Judge Michael Kent rules!

November 15, 2011 — xanthippa

Australian judge Michael Kent rules that a child’s rights trump Sharia!

Well done, judge!

If only more judges acknowledged that, even in circumstances as difficult as divorce, the best interests of a child trump everything else.

In this case, the mother wanted the ruling to be done in Saudi Arabia so that it would be made under Sharia – a set of laws which only considers the Islamic religious beliefs, not the rights of people, much less the best interests of the child.

Thank you, judge Michael Kent!

After all, a person’s a person, no matter how small.

I wish more judges were like judge Michael Kent.

H/T:  Religion of Peace

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‘Face-veil’ in Renaissance Rome was considered ‘the mark of a courtesan’

November 14, 2011 — xanthippa

It is funny how different cultural traditions can ascribe different values to equivalent things:  in this case, the face veil.

We have come face-to-niqab (if you will excuse the expression) with the Islamic tradition of the face veil and are familiar with it:  Muhammad imposed ‘the veil’ on his wives but not on his concubines.

Some people think ‘Muhammad’s veil’ was worn on the front of the throat, but did not cover the face. This can be seen in some Pakistani dress traditions.

Others think it was based on the Slavic  headscarf, as he is reported to have first seen this garment on the Christian slave girl gifted to him by the patriarchs of Constantinopole.  He became so enamoured of it, he imposed it on all of his wives.  If you look at the linked illustrations, it is possible to think that the hijab could have evolved from it.  (This is, in my never-humble-opinion, the most likely the root of the Islamic ‘veil’, because there is a direct reference in the Hadith to the ‘Christian slave girl’.  Historically, Slavs were hunted by the Mediterranians , in order to be sold to Arabi harems – that is the origin of the word ‘slave’.)

Yet others suggest that the veil Muhammad imposed on his wives was meant to cover their whole face – the niqab.  Some people trace this to ancient symbols of prostitution – perhaps.

But, in our culture, the connection between women covering their faces with a veil while in public and prostitution exists in less distand history.  One need not go further than Renaissance Rome.

For reasons that are not exactly clear even to myself, I have been reading a biography of Lucrecia Borgia by Sarah Bradford.  (It is, perhaps, the worst-written book I have ever tried to chew my way through.  The author is completely absorbed in the minutiae and unless you are familiar with not just the ‘big picture’, but also the ‘medium picture’, you might find – like I did – that without frequent outside references, it is difficult to follow the significance of all the rigorously supported details she has managed to cram into the book.  It is precisely the rigorous support – extensive quotes from numerous letters – of what she writes which has kept me slogging through it…even though her analysis of the letters themselves and of their implications is often flawed, to say the least.)

One of the things I learned (supported by a quote from a letter written in that period), she indicates (though she does not dwell on the subject) that in Rome during the time of the Borgias, the high-class prostitutes – courtesans – would wear a veil that covered their face while they rode through the streets or were in public areas.  Not being well versed in the history of this period, I have not verified this assertion in  another publication – if anyone can suggest books I should check out for this, I would greatly appreciate their help.

While I would like to find further corroboration, the fact that this was a direct quote from a period letter, along with the fact that this was an extraneous detail which simply got in because it was part of a letter focused on another subject altogether, convinces me that this likely was the custom of the day. (The lette-writer complains how low Rome had sunk, as so many of the women one could see about were courtesans, which one could see from the fact that they covered their faces with a veil…)

Married women and mistresses – as well as umarried women and girls – did not veil their faces in public, as there was no need for ‘discretion’.  The lower class prostitutes also did not have a need for ‘discretion’, though for the opposite reason.  It was only the high-class prostitutes, the courtesans, who would cover their faces when on their way to visit ‘clients’.

So, the wearing of the face-veil was a ‘class’ thing:  it signified a higher class status among prostitutes.

Which is very curious, because in the Islamic tradition, ‘the veil’ also carries a very definite class distinction:  because Muhammad had imposed it on his ‘wives’ – but not on women who were his slaves, whether workers or concubines, women who wore ‘the veil’ were of a higher social status than women who did not.

It is the view of some current Muslims (and Muslimas) that wearing the veil is a symbol of membership in a socially superior class: the woman wearing the veil is demonstrating her class superiority over bear-headed women.  This explains why some of the Muslimas wearing veils seem to be doing it as an ‘in-your-face’ aggressive gesture.  Far from representing morality or religious piety, this particular set of Muslimas is wearing the veil as a symbol of their superiority.

I am continously fascinated by how, at different times and in different cultures, the same items symbolized different things.  In one time and place, the face veil represents a higher social status woman.  In another, it denotes a higher social status prostitute.

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ThunderF00t: ‘The Stagnation of YouTube’

November 12, 2011 — xanthippa

What he is describing is yet another application of the ‘Filter Bubble’:

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The ‘Filter Bubble’

November 10, 2011 — xanthippa

There is a most brilliant (and relatively short) TED Talk – a must see for anyone who uses a search engine.

Slowly but surely, most search engines and social networks are tracking each of our histories and editing out things they think we would not like.  This means that searching for identical keywords can produce vastly different search result for different people – which is fine, IF we could ‘opt out’ (at least some of the time)…but most of us don’t even know this is happening!

This, in my never-humble-opinion, is a problem.  And it is the topic of the above mentioned TED Talk by Eli Pariser – he refers to it as ‘the filter bubble’.

He raises a lot of good questions.

One possible answer to at least one of these questions is a search engine that markets itself with proud claims that it will not bubble or track you! If you have not heard of them, take a peek at DuckDuckGo.

While on the topic of technology, Michael Geist has been doing some important work reporting on the Digital lock dissent.  He has also posted a most excellent ‘link-library’ to help people support their arguments when they try to dispell the myths the digital lockers are promulgating.

H/T:  Tyr

Posted in education, society, technology. Tags: , , , , , . 3 Comments »

‘The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert’

November 9, 2011 — xanthippa

Yes – I have just finished reading this book (Kindle version) and would like to say a few words about it.

First, in the name of transparency, I disclose that I am named in the acknowledgments as one of the over 40 citizen auditors whom the book’s author, Donna Laframboise, had recruited to audit the references in various IPCC AR4 chapters in order to verify whether the sources were peer-reviewed scientific journals or other materials. (More on this later.)

Let me start with the conclusion:  well worth a read!

It is worth reading regardless of your opinions about global warming and the role humanity does or does not play in it because, contrary to some book reviews, the book does not actually address the science itself.  Let me say it again:  this book is NOT an examination of the science, nor does it draw any scientific conclusions.  Not one!

Rather, this book takes the claims the IPCC (and its members) make about the organization and how it functions and tests them for consistency and validity.  As the sub-title of the book says, it is ‘An Expose of the IPCC’.  It is a journalistic expose of the process (and its corruption) behind the IPCC repots:  exactly the sort of thing that investigative journalist are trained to do.

This is a serious matter:  regardless of where your opinions may fall on the science itself, the process through which the IPCC reports – the reports with perhaps the furthest and deepest financial and political implications of our generation – are generated must be transparent and worthy of our trust.  It is perhaps even more the interest of the ACC believers that this process is ‘beyond reproach’ – that their Kool-Aid is not tainted, if you will.

What Donna Laframboise has revealed in ‘The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert:  An Expose of the IPCC’ is an eye-opener to people who have trusted the IPCC simply because they were told to trust world’s leading scientists.

No, the book is not perfect.  There is a number of things that I would have either eliminated or re-phrased or even things I think are important that were not included in the book.  For example, she does go on about the Y2K bug in an attempt to parallel the hysteria and I get her aim – yet I think this and similar bits detract, not add to the book.  At times, her wording is more colloquial than what appeals to my taste, but that is a minor pick – and what she says, regardless of the style she says it in, is valid.

As for omissions – perhaps the most important one is that while I was checking the references for several of the chapters in AR4 for the Citizen Audit, I noted that a number of the references were not to peer-reviewed journals, but to actual official government policy papers.

To me, this is a big deal.

Yes, she correctly pans the IPCC for using a WWF and Greenpeace pamphlets and ads and press releases as source material – these are clearl not peer-reviewed science, despite the often repeated mantra that the IPCC uses exclusively sources from peer-reviewed scientific publications.  Citing these as peer-reviewed science is very problematic and Donna does a great job exposing this.

But that a number of actual government policy papers (from several different national governments as well as from the EU) are the source material on which the IPCC draws its conclusions is, in my never-humble-opinion, just as big (if not even bigger) deal.  Precisely because, as she documents in her book, it is governments who nominate people for IPCC participation, inclusion of policy papers by those very same governments demonstrates very clearly the conflicts of interest of many of the people behind the IPCC.

OK – that was my pet peeve.  I have to admit, in light of what the book does reveal and how meticulously it documents all of its assertions, it is just a minor niggle.

Perhaps the most praise-worthy aspect of ‘The Delinquent Teenager’ is how meticulously it is researched and documented.  I have not seen a hard copy, but the Kindle version (and, I understand, the pdf version) are filled with links to relevant material and almost a quarter of the book is ‘footnotes’.  Really.  Everything written in this book has been researched and documented beyond anything I have seen – ever.  For a fact junkie such as I am, this really makes the case – and proves it.

Different people liked different aspects:  here are a few other  reviews of the book (this one has copious quotes).

What did I learn from the book that I did not know before?

Two things jump to mind right away:

1.  There were no conflict of interest guidelines or rules for the IPCC as late as 2010 – they were deemed unnecessary.  This is problematic on its own.  However, following a scathing review by IAC, such conflict of interest rules have been done up.  Alas, they will not apply to any of the people currently working on the next IPCC report, because, as Rajendra Pachauri who heads the IPCC says, that would not be fair…

It would not ‘be fair’ to expect the IPCC ‘experts’ to adhere to conflict of interest rules?!?!?

2.  Donna Laframboise strings together a sequence of events that we should be aware of and supports it with quotes from Rajendra Pachauri and others:  the role of the IPCC never was to present an impartial report.

Here is the sequence:

  1. UN creates INFCCC
  2. UNFCCC creates a treaty to curb carbon emissions.
  3. UN creates IPCC to support the UNFCCC and get buy-in from various governments and people around the world.

Let me emphasize this:  the IPCC was created specifically to lend ‘scientific’ backing to the claim there is a problem only AFTER the UN had created the solution!

There is more in the book that I learned, but these two things are of such importance, it is difficult to believe any investigative

This is an important book – if you have not done so, please, read it!

Posted in corruption, education, politics, society. Tags: , , , , , , , . 2 Comments »

Measles outbreak among vaccinated kids: how it that possible?

November 2, 2011 — xanthippa

Vaccination is an important weapon in our arsenal of weapons against infectious diseases, as I have written about before.

However, there is a very real problem with how our health officials are presenting vaccination.  It appears calculated to make people distrust the very tool they are touting!!!

After all, most people are not stupid:  we can tell when we are being told things that demonstrably are not true.  This includes oversimplifications to the poin of error:  we see the real-life results while the ‘experts’ are describing ideal ‘lab conditions’ outcomes…and the two are never the same.  (I’ll come back to this point later.)

I am convinced that the vast majority of anti-vaccination sentiment ‘out there’ is among people who have once  believed the health officials statements which touted the benefits of vaccinations, overstated its effectiveness and understated (or left out cmpletely) its risks.  There is no critic so hardened as one who was once a true believer and was proven wrong by real-life experience!

What do I mean?

If somebody sold you, say, suit of body armour and told you this armour can stop any bullet so that you will be safe wearing it anywhere in a combat zone – but omitted to tell you that the neck and joint areas of the suit are not actually armoured, you went out and got shot through the elbow, you might be annoyed.  Had you known, you would have behaved differently – guarded your unarmoured bits better…  But, having been told that the armour is impervious, you will not be as trusting when they try to sell you the next suit of armour…

There are two main things that health officials are not properly informing people about when it comes to vaccination:

  1. risk
  2. efficacy

Now that this is out of the way – it troubles me greatly to see how the latest ‘measles outbreak’ is being handled by the health officials and/or and mainstream media.

Background:

All school kids (with only very few conscientious objectors and health exceptions) are vaccinated against measles.  Yet, despite this, every few years, there are measles outbreaks.  What sets this one apart is how the story is being spun.

The first statistics that came out were that there were just under a hundred kids infected in the initial outbreak, but well over half of these kids were ‘properly vaccinated‘.  This seems to have baffled the health officials beyond belief – suggesting that these health officials are woefully unaware of the efficacy of vaccines…

Not only do vaccines have a surprisingly low rate of efficacy (some are below 20%), the ‘protection’ they confer on someone is not identical to the ‘protection’ that having the illness would.  This is a function of our immune system:  the sicker a germ makes it, the more dilligent it is about storing the antibodies against it – both in strenght and in length of time it ‘stores’ the antibodies for (hence the need for ‘booster shots’).  Since vaccinations only produce a very mild, immitation version of the disease, the body does not consider these antibodies ‘priority antibodies’ and will often drop them if it has too many other antibodies to worry about.

Therefore, we have consistently seen that may childhood illnesses like measles and chicken pox appear in teenagers or young adults, when they are much more dangerous illnesses than had they been suffered through in childhood.  This is what one would expect to see in a ‘properly’ vaccinated population!

It is similar to the not-often-mentioned fact that until very recently (when arrivals of people from the third world changed the situation), the only cases of polio were found in children vaccinated with the live vaccine and the grandparents who were looking after them.  No vaccination confers protection for more than 20-30 years – something our health officials also should be stressing.

But, back to our story:  since the initial news story, the outbreak has grown to over seven hundred.  Since the percentage on unvaccinated kids is small, it seems reasonable to presume that, as before. more than half of these students were also ‘properly’ vaccinated.

So, how do the health officials propose to deal with the outbreak?

MORE VACCINATION!!!

That is insane!

And irresponsible beyond belief!

Either the strain that is ravaging the teens has mutated from the original – which viruses do on a regular basis, in which case giving them the ‘standard’ vaccine would have no effect (there has not been sufficient time to adjust the vaccine), or there is a genetic pocket of people whose immune systems don’t respond to vaccination typically….in which case vaccinating them some more is both idiotic and dangerous.

Plus this creates the false impression that the problem is being contained, when all this activity will have no significant impact whatsoever.  People need to take personal precautions – yet the authorities are assuring them that they don’t need to since they have everything under control…

I know I am sounding like a broken record, but…

Vaccinations are an important tool for combatting infectious disease.  But, like all tools, it must be used properly and its limitations must be clearly stated and generally understood – and this is not happening right now.  Our health officials, through their attempt to manipulate us to all make the ‘right’ choice and misrepresenting the effectiveness of this tool are actually undermining people’s trust in it and feeding the anti-vaccination hysteria!

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Problems with the Efficacy of Vaccinations

November 2, 2011 — xanthippa

Vaccinations are an important tool to control infectious diseases.  However, like any tool, they are not perfect!

The difficulty lies in the politicization of vaccination.

Like every other time when politics intrudes into a scientific field, the politicians cite science and scientists as their justification for action while the science itself becomes subordinated to and twiste by the politics of the situation…

One of the greatest problems I have with writing this post is that I cannot reveal my sources:  some of these immunologists have spoken up openly, at the cost to their careers.  Yet, immunology is such a narrow field that if I am too specific, they will be identified from my comments and they could suffer more censure for having spoken out.  So, please, excuse my vagueness:  much of what I do say can be confirmed through independent sources and I would urge everyone to do their own homework on this.

We can never get past the fact that real life is not like the laboratory:  there are so many variations between people and factors in their environment that ‘ideal’ laboratory conditions can never be replicated when normal people are vaccinated.  The efficacy of a vaccine is its ability to actually produce an effect – immunity – when the general population is vaccinated with it.  So, when I use the term ‘efficacy’, I am referring to its effectiveness when administered to real people in normal life and not to its effectiveness in laboratory studies.

Most of the vaccines used today are generally deemed ‘good’ if they have an efficacy rate of 75%  – that is, 3/4 – or more.  And, yes – there are vaccines which do have high efficacy rates.  However, there are also vaccines which have much, much lower efficacy rates – yet which have been approved for use.  I am aware of at least two vaccines that have been approved (due to political pressure – not because the scientists considered them ready) when their efficacy rates were below 20%!!!

Efficacy rates below 20% means that less than 1 in 5 people who was properly vaccinated would acquire immunity against whatever it was that the vaccine was meant to protect from.

This would all be fine – if we were told the facts before we made the decision whether to get a particular ‘shot’ or not.

Unfortunately, we are not told the facts.  As a matter of fact, our doctors are not told the facts:  they are not informed of the efficacy rates of various vaccinations except that they have been approved for use.  That, in my never-humble-opinion, is a problem.

It is a very, very serious problem for several reasons:

  • not knowing the potential benefits (efficacy rate), we cannot possibly weigh if the risk factors in our particular case are worht it
  • being told that ‘we are protected’, as we are now being told when we are vaccinated, we do not take the same precautions against infection that we would if we knew that there is more than just a negligible chance that we have not actually acquired immunity through vaccination…which, ironically, increases the likelihood that we actually will get sick

That is the problem when politics subordains science:  the truth is distorted by half-lies.  When reality catches up with over-stated benefits and under-stated risk factors, all kinds of suspicions and conspiracy theories arise which make people mistrust the politicians and scientists both.  This is bad all around – but unavoidable if we let politics control science.

Only the full and honest disclosure of risks and benefits of vaccination can lead to their proper use as an excellent tool in fighting infectious diseases.

Posted in politics, science, society. Tags: , , . 1 Comment »

Risks Associated with Vaccinations

November 2, 2011 — xanthippa

Every medical procedure has risk associated with it. EVERY ONE!!!

That is not to say that the risk is large:  getting a blood test, for example, is a very low risk medical procedure.  The benefit of learning from a bloodtest the information a doctor needs to treat a patient far outweighs the risk of getting an infection or something going wrong during or following a blood test for most people.  Yet, you might not want to perform daily blood tests on a patient with hemophilia…

The same is true for vaccination:  the danger of something going wrong is very, very low.  But it is there. 

In my experience, doctors and other health officials are likely to vastly understate these dangers: some because they truly believe that the risk is so small and the patient too dumb to make a right choice on their own, some undoubtedly do it because they actually get money for having vaccinated over a certain percentage of their patients.  Either way, doctors and medical officials rutinely mis-state the dangers associated with vaccines and manipulate people into ‘getting the shot’.

People pick up on being manipulated – and most dom’t like it…

Yes, most people are poor at risk assessment – but that does not give anyone the right to deny them the very information they need to make their own choice.  Part of being a grown up is making one’s own decisions – right or wrong!

There is a second part to my ‘risk’ rant:  another aspect of the risk associated with vaccination which medical and health officials are simply not giving the general public sufficient information they need to make an informed decision.  The fact remains that we know that some people are much more likely to have adverse reactions to vaccinations than the average person would.

Have you ever been told this?  Most doctors who are not immunologists whom I have spoken to about this are woefully undereducated and, in my never-humble-opinion, almost criminally ignorant about this.

People who have problems with their immune systems are much more likely to have a dangerous reaction to vaccinations (and it is less likely that vaccines will actually work on them).  Again, there are many factors to consider, so each person ought to do some independent research into this.  People who have immune system diseases (like lupus and so on) are the most likely to have very bad reactions to vaccinations.  Close behind them are people with immune system disorders:  asthma, serious allergies (peanuts, milk, eggs) and so on.

[Aside:  the theory of vaccination is that the ‘skin’ of viruses has a ‘fingerprint’ (made up from unique proteins in the bilipid wall of the skin of the virus).  Once our body identifies the germ, it tries to create all kinds of antibodies and tests to see if any will kill the pathogen (infection).  This trial-and-error method is slow and while it is going on, the germs multiply and make a person sicker.  Once an effective antibody is found, the body makes a lot of it and uses it to kill the germs.  Vaccination introduces dead or weakened pathogens into the body:  this causes the immune system to make antibodies against.  Then, the immune system ‘stores’ the antibody and whenever it encounters the germ again it can start to make lots of it right away, skipping the trian-and-error step.  This prevents the germ from multiplying before the body is ready to fight it, so that it is defeated before it can make the person ill.]

Since the potential of acquiring immunity through vaccination (based on healthy immune systems – not ones that don’t work right) is seriously decreased and the danger of an adverse, potentially life-threatening reaction to a vaccine is greatly increased in people with immune systems which do not function properly, these people need to be fully informed of all the specifics and decide on a vaccine by vaccine basis which course of action carries the least possible risk.

This, of course, is not a concern for people with healthy immune systems.

There are other risks associated with vaccination, which do affect everyone.  When multiple-pathogen vaccinations (such as the controversial MMR) are administered – or several single vaccinations are administered at the same time or very close in time to each other, there is some indication that the probability of an adverse immune system reaction is increased.  However, I am not as knowledgable about these risk factors as about the risks associated with vaccination in people who are immunocompromised, so I am not comfortable saying more than that this has been identified as a risk factor.

Yes, there are risk factors associated with vaccinations.  My post is nowhere near exhaustive – it just hits the highlights.  Despite all of these, vaccinations are an important tool to keep infectious diseases under control.

Information is power.  It is my deep conviction that if doctors and health officials gave people accurate information about both the benefits and the risks of vaccination, people would make more informed choices.  Because they would be aware of the true (however small) risks, many of the hysterical reactions to vaccinations would be minimized, if not eliminated altogether.

Posted in human nature, politics, science, society, technology. Tags: , , . 1 Comment »

Ruling in the Warman V Fournier Copyright lawsuit

November 1, 2011 — xanthippa

CORRECTION: THE FOURNIERS WILL NOT BE BACK IN COURT LATER THIS WEEK.  (I was confused by a header from an earlier email – my apologies for the my error.)

(Sad, isn’t is, that I have to specify which of the Warman lawsuits against the Fourniers this is about….)

This is the ruling in the motion to suppress a number of ‘things’ from the Fourniers’ defense statement in the lawsuit Mr. Warman is pursuing against them because he thinks that they have violated his copyright by:

  • inline-linking to his image (while he had full control of the image and could have blocked in-line linking)
  • not taking down a re-posting 0f an article fast enough after he acquired copyright over that article in an out-of-court settlement
  • posting on their site some public documents which quoted the above article

OK, OK – I’ll not stretch the suspense out any longer.

The Fourniers won!!!

It’s not the whole case – just this motion. But, it means that the trial lawyer will have the ability to weigh all the evidence and decide for her/his own self as to what is relevant and what is not.

So, this is a victory for justice!

Small victory, but victory none-the-less.  Especially since Connie Fournier – a non-lawyer – went up against the smooth and charismatic Mr. Katz (without whose extraordinary lawyer skills most of Mr. Warman’s lawsuits would have been summarily dismissed as frivolous – in  my never-humble-opinion) and won!!!

In that sense, it is big personal victory for the Fourniers.

Congratulations, Mark and Connie.

P.S. – The Fourniers will be in Federal Court in Ottawa again on Thursday, 3rd of November, 2011.

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Informed Canadians Oppose Online Spying

October 28, 2011 — xanthippa

Do you think it is a good idea for police to be allowed to listen to phone calls without getting a warrant first?

That is exactly what the Harper Conservatives are proposing to imbed into our Criminal Code.

We should all oppose this – especially as more of use use VOIP and as our cars and smart meters are constantly recording bucketloads of information about us.

Arm yourself – get informed!!!

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