Shocking Allegations

The big story of the past couple of weeks has been over Tasers and whether or not they should be used by police. This comes after the death of a Polish man at Vancouver airport after he was allegedly shocked by police. Let's start with the basics. Taser is a brand name for a device that's commonly referred to as a stun gun. The device sends 20,000 volts of electricity into a person's body via two electrodes causing muscle contractions and rendering a person immobile. Getting shocked hurts a lot but doesn't cause any lasting effects. That's because the amperage is too low to cause any damage. It works on the same principle as an electric fence. Tests by various safety auditors have show the Taser to be relatively safe. Police officers themselves are shocked as part of training to use the device. Still, some people have died from being shocked by a Taser.

By now, you've probably all seen the video of the Polish man. Judging by his facial expressions, he did not appear to be in a normal mental state. He tried to attack police and that's when they shocked him. Unfortunately, he died shortly after the shock was administered. This has sparked an outcry from the man's family, the government of Poland, and several advocacy groups. They now want Taser use by police banned and are demanding a full public inquiry regarding the issue. I can say now that such an inquiry, like most public inquiries, will be a complete waste of tax payer dollars. Interestingly enough, as one Toronto radio show pointed out, many of the people now calling for the banning of stun guns were the same people who called them to be brought in. The gun itself is a method of non-lethal force designed to control people who are violently resisting arrest. The two benefits are that it gives police something else to resort too other than their firearm, and it drastically reduces risk of injury to the officer and the criminal. Between 2001 and 2007, some 245 deaths occurred after an individual was shocked with the weapon world wide. Of those, only seven were believed to have been directly caused by the device itself. Based on these statistics, it cannot be proven that the device kills people. Doctors in BC aren't sure the Taser caused the Polish man's death. He could have had an underlying heart condition that nobody was aware of. In a situation of danger, can we really expect police to ask if some person is medically fit for the device to be used on them? Of course not. Should there be restrictions on the use of tasers? Of course. They should not be used on individuals who are not resisting police, on minors under 14, on the elderly, or as a method of torture. These are common sense. The fact is that the device does give police an alternative to using force that could harm someone. You can either shoot someone running away from police in the leg, which would cause permanent damage, or you can shock them. The police aren't out there using the device to randomly oppress and torture the public. That's not their job and they'd be fired it they did. Police need alternatives, and seven deaths world wide in six years is not enough to justify a ban.

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Censorship in 2007: Fahrenheit 8-12

Of course you can't examine censorship in the media without talking about book bans. The title of this article refers to Ray Bradbury's dystopia novel Fahrenheit 451, about a book burner in an anti-intellectual, hedonistic society. 451F is the temperature books supposedly burn at.

Now, our society has moved somewhat past burning books but the spirit of it is kept alive. The latest furor over a book comes with the Golden Compass, part of the "His Dark Materials" series written by Philip Pullmen. It is a children's fantasy book written for ages 8-12. It was originally published in 1995 according to Wikipedia, though it's only attracted attention recently due to an upcoming movie based on it. Now, what makes this particular book so controversial is the supposedly anti-religious overtones in it. Now, I haven't read it but I've heard enough commentary and analysis that I feel I can talk about it to some degree. The Catholic Church is perhaps the most vocal critic. Other religious figures feel the book should be banned from schools, other want it banned entirely. The Catholic League in the US has been waging a sort of holy war against it. According to leader William Donahue it "denigrates Christianity" and promotes "atheism for kids" and that the author is "trying to undermine the basis of Christian belief." My response to this is so what? Organized religion seems to feel like it's under attack yet it is more visible and popular that it has been in decades. Moreover, if a child decides to become an atheist, why is that so wrong? Many religious people view this as leading children down a moral sewer and to eternal damnation. Apparently, that's justification for banning the book. Such statements are most likely made by people who are uncomfortable with their own faith.

It wouldn't be the first time Christians have tried to ban books for children for the same reasoning. The hugely popular Harry Potter franchise was heavily shelled by these people since it was claimed to promote black magic and the Wiccan religion. Same goes for R.L Steine's Goosebumps series. For once in ages, we are actually getting kids to read without forcing them and they put it down as being evil. Fortunately, banning books is illegal in this country as well as in the united states due to Freedom of Expression rights. Of course there's always the perennial anti-censorship argument that societies that burn books will eventually burn people. I agree with this statement, though not necessarily in the literal sense. Atheism has been under heavy attack to the point of persecution in the US and many other countries for a number of years. Mind you in the US, some atheists certainly aren't helping their cause by trying to counter religion. In this case, passive resistance works best. If the Golden Compass is anti-religious, it brings up the chance for parents to discuss religious issues with children once they get older, instead of shielding them from criticism. People need to be exposed to new ideas so they can reaffirm their views. If they choose to change them, so be it. Banning books is not the answer.

Myself, I do not believe in god and I will defend atheists. I will also defend Christians in cases such as attempts to ban nativity scenes and such. Freedom of speech is an inalienable right. Neither side of the religion debate has the right to take it away from the other, and nor should they.

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Kincardane Bridge Collapse Worrying

It's unfortunate that this news story has not received more press than it has. A bridge in Bruce County Ontario collapsed yesterday, seriously injuring at least one construction worker. My inside sources have told me that what's being reported on the TV and in the papers is not the truth of the story. Here's the story. Workers were pouring concrete on the bridge deck around noon and were almost finished. When the pour is almost finished a "screeding" machine moves across the bridge to smooth out the wet concrete. The weight of the machine moving across the bridge caused it to collapse. It appears that the pillars holding the deck up gave way under the added weight. Perhaps one of the most disturbing aspects of this incident was that fact that I know the person who was operating the screeding machine. I would call him an acquaintance. I've met him on a few occasions. Seems like a nice guy. He runs a business that does just that, smooths concrete on bridge decks. My family running our own bridge construction business uses his business as a near exclusive sub-contractor. He is one of the few companies that does this smoothing who actually owns... well, owned his own equipment. The machine was destroyed yesterday. He had to be airlifted to hospital with serious injuries, though what these exact injuries are I do not know yet. It is a miracle nobody was killed in the collapse.

We've been in the bridge construction business as a family for 15 years while my father has been in it for near 30 years. Not once have any of our bridges failed. It is very rare that they do. However, very few of these incidents are freak accidents. A lot goes on in the nether world of construction that most people are totally unaware of. Our business has tried to focus on quality work and maintaining steady profits rather than sheer volume. However, this sort of thinking makes us dinosaurs. A lot of outfits now focus on sheer volume of jobs, often cutting corners or using unskilled (read cheap) labour to get the job done for the lowest cost possible. These people run into nothing but trouble using this business model, falling deep into the red, using money from one contract to pay for others (which is illegal), and running jobs far behind schedule. The bridge that collapsed was already three months behind schedule and only 80% complete at the time.
I won't name names but these people know who they are. My father, who is a civil engineer, refers to these outfits as "cowboys". Unsophisticated people who have no business doing the work they're trying to do. In some cases, these companies may not even hire engineers to make sure the job is safe. They also cut corners in terms of material and men in order to reduce job costs further. This leaves a vast number of our province's bridges with a questionable safety record.

Are Ontario's bridges safe? The answer is a definite no. Ontario's bridges are a ticking time bomb. What happened in Minneapolis, Minnisota this past summer should have been a wakeup call, but it wasn't. We still have provincial and municipal governments who refuse to allocate more funds to improve our infrastructure. They choose to go for the cheapest contractors rather than investigating their quality and reliability and are surprised when they run into the issues I mentioned above. Governments are purely satisfied with shoddy construction or patch work jobs that just barely extend the life of roads and bridges a few more years. Sure, it costs them more in the long run but they don't seem to care. Owners are not properly inspecting their jobs and sleazy contractors are getting away with blue murder. To paraphrase CTV's W-Five, it's an industry built on indifference. We have decided to retire from the industry at the end of this financial year simply because we can no longer compete against these crooked contractors.

It's not a question of "if" Ontario will experience a Minneapolis style bridge collapse, it's when. In fact, I think I can say with almost certainty that it will be some part of the raised portion of Toronto's Gardiner Expressway. Perhaps the most dilapidated structure currently in heavy everyday use in the province. It is rusted with rebar supports showing through chipped and rapidly deteriorating concrete. Imagine it's Monday morning during rush hour. Traffic on the Gardiner is crawling, and so is traffic on the Lakeshore under it. You're sitting in your car on top of the highway when all of a sudden you hear a loud groan that drowns out your radio. Next thing you know your car is plummeting some 50ft to the ground below. The cars on top leave a mess of twisted metal and carnage while everyone on the Lakeshore below is crushed to death. Disturbing isn't it. Now, I'm no engineer and I know very little about bridge construction, but it doesn't take an expert to see this coming. If you think such a thing is unlikely think of it this way. They were almost finished pouring the concrete for the Bruce County job yesterday. What if they had completed it without this happening? The structure will still be too weak. A tractor trailer or dump truck or a row of cars weighs a lot more than a single concrete screeding machine. Steady traffic causes a lot more stress, particularly over time. It very well could have weakened and collapsed after it was finished when people were driving on it. I think it's time the Minister of Transportation comes up with some answers. Our governments and the contractors they are hiring are playing a dangerous game with our lives. The safety of our roads and bridges should not be left up to a craps shoot.

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Censorship in 2007: Regulation of the Internet Dangerous

A group of artists based in Quebec has determined that the internet needs to be regulated to protect Canadian content and should be subject to the same rules as TV and Radio. I ask, is this really necessary? There's the obvious argument here that Canadians aren't interested in Canadian content at all. The proof in the pudding is all the Canadian programs on the CBC that get very low ratings yet remain on the air just because it's Canadian content. Is such regulation really protecting Canadian culture or is it just another form of censorship?

Canada is unique in that we are supposedly a multicultural society. I argue that based on this, regulation of TV, radio, and the internet in order to preserve Canadian content is inherently un-Canadian. We are supposed to be embracing other cultures and any limits placed on our ability to do so is counter to this. So what if we are swallowed by American culture. We already have been. This art group is only attempting to have the internet regulated because they are not good enough to compete on the global stage. It's typical socialism. If we can't compete, lets force everyone else out.
Regulating the internet to require a certain amount of Canadian content is an impossible task since it is so large and there are literally billions of websites in existence. The only way to do so would inherently require censorship by blocking websites from the states or forcefully redirecting Canadians to Canadian websites even though they do not want to visit them. The CRTC already does this forceful redirection with TV broadcasts and that too is wrong. The internet was supposed to be an open arena to access information. Any kind of regulation or censorship is dangerous and un-Canadian.

Besides, as the internet is an open arena, there are no restrictions on what Canadian content can go up there. Professer of Law and Technology Michael Geist at UofO correctly pointed out that there is a lot of Canadian content online and a lot of it is from Quebec. In fact, Canadians are some of the biggest internet users on the planet, all adding their thoughts and creative ideas to forums, podcasts, Wikipedia, Youtube, etc. All this is viewable by anybody in the world, unlike TV and Radio. Also unlike those other two mediums, putting content online is relatively cheap. It costs nothing to post an art film on Youtube so why would they need government regulation and subsidies to help them. Based on the National Post article, scholars are not on board with this. Once you open the door to regulation, it doesn't end there. Not only do you start regulating what content goes up there, but who can post it and what kind of content is allowed and what isn't. This same issue is strongly evident with the issues over the FCC in the united states where a bureaucracy and a handful of special interest groups control what's exceptable to put on TV and radio. If you regulate the internet for any purpose, you destroy it.

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