Discriminating jobs

There is a court case coming where they will try and decide if it is constitutional for a marriage commissioner to denial service to a gay couple based on his/her religious belief. This is an interesting case for many reasons.

In the end civil marriage is a bunch of paper work before the government. After all, people will sign a legal contract about their possessions and (financial) obligations and the state will confer special status for visitation and other things. The state will not see if they love each other or ask them to swear to a deity. So the marriage commissioner is a specialized notary. This is the same as how a pharmacist is a knowledgeable pill dispenser who's only use above a machine is the (valuable!) ability to ask how the medication may be affected by other medication (I don't mean to trivialize what they do that last part is very hard and very important). Thus is you don't want to do your job you should not have it.

Your job is not a right. A person who's religion says they can't serve women cannot be in the service sector (except maybe at male only places like a penis surgeon). If there are aspects of a job a person doesn't like or cannot do because of their conscious/religion then you shouldn't do that job. A person have every right to object (and you should) but then they shouldn't be in that job. People can't get paid for not doing their work.

For instance. I don't agree with the death penalty and I have sever problems (moral/ethical/"religious") with the idea of killing anyone. Thus it does not make sense for me to join the army! It is not discrimination to fire someone who does not do their job.

The whole problem is centered on the point: What does freedom OF religion mean. It means that you are free to exercise your religion without government interference. The question is to whether that freedom is universal or only private. Our supreme court has not followed a single consistent stance and has thus made a mess of things (like with carrying a long sharp dagger in public because of your "faith"). Hopefully the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal in Regina will be able to set out a consistent and thoughtful definition of freedom of religion as being private (and not above the right getting what you pay an employee for) for other courts to follow.

Besides it can't be that bad since "there are no atheists in fox holes"* and a lot of them must be Christian/Jews/Muslims who must obey the very clear commandment: Thou shall not kill! They seem to have no problem with that one!

*PS: There are plenty of atheists in fox holes serving their country bravely (I know some personally) and the statement is only uttered here to show the ridiculousness of the idea of forgoing some of a job due to religious belief.

Canada's science minister unqualified

Recently I learned some rather distrurbing news about our countries science and technology minister: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090317.wgoodyear16/BNStory/National/home

Here is my letter to him (his email goodyg@parl.gc.ca):

Hello,
As someone who has now stepped into the public service I'm am sure you love your country. Thus I ask you to resign your portfolio as Science and Technology. I think it send the wrong message to our children, other countries investors and the scientific community at large. I fully support your right to your opinions but since you do not have any training in biology and cannot admit science is not a belief you are not right for this portfolio.

I would also strongly encourage you to try and suggest someone with academic science training (maybe a BS.c). This way Canada can avoid any blemishes as the US has suffered over the last 8 years with regards to science and the Conservative party can distance itself from any perception of being antagonistic towards science. This would be a benefit to Canada and the Conservative party of Canada. I'm sure you will do the right thing.
Thank you,
Dr Edward Ackad
Postdoctoral researcher
University of Ottawa

Quebec's new All religions course

When Quebec eliminated Catholic and protestant schools in favor of secular language segregated schools it was left with the problem of "religious instruction." In my year, gearing up to the change, I was given the choice of a religion course (most Catholicism) and a morals course. The morals class filled up and the rest had to continue to take the religion course. Since then Quebec has been working hard to secularize.

To that end it has come up with a world religions course, which is mandatory (the religion one was too). The objections are (basically) that the parents have no choice and that children will see all religions as mythology because they are all presented in a similar way. I don't think I need to say much about that, but think of the converse problem: what is to stop parents from unfairly imprinting their child with a single religion? Some may say this is the parents right. I agree, but it is not an absolute right in my view. Why?

Forget religion specifically. Views can be hurtful and outdated. Racism is a good example. Does a parent have the right to pass on racist beliefs to their child? I'd say no because what is forgotten in this type of argument are the rights of the child. The child has the right to be informed and later on with that information he will make up his mind (and there is nothing we can do to stop that). Thus what is important is presenting the facts correctly.

Educating a child about other religions is no different. The child has the right to information. If you decide to send your child to public school (this is the decision people are forgetting when they say it should be the parents who decide: This group mainly) you are accepting they will be taught PUBLIC values. In a multicultural society, religion is pluralistic and thus must be taught this way. If parents don't like it they need to make the decision to take the child out of public school which is entirely in their power.

Incidentally, the list of 10 reasons (in French) the CLE group gives for why they dislike the course are 10 reasons to like it if your of a different mind and remember children have rights too. (It is quite astonishing to see the lack of respect these people have for the decision making powers of the children and adolescents despite plenty of evidence children can out think adults if given training such as in chess.)

The Canadian budget vs the US

In my view, one of the primary goals of the federal government is scientific research funding. It should be clear that progress in science is directly related to economic progress (for instance Saudi has plenty of oil and still a crappy economy because it can't have science). This is why it is astonishing to find out that while the US has put $15 billion MORE into science funding agencies, the Canadian government has CUT millions. That's right in the wake of an economic disaster they are decreasing funding for science.

This is quite disappointing especially for someone in my position who will be looking for permanent positions. Already Canada has been well behind the US in science funding (odd, I know, considering the animosity in the US towards science). Now NSERC, the primary science funding agency, will have to cut grants, scholarships and fellowships. At least I'm lucky enough to be a US citizen so I can skip out to a country that is at least willing to pay me (at least hypotheticaly :)

Proroguing parlamaent

Both sides have complained about things being undemocratic. Yet the decision is left to an unelected person who is our HEAD OF STATE! The idea of our system being democratic is thus purely moot. The fact that the decision was made by an unelected person is by definition undemocratic regardless of which way she decides. It seems Canadians are finally taking at better look at the system to which they are subscribed and not everything is sure of what they voted for. Hopefully this little exercise will inform more people of our system and maybe even precipitate the elimination of our undemocratic head of state.

Thoughts on the current Canadian political switch

I think the mistake the Conservatives are espousing is that people vote for a government or prime minister directly. In fact, they vote for a representative and the government is formed from the party with the most representatives or in combination with another party to make the most. The idea that a coalition is a subversion of democracy is a lie since we don't vote for the prime minister directly (as the US votes for the president). IF the leader of the liberal party in May(?) turned out to be a non-elected person, then that would be a better case.

I don't have strong feelings for either/any party, but I do find the current situation interesting. The best point was that if we had proportional representation we'd have had this situation anyways so it is, in that sense, democratic. On the sad side, we will likely get a cap-and-trade system instead of a carbon tax which was my preference.

See the problem is only one vote. That is ambiguous and open to interpretation. Did the majority vote against Harper, for continuation in the current turmoil etc. Having had the lowest turnout in an election in a long time can anyone say they have real democratic legitimacy when the population doesn't vote.

(Conservative) Policy you support but think you don't

A short while ago the Conservative party of Canada held a policy convention. The resolutions passed by the conventions are non-binding but are strong signals to the Conservative leadership of what the base wants. Tow policies were (briefly) covered during the news coverage I saw. The first was an abortion issue. Ok, that will never die. The second though is a policy EVERYONE should support, but from the sounds of it everyone but the most savvy political and policy wonks don't.

The second resolution was basically that human rights tribunals not be allowed to hear free speech cases. That sounds awful! Why wouldn't they want human right tribunals (presumably a good thing) to hear free speech issues (a fundamental human right)? The key is in the title: Tribunal or Commission (not court).

We have hate laws and they are a criminal offense (not that they are used, luckily). The rules of the court are over 800 years old and in most people's mind work pretty damn well (needing only tweaks). To alleviate some of the burden on the courts for lesser infractions such as housing discrimination or employer discrimination the tribunals and commissions were formed. These are NOT courts. The usual rules of evidence do not apply. I won't go over all the specifics but a few points will illustrate the difference.

Say I decide to sue you in court for something. If I lose I have to pay your legal fees and both of us are accorded equal privileges by the government for our arguments. In these human rights tribunals (or commissions) the government on behalf of the plaintiff gathers testimony and decides whether to move forward. So it is not the plaintiff and the defendant with a judge it is the government prosecuting the defendant on behalf of the plaintiff. Regardless of outcome the plaintiff pays nothing (the tax payer foots the bill) AND the fee incurred by the defendant (days of work lost, lawyer etc) are NOT reimbursed. Thus the resources of the government are used to prosecute a citizen and damages done to the innocent are NOT repaid. Obviously the state could simply bleed a person dry by always summing them to miss work by dragging on a case.

One more point about these tribunals. One of the punishments they can enforce is a public apology! Our murders are not even subject to that and imagine how insincere and ridiculous that would be on a free speech case!

That's the whole point. These tribunals have recently taken (although latter dropped unfortunately) free speech and freedom of the press complaints. In the freedom of the press case was Macleans magazine and the plaintiffs wanted an unedited multi page rebuttal article (link to opinion) because they felt insulted! The very notion that the resources of the government should be used to attack another citizen without renumeration if they are found innocent is unacceptable in a liberal democracy. If I say something that is hate speech or illegal for some reason I should be taken to a court and evidence presented against me allowing for me to defend myself. I should not be subject to a government sponsored witch hunt where I can only lose (money at least and possible more). Thus I submit that the policy that was put out by the conservatives may sound wrong, it is cleary something everyone should support to protect our fundamental freedoms.

Israel and the US

I've always been curious as to why the US government was so involved in Israel? Surely there are worse conflicts in the world involving child solders etc, so why Israel? At first I thought it had something to do with oil since they were in the middle east, but clearly that can't be since there Israel position makes things worse for them. So there doesn't seem to be economic reasons so naturally I figured it was then a religious thing. But finally I see that's not really it, especially since the Christians want to convert them and aren't that sympathetic (they didn't intervene during the holocaust and the Catholic Church was mute).

No the reason, it turns out is practical now a days. Jews retire in Florida and Florida is a big swing state. Florida can often be the key to the election. Thus to win the White House you have to support Israel.

Barak Obama's faith finding, silver lining?

Of course I want a secular president. An atheist preferably, but I'm content with a religious person who is secular. Barak Obama meets this criteria pretty well, but I was disappointed to hear that he will continue and expand(!) Bush's Faith based initiatives. I can see politically this is a good tactic but clearly it is bad secularism. Ok, that's my idealist rant, now let's get practicle.

This will help him win the white house so that is good since McCain has been a disappoinment since around 2006. Also Obama has put a clear caviate:

Obama does not support requiring religious tests for recipients of aid nor using federal money to proselytize, according to a campaign fact sheet. He also only supports letting religious institutions hire and fire based on faith in the non-taxpayer funded portions of their activities, said a senior adviser to the campaign, who spoke on condition of anonymity to more freely describe the new policy.

In one sense that isn't bad since, as we all know, the US is great for law suits. Anyone terminated due to their faith would get to sue and make headlines about how intolerant one of the religions was. Still I find this a small concillation to the departure from secularism. It has completely muted any excitement I had for his candidancy. If he will compromise on something as basic as secularism, he can't get my support (although he may get my vote since I vote in NY and I haven't read much about the libertarian candidate).

Modern segregationists

Unlike the violent black white segregationists of past todays modern segregationist is slightly more tolerant. They believe segregation is ok, so long as it is optional. The best example is the Ontario Liberal government and specifically Education Minister Kathleen Wynne and Premier Dalton McGuinty. In there modern segregationist view it is ok to segregate Catholics into separate schools so long as the Catholics are allowed out and no other faith is allowed in. The justification is simple: tradition. Wonder how that would have went over in the black white segregation debate? Think I'm exaggerating? Here is a direct quote of Wynne's speech to the Catholic trustees' and principals' AGM:

Catholic system is here to stay

Thursday, 20 March 2008

Written by Michael Swan, The Catholic Register,

TORONTO - Ontario Education Minister Kathleen Wynne put a positive spin on the bitter debate over confessional education during the fall election campaign in a speech to Catholic teachers at their annual union meeting in Toronto March 9.

In the end voters rejected Conservative proposals to expand public education to include Jewish, Muslim and Christian schools and affirmed the existing publicly funded system in Ontario which covers secular and Catholic school boards, she said.

“It’s the most inclusive system in the world,” Wynne told about 600 delegates to the Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association annual general meeting. “We have to model that pluralistic system for the world.”

The election “reinforced public support for the current publicly funded system,” she told The Catholic Register. No amount of public debate over whether it’s fair to fund Catholic schools but not Jewish and Muslim schools would cause a Liberal government to re-examine current funding for Catholic schools as the only publicly funded separate system, she said.

“It’s the system that we inherited,” said Wynne.

Guess Ontarians should've known we've elected a government that is committed to inequality and Catholic privilege. After all they never took an oath to serve all Ontarians.

But best of all, this logic implies that if you inherited a slave it was ok!!

A grand Saudi experiment

In this news post at sciam a really interesting project in Saudi Arabia is going to take place. The Saudi king is endowing a brand new university (King Abdullah University of Science and Technology or KAUST) with $10 billion dollars. But not only that, he is barring the moral police and allowing all the western freedoms on campus (women and men will both be admitted and share classrooms and (on campus) women can drive a car and may even be allowed to dress as non-ninjas. Also, the university is suppose to be completely autonomous with no government intervention. I think this is an experiment since for one thing in a theocracy how can some people be happy with all these restrictive laws but then fine to leave this university alone? Not to mention there is nothing more anti-religious than science. Of course the university is primarily focused on technology, not real basic science so that will help. But I wonder how many students from non-arab countries will want to go to a university in the heart of Saudi Arabia and more importantly how many professors. If this is successful, and the trend spills over to other wealthy arab countries in 20 years with a well educated based of people the culture war in these countries would make America's pale by comparison. This will be a grand experiment (although I wouldn't go for fear of what happens when your off campus) to *watch*.

Thought crimes in Canada!?!

This pains me but I knew it was coming. This is clearly a thoughtcrime and quite disturbing, but then what do you expect in Canada home of the not-so-free! Lets face it, most have not read the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. So lets post a VERY important part:

1. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society. (source)

Who gets to decide what is justifiable!?! The government!! That's not a freedom that a privilege given by a dictatorial authority! It really is completely ridiculous but then our charter even gives the source of its nonsense in the preamble:

Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law:

Canada is therefore founded on the supremacy of an evil fictional character and the rules made up by our politicians, since that's the rule of law since our rights are actually privileges. COuldn't we put it more succinctly:

Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of Dracula and the decries of its politicians:

1. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject whatever limitations the government decides.

There at least now it's honest. Well I hope I'm allowed the be thankful I am a US citizen with real rights and happy that even under Bush's ruining of the rule of law in the US I'm freer in the US!!

Here is Ezra laying it out! It's awesome and is my definition of a patriot.

Mexicans vs Candian Native Americans: what am I missing?

I was listening to the recent interview of Paul Martin by Steve Paikin when two important numbers were thrown out. The first was there are roughly a million aboriginals in Canada. The second was that the Kelowna accord was priced at $5 billion dollars (that an additional $5000 per aboriginal on top of the $6300 per aboriginal or $6.3 billion allocated in 2007 for Native affairs, see here) . Martin was stating that the aboriginals live in third world conditions.

Now as I though about the situation the parallels with Mexicans (or more generally central Americans) became apparent to me. Both live in 3rd world conditions and have little employment opportunity in their "homeland." So why is it Mexicans risk their lives to go to the US or Canada illegally, work crazy hours for crappy wages and send most of their money home to their family where as the aboriginals who have the right to work in Canada don't? As citizen they can get better education for them and their children than the Mexicans, healthcare since they are citizens andbetter jobs since they don't have to take illegal jobs. The aboriginals have what the rest of the poor world want, access to Canada and US jobs.

I guess one possibility is this isn't working for most immigrants who come here and spend most of their salary on remittance, which would beg the question why they stay or new immigrants continue to try to come in? Or maybe giving someone fish instead of teaching them to fish and letting them fish doesn't work. Am I missing some huge piece of the puzzle here?

Thompson on Bhutto and hypocrisy

When I heard what Thompson said about Bhutto's assasination, i couldn't help but notice the hypocrisy of most of his party in this. Here' the quote:
"I think the fact that a secular woman had a chance of ascending to power in Pakistan again as prime minister probably drove the more looney of them to do something like that -- that in of itself. Plus the fact that this reminds us that this is part of a much greater picture - this is a war that we are engaged in and it is an international conflict...Pakistan and other parts of the world are part of this and they are under attack."

Yet in the US his party (and the Dems to some degree, especially of late) constantly tout their religiosity! We want other countries (especially Muslim countries) to have secular progressive leaders and at home Mike Huckabee is competing with Romney to be the "Christian" candidate! Thompson is not Ron Paul with a true understanding of church-state separation and so it is just hypocrisy, but I do wonder if in Muslim countries they hope for a president who is a secularist instead of a Christian in the US?

Qualifications for president and evolution

People have a right to believe whatever nonsense they wish, but the idea of electing representatives means the electorate must decide who is qualified to lead them (since we no longer believe in divine right in the modern world). But when candidates today say they "don't believe in evolution" they should be disqualified by the electorate. The reason is not due to them violating church-state separation or not having attained a sufficient level of knowledge to function in the real world (since they have being that all main candidates are wealthy and successful in their own rights), it is due to there lack of reason and disjoint views from reality coupled with being the Commander-in-Chief.

Evolution has more evidence than any political or economic situation will ever have and if they cannot accept the facts with such overwhelming evidence it is worrying what will happen in situations with much less evidence. We have seen first hand what happens when a belief is touted as fact (WMD's in Iraq for instance) and a president who cannot either admit he does not know enough about biology to comment or make an informed decision but rather takes the word of religious officials is a liability for the country.

Failure of the new religious fevor

While the current issue of The Economists makes some good points about the rise of religion, I disagree with the forecasts. In this article they are forecasting that the role of religion will continue to increase. While this is somewhat true I think the authors have missed two important points: the increased diversity of religions, even within the larger ones and the patience for such solutions.

Firstly religions are mostly in a free market and so they are forced to compete with each other. this is not new but the amount of competition is clearly at an all time high since information has never flowed so easily. This means that while the percentage of people with some religion/spirituality will probably remain roughly constant or with a slow decline to to more information about alternatives to superstitious world views, but the overall infulence will decrease because we will no longer have a single voice for the large chunk of religious people. For instance in the US the religious voice of the protestants was largely the religious voice in the early 20th century. Now that group has been subdivided many times and continues to subdivide. Similarly if the number of Muslims increase this does not mean you simply have more people wanting sharia law or something since there are many competing forms of Islam including secular Islam. In this sense there is a big divide and conquer scheme amidst. Religions continue to compete for followers and change to attract the largest market share and so the religious voice becomes an incoherent chorus, losing its power.

The other thing to note is that people will abandon ways that do not work. While many places are trying to return to religion for various reasons in the end when they lack medical care and economic opportunities for their children due to spending much time on religion and not science I doubt many will continue with such a lost cause. Currently it may seem like a good idea to fight for your place in the world using religion instead of science, but business doesn't work so well with religion and so it will again fail (one need only look at most Muslim countries economies and compare them to secular Turkey or precivil war Lebanon). As science continues to move ahead and provide cures, preventive treatments and economic opportunity religious people will realize the only one's with opportunity are the one's preaching the religions and abandon it for a more private faith and secular public life. I don't give the current large religious uprising (meaning religion in government and public life) more than 20 years in North America, but the middle east I think it will continue to increase for about 50 years until the oil is scarce and water is more valuable and there troubles are truly huge and their religion and so utterly failed them. I think it will end like in Dune. The Muad'hib has died, we are just waiting for the Preacher's message to take solid root. But the largest religious deconversion I predict for South America as their economies continue to grow. We'll see!

But I'm not saying religion/spirituality will disappear (I'm not that much of an optimist), merely that it's relevance will go back to pre-1960's level in public life.

Canada Free Press, Jul 26/07

The article below was pulled the editor of the Canadian Free press (a practicing Catholic) but it is really good and worth having out there. It is honest and so hard-hitting. To bad the Canadian Free press pulled it. But by the magic of the Internet it is revived! Great work Mr. Reid!!

God, religion, punishment

Throwing bad policy after bad policy

By Gary Reid

Thursday, July 26, 2007

What do these things have in common?

The earth is but 6,000 years old and Noah took pairs of dinosaurs on board the Ark along with other animals. God is punishing the United Kingdom with floods because Britons tolerate homosexuality. God punished the United States the same way for the same reason through Hurricane Katrina. God commands you to kill your children if they talk back to you. God commands you to kill unbelievers. The Catholic Church is the one true church.

If you are a rationale person, you would have to say that the commonality in all these religious contentions is that they are simply rubbish.

Yet, more than 30 million Americans who call themselves Evangelical Christians buy into the 6,000 year-old earth belief and teach this to their children (rent the HBO-produced video, You have a friend in God, to see this in action).

The British Anglican Bishops, who apparently have greater insight into the mind of God, recently revealed the true reason for floods. However, they failed to explain God’s promise to Noah not to use floods again whenever he decided the human herd needed culling. And with respect to Katrina, we all remember the exhortations of the late Reverend Gerry Falwell on this subject.

Deuteronomy, the fifth book of Moses, and, lest we forget, the holy word of God, informs Jews of proper child rearing techniques (beating and killing). Apparently, given the three millennia survival of Judaism, Jews thought God was just kidding, or simply didn’t understand teenagers, and decided to skip over that chapter and opt for common sense.

Unfortunately, we have become all too familiar with that other book of divinely-inspired homicide, the Koran, and its prescription for the disposition of unbelievers. Finally, Pope Benedict, as unbiased an observer of religiosity as one could find, recently ticked off the world’s Protestants by reasserting the primacy of the Catholic Church.

That last one is a bit more thorny than the others because each of the faiths, and all of their sects, claim to be the one true religion. They can’t all be right.

Generally, we consider religion to be a private matter and in their homes or in the confines of their churches, mosques, tabernacles, gospel halls, kingdom halls, synagogues and temples, if these religious folks want to cling to these strange beliefs, who cares? It is only when they spill into the outside world through attempts at censorship and outright murder that we start to ask ourselves do we really need pay such deference to religions as we seem to?

I raise this in the context of the unwise election platform of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party. Its leader, John Tory, claims that by funding faith-based schools we will be inviting into the mainstream some 53,000 students now being privately taught in the beliefs of their faiths. He makes it sound as if Ontario’s public policy has excluded them.

They have always been welcome in the public school system and they are outside of it because their parents decided to separate them so that they will not be contaminated by the teaching of other knowledge that does not square with the holy books (try squaring the book of Darwin with the book of Genesis).

What Tory does not highlight is the thousands of additional students whose parents will place them in faith-based schools once public funding becomes available. It’s not just 53,000 students.

Tory recently announced his intention of hiring former premier, Bill Davis, to study the implications of funding faith-based schools. Some have condemned this move, pointing out that Davis is the person responsible for getting us into this problem by providing full funding for a Catholic school system. It has been likened to hiring the fox to reorganize the chickens.

I hope Davis never gets the appointment, because the PCs deserve to lose the election on this issue. However, I would hope, if it does come to pass, Davis will have had sufficient time to reflect on the damage he inflicted in Ontario, that he will have the courage to face the fact he did the wrong thing, and the fortitude to correct his mistake by recommending one public system, uncontaminated by any particular religious dogma.

Davis used to say, puckishly, that he was just a B student in law school. So was I, as a matter of fact. But this B student is left wondering why Davis, and now Tory, did not or do not try to square the book of education with the book of religion. Education is all about opening young minds to the possibilities in the wonders of knowledge yet to be discovered. Religion is dedicated to closing off such enquiry and shunning new knowledge that conflicts with religious convention.

Why should the public be asked to fund the closing of young minds? Why would that be in the public interest?

---

Gary Reid is a freelance writer and a public affairs consultant.

The Iraq war: a lesson for scientists and smart people

Evnen with far superior man/fire power and the intention to overthrow a brutal dictator the US lost the war, but won the battle. Most agree this is because they did not win the "hearts and minds" of th population. This is a good analogy for the evolution propaganda (it's not a debate, if you believe it is go directly to school, do not pass go) since although we have the very best army of facts and evidence it doesn't guarantee victory. Unfortunately we are pitted against a clever amorphous insurgency of irrational dogma that is appealing to some who lack proper education or simply desire power for themselves over others. Because these ideas and perpetrators can hide in the amongst the population we must battle them tactfully to win them over for all our sakes. In my opinion this requires outreach. We must go into the trenches and weed out these ideas and expose "righteous" claims as false, harmful and simply a power play. Many people's view changes when they realize their child's life could be endangered by such ideas.

As an example for the science (not Iraq part), the belief in creationism implies that vaccines are useless since it is god's will to give the virus and that no virus can evolve to jump the species barrier. Also many drugs are made by evolving bacteria to manufacture the drug. Most people are not religious enough to stake their child's life on their superstitions and so see a doctor not priest or imam when they get sick. Not teaching evolution needlessly delays progress on cures due to the social and economic problems that our society incurs, but to win the hearts and minds we must build and understanding and relationship with them to win them over.

The Great Candian Charter of Rights...

doesn't contain the right to council. Although we are used to hearing, "if you cannot afford one one will be provided for you..." when we watch law and order, the Canadian system isn't the same. Since we essentially an elected monarchy (once elected we are ruled over, not governed) it is not surprising to myself how this court case was decided. As I have learned form separate schools, our Charter is a mish-mash of stuff as opposed to the American Bill of Rights and Constitution which is based on principles (for better or worse). This will hopefully wake up Canadians to a simple and startling fact: Our American cousins have more rights than we do!

The oddest thing about this is that all Canadians have the right to health care, but not legal council. What does that say about your society when you will pay the medical bills but not the legal bills. To me it says we have a system that is not meant to be rattled. Long live the king....

Republican's praising Regan

If you are like me and think the reverence for Ronald Regan is at a fevered pitch I have a simple solution. Remind them about the immigrant amnesty. It's one of his few actually smart policies and it will brake most Republican's brains (like asking a creationist how you get a population from two humans without inbreeding).