the Reagan/Bush Sr. eras. Plus, entering the States, you feel that while people aren’t as polished, but they (be they Democrats or Republicans) are more sincere and rooted in their national values.

Regarding the Expelled movie, I start off with what I was going to suggest earlier this week had a post actually emerged: it is not about destroying evolution nor was that the purpose (see the video clip for more verification). Instead, the Darwinists, who are so scared about what this movie could do in the court of public opinion that they even attack a small-fry blogger in Ontario for merely showing interest in this movie, have failed to address the question this movie raise on why scientists (those with PhDs and impressive resumes) who discuss Intelligent Design are ostracized. Science is man’s study of nature and being a human construct is prone to faulty theories and conclusions; just as the ancients observed the universe revolving around the Earth, or the enlightenment folks developed sophisticated alchemy charts to explain compounds, so too have many scientists throughout many centuries observed, but come to the wrong conclusions because of their perspectives. Even Einstein’s speed of light barrier is now being treated as a special case these days and that mathematically-postulated equation was only invented within the last century. From a political perspective, I have to warn the Darwinian forces that continuing to ignore the argument that Expelled makes only risks their side’s own peril. Doing so only reinforces the statement Ben Stein has made that Darwinian scientists are not interested in the continuous defence of their conclusions that has been and should be inherent to the work of science.

Next, on the appearances in the movie, I noticed a striking difference between PZ Myers and his buddy, Richard Dawkins. Myers, who in the movie gushes about the day when God is marginalized in our society despite the recognition of North America’s founding fathers (not to mention even the UN’s approval…) of the freedom of religious beliefs (and not just on the weekend PZ!) was far more confident in his opinions, whereas Dawkins, who wrote “The God Delusion” was surprisingly stuttery and uncertain as he spoke. Being a political animal who specializes in electronic media, I did pay careful attention to see when cuts were made in the scene (which could suggest editing and misleading question-answer sets) and at the end of the movie when Dawkins was being interviewed with Stein one-on-one, these cuts did not exist in a way that could’ve edited the detailed answer that Dawkins gave — namely that he could see the possibility of aliens seeding the Earth via some sort of ID that they developed. In other words, Dawkins agreed on camera that ID could have merit…but as long as we’re not including God in the equation. A rather meta-physical assessment for a biology professor to make, yes, but he also failed to explain how the A* I discussed a few weeks ago came into being (remember, nothing + nothing != something!). I would also note that nothing that any of the Darwinists said in the movie, when taken at face value, could be taken out of context; one guy actually suggested that molecules attached themselves to crystals and *poof*, we had life on Earth — you just can’t splice that kind of stuff!

The movie also did deal with the Hitler-Darwin connection, admitting that not every Darwinist will become a Nazi, but suggesting that Darwinism does lend itself nicely to eugenics and the bloodbath that has been many atheistic regimes throughout the 20th century (see current news on China for more details…). Could the Darwinists counter this claim? I don’t know, but that’s only because they haven’t seriously tried yet except to collectively say “nuh-uh”!

Ultimately though, the movie sets up a dangerous potential for those who follow the status quo. If the movie does well and becomes as recognized as Bowling for Columbine did years ago, it will either force the Darwinists to adapt to a new environment wherein they actually offer a credible rebuttal to ID or, poetically, are cast off into the great waste-bin of historical movements no longer among us. This will include a healthy debate with the scientists who openly challenge the doctrine of Darwinian evolution. It will also mean contending with the large number of scientists, teachers and faculty who, though afraid for their careers now, will down the road get the protection of tenure and management, thus bringing a delayed, but more potent threat to Darwinian group-think. Who’ll win in the end? Well, it’s all about the survival of the fittest, right?

This, again, is my whole point with the exercise: “Earth Hour” may be many things, be they politically motivated attempts to one day make Al Gore President of Earth, guilt-suppressing for the feeble-minded or an excuse for the promiscuous left to achieve it’s one and only goal no matter what the issue is framed as, but it is not about saving the Earth, nor is it about changing our lifestyles. Instead, like “buy nothing day”, the UofT sit-in this week, Kyoto, the green ribbon campaign of 1997 and The Waffle, Earth Day is just another much ado about nothing that The Left has established to be high on symbolism, but waning on substance. At the end of the day, it wasn’t really about making a difference, but about feeling like we did; it wasn’t meant to change how we view the world, but how the world views us. So congrats Earth Hour warriors! You’ve claimed one hour to feel all smug about (although I really don’t know why…), but I still have 8765 more this year where common sense will take over! I might be the pariah tonight, but come tomorrow morning you’ll be the one following my lead…

“We would be concerned by any kind of acquisition of Yahoo by Microsoft,” Chief Executive Eric Schmidt told reporters.

“We would hope that anything they did would be consistent with the openness of the Internet, but I doubt it would be.”

Which is pretty laughable coming from anyone who cooperates with Chinese censors to limit freedom of speech in China in exchange for access to the lucrative Chinese market.

Online search engine leader Google Inc. has agreed to censor its results in China, adhering to the country’s free-speech restrictions in return for better access in the Internet’s fastest growing market.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based company planned to roll out a new version of its search engine bearing China’s Web suffix “.cn,” on Wednesday. A Chinese-language version of Google’s search engine has previously been available through the company’s dot-com address in the United States.

By creating a unique address for China, Google hopes to make its search engine more widely available and easier to use in the world’s most populous country.

Schmidt isn’t worried for the Internet, he’s worried about the potential for loss of market-share…

The commentators on that post were respectful and represent the softer wing of the group, however many of us on the information super highway, or involved with churches have witnessed a louder, more militant variety of Atheism; a group that goes so far as to accuse anyone involved in religious organizations as being stupid, devolved or abusive. These are fighting words to say the least. So the question to me now becomes, where do the militant atheists stand in light of the Thomas Aquinas reasoning with regards to the origins of existence? I have heard quite often from individuals who espouse absolute certainty that there is no God that they have figured out the puzzle and are frustrated that others have not seen the light that they have. If there are any takers, I’m sincerely interested to hear the line of reasoning on how the A* of my previous post came about without Divine intervention.

Under his picture, Wikipedia lists his religious views as “Atheist” which isn’t all that interesting in and of itself unless you consider just how fumingly hostile the internet atheist crowd (complete with their own icon) is to the idea of being called religious or having their beliefs associated with the realm of faith.

While it might be true that they aren’t seeking to build any “bridges to the Divine” as a commonly held definition of religion holds, they certainly put a great deal of faith into their beliefs (and in the hostile circles, dogma that they expect the rest of us to follow).

To demonstrate, I borrow from St. Thomas Aquinas, a high Middle Ages philosopher and Dominican friar who contributed a tremendous amount of work to the understanding of the world, universe and existence during his lifetime. In my favourite work of his, titled “The Existence of God” — a document that is still studied today for its significance and logical cohesion — Aquinas gives the following physical arguments:

1) Things are in motion, ergo Someone had to put them into motion. Aquinas wasn’t even aware of the degree to which this is true, with not only the very macro (planets, stars, galaxies) but also the very micro (gamma rays, subatomic particles) participating in motion.

2) In the world, something never brings about its own existence, otherwise it would have to predate itself. Taking things back far enough though, something had to cause the initial object, particle, energy, what have you, and therefore there must have been a first “cause” which Aquinas deems as “God”.

In other words, what Aquinas did was to look at the origins of the universe and realize that whatever the first form of existence was — to satisfy the nihilist, let’s say it was a small particle, A*, from which the rest of existence came from) — that form had to come from somewhere. Apply special theories, like it transitioning from a parallel universe, or another form of existence, or what have you and you will still have to trace things back to an A*.

A* had to exist, because our universe now exists. Therefore, A* had to come from something more than just a simple A**; it had to be created. If it was created then, the creator would be two things:

1) Eternal, since otherwise we’re back to A* again, and
2) powerful enough to call up something out of nothing

We can argue about semantics, such as if the eternal trait was direct or is passed back even further, however we still need a God existing without being created to get to where we are today (and frankly, it’s missing the point here, which revolves around atheistic understanding), or to what extent creation took place (which, again, is another topic for another day!). The point is that you cannot have existence like ours without the two above mentioned traits existing somewhere down the line.

To believe otherwise would be an article of faith, with no physical rationale or evidence to lend credit to it. So, is it wrong to call atheism a religion? Perhaps in the strictest sense, in that some believe religion requires God or a god(s). However, is it a faith movement? Well, between Thomas Aquinas, Wikipedia and the Conservation of Matter and Energy, I’d say the answer is a pretty definite yes!

After stories like students being ostracized by Ryerson University in Toronto for setting up the online version of a study group, I think we at least owe it to ourselves and our children to investigate other ways of delivering essential life skills. Having graduated within the last five years, I know well the tag that many professors would add to assignments stating that there could be no collaboration.

At least where I went to school, this rule was never enforced. For example, physics professors after class would visit the study lounge on a social call, see groups of students working together on the assignment he stated was to be done alone and sometimes even offer hints to the solutions to help the group along. In first year, it was well known that a conglomerate of students would book the residential study lounges around the clock so that they always had a private, taxpayer and tuition-funded room between the ten of them; the administration turned a blind eye when it was pointed out that the same names had the room booked from January through April. Put simply, any professor at Waterloo who honestly expected either independent assignment completion or an unnetworked mob of students in his/her class to try and use the power of numbers to their advantage was just being plain naive!

If a professor or university is going to impose such a rule on its classes (one again that I don’t see much merit for as tests are structurally designed to show individual work, while assignments are always cited as learning tools), shouldn’t it work both ways? In other words, if the student is obligated to do the work independently then the university should ensure the student fair competition from his/her classmates by designing an assignment that can only be done independently without intentional and manipulative cheating. It’s only fair that Ryerson and other schools provide this in exchange as many schools, especially engineering schools like the one this troubled student is currently in, now work through a bell-curve system where it’s not about how well you do on your assignment but how you rank in comparison with your classmates. If the school is going to turn a blind eye to some forms of group work (eg. study lounge groups, going to knowledgeable friends/family) then it can’t assume to go after internet work because at least these cases have evidence prepackaged.

Of course, the former examples are unenforceable, as they should be, so again I ask why universities would even dare to set guidelines on assignments that collectively are only worth 10% of the mark because the prof knows they’re not good gauges of knowledge anyway? I wish the student now in trouble with his school all the best, and if things don’t go his way today I hope that he considers a long-term fight over this where the university will come under public scrutiny over their ridiculous rules. Maybe then, with its own reputation on the line, Ryerson will be more keen to come into the 21st century, and leave the 12th!

For anyone who doesn’t play video games, and will wonder just what all the hubbub is about, I’ll try to correlate in a political way just what this would be like:

Imagine Stephen Harper, Citoyen Dion, Jack Layton, the more prominent Premiers, the US Presidential hopefuls and every other political celebrity were involved in a non-lethal brawl that was 50% election, 50% shoving and 50% even more silly! Imagine the entertainment value. That’s just the tip of the iceberg, even if we throw in Al Gore(with his special super-patented climate change attack!) and Ann Coulter (plus a descending army of FOX News reporters) into the bunch. Sorry, but that’s the closest analogy to the awesomeness that is Smash Bros that I can come up with.

For everyone who does understand games though, I confess that I’v always loved a man in uniform. Come to think of it, having Mark Steyn running around shouting “Show me your moves” might not be a bad game concept after all…

Did you know that malaria is the most easily preventable disease of all catastrophic diseases in the world?

The use of an insecticide treated mosquito net that surrounds a person’s bed at night while they sleep, will prevent mosquito bites.

So would any one of a half dozen malaria medications.

One million Africans die PER YEAR from Malaria. The number of deaths caused by pregnancy is miniscule in comparison. Yet preventative measures and abortifacients for pregnancy are free for those who could most easily afford it. Malaria treatment and prevention costs, dearly, for those who can least afford it.

Malaria is just one example. Where are our priorities? Why do we consider it more important to prevent babies than prevent frequently terminal brain fever?

Sparing me from such burdens is the revelation from an Israeli researcher who now claims that Moses really went to a “high” place to get the 10 Commandments. I know of a few other Bible-bashers who will take exception to the Law actually being authored by Moses (not to mention PZ’s little echo chamber crowd, who probably think that they just eroded onto the surface of Mount Sinai), so I’m sure everyone’ll understand that I’m very confused and need some help with this problem: whose attacks on the Bible are correct? Is it the crowd who think that psychedelic and mineral concoctions magically led the Israelites out of Egypt and gave them a legal code that we use as the foundation of our laws today? Or is it the group that doesn’t even think there was an Exodus and just think that this legal code just appeared out of nowhere some time around the third century B.C.? Don’t trip over yourselves to offer me the answer kids!

But, like almost all things that liberalism gets behind, the devil is very much in the details. A series of articles went largely unnoticed back in mid-February when we were concerned with John Tory’s fate, the Alberta election or the federal government’s lifespan. In them comes news that bread, particularly the stuff its made of (grain) has tripled in price in just a matter of months. Two factors are being blamed:

a)the rapid emergence of a middle class in the combined 2 billion-large areas of China and India (serious question: would it be improper to refer to this as Chindia from now on?)

and b) the increasing demand for ethanol as an energy source

We have no right or basis to blame the first point on anyone (in fact, kudos to the Asians who are beginning to enjoy a better standard of living!), however we should look into that latter one. Ethanol is a fairly plentiful chemical in our ecosystem, and the hippies love it because it’s a fairly clean, albeit highly inefficient source of energy (although don’t tell them that its mass is composed of over 50% carbon!). Don’t get me wrong either: if nothing else, I’m pro-moving away from oil just so we can stick it to the Saudis and eliminate the threat they pose to western civilization, however not only is the ethanol energy craze the philosopher’s stone of the modern era, it’s also the next best way of socialism causing a famine in the land.

Demonstrating that they really don’t understand economic forces, the greenies of the world praised ethanol as a cheap and renewable source of energy. Yes, it’s definately renewable but cheap is only a temporal trait as the market is always changing. If you need 1000 pounds of wheat to feed your population per day, and request another 500 pounds for energy purposes, demand goes up, and the price with it. Things could eventually stabilize with either continued breakthroughs in agricultural chemistry to improve grain yield, or us just planting more fields with grains, however I remain skeptical as energy demands have steadily increased over the past 100 years and will continue to as our population and technology increases. In the meantime, we really need to ask ourselves if forcing a child to do without an extra meal is worth the dubious effort to remove carbon from our atmosphere.

Anyway, over at the Expelled movie website, a little tidbit was revealed today that explains that the Professor of the West might be trying to hide some skeletons of his own (much akin to the dogmatic types who insist that we acknowledge macroevolution’s reality, or else). I’m a good sport though and I’m feeling generous so here’s a proposal: Prof. PZ Myers,you have until 5:30 pm (your local time) to fess up to these accusations and explain yourself. Otherwise, you will forever be cast as having no credibility! Looking forward to hearing the response…;)

Now, legislators in the United Kingdom are planning to pass a ridiculous law to “fight” internet piracy. The proposal involves placing an inordinate amount of responsibility on the internet service providers.

Broadband companies who fail to enforce the “three-strikes” regime would be prosecuted and suspected customers’ details could be made available to the courts.

Last year, the Canadian government played a similar charade solely for the sake of appearances.

This UK law is virtually impossible to police. I do not know whether to take comfort in that fact or not. On the positive side, the law has no teeth. On the negative side, attempts to enforce this law invariably become unwarranted wasted resources. I want to believe that the legislators know all this and that legislation is no more than a public relations stunt by the UK government.

This past weekend, I posted a blog entry on the column that the National Post printed on Saturday featuring Ryerson University professor Judy Rebick, a woman whose current job title I found out is strikingly Orwellian: the Canadian Auto Workers–Sam Gindin Chair in Social Justice and Democracy.

Needless to say, my challenge to all that would take it on to move beyond the respective three or four talking points that each side has trudged out over the past 20 years was well met and I was both pleasantly surprised and very grateful to those who posted their constructive responses. It demonstrated to me that at least some people out there are honest when they say that abortion to them is an undesirable procedure and that society should be looking for a solution that benefits both mothers and children (I would also add fathers personally) alike. This was truly the type of debate that our society should have been having back in 1988 when the ruling came down from the SCC.

Moving onto what to do with this problem, it was suggested here in the comments that pro-lifers should pursue an agenda of getting the government to fund the needs of mothers who wish to carry their babies to term but are financially restricted. It’s a valid argument coming from the social democrat side of Canada’s political spectrum and I welcome any pro-life liberals who wish to pursue this further. I personally find the cause to be noble, like many ideas on the left, however I did take some time to reflect upon it during the past few days and cannot help but be reminded of the words of Mark Steyn in his now-infamous book, America Alone. Steyn made a point early on in the book that even if Bill Gates offered to pay for all the social services in the U.S., he would still oppose subsidies as he believes they make people dependents and society unable to reach its fullest potential. In fact, he goes further and states that there is an inherent danger to such programs in that allows people to ignore the real cost of whatever is being provided, while also bringing them to believe that such benefits are entitlements. Now, I’ve met my share of mothers over the years and I know that a good majority of them would never want to raise their children in such an environment. Still, there is a large, but harmful minority out there for any given government silo full of grain.

This leads me to rely on the largely ignored competent of a successful libertarian society: such a society must be built upon community. It seems that we have confused community and government these days, but there are vastly different and that difference is crucially important to understand. If a single-parent family is just a faceless number, there would be no accountability aside from across-the-board standards that the government bureaucracy sets up. If instead, a church or local organization like Birthright or the United Way were to set up a program to assist single mothers in becoming self-sufficient as they raise their children, then we have a humanizing aspect that both keeps a watchful eye on any abusive recipients while also allowing for additional funding or leniency for those families with special needs.

Either way though, whether through the government or organizations, I feel that the idea of stepping up to the plate and providing the money for these women who go through the difficult situation of single-handedly raising their children is long overdue. To my pro-life colleagues, perhaps rising to the occasion on this matter would be a better effort to focus our attention on in the next 20 years than our efforts of the past 20, although ultimately finding new ways of eliminating any proclaimed need for abortion would help us even further to bridging the gap between the respect for all human life and society’s acknowledgment of this respect.

No one has been silenced on the issue, as Barbara Kay suggested this week in her column. Dr. Morgentaler has fought province by province to ensure that the legal right to abortion is supported by medicare.

By “no one”, I presume Prof. Rebick means no one on the pro-choice side since Barbara Kay’s column earlier this week dealt specifically with university administrations and/or student governments in Newfoundland, Ontario and B.C. all refusing equal rights to pro-life groups or their apologists. That quote above is all there is; I presume that by referencing Mrs. Kay that Prof. Rebick read the work cited but seems to offer us no compelling reason to believe her statement.

Sadly, this is the habit that I have witnessed in almost every pro-abortion individual who wants to “debate” abortion; state the emotional arguments how how a woman has the right to control her own body’s functions (she doesn’t, otherwise women would have a legal right to be cured from cancer or at least to cosmetic surgery), dangerous abortions would happen if it were illegal (completely ignoring present dangers in legal procedures, not to mention the disregard of the rule of law), only women can understand and therefore speak on this issue (so what of all the “pro-life” women out there and does this mean that men should only be able to speak on issues that we feel we have special insight on?) and we’re not sure when life begins anyway (a point that actually enhances the anti-abortion arrangement since most of our laws err on the side of caution, which in this case, would mean preventing the abortion of a life at the earliest point in time that this life could exist).

The comments I made in brackets are all responses that we who feel abortion is murder (by definition, a taking of a human life) have made and have yet to hear a direct response on that isn’t a rephrasing of the original argument. Here we have a well-established academic, writing for a national newspaper, and even she cannot bring herself to confront any rebuttal to her arguments. And that, my friends, leads me to wonder if all of the “pro-choice” forces now hypocritically breaking the mantra of universal freedom of expression on university campuses are really aren’t just tactically smart after all…

You’re kidding right?

You’ve got a problem with idling cars causing pollution,  build bigger roads and bridges.  100 times the pollution for 4 hours each morning and 6 hours each evening as the Second Narrows and the Lion’s Gate back up for miles.

The average person idles in a drive thru for less than 5 minutes.  He idles on the bridge deck for an hour at least during rush hours.  What about public health?  Why do we force people to sit in traffic breathing carbon monoxide?  You can’t have it both ways - you either build the transit to move people or you build roads to accommodate cars.  You can’t not build transit then whine that nobody rides it.

Sydney’s Cardinal Pell heavily criticized an Australian medical journal for publishing a professor’s letter calling for a tax on children of $5000 per child and $800 yearly for each child after birth, as punishment for parents who have families larger than two children.

…

Dr. Barry Walters condemned Australia’s “baby bonus” program, writing that “showering financial booty on new mothers” encouraged “greenhouse-unfriendly behaviour” and that Australia should adopt population plans similar to those in India or China. Trees should be planted to negate the ecological effect of every child born, he said.

But Cardinal Pell said that anti-human environmental proposals from extremist minorities were the real cause for concern.

Sadly, extremist minorities, the likes of which we saw around here courtesy of Atheism’s American high priest, soon become oppressive majorities after they use their influence in the education system to brainwash enough young voters to militantly support the agenda in question.

Just for the record as well, it’s not like India (whose culture is known to mimic ancient Rome’s and prefer male babies while slaughtering its daughters — feminists? feminists?!) or China export there excess human capital to other nations like our grande immigration scheme in this country likes to imagine. The bodies pile up pretty fast.

This professor’s letter also begs the question of what would happen if expectant parents aren’t able to pay a sickening carbon tax on newborns. Does the state then empower itself to violate the mother physically and abort the child? (Feminists? Feminists?!) The only crime that I can see the armies of The Left truly convicting this professor of is demonstrating modern liberalism’s true agenda of pursuing a Utopian world (which won’t work under real-world circumstances) through means that would make Hitler, Stalin, et al blush in jealousy. At least the ancients, as primative as I’ve been told they were in comparison to our highly evolved brains and culture, were honest enough to admit when all they wanted was a good old genocide to appease their blood-thirsty gods!

Michael Ledeen, not a practicing Catholic

Ben Stein, first made famous in the celebrity world through Farris Bueler’s Day Off, staunch Republican and former speech writer for Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, is staring in a new documentary called “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” that will be out in theatres this February and tackles the dogma of evolution that is not only harming free speech in our society but also has led to many of the disasters of the 20th century with the greatest death toll. I have searched and haven’t seen any evidence that it will be carried by Canadian chains, but I hope this is just because the movie is still at least a month away from release.

Anyway, watch the trailer here since it’s actually a pretty powerful and moving piece. I hope that everyone who considers themselves to be truly open minded to all the possibilities of science watches this too. As for the commentators on this blog who will simply dismiss both this post and this movie as blind faith, I offer the challenge to you that Stein implies in the above-linked movie: watch the movie, listen to the criticism and respond accordingly. Otherwise, it really begs the question on whether you are really comfortable with your faith in what you have heard about evolution (studies, evidence of, arguments for), or are just paranoid that someone if challenged with a rival theory like intelligent design it will come crashing down. For the trolls (and you know who you are!), I simply offer the original title Darwin gave to his book,

On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life

,and ask you to explain how such a social (and Holocaust-endorsing) statement can be classified as the title of a purely scientific work — until I get a direct answer to that, I will not respond to any of your inquiries as I haven’t seemed to get much of a response on mine and think I’m overdue!

With that said, let the acid start flying…!

“If we were all rich, that would be very nice,” Albright said. “If we were all poor, it would be too bad, but we would be the same. What the problem is now is the poor know what the rich have as a result of information technology and the spread, generally, of knowledge. And, it creates a whole new host of problems in terms of disquiet and anger.”

first it will be ‘copyrighted’ materials, then ‘perverted’ materials, then ’subversive’ materials

Now that we’ve all settled into winter here in Canada and the Bali Summit is complete, the focus is starting to turn to the mission in Afghanistan. It struck me yesterday in my travels during the Boxing Day trials that these two political theatres have an interesting correlation that everyone on the Left, the Right and in between should heed:

In the environment sphere, the Left tells us that despite the fact that the U.S., China, and India (the global leaders in CO2 emissions and real pollutants) have, to date, not signed onto any treaty that would limit their emissions Canada should step up to the plate and do more than our fair share in reducing these emissions so as to at least reduce the alleged damage that would occur due to CO2 build-up in the atmosphere.

In the global security sphere, the Right is telling us that despite the fact that Great Britain, Germany, and Italy (the other coalition partners that are part of the NATO mission in Afghanistan) aren’t contributing their fair share in the heavy-fighting reasons in southern Afghanistan that Canada should step up to the plate and finish the job no one else is willing to in Afghanistan so as to at least bring stability to the Afghan people.

It’s an interesting comparison especially when you factor in the rebukes to each respective argument. While I would argue that the Afghan mission has more success, both initiatives are only tentative and not guaranteed to bring on a better world and both are costing our economy money that opponents would be better spent.

The only consideration that I believe we should be factoring into these issues as we consider how to move forward on them is that in both cases the other countries of the world are either too lazy or too hypocritical to engage in the endevours themselves, so whether it is fighting the Taliban in the mountains of Asia or car emissions on the 400, we shouldn’t be looking to the international community for either guidance or support. Rather, our policies should be based on a clearly thought out vision that is prudent and ultimately promotes Canadian values and growth. Consider this when both issues come up in next year’s almost-certain election when all four party leaders pitch their vision (or lack thereof) of why we should hitch our coach to their particular wagon!

Meanwhile, the irony was well met on Bourque last week as that site’s administrator noted that thousands of delegates decided to meet in a Bali resort to curb emissions…but as a consequence of Bali’s remoteness, every single negotiator and diplomat now there had to fly in by jet.

Such is the world these days; a stunning circus for the Martians and Vulcans watching us from outerspace. Unfortunately, those of us bound to the ground have to put up with the Gaia cultists and Jihadis as they both attempt to wrestle control of our societies from the pack of shallow secularists who have been running the joint since the end of the Second World War.

Unfortunately, as much as we might all like to laugh at the fact that today’s Toronto protest o