Just an old boys appointment

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Critics blast ‘dead-of-night’ rights appointment – The Globe and Mail.

I don’t know enough about Mr. Latulippe to know if he is going to destroy Rights and Democracy, as Mr. Ignatieff is quoted as saying; however, it doesn’t look all that good. Three senior managers fired, a late night appointment, a disregard for the controversial nature of the appointee who apparently has strong opinions on the immigration of people who are Muslim, buddy of the responsible Minister: all make for very bad “optics”. Perhaps the throne speech and the controversy over the lyrics to O’Canada were supposed to overshadow this item. I didn’t know much about the agency, but there is a very good website.

About the lyrics, I have been listening to “all thy sons command” all my life. Recently I and many others have been singing “all of us command.” Anyone have a problem with that? I understand the lyrics were changed at the time of the first world war as part of a recruiting drive. Along with the income tax, we were stuck with them.
But changing them should not be a major focus of this parliament. We are at war; we have just started to come out of economic turbulence; we have a huge deficit, uncushioned by the savings that Paul Martin had set aside for just such an eventuality( the Harper government spent them to buy our votes ie lowering the taxes).

True Tory Colours

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Immigration Minister pulled gay rights from citizenship guide, documents show – The Globe and Mail.

It’s not just that Jason Kenney, the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration pulled a section of the study guide for immigrants that details Canada’s gay rights legislation. He did that, according to the Globe article over the objections of senior staff memebers. That’s what we expect from him.

It’s not just that now people who immigrate from countries where homosexuality is a crime, will have no idea that they are coming, or could come to a country where “There’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation.”.

It’s far worse than that, in my opinion. It points to a continuing, under the radar,  fundamentalist religious agenda in this government.

It’s far wore than that. Jason Kenney has tried to change who we are by ministerial decree, without  regard for the wishes of Parliament, the decisions of the Supreme Court, or the decent behaviour of most Canadians.

Through the actions of this minister and by his own prorogation of Parliament, Stephen Harper is showing Canadians his contempt for our institutions, for all he wrapped himself in the flag in Vancouver.

Olympics

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On February 24th, I wrote that the Own the Podium backers might be disappointed by the medal count. Exultant must be the way they feel now.
Last night a non-CTV channel was running that ad about the boy trying to get enough money for hockey by applying for a part-time job. In my practice I see kids like that, whose parents are on welfare, or single parents, or single-earner families who can’t begin to afford the expense of enrolling them in sports. Some of the lucky ones are in Tim Horton’s programmes.
I recall one unhappy boy in foster care, who got a new family when he was twelve. He couldn’t skate, but now he’s playing hockey, and happier than I’ve ever seen him. Most of that change comes from the support of his foster family, but not a little from being able to play a sport he loves. He and his family are gold medal winners in my book. The money that supports him comes from the Children’s Aid Society. When you are thinking of donations, remember the kids in care. They are ours, through the Crown, our responsibility.
Soccer is the game that matters to many of the kids. Doesn’t cost too much, lots of fun, aerobic, and outside. Summer Olympics are coming. Let’s see some support for the budding summer athletes.

Profanity

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Recently I blogged about the Black Bloc. A comment, which I have deleted, contained profanity which I won’t allow on my blog.

Wealthy people don’t savour the little things in life – The Globe and Mail

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Wealthy people don’t savour the little things in life – The Globe and Mail.
This article reports on a two part study which is to appear in Psychological Science. This is the flagship journal of the Association for Psychological Science, so the articles are, I presume, peer reviewed. I was left with questions such as how to measure awe, or joy. These are some of the emotions they claim are reduced in those who have money, or think about money(not necessarily the same people). The second part of the study had observers decide how much an individual was savouring a piece of chocolate by how long it took the individual to devour it, and how much the person appeared to enjoy it; this after seeing a picture of money. Somehow it doesn’t sound very scientific to me, but someone gave them a grant to discover, I suppose, whether money can buy happiness.
The Own the Podium people certainly seem to think that money can buy medals. For a country with a base of thirty million or so people, competing against countries with three hundred million, I think the Canadian athletes are doing very well. They needed better training facilities and better coaches and a great many other things that I have no knowledge about, in order to improve and compete. And they are! However, training and coaching can only go so far. It comes down to muscle length and strength and talent and drive and genetics. These are not for sale.
Some countries identify children as potential athletes, almost in the cradle and train them all their young lives. Even this is no guarantee of success on the day, in the five seconds or five minutes or five hours it takes for an event.
It can’t be predicted on a spreadsheet. The mysterious backers who donated to the effort may be disappointed in the return on their investment, if they only count the medals. Perhaps they are the individuals the psychologists should study.

Ten rules for writing fiction | Books | guardian.co.uk

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A member of my writing group, the Internet Writing Workshop, posted a link to this article in the Guardian: collected lists from authors such as Margaret Atwood and Stephen King – their personal rules for writing. One rule is on all the lists – write and then write some more. Write, revise, write, make it as well. I must say I always get a kick out of Margaret Atwood’s. I like her advice to take a pencil on the plane as pens leak. Take two, she says, one may break. A link to her blog is to the right.
Another piece of advice, not in these lists, is to do something “writerly” if you come to a blank spot: look for an agent; write your blog; read about writing; read about grammar; read.

The Globe and Mail reports this morning that the G20 meeting is coming to Toronto in June. Much wailing about the disruption to the city, to commerce, to the life of the people who live and work downtown. It’s only for two days, people. The city has that much disruption from marathons for this cause, and parades for that.
The potential violence is another matter. Earlier this week I blogged about the Black Bloc, the criminals in facemasks allowed to march with legitimate protestors and commit random acts of destruction. I don’t understand why, if it is reasonable to assume that a person wearing a mask in a bank is about to commit a criminal act and should be arrested, or at least called to account, the same individual in the midst of a crowd of similarly dressed people – the Black Bloc – which has a history of random violence, should not. And no, I don’t think hiding one’s face with the clear intention of creating terror and avoiding responsibility for criminal acts is a civil right.

Black Bloc

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News | About Vancouver | Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games | CTV Olympics.

The protest groups at international events as diverse as the G8 and G20 meetings to the Olympics seem to have become fixtures. According to the article above, a group of anarchists move from protest to protest, dressing in black clothing and wearing masks. It seems to me their only real objective is a day out, play-acting their fantasies, and harming other people as they go.
“Oh but we never hurt people,” they cry.
Really? What about the people whose cars they damaged, and the small shop owners who sees a month’s income disappear to pay for broken windows. Whose cars were they: perhaps a young couple just starting out in life, or a single father, or an elderly woman clinging to her independence?
“Oh but the cause, the noble cause,” they answer.
Cowards and thugs, I say, likely escaping from boring, tedious, low-level jobs, if indeed they have any.
Martin Luther King didn’t hide his face. Mahatma Ghandi didn’t draw courage from being part of a mob. Protest on, peaceful and non-violent marchers. The rest of you, leave.

Behavioural analysis unit

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Special OPP unit deeply involved in Williams investigation.
Highly-specialized OPP unit credited for speedy arrest – The Globe and Mail.

Both of these articles contain some information about the Behavioural analysis units, but I wanted to know more about the training and effectiveness.

So who are the profilers, how are they trained, and how effective are they? As to the latter, one article in 2007, suggested not very. (Taking Stock of Criminal Profiling: A Narrative Review and Meta-Analysis
Snook et al. Criminal Justice and Behavior.2007; 34: 437-453) However, in that paper, the analysis included “self-described” profilers. Currently, according to an excellent article on a Government of Canada website, in
order to apply for the training program, a candidate must meet the following requirements:

Be a police officer in good standing;
Possess a minimum three years’ recent experience in the investigation of interpersonal violent crime;
Possess superior investigation skills, documented in writing, in the area of interpersonal violence;
Possess a demonstrated ability to articulate thoughts both orally and in writing;
Speak, write, understand and read English fluently;
Be approved and sponsored by an ICIAF member in good standing;
Be recommended in writing by the appropriate official of the agency employing the candidate;
The agency employing the candidate must agree to cover all training costs;
The agency employing the candidate must confirm in writing that the candidate will work primarily as an analyst for at least the final year of the training program and three years thereafter.
Once admitted to the roughly two-year program, the candidate must study or obtain training in the following areas: sex offenders and typologies, sexual homicide, legal pathology, crime scene reconstruction, homicide investigation, investigation into suspicious death, child abduction and abuse, interviews and interrogations, normal and abnormal behaviour (psychiatry and psychology), preparation of analyses, threat asses sment, arson and attempted bombings, as well as a professional development course for instructors. The candidate must also familiarize himself with media and public relations strategies, blood spatter analysis, computerized case association systems (ViCAP, ViCLAS), laboratory procedures for criminal analysis and scientific content analysis (SCAN) (ICIAF, 2005).

The candidate must also complete a minimum of six months of investigation work supervised by a member of the ICIAF or the FBI National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crimes (NCAVC), including at least two months of supervised work at NCAVC. At the end of the training, the candidate must pass an examination. The candidate is presented with a case and has thirty days to write up an analysis and prepare an oral defence before the members of an evaluation committee, whose decision must be unanimous. After one year as an associate member in good standing, an application for full fellow status may be submitted to the ICIAF (ICIAF, 2005). Canada currently has four analysts who are full fellows: two employed by the RCMP and two by the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP). Three candidates are currently registered in the training program (two employed by the OPP and one by the RCMP). The Sûreté du Québec employs two analysts, but their status is unknown.
(Human Rights Commission, Government of Canada) The complete article is very interesting and is available on line at http://www.chrc-ccdp.ca/research_program_recherche/profiling_profilage/page4-en.asp

The Williams case involved the Ontario Unit.
The advantage the profilers have now, over those in the past includes the vast amount of information available online and being gathered into databases, like ViCLAS, available to law enforcement all over the world.

A Serial Killer?

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Tire tracks led police to Williams – The Globe and Mail.
This article reads like a story outline for Criminal Minds, including a behavioural analyst from the OPP. The headline says that tiretracks in the snow led to the Colonel being a suspect, so perhaps I mean CSI.
I hope that this is not a horrendous mistake, of the sort we have seen too many times in this country. Names like Morin and Marshall and Truscotte come to mind. If the Colonel is guilty, the question becomes, how did the military miss such a degree of pathology? The top brass thought he was great. What did the men and women, especially the women, think of him? And if there were complaints, who buried them? And if he is guilty, what about other countries where he was posted, and unexplained murders or assaults there? It could get deeper and uglier and much sadder.

Snow

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‘Snowmageddon’ slams mid-Atlantic; utilities race to restore power – CNN.com.

Commentators on Canadian news sites are full of self-praise, along the lines of ” Come on folks, this is routine in St. John’s.” Yes it is, but they are used to it, and the people down in Washington are not.

We had a taste of this last year. Four big snowstorms and the guys who plough were all on strike and it lasted for weeks. The schools were closed so often that I had small patients of kindergarten age who only had been to school a few days by the end of April.

But the streets were kept open, most of them in town anyway, by neighbours who used their snowblowers on sections, and others in pickup trucks with ploughs attached.

We usually have three big storms a winter, and two of them have passed us by, staying well South of the Great Lakes. Great you say? Maybe, but we will need water this summer, and the snow is a big source. Besides, yet another winter with temperatures below -20 C means more roses and other perennials missing from my garden in the spring. I say, bring on the snow.