timeimmortal

That’s what an engineering prof is proposing, at any rate.

Edmonton property taxes should rise four per cent annually for the next decade just to help put crumbling roads and sidewalks into decent shape, a University of Alberta engineering professor says.

That’s only the start of a $2.9-billion program needed to overhaul decaying city infrastructure that on average is in poor or very poor condition, in one out of five neighbourhoods, Prof. Simaan Abou Rizk told council’s transportation and public works committee.

He warned that unless more money is spent on the problem and more attention is paid to fixing roads and other structures before they deteriorate too badly, 56 per cent of communities will be in that condition by 2039.

…

Abou Rizk agreed the proposed tax hikes, in addition to money the city will need to pay for police, transit, parks and the rest of its operations, might be hard for some people to swallow.

“I showed this presentation to my wife. She almost fell off her chair, (saying) ‘What do you mean, four per cent a year for 10 years? That’s crazy.’”

I guess this is the price we pay for electing a tire salesman as our mayor for all those years. ;)

BCF links to an article by Russ Brown, a professor of law at the University of Alberta (my alma mater) has an article up on the Faculty of Law blog concerning Pastor Stephen Boissoin’s “conviction” by the AHRC. And while Prof. Brown doesn’t agree with Boissoin’s views, he definitely understands Voltaire:

An earlier post referred to a recent case in British Columbia and argued that the functionaries who staff the country’s human rights commissions have no competence to determine the constitutional limits of expression.

The problem is not, of course, confined to British Columbia. The Alberta case involving Ezra Levant is notorious, and now comes the Boisson case - in which the Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission ordered a youth pastor in Red Deer to write an apology abjuring (I presume untruthfully) his views on homosexuality and has also ordered him to refrain from making “disparaging” remarks about homosexuals. (It has been observed that for him to give a sermon in his church citing the biblical injunction against homosexuality probably violates the Commission’s order).

…

What is astonishing about the Commission’s order is that it goes beyond what is, in my view, the already illegitimate regulation of expression by functionaries. This man is being ordered to actually engage in expression: specifically, to recant and, by abjuring his own views on homosexuality, to say something which is presumably contrary to the dictates of his own conscience.

It’s no small step to move from ordering thou shalt not say to ordering thou shalt say. Let’s hope a real court gets ahold of this.

Indeed.

He hits the nail exactly on the head. It’s one thing for the court to say to Pastor Boissoin: “you can’t say that anymore.” That would be bad enough, seeing as how it is Censorship of expression that does not appear to meet the necessary — and sole legal — criteria for the due limitation of expression: incitement to violence. But actually forcing Pastor Boissoin to speak something which is not a viewpoint he holds for himself is quite another thing, and then much more serious.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

The professor who briefly appears in the segment, Denis O. Lamoureux of the University of Alberta, is a former theology professor whom I still keep in touch with. He was briefly quoted, as the Reader can see, in a discussion with Richard Dawkins on TVOntario’s “Agenda” program.

Dawkins has his opinions, and I have mine. What I wanted to remark on in the video is how trapped, how very stuck, Dawkins is in his view of the relationship between science and Religion as being a dichotomy. He cannot grasp that an excellent science would believe in God not out of some kind of desperation, but by conscious choice that emerges out of reasoned consideration. Dr. Lamoureux (or Dr. Dr. Dr. Lamoureux — he holds three PhDs, two of them in scientific fields) was an atheist for no small length of time.

Dawkins is so trapped in this dichotomy that he can’t help but attempt to pigeonhole Dr. Lamoureux by essentially declaring that Denis uses his religion to explain away gaps in the evolutionary process. Perhaps Dawkins can be excused for not having gotten to know Dr. Lamoureux as well as he should have — suffice to say that anyone who knows Denis knows that the last thing he believes is a “God of the Gaps” model of creation.

When Denis talks about God being “behind” the science, he’s not talking about a God who simply guides the process past the rocky spots and yet-unexplained gaps in its record. Instead, he’s talking about the sort of God I discuss in this article here — a God who created all things out of His endless love, who continues to pour our His love upon creation, and to whose love creation responds in a multitude of amazing ways…including the emergence of life itself.

Update: Welcome, WebElf readers!

Read the rest of this entry »

I see my alma mater has overhauled its website…or at least the design thereof.

I like it; it’s a bit lighter and less contrasty than the old one was.

Let’s all watch Canada’s new favourite raving Muslim/power-generation engineer rant and rave about how great Hezbollah is, shall we? It’s another pitch-perfect piece that fuses anti-Zionism paranoia with fears of Christian conspiracy, all the while praising Hezbollah as “Lebanon’s Islamic Resistance militia” and noting their commendable “religious dedication, discipline, military skills, large public support base, high morale, good communication and [supply of the] enemy’s military information.”

Yup, he’s a Canadian. Apparently.

Over at Ace of Spades, LauraW and Ace joined the group of folks who have wondered aloud at the strange connection between engineering as an educational discipline and the tendency to become embroiled in radicalism — Ace, in particular, wonders if it’s a “personality type” issue, assuming I read him correctly. And certainly, there has been something of an established trend that has been observed in the past that suggests that engineers are prime recruiting targets for the global jihad.

It’s not hard to see why terrorist groups would want to recruit engineers — backpack nukes and Qassam rockets work so much better when someone with solid, relevant technical know-how has been involved/instrumental in their creation and setup. What’s perhaps harder to see is why engineers would be as apt as they are to sign on with the radicals.

Ace might just be on to something when he notes:

I’m asking because the engineer’s mindset — and likely then the personality type most strongly attracted to the profession — is much concerned with streamlining, simplifying, cutting through bullshit, cutting down on wasteful steps, etc. And I wonder if then doesn’t result in a tendency towards rejection of Politics entirely as simply irrelevant to one’s day-to-day life or else a strong identification with one political faction due to identifying one of any key factors (freedom, security, what have you) as primary and discarding most others as secondary at best.

Certainly, the above describes most engineers I know, including most of the ones I went to school with. But there’s a bit of a problem can emerge in all the simplifying and cutting out. Oh, one expects (as things like Dilbert have reminded us ad nauseum) a certain degree of social isolation to accompany any foray into engineering as a discipline, and certainly most of the people I went to school with could easily be said to fall under the category of “social misfit” — a category I myself an easily a part of.

There was an incident I can think of related to one engineering student in particular who wound up being banned from the University of Alberta campus, in no small part because his life had basically been trimmed to the point where all he had was his engineering, to the point of having forgotten the rules of basic human interaction. Suffice to say, he was banned for stalking a few women (some of whom I know), and I suppose that his doing so shouldn’t have come as the surprise that it did: having cut out all other aspects of normal human-to-human interactive ability from his life, he really had no idea what the proper way to express interest in a member of the opposite sex was anymore.

I think the sort of excessive social isolation that can accompany an education heavy in numbers and equations (untempered by the occasional bold expedition into writing or art) is not particularly different from the sort of social isolation that the young, exciteable men of…say…Palestine feel. Many of the same tensions are present, in fact…especially sexual tension, which fanciful tales of an endless harem of virgins in Paradise appeals to only too easily, and often with deadly results.

It’s a two-fold problem, then. On one hand, terrorist groups in need of people with solid technical training and education, who have only martyrdom and the lure of virgins in Paradise to offer. On the other hand, socially isolated, shy, technically gifted (and highly trained) professionals who’ve spent too much time in their books and wouldn’t mind a little companionship, but who may have next to no idea how to go about finding a companion.

Hmmn…and people wonder why there’s a natural connection here?

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

It never ceases to amaze me how a minor little blog such as mine (seriously: check out the Technorati rating on the sidebar…mid-to-high 30s? Pathetic!) attracts the notice, on occasion, of folks in the news. Not that David Kahane is exactly a household name. Then too, he hasn’t exactly managed to avoid the spotlight either, and he writes in to remark on something I wrote about a class he teaches.

“St. Joseph’s College strives to engage everyone in the experience of those human values that encourage a respect for all persons, promote social justice, service, and friendship, and foster a desire for truth that includes the sacred.”

Hear hear. And yet I’m not feeling this ethos in your condemnation of me. Sorry.

I wish that you weren’t so quick to categorize me as your enemy, and to dismiss my work based on very limited information.

For the record, O Reader, I am but a former student of St. Joseph’s College at the University of Alberta — I am not currently a student of that institution, nor am I a member of the staff or faculty there. I am a member of the College chapel parish, as it is a Catholic church in addition to being an institution of learning, but that is about as far as it goes.

To be fair, I generally align myself with the ideals expressed in the statement of purpose that Mr. Kahane has excerpted above, especially in regard to “a desire for truth that includes the sacred.” To be equally fair, my intent in my earlier article was not specifically to offer condemnation, nor was it to define myself explicitly as the enemy of another person.

Rather, it was meant as a commentary on a certain…shall we call it liberal smugness? Fundamentally, what was at issue was that a philosophy class — in which students were encouraged to, among other things, think positive self-referential thoughts in a meditative style and to spend time sitting in public directing these “positive energies” as passers-by — was being touted as an experiment in social justice, when in fact it was nothing of the sort. Had it been billed as an experiment in liberal self-absorption, I’d have not bothered to take issue with it, because that latter classification would have been closer to the truth. But as it was billed as an experiment in social justice, I chose not to remark upon the untruth.

Sitting around thinking happy thoughts and hoping that the people walking past are getting your vibes is not social justice; it’s hippie-dippy claptrap. Social justice is spending five hours in a meager kitchen serving the best damn meal possible to a few hundred homeless people. Social justice is volunteering to take persons with out for various recreational activities. Social justice is joining [insert profession here] Without Borders and going to Africa for a year or two to do your very damndest to improve the lot of as many people as you can through the use of what technical skills you have amassed.

I’m not interested in being the enemy of anyone but Satan. I’m not trying to make enemies with what I write (as hard as that might be for some to believe). But equally, I have no tolerance for bullshit. If that sets me at odds with the “ethos” of the mission statement of St. Joe’s College (the educational institution, not the church), that’s something I’m willing to risk.