Thursday 31 December 2015

Frosty's tragic end


Please don't tell the girls, but Frosty has come to a tragic end. The details are too gruesome to put up on a public blog. Let's just say he suffered a dissociative disorder caused by El NiƱo involving his head and body. I suppose he lost his mind, you could say.

Frosty and friends in happier times
(c) 2015 Terry McCann

Tuesday 29 December 2015

A Crisis of Junk Science

When the noble science of Science degenerates into junk science the ripples of scepticism resulting from feelings of betrayal and anger have the potential to become a tsunami.
"In the U.S., the Federal Bureau of Investigation admitted last April that hair identification testimony from its forensic scientists was flawed in 95 per cent of the 268 cases before 2000 it has reviewed so far. In 32 of those cases, the defendant was sentenced to death."
The above is from an op-ed by criminal defence lawyer, Daniel Brown, in today's Toronto Star.

Before Canadians feel too smug here's another snippet:
"Bad science is an alarming thread that runs through almost two dozen Canadian wrongful murder convictions exposed in recent years by the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted (AIDWYC). The roll call of errors in these cases includes clothing fibres mistakenly believed to match one another; experts who incorrectly concluded that dog bites on a dead child were knife wounds inflicted by her mother; inept autopsies that misinterpreted the cause of death; biology samples contaminated by a government lab technician; and hair samples that anchored a murder conviction, yet later turned out to be worthless."

The only consolation for Canadians is that Canada does not have a death penalty. Innocent people have not been killed; they have simply languished in jail while their children were removed and placed in group homes, foster care or adoption.

In his piece, Brown observes,
"Wealthy defendants are able to afford top lawyers and expert witnesses, but indigent accused or those from marginalized communities frequently bear the brunt of bad science evidence. They cannot match cases assembled by well-funded police and prosecutors, sometimes pleading guilty to obtain a reduced sentence in the face of superficially overwhelming evidence."

The Alchemist by Pieter Bruegel

Brown makes some conclusions that I think are predictable and precisely to my first point about scepticism:
At precisely the time we ought to be exercising heightened skepticism, a mistaken belief is developing that wrongful convictions are a thing of the past.

And again…
Judges must be better trained to weed out junk science and unwarranted opinions offered by experts. And they must warn juries about the perils of placing too much reliance on science or picking sides in a battle of experts.
This reminds me of manufacturers relying on inspectors to 'inspect in' quality. As W. Edwards Deming pointed out decades ago, that is far too late in the production cycle and way too susceptible to error. Would we fly to our vacation spots knowing the plane we are on did not have adequate requirements and design review, risk and failure modes analysis, verification and validation prior to 'inspection'? Heck, let alone fly, we don't even allow cars on the road that have not been built according to this process, and yet we trust that our 'scientists' all use correct scientific methods and design of experiment even though they often do not bother with peer review. Hello?


Read the entire op-ed here: Junk science is undermining our justice system

(Republished from my professional blog article of the same title at tcmc Quality Management Services)

Photo credit: http://www.wikiart.org/en/pieter-bruegel-the-elder/the-alchemist

Tuesday 22 December 2015

Children without a voice

Writing his regular column for the Toronto Star Martin Regg Cohn's piece today is about the failure of Ontario's children's aid societies to properly protect some of the most vulnerable and needy children.

He concludes, "Unlike the grown-ups who get all the attention, kids can’t vote, and lack a voice. But they still need politicians in power to hear them."

True as this is about the children Cohn is explicitly writing about, I believe this to be even more cogently true about kids in the womb. Kids 'in utero' do not even exist as humans in Canadian law. They suddenly appear, Voila!, and enter into the ambience of law with human rights and freedoms when they pass through the magical birth canal, or, like rabbits from a hat, are yanked out by C-section 'deliverers'. Until that moment, these are the most voiceless kids on the planet.

"The Scream" by Edvard Munch
You can read Cohn's column online here: Premier ponders blowing up our CAS mess. It's an excellent piece and I recommend it to Canadians living in Ontario. For non-Canadians, CAS is an acronym for Children's Aid Societies.

Picture credit: "The Scream" by Edvard Munch - WebMuseum at ibiblioPage URL: http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/munch/munch.scream.jpg. 
Licensed under Public Domain via Commons


Wednesday 9 December 2015

Abstract musing on favourite colours

Credit: www.allaboutbirds.org


Grey, brown, black and white
are not my favourite colouring colours
drab, boring, cold, depressing

yet on a chickadee delighting,
even playing.

A zebra...
magnificent, flaunting,
shy, demure, seducing.
Credit i.livescience.com/

Touching, hearing, seeing
creatures foraging, flying,
living, breathing, laughing, crying
dispel the abstract musing
on favourite colours
as dawn's awaking
dispels the sleeping dreaming.

Monday 7 December 2015

Indonesia is burning. Who cares?

Fires in Indonesia are currently producing more carbon dioxide than the US economy. And in three weeks the fires have released more CO2 than the annual emissions of Germany.

Photo: Ulet Ifansasti/Getty Images via www.theguardian.com.
Starbucks, PepsiCo, Kraft Heinz and Unilever are complicit in both cause and inaction.

The cost in human lives and misery is colossal as is the destruction of species. ‘Children are being prepared for evacuation in warships; already some have choked to death. Species are going up in smoke at an untold rate.’

This article was written October 30 and revised November 16. The fires continue unabated.


Indonesia is burning. So why is the world looking away?

by George Monbiot in The Guardian.

Thursday 3 December 2015

Call for an independent, public review of the costs of nuclear stations in Ontario

No nuclear project has delivered on time or on budget in Ontario’s history. Ontario still does not have a plan for storing radioactive nuclear waste, nor does it have an public emergency plan to deal with a Fukushima-scale nuclear accident. And taxpayers are on the hook for the costs of a nuclear disaster because no private company will fully insure high risk nuclear stations.

Darlington on Lake Ontario
Ontario’s residential electricity rates rose by 3.4% on November 1, 2015. According to an Ontario Energy Board report, 45% of the rise in Ontario’s electricity generation costs is due to subsidies for Ontario’s aging nuclear reactors. The 2012 restart of the Bruce A Units 1 and 2 reactors came in $2 billion over budget and over 2 years behind schedule. Rebuilding the Bruce B Nuclear Station will cost Ontario’s consumers between $60 and $111 billion over 30 years. Rebuilding the Darlington Nuclear Station will cost Ontarians between $8 and $32 billion.

Studies show that Ontario could reduce its debt by $12.9 billion, save ratepayers over $750 million per year ($15 billion over 20 years) and secure a higher return on equity for publicly owned Ontario Power Generation if Ontario replaces high cost electricity from Darlington with lower cost water power from Quebec.

Yet, Ontario has never conducted an independent public review of nuclear costs or alternatives.

It’s irresponsible for the Liberals to spend billions on rebuilding nuclear plants without conducting an independent public review of costs and alternatives.

I therefore join the call on the Government of Ontario to conduct an independent public review of the costs of and alternatives to rebuilding the Bruce B Nuclear Station and the Darlington Nuclear Station.

SIGN THE PETITION

(Picture credit http://www.powermag.com/opg-proposes-new-nuclear-construction-at-darlington/)