Magic Statistics

The stadium built for the 1976 Montreal Olympic Games is almost paid off.

Built for the 1976 Summer Olympics, the 58,500-seat stadium cost an estimated $1.5 billion.

Provincial officials believe it will be fully paid off this year.

"We think we'll be finished with the last payment most probably during the end of the summer," said Sylvie Bastien, with the Olympic Installations Board, which oversees the stadium.

Olympic Stadium is affectionately known by Montrealers as “The Big O” or, less affectionately, “The Big Owe”, due to the huge expenses incurred in construction and operation of the facility.  The planned retractable roof could not be installed by the time the games commenced because of labour disputes—an omen of things to come.  It was not completed until 1988 and malfunctioned repeatedly after that.

After the Olympics, the Montreal Expos baseball team played there from 1978 through 2004.

In 1991 a 55-tonne concrete slab fell from the roof inside the stadium; fortunately, no one was hurt.  In 1992, the retractable roof was replaced by a fixed roof.  In 1998, the permanent roof was removed for repairs for the duration of the baseball season.  In 1999, another section of the roof collapsed, showering workers inside with ice and snow.  A new fixed roof was installed later that year, but that too has proved unreliable and requires periodic repairs.  Yet another new roof is now being considered.

In view of those ongoing maintenance issues and the stadium's chronic annual deficit, it is not surprising that the city of Montreal and the province of Quebec are wrangling over who will take ownership of the Big Owe after the mortgage is paid.  Neither wants it.

But paying off the debt has triggered heated negotiations between the province and the city of Montreal.

The city is supposed to take ownership of the stadium when it's paid off.

Municipal officials say they don't want it.

"We don't want to be the owner of the stadium," said Francine Senecal, the city's executive committee member responsible for sports and leisure.

Senecal, who says the stadium runs a deficit of millions of dollars each year, says it belongs to all Quebecers.

Montreal’s Olympic Stadium: one of the biggest white elephants in Canadian history.  Now no one wants to be saddled with it.  A fitting end to the project of which Montreal Mayor Jean Drapeau infamously said, "The Olympic Games can no more lose money than a man can have a baby."

The Olympic Stadium’s mortgage outlived Mr Drapeau, who died in 1999.

UPDATE (19 Dec.): Big Owe no longer: The $1.5 billion debt is paid off. 

Anthony Lane's review of the big flick is far more entertaining than the film itself.  Here's an excerpt:

There has been much debate over Dan Brown’s novel ever since it was published, in 2003, but no question has been more contentious than this: if a person of sound mind begins reading the book at ten o’clock in the morning, at what time will he or she come to the realization that it is unmitigated junk? The answer, in my case, was 10:00.03, shortly after I read the opening sentence: “Renowned curator Jacques Saunière staggered through the vaulted archway of the museum’s Grand Gallery.”
. . .
Should we mind that forty million readers—or, to use the technical term, “lemmings”—have followed one another over the cliff of this long and laughable text? . . . How timid—how undefended in their powers of reason—must people be in order to yield to such preening? Are they reading “The Da Vinci Code” because everybody on the subway is doing the same, and, if so, why, when they reach their stop, do they not realize their mistake and leave it on the seat, to be gathered up by the next sucker? Despite repeated attempts, I have never managed to crawl past page 100. As I sat down to watch “The Da Vinci Code,” therefore, I was in the lonely, if enviable, position of not actually knowing what happens.

Stumbling out from the final credits, tugging nervously at my goatee, I was none the wiser.

Read the whole thing.

via Midwest Conservative Journal.

Globe and Mail columnist Jeffrey Simpson excoriates Canada’s three opposition parties over their rejection of Gwyn Morgan's nomination to the proposed public appointment commission.  He singles out for censure NDP MP Peggy Nash, who berated Mr Morgan for telling an unpopular truth about gang violence in Vancouver and Toronto.

In a speech earlier this year, Mr. Morgan had pointed out that violence afflicts the Jamaican-Canadian community in Toronto and that gangs trouble certain East Asian and Chinese communities in Vancouver.

Finally, after years of deliberately obscure, politically correct language, people all over Toronto last summer began publicly identifying and talking about the violence in the Jamaican-Canadian community. Not all the community, of course, but enough of it so that community leaders themselves and others focused on its problems. After all, if you can't correctly identify the location of a problem, you can't analyze or remedy it.

Mr. Morgan, therefore, repeated what ordinary people, police officers, government officials, social agencies and even the media were saying in Toronto. But, in the blinkered eyes of Ms. Nash, accurate descriptions of problems disqualify someone from public office if they give offence to her and a handful of others.

Ms Nash blamed the violence on spending cuts implemented under former Ontario premier Mike Harris, even though gang activity is centred only in certain ethnic groups.

Mr Simpson thinks the proposed commission a terrible idea, but the “yahoo MPs” were too absorbed in their ideologically driven grandstanding to bother themselves with the merits of the public appointments bureaucracy.

Maybe they're upset about Prime Minister Stephen Harper's increasing lead in the public opinion polls.  They would be right to be concerned about that, but I don't think self-righteous demagoguery is the way to convince the Canadian electorate that they're more fit to govern.

For access to the complete column, click here.

Shiraz Feteh Rahman Bellula, a Sudanese woman who converted to Christianity, went into hiding to escape physical abuse from her Muslim family who objected to her "apostasy".  After she was reported missing, the police arrested Anglican Rev Elia Komondan, Catholic schoolteacher Anthony Gabriel, and four others on suspicion of kidnapping.  The woman has now returned to her family and the six Christians released from custody.

“[Rev. Komondan] was released on Thursday [May 18] without any charges,” the priest’s lawyer Kulang Jeroboam confirmed from Khartoum yesterday. Gabriel, a religion teacher at St. Peter and Paul Catholic School, also said that no charges had been brought against him.

Though the Christians were taken into custody on May 14 in response to a kidnapping complaint filed by Bellula’s family, police seemed concerned that the missing woman had converted to Christianity.

“The security officer who was questioning us was very aggressive,” Gabriel, 41, said. “He said, ‘We know you have made her a Christian. It is all your responsibility, you contributed to her killing!’”

According to one Christian source who requested anonymity, Bellula’s family was forced to sign a statement that they would not mistreat her. “But the document they were made to sign will not grant her safety,” the Christian said.
. . .
The young woman came out of hiding after reading in the newspaper that several people had been arrested over her disappearance.

The news article says that Ms Bellula converted to Christianity two years ago, but does not indicate the circumstances in which this occurred.  Sudan’s constitution guarantees freedom of religion, but also cites Sharia, which prohibits leaving Islam under penalty of death, as the source of law.  (Where have we heard this before?)  So, local church leaders are quick to deny that they encourage Muslims to become Christians.

“We are not interested in converting Muslims,” the priest [Father Peter Ayoung, Catholic vicar general of the archdiocese of Khartoum] told the Khartoum Monitor, adding that changing religions is an individual responsibility.

“We are allowed to preach to our own people, but not to talk to Muslims or Christian Muslims [converts from Islam],” Canon [Sylvester] Thomas [of All Saints’ Cathedral] commented.

They can’t even talk to former Muslims who have embraced Christ!?

A local minister who insisted on anonymity said that no one wants to baptise Ms Bellula because that would put her life at risk.

Contrary to popular belief, people who grew up in "sheltered" circumstances are less likely to be misled or gulled than are people who endured adverse circumstances in childhood and adolescence, according to new research from the University of Leicester's School of Psychology.

The study found that while some people may indeed become more 'hard-nosed' through adversity, the majority become less trusting of their own judgement.

Kim Drake, a doctoral student at the University of Leicester, conducted the research with Professor Ray Bull and Dr Julian Boon of the School of Psychology. Kim said: "People who have experienced an adverse childhood and adolescence are more likely to come to believe information that isn't true— in short they are more suggestible, and easily mislead [sic] which may in turn impact upon their future life choices; they might succumb to peer pressure more readily."

'Adverse life experiences' examined included major personal illnesses/injuries, miscarriage (from the male and female perspective), difficulties at work (being fired/laid off), bullying at school, being a victim of crime (robbery, sexual violence), parental divorce, death of family member and others.

The study also suggests that, the more adversity a person suffers in youth, the greater the degree of vulnerability to exploitation and misinformation.

Conversely, those who enjoy positive experiences and a supportive environment early in life appear to be better protected against effects of adversity in adulthood.

"If positive life events predate the negative life events then individuals may be more resilient in terms of, not being so badly affected, psychologically, by the subsequent adverse events. However, issues may arise if the reverse is the case; if the adverse life events precede the positive, those individuals may become, as a result, more susceptible to suggestion and misleading information. Nevertheless, future research will still have to examine this. The order of life events experienced, however, is seemingly important."

This new research thus underlines the importance of parents as role models for their children.  Parents who handle difficulties in a level-headed manner provide a positive example that children tend to emulate later in life.  The opposite—parents who handle stressful situations in an irrational or excessively emotional manner impart poor life skills to their children—seems to be equally true as well.

The university’s press release is posted here.

UPDATE (24 May): Commenter Celal notes the lack of technical supporting documentation on this study.  In order properly to assess a social scientific study such as this, methodological information should be taken into account.  I've sent an e-mail to the lead researcher asking for this. In the meantime, take this study with as many grains of salt as you think appropriate.

An Australian newspaper has reported that Canada and Australia are considering creating a "uranium OPEC".  The two countries together account for over 50 percent of world production of a mineral that looks set to become increasingly important as oil-consuming nations turn to nuclear energy as an alternative to oil dependence.

[Australian Prime Minister John] Howard ended a two-day visit to Ottawa, that included an address to Parliament and talks with Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper. The Prime Ministers agreed to direct officials to work out the structure of a uranium producers group. It would complement the US proposal for a Global Nuclear Energy Partnership of the big nuclear power users.

Mr Howard said the US proposal had implications for Australia and Canada, who must work to ensure it did not affect "our own interests or the legitimate exploitation of uranium reserves". Mr Harper said Australia and Canada would work "very closely together" to see their interests were protected.

From an article that appeared in the Brisbane Sunday Mail on 21 May, via Greenie Watch.

Christians aren't the only people objecting to the historical errors in Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code.  Leonardo scholars are cheesed off, too.

[S]cholars now have the task of explaining to the general public that Leonardo was a thoughtful, meticulous and inspired scientist, not a stealth artist who loaded his paintings with cryptic hints.

Brown’s book is to “da Vinci scholarship as going to McDonald’s is to gourmet cooking,” said Mark Elling Rosheim, author of the newly published Leonardo’s Lost Robots, and a roboticist who has created designs for NASA. “It’s just like junk food. It’s not something to be taken seriously.”

From 1452 to 1519, Leonardo, born near the Tuscan town of Vinci, not only created art masterpieces like the “Mona Lisa” and “The Last Supper,” but also made discoveries in anatomy, engineering, botany and biology. His notebooks are filled with sketches, designs, observations and conclusions, breathtaking in their scope and vision.

Jonathan Pevsner, molecular biologist at the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore and Leonardo buff, read The Da Vinci Code and marked every reference to the philosopher-artist either correct or incorrect.  The "great majority" of the references, he says, were inaccurate.  He also suggests that those who wish to learn what Leonardo was really about should pick up a translation of the man's notebooks.