Butts Testimony Live

The Libranos 149 Comments

Sorry, I got distracted and forgot this joker was testifying this morning — live feed at CPAC.

POLLSPOTTING: Who do you believe more on the SNC-Lavalin affair? (CTV Ottawa)

Question round: Basically, his strategy is to call JWR a liar. And, can’t remember.

Random reactions from various Twitter feeds.

Update: I’ve been busy with work and life, so couldn’t pull a full round up. Suffice it to say that the op-eds will be flying tomorrow after Wenrick’s second round of sanctimony before the committee.

I, For One, Welcome Our New Self Driving Overlords

Science Self Driving Roadkill 17 Comments

Sit back and let the machine figure it out.

A growing amount of scientific research involves using machine learning software to analyse data that has already been collected. This happens across many subject areas ranging from biomedical research to astronomy. The data sets are very large and expensive.
 
But, according to Dr Allen, the answers they come up with are likely to be inaccurate or wrong because the software is identifying patterns that exist only in that data set and not the real world.

 
“Often these studies are not found out to be inaccurate until there’s another real big dataset that someone applies these techniques to and says ‘oh my goodness, the results of these two studies don’t overlap‘,” she said.
 
“There is general recognition of a reproducibility crisis in science right now. I would venture to argue that a huge part of that does come from the use of machine learning techniques in science.”

He Admires Their Basic Dictatorship

Chinada Gopher News Shiny Pony The Libranos 52 Comments

First rule of dictatorships — when you sell yourself to dictatorships, they expect you to stay bought.

Winnipeg-based grain handler Richardson International had its registration to ship canola to China cancelled at the beginning of March.
 
“Canola is our biggest cash crop in the province, so this will affect things right away and quickly,” said Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan president Todd Lewis.
 
The Chinese government didn’t disclose its reason for blocking Richardson’s access, according to a Tuesday report from the Reuters news agency.

I, Napoleon

Freespeechers I, Napoleon 33 Comments

Last Wednesday, the Supreme Court of British Columbia (B.C.) ruled that a 14-year-old girl may undergo transgender hormone “treatments” to support her transgender identity as a boy — without her father’s consent. The court went so far as to threaten to penalize the father’s speech. If he calls his daughter a girl, that would constitute “family violence,” which would be punishable by law.

Tar and feathers.

Y2Kyoto: Political Science

Great Moments In Socialism Y2Kyoto 40 Comments

Via ZH;

The big danger isn’t climate change, it’s hysteria. And government, and the types who manipulate it, destroying the economy. I’m afraid that many scientists on the global warming bandwagon are there for purely selfish economic reasons. Unfortunately most science funding today is done directly and indirectly through the government. It’s a political process.
 
And if you’re a scientist who’s considered politically unreliable, who believes politically incorrect things, you’re not going to get the funding. You’re not going to get journals to publish your articles. You’re not going to get positions in universities, which are universally controlled by leftists. It’s interesting that the people who believe in AGW [anthropogenic global warming] are almost all leftists, and the people who don’t believe in it tend to be non-leftists.

h/t ES

This Is Not Your Grandma’s Humane Society

Animal Rights Extremism 17 Comments

Say what you want about Buzzfeed. This is good work.

This was a sensitive moment for one of the globe’s most prominent charities. The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) had long helped fund and equip Chitwan’s forest rangers, who patrol the area in jeeps, boats, and on elephant backs alongside soldiers from the park’s in-house army battalion. Now WWF’s partners in the war against poaching stood accused of torturing a man to death.
 
WWF’s staff on the ground in Nepal leaped into action — not to demand justice, but to lobby for the charges to disappear. When the Nepalese government dropped the case months later, the charity declared it a victory in the fight against poaching. Then WWF Nepal continued to work closely with the rangers and fund the park as if nothing had happened.
 
As for the rangers who were charged in connection with Shikharam’s death, WWF Nepal later hired one of them to work for the charity. It handed a second a special anti-poaching award. By then he had written a tell-all memoir that described one of his favorite interrogation techniques: waterboarding.
 
Shikharam’s alleged murder in 2006 was no isolated incident: It was part of a pattern that persists to this day. In national parks across Asia and Africa, the beloved nonprofit with the cuddly panda logo funds, equips, and works directly with paramilitary forces that have been accused of beating, torturing, sexually assaulting, and murdering scores of people. As recently as 2017, forest rangers at a WWF-funded park in Cameroon tortured an 11-year-old boy in front of his parents, the family told BuzzFeed News. Their village submitted a complaint to WWF, but months later, the family said they still hadn’t heard back.

Related: Gerald Butts was president and CEO of the World Wildlife Fund from 2008 to 2012.

Oh, Shiny Prime Minister!

Political Animal Shiny Pony The Libranos 129 Comments

(It’s probably nothing).

Bumped for morning update: Trudeau’s trip to Regina has been “abruptly cancelled”. No surprise, as the Canadian Tire stunt was tacked on so the taxpayer would pick up the tab for a Goodale fundraiser.

A “political civil war”? What hath Scott Brison wrought?

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