Magic Statistics

Father Doglas Yousef Al Bazy, Chaldean parish priest of St Elias Church, Baghdad, has not been heard from yesterday (Sunday) morning.  His colleagues fear he has been abducted.  If so, this is one more in a series of terrorist acts apparently designed to drive Christians from Iraq.

Christians in Baghdad fear yet another priest has been kidnapped. Fr Doglas Yousef Al Bazy - 34 years, Chaldean - left his parish yesterday morning and has not yet returned home.

The alarm was raised swiftly throughout Iraq and the diaspora via the Internet and SMS: the young priest's community and leaders of Iraq's Chaldean Church believe it is "highly likely" that he has been kidnapped. If their misgivings are proved right, this would be the latest in a long list of kidnappings targeting Christian clerics.

Fr Doglas was very active in the diocese and focused much of his attention on teaching young people.  He is also secretary of the Council of Church leaders in Baghdad.

[A]mong the Chaldean community, the idea is increasingly taking hold that threats and kidnappings are not carried out indiscriminately, but that they "target those people who are most involved in the Christian community, the younger and more courageous ones, almost as if to give a warning to those who persist in hoping that they will be able to continue living in the country."

Many Christians are finding life in Iraq increasingly unbearable.  They leave their homes as infrequently as possible.  Persecution has become impossible to avoid even in the workplace.  Bakers were killed "just because they formed typical rhomboidal shaped loaves, in the vague semblance of a cross."

The Chaldean Auxiliary Bishop of Baghdad, Mgr Shleman Warduni, has appealed for the safe return of Fr Doglas.

Previous related posts:

• Iraq's chief archaeologist quits, flees religious persecution
• Persecution of Iraqi Christians is escalating
• Orthodox priest kidnapped and beheaded in Iraq

UPDATE (1 Dec.): Fr Al-Bazy has been released unharmed after nine days in captivity.  His kidnappers are still at large.

New research shows that some wasps carry an insect variety of pepper spray that they use against other wasps only when they’re losing a fight.

For the first time scientists, funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), have recorded 'chemical exchanges' undetectable by the human nose which take place between females of a species of bethylid wasp - Goniozus legneri, when they fight over larvae on which they lay their eggs. Not only have they discovered that chemical exchanges take place, but also that it is always the losing wasp that releases the potent gas.

Researchers arranged and filmed 47 dogfights scraps between pairs of female wasps.

Behaviours displayed by the wasps included chasing, biting, stinging and full-on fighting. The video and chemical analysis showed that a volatile chemical, which is a type of spiroacetal, was released by the wasps when losing a particularly aggressive fight.

Watching wasps duke it out sounds like tons of fun, as long as one is sure they can’t escape and turn against the audience.

It is hoped that the knowledge gained can be applied in combating crop-destroying bugs.  Dr Ian Hardy of the University of Nottingham explains.

"Bethylid wasps kill the larvae of many insects that are pests of crops, such as almonds, coffee and coconut, ruining harvests and costing industry thousands of pounds. These wasps could be used as a cheap and effective biological control to kill the larvae, avoiding the use of expensive and polluting pesticides.”

Research yielding more efficient methods of annihilating vermin that attack coffee has my full support.

Ségolène Royal has taken the Socialist Party of France by storm, handily winning official nomination last weekend as presidential candidate in next spring’s election.  The slim and attractive 53-year-old overcame (occasionally disdainful) opposition from the party’s old guard, in her view motivated largely by male chauvinism, to earn 60% of votes cast by members.  She is the first woman to win a major party’s nomination for president of France.

In an interview given hours after she was nominated, one of Ms Royal’s closest advisors said it is her position that Britain must choose between the European Union and the United States.  In her view, apparently, the UK cannot be close friends and allies of both.

Gilles Savary, a French MEP and her spokesman and foreign affairs adviser, spoke exclusively to The Daily Telegraph, revealing her EU policies in detail.

He set out a vision of an ambitious new EU treaty, replacing the EU constitution which has been in limbo since French and Dutch voters voted against it last summer.

Britain would be asked to sign up to the new treaty, but if it rejected calls for increased protectionism, an EU foreign minister, convergence on tax rates and moves to create a European army, then France and her allies would agree a treaty among themselves, he said.

Tony Blair's successor as prime minister, whether Gordon Brown or David Cameron, now faces an inevitable crisis over Europe after France chooses its next leader in April.
. . .
"Great Britain is absolutely indispensable to the European Union. It is great nation, a global power. But the question the English have to answer is – do the English consider the English Channel to be wider than the Atlantic? We on the continent have the right to deplore the fact that Great Britain appears to consider the Channel is wider," he said.

Mr Savary sees three “clubs” in the EU: an "ultra-Atlanticist" club, led by Great Britain; an “unfortunate” nationalist club centred in eastern Europe; and a club of European unity, led by France, Germany, Italy, and Spain.

Nicolas Sarkozy will almost certainly be Ms Royal’s main opponent for president.  His centre-right Union for a Popular Majority (UMP) party will officially designate its candidate in January.

Whoever wins will face the challenge of reversing France’s economic decline and attending to turmoil arising from communities of immigrants and their descendants who are procreating much more quickly than native Europeans.  The French secular state model will be sorely tested.  So far, however, Ms Royal seems more concerned with putting the English in their place.

Previous related post: Britain coming to share France’s view of Muslim veils: Villepin

Oil-poor Israel believes it can reduce imports by one-third by extracting oil from shale.  Israeli oil company Hom Tov has patented a new process that could make it possible to produce synthetic oil for $17 per barrel within three to five years.

Oil shale is limestone rock that contains hydrocarbons, or fossil fuels — about 20 percent of the amount of energy found in coal. Using the rock as a raw material and coating it with bitumen, a residue of the crude oil refining process, the company can produce natural gas, fuel, electricity, or a combination of the three.

Older technologies squeezed the hydrocarbon material out of the rock, with extremely high pressure and at high temperatures.

According to Professor Ze'ev Aizenshtat, an oil shale expert, the Hom Tov process is more environmentally friendly than other methods of converting oil shale into energy. It also allows for more flexibility in the kind of fuel produced, produces less waste and operates at lower temperatures than other methods.

Israel would reap obvious benefits from reducing its dependency on potentially unfriendly oil-exporting nations.

h/t: Greenie Watch

Previous related post: US could be energy self-sufficient by 2025

The report of the UN project “Alliance of Civilisations”, written by “a High-level Group of eminent personalities”, decrees: “There is no hierarchy among cultures”.  As an example, the report asserts that the West’s record on women’s rights is just as bad in its own way as that of Islamist countries.  The Globe and Mail pans the report, calling it “blinkered”.  It’s hard to disagree.

The authors strain to minimize the problem by conflating endemic misogynistic practice and brutality in those Muslim countries with gender-equity debates in developed countries. "In many parts of the world, including Western countries, much progress is still needed with regard to the status of women," the eminences declare. Indeed it is; but pay-equity disputes and debates over maternity benefits are not the same thing as public beatings, stonings and honour killings. Here, surely, there is a discernible hierarchy.

The Globe also disputes the report’s claim that support for jihadist violence is limited to the proverbial "radical groups on the fringes of Muslim societies".

You know you're away out in left field when the Globe and Mail criticises you for being excessively sensitive to other cultures.

For access to the full editorial, click here.

I don’t follow football (as you can tell from the headline), but several people in my office were born in Saskatchewan and maintain a love-hate relationship touching affection for the perennial losers old home team.

The following is taken from an e-mail that circulated through the office this morning accompanied by screams of agony jovial laughter.

Q. What's the difference between the SASKATCHEWAN ROUGHRIDERS and the Taliban?
A. The Taliban has a running game.

Q. How do you keep a SASKATCHEWAN ROUGHRIDER out of your yard?
A. Put up goal posts.

Q. Where do you go in REGINA in case of a tornado?
A. TAYLOR FIELD - they never get a touchdown there!

Q. What do you call a ROUGHRIDER with a GREY CUP ring?
A. A thief.

Q. How many SASKATCHEWAN ROUGHRIDERS does it take to win a GREY CUP?
A. Nobody knows and we may never find out!

Q. What do you call 47 people sitting around a TV watching the GREY CUP?
A. The SASKATCHEWAN ROUGHRIDERS

Q. What do the SASKATCHEWAN ROUGHRIDERS and possums have in common?
A. Both play dead at home and get killed on the road.

Q. How can you tell when the SASKATCHEWAN ROUGHRIDERS are going to run the football?
A. The back leaves the huddle with tears in his eyes.

Better luck next millennium year.

"I put my stats where my mouth is"

"I got correlation, t-test, and even chi-square;
I use stats ever’day, like I’m combin’ my hair"

h/t: Binky 

That’s “retiring” as in “leaving one’s job”, not as in “shy or reserved”.  No one would accuse the soon-to-be-former director of the Yukon Bureau of Statistics of being reserved.  Dr Gerry Ewert is not afraid to speak his mind and rarely reluctant to let statisticians and government policy wonks know when he thinks they’re talking through their hats.  A clear and incisive thinker, he has no time for political correctness or other preconceived notions that inhibit honest examination of the problem at hand.  For him, there are no sacred cows in policy analysis.

Dr Ewert has a fascinating background.

Born in Saskatchewan, the retiring director of the Yukon bureau of statistics grew up in Kenya while his parents were teachers, attending boarding school and finishing his high school courses by correspondence.

He went back to the country in 1967 to teach school at age 20.

The experiences rooted in him two complimentary drives: wanderlust, and a desire to combine morality with effectiveness into government policy.

Between his day job inside the Yukon bureaucracy — and before that, within Alberta’s government — Ewert has moonlighted as an international development consultant, helping Nigeria, Lesotho and Egypt create education and poverty strategies.

The Yukon News article does not mention that Dr Ewert’s father was a Church of God pastor or that his parents served Christ’s church in Kenya for many years.  Gerry is an active member of Riverdale Baptist Church.

After earning a BA, honours psychology, from the University of Alberta in 1971, Ewert worked for the Alberta government for several years.  Later, he earned a masters and doctorate at Harvard University and a masters from University of Alberta.

He moved to Yukon in 1991 to work in the territorial government’s Department of Education and became director of the Bureau of Statistics in 1995.

As an consultant working in developing countries, he takes a broad moral view of the issues before him.

“A large part of international development aid just goes wasted because it doesn’t attempt to understand the context it’s in.

“Once you understand it, you can start working around it. But then you start running into a moral problem: to what extent do we intervene to change a culture?”

“That’s not a trivial question,” he says.

“In my work, I will actively engage people in that discussion.”

Read the whole thing.

The photo at the top of this post was scanned from a hard-copy newspaper edition.  I dropped by Gerry’s office for his autograph (see lower left corner of the photo) before posting it here.

Today is the first day of Gerry’s last week at the Bureau.  May our Lord bless him and his family in all their future adventures.