paulhillsdon.com

Shocking revelation by General Wesley Clark.

I don’t always agree with Mr. “Hyperbole  Catchphrase” Trump, but he’s got a good take on Bush.

I was trying to come up with a title that would satisfy the two articles I’m about to bring together here, but I thought the dismally disappointing one above would turn out better than a Rocky and Bullwinkle two part name.

To begin with, let me tell you about the most recent information about sea level rise. The report is that, according to the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado, sea levels will rise almost 2-3x worse that originally predicted. What makes this study particularly interesting is that they examine how much the sea level will rise, based not on the melting of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, but the land-based glaciers and ice caps.

The official IPCC report predicted a rise, this century, of 7.6 cm. Based on this new evidence, estimates of land-based ice melting adds about 10-24.5 cm to the tally, leaving us with a predicted sea level rise of about 30 cm. Bad news for the local dykes that have a very little vertical contingency space for flooding.

Still, not as bad as the 20 feet (6m) rise that Al Gore warned us about in An Inconvenient Truth. But who knows these days - the scientists like to give us the best case scenario, but the estimates continue to get worse as little action is made towards climate change.

Now, yes, you could argue with me on that front. Sure, a lot of action has been taken since Gore won his Oscar. The environment has been a huge issue recently on the front of all the world’s governments. But even with the slow movement of the large federal governments, a ton of measures have been taken by the smaller, more local governments, from municipal green targets to the banning of plastic bags and incandescent lightbulbs. And yes, the public at large now realizes the issue, and I’m sure is taking some small steps towards the green lifestyle. But, really, is this enough to make sure we can stick to the best case scenario, and avoid the rapture that Gore has warned us of?

It seems like most don’t think it is. The daily poll on Facebook asked the question “Will humans be able to overcome the global warming crisis?”. 50% said “No”, while 19% still said “It’s really not an issue…”. Alright, so I admit a large majority of those who participated in the poll were 18-24 year olds, but wouldn’t you think that this issue, of all political issues, would be the one most important to that age group?

It doesn’t seem like there’s much hope for the future. What’s worse is the issue is no longer at the top of the political conscientiousness, like it was six months ago.

There exists a need among theists to justify life’s purpose. Far from being content with self made goals, with personal achievements set by the individual for his own existential benefit, they desire an authority handing down purpose, telling them this is how they ought to live or this is the proper role they are to play. For the atheist, the mere facts that he is here, existing, and that his existence is finite are purpose enough indeed. With one life, the drive becomes to make the most of it we are capable. Thus, the non-believer can answer history’s most asked question by saying, “The purpose of life is to live the best life each and every one of us can.”Why should god be included in this consideration? Why can’t the question end there, with each human defining for himself what the best life looks like and taking whatever steps he is willing to get there? For the theist, however, this solution is not freedom but nihilism. A self generated purpose is no purpose at all. It is emptiness and, with it, despair. If nobody made me, why am I here? If nobody wants me to follow a given path, why should I follow any at all?This is the same argument from consequences so often hurled at evolution: if we’re all just the product of random chance, what’s the point? If the universe is without a creator, then, for theist, we are all horribly, cripplingly alone. Yet, as an atheist, I am not alone. I have a wife I love and close friends and family I can share my successes and failures with. I’m on a planet with billions like me: humans living out their own tiny blinks of time in the same universe both awesome and mysterious. Making right by that world and the people in it is my purpose, one I can feel the profound weight of and the grand and breezy freedom it allows me to define exactly what “right” means for me. While I may be the result of the very non-random process of natural selection acting upon an arbitrary base of matter and mutation, the joy I feel when I’m with people I love and the sense of accomplishment I get when I fulfill my goals are far from random.

What role can god even play in any of this? Let us say there exists a supreme being who planted in my head the notion that I ought to live the best life I know how. Does he tell me what that means? If he does, it’s in contradictory forms, for what is best within a Catholic world view is very different from best for a buddhist or best for a Wahhabi Muslim. Without definite selection criteria between the faiths, criteria that can themselves be verified without appeal to one of those faiths, how am I ever to know what is the best life? Because the specifics of the world’s religions are, therefore, of little use, I’m left only with what feels right to me. I can seek the advice of others—and I would be prudent to do so—but even they are in same boat as myself, advocating rightness to them as they understand it. Thus the existence of god, so far as purpose goes, is of pitifully little value, with the experience of man carries incredible weight.

[via scottelliott.com]

popothebright on digg.com:

God I hate this board full of clueless people who don’t understand the issue.

I live in Manhattan. So excuse me if I sound like I’m pissed, but when I hear people slam Bloomberg for trying to “pull something” it really pisses me off. Because the reality is, he is trying to SAVE something.

1) This is a crowded city that was never, ever meant to handle the number of cars which now try to squeeze into it on a daily basis.
2) Fat, stupid suburbanites who buy Hummers think they have a god given right to drive their enormous 2 ton beast into the city and find a place to park. Most of them expect to find a place to park on the street.
3) The amount of gasoline wasted by cars with four seats and one passenger is horrific.
4) To all of you who think this is somehow a curtailment of “rights”, let me be perfectly clear: You don’t have ANY RIGHT AT ALL to bring a 100square foot, carbon monoxide spewing beast with you into one of Americas most crowded places. Park it in Jersey, Westchester or the Bronx, and USE PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION.

This is about saving energy and precious space. This is about pedestrian safety. This is about enviornmentalism. This is about reducing a very serious overcrowding problem.

Anyone who thinks this law is somehow “sticking it to the little guy” is an ass. The little guy is a fat retard from Jersey who wants to bring their pollution-spewing behemoth into the city and is sort of hoping to find a parking spot right in front of Bloomingdales. Fuck them. And hooray for Bloomberg for saying “no”.

Bertha Williams, a member of the Tsawwassen First Nations band, is accusing Federal Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice and B.C. Aboriginal Relations Minister Mike de Jong of buying the band’s members votes to accept a new proposed treaty. de Jong has already admitted he is guilty as charged to The Province: “The government wants this vote to succeed and we don’t apologize for holding that view”. The Sun covers the story here.

The accusations are as follows, as quoted from The Province’s article:

Public funding to cover flights from other parts of North America so that off-reserve band members could attend the band’s July 7 annual general meeting

The B.C. Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation Ministry’s hiring of Bruce Rozenhart of Vancouver-based Counterpoint Communications, a self-described specialist in “crisis-management public relations” to work with Baird in the lead-up to the on-reserve vote July 25.

B.C. government funding to send 40 Tsawwassen band members to northern B.C. to visit the Nisga’a and talk to them about their earlier treaty settlement.

Public funding to pay every Tsawwassen band member 60 years of age or older $15,000 once a Yes vote is achieved but before final ratification by Ottawa and Victoria.

If this is indeed true, and it seems like it is, let me be the first to call Prime Minister Harper a hypocrite. His promise through the Federal Accountability Act was to prevent another sponsorship scandal. While not necessarily the question of national unity, this is still the use of tax dollars to, essentially, buy votes and sway the scales. It is completely despicable.

Here is Ms. Williams’ full letter:

Dear Prime Minister Harper and Premier Campbell:

The vote on the Tsawwassen Treaty is set for July 25th.The likelihood of a fair vote is receding with every day that passes. I fear that the federal and provincial governments are attempting to subvert the Tsawwassen vote.

The federal and provincial governments lost the vote on the Prince George treaty.The people voted it down.

Please don’t make this about you and your governments. Your governments seem intent on using federal and provincial money to buy support so that this time you will not be embarrassed by another loss. The decision on the Treaty is something that longstanding members of the Tsawwassen Band must decide for themselves without interference from Ottawa and Victoria.

Please let us decide our future with out outside interference. Please don’t try to buy our vote just because you can. Longstanding Tsawwassen residents deserve better. We are Canadian citizens too. Please don’t treat us like the residents of a third world country desperate for food.

When you have federal or provincial referendums you ensure that funds are available for both Yes and No committees to campaign for or against the issue in question. There are strict rules forbidding governments from intervening one side or the other. In the upcoming vote on the Treaty all the federal and provincial money and resources has gone to those who support the treaty. If you and your governments actually respected us you would let us decide without trying to manipulate the vote.

In the old days you might have used a Hudson’s Bay blanket, some musket shot, a new suit for the cheif and a bit of rum. Not much has changed. Today’s Indian Agents simply have newer trinkets and nicer suits but they are still up to their old tricks.

Today it is free flights and hotels to bring votes from the United States and as far away as Ontario. The persons flown into vote at our general meeting on July 7th actually outnumbered the number of Tsawwassen residents who voted. It worked. You were able to overturn the decision of voters at the recent band election where voters had voted down changes on who can vote in band elections and on the treaty ratification vote set for July 25th. At Saturday’s meeting the fly-ins outnumbered local residents and overturned the vote on membership. Now with less than two weeks before the vote on the treaty the rules on band membership are being radically changed in an effort win the vote.

Recently, I learned about the hundreds of thousands of dollars that the federal and provincial governments have made available to manipulate the vote to favour the Yes side.

It turns out that you are funding communication consultants to promote the Yes vote, the same people you use as communication advisors on federal and provincial elections. We don’t need your slick-tongued election-consultants to run a campaign of voter manipulation and fraud. Keep that stuff in Ottawa and Victoria. We don’t need or want them in our community.

On Saturday it was announced that a Yes vote will mean that every band member 60 or over will immediately receive $15,000, younger members will receive a lesser amount. No one need wait until the treaty is actually implemented. It will be money in every pocket immediately following a successful Yes vote. That sounds mighty tempting.

That is not the end of it. Forty band members are to be flown to northern British Columbia to visit Nis’ga. Everything is to be paid for. The Department of Indian Affairs which is legally responsbile for keeping a list of eligible band members reposrts that we have only about 160 band members who live in Tsawwassen. An all expenses paid trip to the Northern B.C. for 40 band members seems intended for one thing and one thing alone - an attempt to manipulate voter and votes.

Added to that the number of persons who are already on the band payroll and we have few band members who do not have a direct financial interest in the outcome of the vote.

According to the recent budget meeting the budget for this year is nearly $7 million. That sounds like a fair amount of pocket change for the Chief and her friends to dole out. It includes a treaty communication budget of $430,000.

Mr. Prime Minister and Premier Campbell if you have $7 million dollars for members of the Tsawwassen band, why not divide it equally amongst the local residents and give it to each of us directly rather than as a loot bag to enable the Chief and her cronies to buy our support?

The Gomery Inquiry confirms that the federal government employed some of the same tactics in the last Quebec referendum. Prime Minister Harper please do not repeat the same errors of the Chretien government in the Quebec referendum in this referendum on the Tsawwassen Treaty.

Gentlemen you have endangered a fair and honest vote on the treaty.

Is protecting your multi-million dollar treaty scheme really more important than allowing individual Tsawwassen residents to decide? Do you think we cannot be trusted to decide our own fate?

Do you see the Tsawwassen Treaty as so flawed and so against the interests of Tsawwassen residents that you must send in your own election consultants with bags of money to mainpulate the votes list and win the July 25th referendum on the treaty?

Yours truly,

Bertha Williams

Longtime Resident and Tsawwassen First Nation Member

Following with my new fascination on visualizing data, I ran across this excellent graphic from The Economist on gas prices and current consumption rates worldwide. Extremely interesting stuff. Could you imagine paying $80 + to fill up a Honda Civic?!

[via TreeHugger]

HIV immune prostitutes in Africa. Sound like an oxymoron? It could just be the amazing work of evolution. According to this article by TIME, scientists have been tracking a number of sex workers in Africa for several years now, and while the women caught many other STDs, they appear to be naturally immune to HIV, and thus, to AIDS as well. There are theories bouncing around about how exactly the women are fending off the deadly virus, but so far nothing concrete has been found. The story notes that this is similar to how the smallpox vaccine was developed - by studying the “milkmaids who had gone through bouts of cowpox [that] enjoyed natural protection against the much deadlier smallpox.”

But it doesn’t stop there however. Another article, this one by the New York Times, explains how humans may have spread globally, but evolved locally. The story here notes how separate colonies, studying humans in separate areas such as Europe, Asia, and Africa, all developed similar, but different natural immunities over time, due to differences in environment causing the evolution. For example, it explains the local development of different cases of lactose tolerance:

A notable instance of recent natural selection is the emergence of lactose tolerance — the ability to digest lactose in adulthood — among the cattle-herding people of northern Europe some 5,000 years ago. Lactase, the enzyme that digests the principal sugar of milk, is usually switched off after weaning. But because of the great nutritional benefit for cattle herders of being able to digest lactose in adulthood, a genetic change that keeps the lactase gene switched on spread through the population.

That lactose tolerance has evolved independently four times is an instance of convergent evolution. Natural selection has used the different mutations available in European and East African populations to make each develop lactose tolerance. In Africa, those who carried the mutation were able to leave 10 times more progeny, creating a strong selective advantage.

Researchers studying other single genes have found evidence for recent evolutionary change in the genes that mediate conditions like skin color, resistance to malaria and salt retention.

Now, I may be off here, but I find it particularly intriguing how, rather miraculously, prostitutes (!), in Africa (!), have become somehow immune to HIV. Again, correct me if I am wrong, but isn’t this blatantly some form of evolution? Not necessarily the development of a whole new mechanism of fighting the virus, but perhaps a tiny tweak somewhere in the genes that stops HIV in it’s tracks.

Now, taking into account the study that suggests evolution occurred locally, wouldn’t it simply make sense that the immunity would occur in the area that is suffering the most from the disease? Furthermore, it actually makes sense that the immunity would develop in the gene pool, as Africans pass along the virus through birth, unlike many in the Western World who catch it unexpectedly through unprotected sex or the sharing of needles. For example, it would presumably take evolution longer to produce an immunity for gay men, as the virus wouldn’t necessarily continue through a gene pool, generation after generation, like in Africa.

It’s hope for the future though. Especially in Africa, the one place that needs it most. Wouldn’t it be fantastic if, in 30 years time, the virus is nearly eradicated in Africa and a whole new generation of human beings are completely immune to such a tremendous killer in that continent?

Did that sound like “American Idol: The Results Show - Wednesday on CTV”? I hope it did.

As you may already know, Surrey held a Sustainability Forum a short while ago. In addition to several workshops, the forum had participants fill out data surveys, attempting to define their visions and goals for the city’s sustainability. The data hasn’t yet been tabulated into an updated Sustainability Charter, but I did notice the city posted the raw results of the surveys on their website.

I’ve been toying with the idea of visualizing data for a weeks now. I think presenting information in a visual format with comparisons is highly effective to putting things into perspective. This is my first attempt at such visualization, and while it’s not super fancy or anything, I think it works pretty good.

Participants were given four dots in blue, green, red, and yellow. The blues had to be placed on the economic chart, red on social, and green on environment, while the yellows were the extra option that could be placed anywhere. As I said before, this exercise was to give staff an idea of what residents feel is most important in terms of sustainability. Other exercises set goals, and outlined areas that require change (thorough a map). I’m only covering the first exercise here.

Environmental Sustainability

As you can see, multi-modal transport got the largest amount of support. It’s interesting though, that it’s not the highest voted with green dots (LEED buildings), but did get a large amount of support through the optional yellow dots. The participants must’ve been informed, because, according to the data, they cared more about LEED designations and renewable energy, very specific green options, versus the more general options such as energy consumption and green house gases (although they were also somewhat important). The public cared least about storm water flows, and solid waste, showing that, presumably, the public assumes that the status quo is fine for now.

Economic Sustainability

It’s quite clear here that the residents think “green” business is very important for economic sustainability. It’s not clear whether “green” business means businesses that are green, or businesses that exist to sell “green” options, or, probably, both. It also points out the the public strongly supports small businesses over big box retailers, and that they want enough jobs in the city for all it’s residents. People also supported high tech and health industry expansion. Perhaps showing residents’ annoyance over the continual increase of property taxes, they fully supported more of the city’s coffers being filled by businesses. I’d also like to point out that, following Maslow’s hierarchy very closely, a low rate of unemployment, isn’t that much of a concern right now thanks to our good economy. In other words, it’s already being fulfilled, so we’re focusing on things higher up in the hierarchy of life.

Social Sustainability

Again, pointing out Maslow’s hierarchy, income and life expectancy, being pretty good overall in Canada, aren’t very large issues on this chart. However, interestingly, all the other issues are about equal in importance. Although, if there are significant issues, they would be education and the poor, as they have the most red votes, and the least amount of yellows (which would make a topic secondary importance).

Overall use of Yellows

I made up this chart from where people used their four yellow votes the most. It seems as though people felt that environmental sustainability was critical at this moment to achieve an overall sustainable city. Intriguingly, social and economic sustainability, while of lesser importance of the public, still took just under half the vote combined. Not only that though, because, as both were nearly equal in terms of yellow votes, they were presumably less important in short term improvements necessary towards sustainability.

Final Tally

This final chart brings all the votes into even better comparison value. It shows that the most important achievements in terms of sustainability would be multi-modal transport (48), growth in “green” business (40), new buildings at LEED standard (35), and Jobs:Residents (30), with renewable energy, energy consumption, and families below poverty level, coming in with high 20s.

Accordingly, the least important factors for sustainability today are household income, life expectancy, rate of unemployment, increase in total businesses, and storm water flow - again, either following Maslow’s hierarchy, or simply a lack of understanding (storm water flows).