Politics – Page 32 – Spinor Info

Data journalism

Politics, Programming, Society 3 Responses »

Jul 262010

It’s not for the first time I said this, but you just gotta love this Internet thing. The big news this morning of course is the leak of some 90,000 classified US military documents from Afghanistan. Guardians of state and military secrets are horrified: troops’ lives will be at risk, they say. What they should recognize is that the fact that we live in an open society, far from being a weakness, is really our greatest strength. Open discussion of the pros and cons, the successes and failures, the risks and possible outcomes of a war is part of living in a liberal democracy.

As to the release itself, it’s funny how times are changing. When I learned the database language SQL ages ago, it was because I make my living as a computer professional. I did not necessarily expect to use my SQL skills in scientific endeavors, but that, too, came to pass when I began using the wonderfully crafted SQL-based query interface of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. What I certainly never expected is that one day, a journalistic leak will arrive in a variety of formats, perhaps the most useful of which is an SQL dump. I wonder: do they teach the building of SELECT queries in journalism school these days?

Question their judgment, not their character

Canada, Politics No Responses »

Jul 262010

I think it is fair to say that Canada’s Industry Minister, Tony Clement, is not my friend these days. Quite the contrary, I can hardly wait for the day when he becomes Mr. Tony Clement, private citizen, along with the rest of his colleagues in government. That is because Industry Minister Clement is the minister behind our government’s latest attempt to pervert Canadian copyright law in favor of the likes of the Disney Corporation.

However, the news this morning strongly reminded me of US Vice President Joe Biden’s oft retold life lesson: when it comes to politicians with whom you disagree, it’s their judgment, not their character, that you should question. Last night, Clement risked life and limb as he jumped into a river to help save a drowning woman. He may not be a very good Minister of Industry, but his heart seems to be in the right place.

America’s top fascist

Politics No Responses »

Jul 102010

America’s top fascist (well, if he isn’t, he is certainly a contender for the title) may be going to jail after all. You can only go so far abusing your power in a democracy.

(Note to self: just in case he survives this round, perhaps it’s a smart idea not to drive through Maricopa County, Arizona anytime soon? Who know what blogs Arpaio and his minions read…)

G20 in Toronto

Canada, Politics No Responses »

Jun 272010

So on the one hand, we have leaders who seem unable to make sensible decisions about governing the world without being able to smell each other.

On the other hand, we have professional protesters who protest all the time, even when they don’t even know what it is their protesting against.

Then, on the third hand, we have thugs and hooligans who think that using a political event like a G20 meeting is a good excuse to smash shop windows and burn police cars:

As a result, we have reporters who need a personal bodyguard while reporting from the streets of downtown Toronto (what is it, Beirut? Kabul?):

And we have intimidating walls of policemen, trying to maintain some semblance of order:

All in all, must have been a lovely day in Toronto. All of which was about to prompt me to make a wise remark about living in the brave new 21st century, but hey! We’re a full decade into the new century and so far, we had no world wars, no nuclear explosions, not even too much by way of genocide (let’s not forget Sudan, though). So perhaps there’s hope for us yet…

Big mouth general or conspiracy thriller?

Politics No Responses »

Jun 232010

So this McChrystal guy cannot keep his mouth shut, and now he’s summoned to the White House. I am sure he’s going to get an earful from Mr. Obama.

Or perhaps there’s a bigger conspiracy here? I cannot help but think of all the science fiction thrillers in which the renegade general uses a ruse just like this one to get in the physical presence of a despised political leader…

OK, I probably read or watched too much science fiction over the years.

Is Hungary the new Belarus?

Hungary, Politics No Responses »

Jun 202010

Hungary’s right-wing FIDESZ political party achieved a two thirds parliamentary majority this spring, ending eight years of Socialist rule.

Many predicted that once FIDESZ was in power, especially with a two thirds majority that allows them to modify the country’s constitution without opposition support, they will turn their back on democracy. While I had no illusions about the FIDESZ leader, Viktor Orban (he may be portraying himself as the leader of pro-democracy, anti-Communist forces but all too often, his behavior and mannerisms remind me of the country’s pre-1989 Kadar-era elite), I had no such worries: political parties come and go, but 20 years after the collapse of Communism, the democratic institutions of Hungary, a member of the European Union, seemed solid and stable.

Now I am not so certain. FIDESZ introduced a media bill in Parliament that seems to confirm some of the worst fears of their opponents. Is Orban really aspiring to become Europe’s next Lukasenko? I wish I could answer that question with a firm negative.

I keep telling myself that I should not care. I live in Canada, and while I may occasionally doubt Stephen Harper’s prowess as Prime Minister, I have no reason to doubt his commitment to democracy. So why should I care about what happens in a teeny little country in the backwaters of Europe, full of delusions of grandeur and outdated, obsolete political ideals worshiped by its “Christian middle class”?

And, truth to tell, I care less and less. I still care because my parents live there and might suffer as a result of a government gone berserk. And, I occasionally meet Hungarian expats here who don’t realize that 1956 was more than half a century ago as they celebrate the “defeat of the Reds”. (Replaying a revolution that never happened was a recurring theme in the FIDESZ political rhetoric, too.) Other than that… if the majority of Hungarians really believe that this is the route to the country’s salvation, well, enjoy.

Vigilance

Canada, Politics No Responses »

Jun 202010

Ottawa police is asking us to be vigilant. I am not sure what they mean.

I have a neighbor who is from the Middle East. Should I call police and warn them that he may have anti-Western sentiments?

I have a friend who has expressed leftist, dare I say anarchist, views on occasion. Should I call police and warn them that he may be a troublemaker?

Come to think of it, my own views of the authorities are not altogether charitable either. Can I be trusted? Or should I call police just in case and denounce myself?

Small people

Environment, Politics No Responses »

Jun 172010

BP’s chairman, Carl-Henric Svanberg, responding to questions from journalists, described the residents of the Gulf states as “small people”.

Many suggested that this gaffe should be ignored, as the chairman is from Sweden, he is not a native speaker of English, and in his mother tongue, the term is commonly used to describe average citizens, small businessmen, and the like.

Now it so happens that I am not a native speaker of English either, and my mother tongue also has a phrase, translated literally into English as “small people”, but used the same way as it is used supposedly in Swedish.

So how come I almost fell off my chair when I heard Svanberg’s remarks during the televised news conference?

Knee-jerk politics

Economy, Environment, Politics No Responses »

Jun 102010

I admit: I really thought Obama was better than this.

Back after 9/11, the moronic Bush administration shut down all commercial air traffic for days in a knee-jerk reaction that exaggerated the economic fallout of the 9/11 attacks possibly by orders of magnitude. (None of which prevented them from chartering special flights to help Saudi nationals, including members of the Bin Laden family, flee the United States in haste. But that is another story.)

Now here’s this oil rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. To be certain, there exists a serious need to review how these rigs are licensed, how they are operated, and whether or not future drilling is worth the economic risk. But shutting down on-going drilling operations? Not only does it do grave economic harm to an already heavily affected region, it may actually increase the risk of another spill.

If this is how Obama continues his presidency, I don’t know what will save us from seeing Sarah Palin and her friends move into the White House in January 2013. Now there’s a scary thought.

When you build a Wall, be prepared to kill for it

Politics No Responses »

Jun 102010

That is the tough lesson guardians of the East German workers’ paradise learned: once you build a Wall along the border, you must be prepared to kill in order to maintain its usefulness and integrity.

It is no different along the US-Mexico border; whatever it is that people think is worth protecting by building a Wall (something that is quintessentially anti-freedom: a device constructed for the sole purpose of limiting people’s freedom of movement, to maintain some kind of a political or economic status quo), such a Wall cannot stand unless its guardians are willing to kill. Kill, if necessary, even a 15-year old teenager by shooting him in the face.

Perhaps someone who has one of those medals in his possession that Honecker used to give his border guards would mail it as a gift to this fine US border agent in appreciation for his bravery.

Vicious mob on the high seas

Politics No Responses »

Jun 032010

Netanyahu tells the world that members of the Israeli Navy were met “by a vicious mob” on board those humanitarian boats that they attacked. Very well… let me take everything Israel says at face value. Let me assume that everything happened exactly as the Israelis say.

So what? The boats in question were attacked by the armed forces of another nation on the high seas. That, last time I checked, is called piracy. And the crew of any boat have the right to defend their boat against pirates, if necessary, even by acting as a “vicious mob”.

The billion dollar summit

Politics 1 Response »

May 272010

What can a billion dollars buy?

Well, a space shuttle cost about a billion dollars new back 25 or so years ago. It might be more expensive to build one now, but a billion dollars can still buy something like three to four robotic missions to Mars. Or one deep space mission to, say, Jupiter or Saturn.

Back here on Earth, it can probably buy food and basic medical care for many millions of people in impoverished countries. Could help a great deal with the recovery in Haiti. Or, closer to home, it could cover nearly half the cost of Ottawa’s planned urban light rail system.

Or, it can buy you security for three days, while Canada hosts the G8/G20 leaders.

Forgive my language but have these assholes not heard of videoconferencing? Can’t they just use e-mail? Or, if they really must meet face to face and smell each other, can’t they meet somewhere like, say, the North Pole, to keep security costs at a minimum and not inconvenience thousands and thousands of citizens in the neighborhood? (I hope seals and polar bears forgive me for this suggestion.)

Ontario politics

Canada, Education, Health, Politics 1 Response »

Apr 252010

So a few days ago, I wrote a blog entry about Ontario’s new grade school curriculum. The one that has since been withdrawn due to objections by conservative groups. I have to concede: they may have a point. I used no words in my blog post that were not used in the curriculum itself, yet the result was apparently too strong for Facebook; their automated software did not pick up and paste the entry onto my Facebook page.

Still, I stand by what I said: after I looked at the actual curriculum (as opposed to the sensationalized headlines about it) there really was nothing in it that a sane person could possibly object to. It’s not about sanity, of course, it’s about politics, which is why Ontario Liberals decided to abandon the updated curriculum after all. They can only fight one battle at a time, they say, according to the Toronto Star. I just wish that the battle they chose to keep fighting was this one, as opposed to the astonishingly braindead idea of messing up pharmacies by blocking payments to them by generic drug companies. Or the HST… which would have been a good idea back when the GST was introduced, but now, it’s just a badly disguised tax grab.

25 years of glasnost and perestroika

History, Politics No Responses »

Mar 112010

25 years ago today, Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. I don’t think I noticed… indeed, other than new slogans like “glasnost” and “perestroika”, which were mostly just words, the system seemed just as crumbling as before. Perhaps even crumbling a bit more… Gorbachev’s rise to power occurred, after all, a mere two months after the Comecon’s worst energy crisis, marked by shortages in natural gas and a massive collapse of the electrical grid. And then, a year later, it was Chernobyl’s turn. Did anyone need more proof that Communism was, even under the best of circumstances, a social system incapable of providing a sustainable, safe, secure, prosperous life to its citizens?

Nonetheless, I had no reason to suspect that Communism would vanish anytime soon. Indeed, I don’t think there was anyone in Hungary in 1986 who would not have considered it a safe bet that the Soviet empire, along with its one-party vassal states in Eastern Europe, would be around for at least another 25 years. These views played a major role in my decision to leave Hungary in 1986. A decision I never regretted, but still… who would have thought that just three short years later, the Berlin Wall would come down and not long after that, the flag of the USSR would no longer fly over the Kremlin?

Not terrorism?

Aviation, Politics No Responses »

Feb 182010

Imagine… a person leaves behind a politically charged manifesto, and then flies an airplane into a crowded office building with the intent of killing himself along with many other people. A terrorist?

Not according to the United States government, who promptly assured us that the incident that occurred today in Austin, Texas, is not terrorism-related.

So what exactly defines terrorism? Does the perpetrator have to be, in addition to a politically motivated suicidal murderer, also brown-skinned and of the Muslim persuasion?

Speaking Russian in Kabul

History, Politics No Responses »

Feb 162010

According to a Radio Free Europe journalist, even today, many of Afghanistan’s small intellectual elite still speak Russian, a legacy of one of the few good things brought to Afghanistan by the Soviet invasion, the education of many Afghans in Soviet institutes of higher learning. What will our legacy be in Afghanistan 20 years into the future, I wonder?

Miss him yet?

Politics No Responses »

Feb 102010

Here’s a nice billboard from snowy Wyoming:

Maybe someone who has the money will erect another billboard with the only appropriate answer that I can think of… NOPE!

Space budget

Politics, Space 1 Response »

Feb 042010

Steven Weinberg has an opinion piece on the Wall Street Journal Web site, where he expresses confidence that Obama’s NASA budget is the right one. Instead of wasting money on a manned space program that is self serving (i.e., other than putting men in space, it accomplishes nothing) more money will be available for doing real science, he thinks.

He has a point… but, well, but there is a but. Science is an important goal of the space program, but it’s not the only goal. As a matter of fact, if you ask me as a taxpayer why I think it’s a good idea to spend some tax dollars on the space program, scientific research is just one of the reasons I’d mention, and not even necessarily the first reason. People should travel in space because our future is in space. The steps we’re taking today may be baby steps, but they’re still important steps… even if a future with colonies on Mars, manned exploration of the outer planets and their moons, or perhaps travel beyond the solar system is decades, if not centuries away.

Having said that… the Constellation program, effectively repeating the accomplishments of Apollo with slightly upgraded hardware, may not have been the smart thing to do even if it had been funded right, which it wasn’t. Another footstep on the Moon is not the same as sustainable manned deep space exploration. If I recall, one of the Augustine commission’s suggestions was a deep space program without a specific landing objective; one that focuses on developing capabilities more than achieving spectacular “footstep-and-flag” milestones, “landing” only on asteroids, if at all, focusing instead on long-duration flights in deep space. If this is the space program Obama’s administration is about to establish, who knows? Perhaps he’s putting the space program on the track that it should have been put on decades ago. (Then again, perhaps I’m just an incurable optimist.)

As a footnote of sorts, I find it noteworthy that, more than 50 years after Sputnik, there is still only one nation on Earth with a comprehensive deep space research program: the United States. Much of the Soviet space program died an undeserved and premature death after the collapse of the Soviet Union; as to China, India, Japan, the EU and other nations, their efforts are commendable but that still leaves them in the “also ran” category.

Move over, Himalayan glaciers…

Politics, Religion, Weather and Climate No Responses »

Jan 312010

This is becoming more than a little annoying, to be honest. First, there were the Climategate e-mails. Then, the claim about Himalayan glaciers. Now the latest: according to the Daily Telegraph, claims made in the IPCC report about vanishing ice in the Andes and the Swiss Alps were based in part on a popular magazine, in part on the dissertation of a Swiss student who interviewed mountain guides.

And this is supposed to be the foundation for a multi-trillion dollar shift in the world economy in the coming years?

To be clear about it: I am not a “climate change denier”, disgusting as I find this term implying some kind of analogy between genuine scientific skepticism and things like Holocaust denial. Questions raised by Climategate notwithstanding, I do believe the data, and the data show that there was warming in the past several decades. However, the IPCC report was supposed to go much further, and provide answers to some very clear questions. Namely 1) is there a long-term warming trend? 2) is it due to CO2? and 3) is it bad for you?

These are not easy questions to answer. The long-term warming trend that might exist is hidden behind noise: large year-to-year fluctuations, the 11-year solar cycle, other longer-term cycles. The data may perhaps be equally well fitted by a model that proposes a long-term cooling, but medium-term fluctuations which caused the current warming cycle. Here’s where the second question comes in: the model should not be a mathematical mind game but firmly rooted in physics. Do we know the physics well enough? Knowing the cause is also important if we wish to reverse the effects… if we misunderstand the physics, all our efforts to reduce CO2 emissions will be in vain, while we ignore the real causes. And even assuming that the physics is clear and the models are reliable… why is warming such a problem? Sure, ocean levels will rise a little and some cities may have to move in the coming century… on the other hand, for instance, how about vast stretches of tundra that become fertile and can be used to fed the planet’s growing population?

The IPCC gave us firm conclusions. Yes, there is a long-term warming trend. Yes, it is due to anthropogenic CO2 (hence it can be reversed by reducing CO2 emissions). And yes, all things considered, it is very bad for us. But… If the IPCC’s conclusions on these questions are based on sloppy research, why on Earth should I believe them? Is it something like Pascal’s wager, because we have nothing to lose and everything to gain by betting on the IPCC being right? I’m sorry but I don’t buy that just as I’m not buying Pascal’s original argument either… I’d rather end up in Hell as a virtuous pagan than as a hypocrite.

Melting glaciers?

Politics, Weather and Climate No Responses »

Jan 212010

Just when you thought Climategate was bad enough already, here’s another little tidbit.

Back in 1999, New Scientist published an interview with Indian climate scientist Syed Hasnain about melting glaciers in the Himalayas. In this interview, Hasnain speculated that “all the glaciers in the central and eastern Himalayas could disappear by 2035 at their present rate of decline”.

Fast forward to 2007 and the (in)famous Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, which states that “Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate.” The source? A 2005 report by the World Wildlife Fund, which, in turn, quotes the New Scientist: “The New Scientist magazine carried the article ‘Flooded Out – Retreating glaciers spell disaster for valley communities’ in their 5 June 1999 issue. It quoted Professor Syed Hasnain, then Chairman of the International Commission for Snow and Ice’s (ICSI) Working Group on Himalayan Glaciology, who said most of the glaciers in the Himalayan region ‘will vanish within 40 years as a result of global warming’. The article also predicted that freshwater flow in rivers across South Asia will ‘eventually diminish, resulting in widespread water shortages’.”

So, it appears that a popular science magazine was the primary source for such a dramatic statement. The assertion that Himalayan glaciers might disappear by 2035 was never published in a peer reviewed journal. Worse yet, note how the statement became inflated over time: whereas the original article spoke of “all the glaciers in the central and eastern Himalayas”, the WWF translated this into “most of the glaciers in the Himalayan region”, and by the time this gloomy prediction got into the IPCC’s report, it read simply, “”Glaciers in the Himalaya”.

Now New Scientist is taking them to task, leaving many to wonder: is this really representative of the quality of the science on which dire global warming predictions are based?

For the record, while glaciers in the Himalayas may suffer from global warming, they’re not (yet) in danger of disappearing anytime soon. Certainly not by 2035.

Older Entries Newer Entries