Magic Statistics

In a serious blow to his authority as Prime Minister, Tony Blair suffered a humiliating loss in the British House of Commons when his Labour Government was forced to accept unwanted changes to the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill.

Tony Blair's authority was gravely weakened last night after the Government crashed to a double defeat over the religious hatred Bill.

In farcical circumstances, the Prime Minister was apparently allowed home shortly before the second crucial Commons vote, which the Government lost by one.

Opponents of the bill, both inside and outside Parliament, saw it as an attack on free speech.

Last night's votes came as some 200 objectors demonstrated outside the Palace of Westminster before and during the Commons debate. Labour and Tory MPs had expressed disquiet over the proposed legislation, which in its original form would have made it a crime to use words or behaviour that were threatening, insulting or abusive to religious groups.

The House of Lords had amended the Bill by removing the "insulting or abusive" element, and the Government failed to re-insert them after a lively three-hour debate.

Rowan Atkinson, a leader in the public opposition campaign, gave a speech earlier this week urging the government to accept the amendments passed by the House of Lords.

It is absolutely right and reasonable that religions should be protected from threatening language, behaviour and written material but I support the amendment to retain the right to abuse and insult, because of the essentially irrational nature of religious beliefs. That is not to dismiss them: indeed, I'm a great believer that the most important and most sustaining things in life are essentially irrational.
. . .
In my opinion, freedom of expression is being allowed to cause trouble, or create discomfort, or offence, as long as your words or behaviour are not threatening.

I agree. Freedom of speech is not worth very much, in my view, unless it includes the right to voice unpopular or objectionable or, on occasion, offensive opinions. Unfortunately, I think, that understanding of freedom of speech is coming under heavy attack. I blogged the House of Lords' amendments to this bill back in October.

Another bit of churchy silliness. This new product seems custom-designed for the emerging church movement. Don't like the look and feel of your traditional, old-fashioned church building? Blow up your own! It's the inflatable church. It even has stained glass windows and an inflatable organ.

This could ease the transition for Episcopal congregations turfed out of their buildings by ECUSA bishops.

Lots more pictures here.

The same company also makes inflatable pubs. It would probably be a good idea to use those only in jurisdictions with no-smoking by-laws.

via Pontifications.

This may be the best church advertisement I've ever heard.

via Drell's Descants.

This cartoon flap is developing into a major international crisis. Here are a few links to other blogs covering this:

• Muslim World Still Freaking Out Over Danish Cartoons
• Organisation of the Islamic Conference, Arab League Want anti-Cartoon UN Resolution
• Scandinavians warned to leave Gaza
• Islam's Warriors Raid Gaza E.U. Offices over Danish Cartoon Row
• Danish blogs and newspaper websites coming under cyber attack
• Islamic Jihad against blogs
• The Cartoon Jihad Continues

Because the Danish government refuses to apologise for, or impose legal sanctions on, the newspaper that originally published the cartoons, Saudi consumers are calling for a boycott of Danish products. Thus has arisen a new anti-dhimmitude campaign. Last year, it was Free Piglet; now it's Buy Danish. I found this cri de coeur and list of Danish products at Islamophobic:

Support Free Speech! Buy Danish More info: Thou shalt not draw
Wikipedia: Muhammad Drawings

• Arla Foods
• Carlsberg beer
• Danish Bacon
• Danish Breweries
• Danish Crown
• Danish Deli Food
• Danish Food Shop
• Danish Tourist Board
• Visit Copenhagen

Buy more Danish beer. Works for me!

This blog appears to have been caught up in the Cartoon Jihad.

UPDATE (31 Jan.): Michelle Malkin has posted a Danish flag, the 12 offending cartoons, commentary, and links.

On 11 January, I posted a three-sentence blog entry linking to a comic book called Mohammed's Believe It Or Else!. The post also included about a dozen trackbacks, mostly to Brussels Journal, CUANAS, and other sites reporting on the controversy over a Danish newspaper that published cartoons of Mohammed that Muslims deemed insensitive.

There my blog post sat for a week or two. But within the past few days, that little post has received hundreds of hits, mostly from Arab countries: Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Egypt, Sudan, Qatar, etc. According to StatCounter, in the last four days (counting today, which isn't over yet), this blog has received 1694 unique visitors who have loaded 2729 pages. Of the most recent 1100 pageloads, over 679 were loads of that three-sentence post from over two weeks ago. Almost all of these are arriving via the trackbacks at The Brussels Journal.

I've also received a few e-mails suggesting that I need to investigate the facts about the Religion of Peace and stop insulting the prophet. Yet there are other posts on my blog far more critical of (some) Muslims.

Now I see that another of my blog posts has been linked by a blog at MSN spaces saying "Help closing this Islam haters site".

This StatCounter chart shows my hits since 10 January. Today, the final day on the chart, isn’t even over yet.

During the last four days, I‘ve received over 100 hits from United Arab Emirates. I probably had only five visitors from UAE in the previous six months.

UPDATE (31 Jan.): Final tally for yesterday, 30 Jan.: 768 visitors, 1236 pageloads.

Tagged by Rebecca for this meme.

Four Jobs You've Had

• Kid who packed groceries behind the cashier (a job that doesn't exist anymore)
• Teaching assistant
• Statistical computing consultant
• Bank management trainee (what a joke that was!)

Four Places You've Lived

• Pointe-Claire, Quebec
• Vancouver, BC: New Westminster, Burnaby, West End, Kitsilano, & so many other neighbourhoods I can't remember them all
• Seattle, Washington: U District
• Oxford, UK

Four Vacations You've Taken

• Disneyland, California
• Visiting relatives in Toronto
• Anchorage, Alaska
• Britain and Paris

Four Vehicles You've Owned

• Volkswagen Beetle of unknown vintage
• 1982 Mazda GLC
• 2004 Ford Mondeo (actually the rental car we drove around Britain for six weeks—a great car)
• 2003 Toyota Corolla
• Unfortunately, I've never owned, or rented, one of these.

Four Blogs I Want to Tag

• Tom Gilson @ Thinking Christian
• Mike the Geek @ The Waffling Anglican
• John Telfer Brown @ Scotwise
• Foyle @ Verum Serum

Beginning around 1:30 pm yesterday afternoon, there was a major power failure in the southern part of Yukon. My part of Whitehorse had no electricity for over seven hours. Power has apparently been restored to all affected areas, but we are being warned this morning that the situation is not yet back to normal.

[Janice] Patterson [a supervisor of communications with Yukon Energy] says if there is too much demand for power, there would have to be rotating power outages. But she says the energy corporation hopes that can be avoided.

Power outages are not uncommon here; we have two or three a year, most often on very cold winter days. The temperature last night fell to -28C. This is the longest one I can remember, however.

I was working on a couple of blog posts when the power went out. I hope to get them posted this evening.

The collect for today, the Fourth Sunday After Epiphany, from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer:

O God, who knowest us to be set in the midst of so many and great dangers, that by reason of the frailty of our nature we cannot always stand upright; Grant to us such strength and protection, as may support us in all dangers, and carry us through all temptations; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Romans 13:1-7
The Gospel: St Matthew 8:23-34

StatGuy is a Mercedes SLK!

You appreciate the finer things in life. You have a split personality - wild or conservative, depending on your mood. Wherever you go, you like to travel first class. Luxury, style, and fun - who could ask for more?

Take the Which Sports Car Are You? quiz.

Split personality? Mood swings? Well, sometimes.

"Who could ask for more?" I could ask for the cash to buy one of these babies.

via Binks.

Demographers have been warning for decades that the birth rate in Germany is far too low to replace the existing population.

The number of Germans has declined by 3.2 million — the population of Berlin — over the last 30 years but demographers' concerns have mostly been ignored until now in a country scarred by the Nazis' nefarious procreation pressures.
. . .
Germans are at risk of dying out if the trend continues, said Harald Michel, managing director of the Institute for Applied Demography. He fears the German population could shrink from 75 million to 50 million by 2050 and further after that.

The birth rates have been below the replacement rate for 35 years — a lethal development, he added. Germans could become an 'endangered people.' It's hypothetical now but we may have to think about 'the last German' at some point. The problem is compounded each generation. Children not born 30 years ago obviously aren't there to have children now.

If Germany is to survive, its anti-child/anti-family culture will have to change radically.

Germany needs a fundamental change of attitude towards the family, 38-year-old Annette Zill believes. The truth of the matter is you have to act as if you don't have children. You have to apologise for it, said the mother of 10-month-old Karl Friedrich.
. . .
But women here are under no illusion that you can have a great career and bring up your child. In Germany you're seen as a huge risk factor. Employers won't openly say they've got anything against children. But your heart sinks if they ask, 'What will you do if your child is sick?' Then you're constantly left with a bad conscience - towards your employer and your child.

As far as some German employers are concerned, apparently, children only reduce worker productivity. With that attitude, no wonder Germany is set to lose a third of its population in the next generation. Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, is encouraging German women to have more babies. The point person in this effort is Mrs Merkel's Minister for Family Affairs Ursula von der Leyen, who has seven children of her own.

She says that Germany is extremely backward in its attitude towards the family. Unless the birth rate rises, we will have to turn out the light.

Ms von der Leyen has proposed a series of radical measures to encourage Germans to have more babies, including compulsory paid leave for fathers of newborns.

Here's more information on the demographic outlook in Germany.

Italian atheist Luigi Cascioli filed a criminal complaint against a former schoolmate, now a Roman Catholic priest, Rev Enrico Righi for allegedly breaking two Italian laws by asserting that Jesus Christ was born of a couple named Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem and lived in Nazareth. The trial got underway today.

Cascioli claims that Righi violated two Italian laws by making the assertion - so-called "abuse of popular belief", in which someone fraudulently deceives people, and impersonation, in which someone gains by attributing a false name to someone.

"The point (of today's hearing) is not to establish whether Jesus existed or not, but if there is a question of possible fraud," Cascioli's lawyer, Mauro Fonzo, told reporters before the hearing.

Cascioli says that for 2,000 years the Roman Catholic Church has been deceiving people by furthering the fable that Christ existed, and says the church has been gaining financially by "impersonating" as Christ someone by the name of John of Gamala, the son of Judas from Gamala.

Fr Righi's defence will apparently entail presenting historical evidence of Jesus' existence from both biblical and extra-biblical sources.

I’m not a lawyer, but I have to wonder whether Mr Casgioli has much of a case on either charge. Abuse of popular belief, according to the news article, involves fraudulent deceit. If Fr Righi sincerely holds the belief that Jesus was a real historical person, is that fraud?

As to the impersonation charge, wouldn’t the burden of proof be on Casgioli to show that this person John of Gemala, whoever that is, is the "real" Christ? (Mike the Geek tried to find out who John of Gamala was, and could find no evidence that he existed. Does that mean there are legal grounds for a complaint against Mr Cascioli for abuse of popular belief?)

No matter, for Cascioli admits that he expects to lose his case in this court. He’s just laying the groundwork for an appeal to

the European Court of Human Rights, where he intends to pursue the case against the church for religious racism.

An Italian atheist sues an Italian priest over the existence of a first-century Galilean Jew. Where's the racism?

Demographic changes continue to work through the Canadian economy. Another essential industry has an aging work force on its hands. Statistics Canada reports on the challenge facing the trucking sector.

[B]ecause of the sector's steady growth, an aging work force, and the declining popularity of the occupation, the industry may soon face a shortage of qualified truckers.
. . .
Truck drivers constitute a relatively older work force. In 2004, the average age for wage-earning truckers was 42, and for their self-employed counterparts, 45.

Also, 18% were aged 55 or older, compared with 13% for workers in general. For the first time in 2004, truckers aged 55 and over outnumbered those under 30, indicating that the occupation may be hit by a large number of retirements in the coming years.
. . .
Just as worrisome is the lack of young truck drivers. Only 5% were under 25 in 2004, compared with 15% in the labour force as a whole. Similarly, just over one-quarter of truckers were between 15 and 34, as opposed to 37% in the labour force as a whole.

From the standpoint of supply, this indicates that today's young workers are less inclined than the previous generation to enter the occupation.

"On the road again"? For now, but maybe not for too much longer.

My younger brother is a long-distance truck driver. He has no immediate plans to retire, but younger-than-me means he’s still one of those older drivers.