Magic Statistics

The blog seems to be back to normal following last week's move, so this is the personal announcement that I said was coming down the pike.

I intend to retire next summer (not from blogging but from my real job).  In October 2008, I will have worked twenty years with my current employer, all in the same statistician position.  I have informed the powers that be that my retirement will be effective as of that date.  With accumulated vacation time, etc., my last day in the office will fall sometime in August next year.

I won't detail all the factors that led to this decision at this time, except to say that it has to do with the StatWife's employment situation, not mine.  Accordingly, we plan to depart Yukon after almost twenty adventurous and wonderful years here.  Our destination, God willing, will be the Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia.  (We hope the province is having all the lousy weather this winter, so our first winter there will be mild and pleasant.)

We know that Nova Scotia is not the most congenial place in Canada for traditional orthodox Anglicans, but we have heard of a few parishes where the faith represented by Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer is upheld and proclaimed.  We hope to make our home with one of them.

I have no definite plans yet for my post-retirement life, except to do things I don't have time to do enough of now: reading, praying, contributing to the church, physical activities.  I may also seek opportunities for short-term consulting assignments.  Some will be sad glad to hear that I have no plans to stop blogging, although there will no doubt be an interruption as we pack up and move to the Far East of Canada.

Previous related post: John Piper: “Don't waste your retirement”

Police in Papua New Guinea are looking for The Most Rev George Ambo, former primate of the Anglican Church of Papua New Guinea, for questioning in connection with the theft of emergency supplies destined for people in an area struck by a cyclone and flooding.

The supplies were apparently stolen by members of Puwo Gawe, a cargo cult said to be led by Sister Cora, an excommunicated Anglican nun, and Archbishop Ambo.

Security forces have been directed to detain cult leaders of the Puwo Gawe cult movement over their alleged involvement in hampering the effective distribution of relief supplies.

The cult is reported to have a following in almost all areas of the province.

Yesterday, a team of police and soldiers were deployed to Begabari village along the North Coast with orders to round up cult leaders who allegedly meddled in the efficient distribution of relief supplies transported there last Saturday.

Puwo Gawe members grabbed the supplies, claiming that the goods were cargo given to them by their ancestors.  Police are determined to arrest those responsible for disrupting distribution of desperately needed disaster relief provisions.

George Conger provides some background information on cargo cults in the South Pacific.

Cargo cult devotees believe in the imminence of a new age of blessing and prosperity, whose sign will be the arrival of cargo from heaven.

While the cults first arose in the mid-Nineteenth century when Melanesians first came in contact with the West, they spread quickly during World War II when the American and Australian armies established large supply depots in the region to support the allied campaigns in the Solomon Islands and New Guinea.

Cult devotees saw the influx of supplies as a sign of the millennium, and many stopped farming and hunting, turning to spam and other army foodstuffs for subsistence. God’s failure to return discouraged many, but the cults survive, led by charismatic leaders who predict the imminent arrival of cargo from heaven.

It is not yet clear whether Abp Ambo, who served as primate from 1983 to 1990, is actually associated with the cult or aided the thefts.  Allegations and unconfirmed reports are all police have to go on thus far.

The Melbourne diocese of the Anglican Church in Australia has recommended to a law reform commission that abortion should be legalised.

Archdeacon Alison Taylor said yesterday the church recognised there were circumstances, especially foetal abnormality, when abortion was "the least problematic solution".

Except for the dead baby.

Archdeacon Taylor went on to disavow the “pro-choice perspective” and offered other incoherent comments.

"If we are serious about reducing the number of abortions, paradoxically we shouldn't make it more difficult legally because we will go back to the days where poorer women resorted to underground means and corruption was rife through the police, medical practitioners and hospitals," she said.

"The knee-jerk reaction is to make the legislation very restrictive, but the way you reduce abortions is with contraception and sex education. The other thing is to support families — we need to be a pro-child society with a pro-child government."

A "pro-child" society and government with legal abortion?  Right!

Previous related post:  Abortion in the UK: Safe, legal, and common

An in-depth investigation by two University of California researchers using province-level data has found that China’s CO2 emissions increased dramatically in the past five years, and are projected to grow by between 11.05% and 13.19% annually through 2010.

What does this mean? I hope you are sitting down because you won’t believe this.

In 2006 China’s carbon dioxide emissions contained about 1.70 gigatons of carbon (GtC) (source). By 2010, at the growth rates projected by these researchers the annual emissions from China will be between 2.6 and 2.8 GtC. The growth in China's emissions from 2006-2010 is equivalent to adding the 2004 emissions of Japan, Germany, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia to China's 2006 total (source). The emissions growth in China at these rates is like adding another Germany every year, or a UK and Australia together, to global emissions.

The study projects that the increase in China’s CO2 emissions between 2006 and 2010 will match the total 2004 emissions of Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, and Japan combined.

h/t: Greenie Watch

Previous related posts:

• China: Our economic growth is more important than Kyoto
• China soon to be world’s biggest carbon emitter
• Here’s a bright idea: Set up world climate police under UN

The Canadian Union of Postal Workers spills the beans on the latest nefarious scheme by Canada Post: CUPW suspects that the Crown corporation wants to cut costs.  Horrors!

Mail super-boxes 'way to cut costs,' union suspects

The union representing postal workers says safety may not be the only reason Canada Post is moving rural customers to super-box sites.

You have to get up mighty early in the morning to put one over on the postal workers’ union.  Neither rain nor hail nor sleet nor snow nor heat of day nor dark of night shall keep the featherbedders from swiftly exposing imaginary possible sinister corporate plots to save money.

Thanks, CUPW.  I know I’ll sleep better tonight.