Santa Claus does too exist!

Contrary to the assertion of the scandalous propaganda on the left, Santa Claus does indeed exist. And I can prove it. Start with proposition A:

A. If A is true, then Santa Claus exists.

Now, suppose A were true. Then it would follow that if A is true, then Santa Claus exists, and again since we're supposing A is true, it would follow that Santa Claus exists. So we've shown that if A is true, then Santa Claus exists. But that is proposition A, so we've proven that proposition A is true. So that means that Santa Claus exists! (A remarkable conclusion given my recent post on things that probably don't exist.)

The only trouble is that the reasoning above lets you prove anything (e.g. that penguins rule the universe). It's an example of Curry's paradox, which can't be easily explained away, and is the subject of ongoing research by logicians.

Bah humbug!

Still not convinced? Thomas Aquinas to the rescue! Well, actually, his modern admirers. Aquinas came up with 5 ways of proving the existence of God. Dr. Joseph Magee, a Thomistic scholar, has used similar methods to develop 5 ways of proving the existence of Santa Claus. For example:

The fourth way is taken from the grades which are found in Christmas spirit. Indeed, in this world, among men there are some of more and some of less Christmas spirit. But "more" and "less" is said of diverse things according as they resemble in their diverse ways something which is the "maximum." Therefore there must be something which has the most Christmas spirit, and this we call Santa Claus.

I would question, however, the implicit assumption that it's a man who fits the bill.

Visions of sugarplums

If you think I'm just trying to flatter the jolly old elf so as to garner more loot this Christmas, well ... keep quiet about it, would ya?

log base 2

It turns out that the number 1 reason people visit this blog is to calculate log base 2 of an integer. So here is log₂ of 1 through 10, to 16 digits precision:

log₂(1) = 0
log₂(2) = 1
log₂(3) = 1.584962500721156
log₂(4) = 2
log₂(5) = 2.321928094887362
log₂(6) = 2.584962500721156
log₂(7) = 2.807354922057604
log₂(8) = 3
log₂(9) = 3.169925001442312
log₂(10) = 3.321928094887362

Note that log₂(x) is defined for any x greater than zero. If you have a calculator than computes the natural logarithm (often denoted ln), then you can calculate log₂(x) = ln(x)/ln(2). The same thing works with log base 10, i.e. log₂(x) = log₁₀(x)/log₁₀(2).

But what does it mean?
log₂(x) means the power you have to raise 2 in order to get x. For example, 2² = 4, so log₂(4) is 2. Similarly, 2³ = 8, so log₂(8) = 3. It turns out that 2^1.58496 is very nearly 3, so log₂(3) is roughly 1.58496.

Some cases deserve special mention. log₂(2) = 1 because 2¹ is 2. log₂(1) = 0 because by mathematical convention 2⁰ = 1 (this holds not just for 2, but for any base). Finally, note that log₂(0) is undefined, although some software will return -Infinity (which is the limit of log₂(x) as x approaches zero).

What is it used for?

The logarithm is useful for a variety of purposes. One of the more common is when describing exponential growth or decay. For example, the time for a radioactive substance to decay to half its mass is called the half life. Similarly we can describe accelerating growth in terms of the doubling time. I previously applied this to the number of blogs tracked by Technorati.

In computing, log₂ is often used. One reason is that the number of bits needed to represent an integer n is given by rounding down log₂(n) and then adding 1. For example log₂(100) is about 6.643856. Rounding this down and then adding 1, we see that we need 7 bits to represent 100. Similarly, in order to have 100 leaves, a binary tree needs log₂(100) levels. In the game where you have to guess a number between 1 and 100 based on whether it's higher or lower than your current guess, the average number of guesses required is log₂(100) if you use a halving strategy to bracket the answer.

Two much of nothing

Although I can't provide additional help to people with logarrhythmias, I hope this note is of some assistance.

Things that (probably) don't exist

A recent article by philosopher Steven Hales is titled "You Can Prove a Negative" (a slightly different version of the article is available as a pdf file). Hales argues that the "principle of folk logic" saying you can't prove a negative is just plain wrong.

He points out that "any claim can be expressed as a negative, thanks to the rule of double negation." So it's easy to come up with examples of proving a negative. Hales goes on to say that "Some people seem to think that you can’t prove a specific sort of negative claim, namely that a thing does not exist." He counters this with an example of a valid proof that something doesn't exist:

1. If unicorns had existed, then there is evidence in the fossil record.
2. There is no evidence of unicorns in the fossil record.
3. Therefore, unicorns never existed.

Of course, the difficulty here is with the truth of the premises (1 and 2). In particular, it could be that we just haven't found unicorn fossils yet. Or perhaps, unicorns don't leave a fossil trace. Deductive arguments are so neat and tidy we may forget about what's been swept under the carpet: the truth (or otherwise) of the premises.

Finally Hales grasps the nettle:

Maybe people mean that no inductive argument will conclusively, indubitably prove a negative proposition beyond all shadow of a doubt. For example, suppose someone argues that we’ve scoured the world for Bigfoot, found no credible evidence of Bigfoot’s existence, and therefore there is no Bigfoot. A classic inductive argument. A Sasquatch defender can always rejoin that Bigfoot is reclusive, and might just be hiding in that next stand of trees. You can’t prove he’s not! (until the search of that tree stand comes up empty too).

And now we come to the heart of the matter:

The problem here isn’t that inductive arguments won’t give us certainty about negative claims (like the nonexistence of Bigfoot), but that inductive arguments won’t give us certainty about anything at all, positive or negative. All observed swans are white, therefore all swans are white looked like a pretty good inductive argument until black swans were discovered in Australia.

Well, hold on just a moment. We were talking about "a specific sort of negative claim, namely that a thing does not exist". And the swan argument hasn't been written that way. If we do write it that way, we get the inductive argument no observed swans are black, therefore all swans are non-black. So non-existence claims based on observation are uncertain.

But what about existence claims based on observation? Well, you only have to see one black swan too conclude that not all swans are white, and this inference is certain because it's deductive. (This is, of course, provided that we can trust that what we've seen really is a swan, and it really is black, and that we didn't just imagine the whole thing. There are some important issues here, but taking this too far can lead to radical skepticism, which is unproductive.)

My point is that when it comes to using observational evidence to argue for existence (a positive claim) or non-existence (a negative claim), you can't prove a negative, whereas you can prove a positive. (Here I'm using "prove" to mean "establish with certainty".) So, in this sense, I disagree with Hales. And I think that this is what people typically mean when they state that "you can't prove a negative". I also think that the imbalance in the difficulty of demonstrating non-existence compared to existence is a strong argument that the burden of proof should be on those who claim the existence of something.

I agree with Hales, however, in his defense of induction:

The very nature of an inductive argument is to make a conclusion probable, but not certain, given the truth of the premises. That's just what an inductive argument is. We’d better not dismiss induction because we’re not getting certainty out of it, though.

I believe we all crave certainty, but it's in pretty short supply—caveat emptor.

If we weren't so terrified of uncertainty, we might make much better decisions. When it comes to things that can be quantified, the field of statistics offers some very useful tools for dealing with uncertainty. Suppose, for example, we're trying to determine whether all swans are white. If we sample, at random, 100 swans, and each of them is white, then a very useful approximation, the "Rule of Three" tells us that we can have 95% confidence that the true proportion of non-white swans is less than 3/100 or 3%. Suppose we continue sampling swans and they stubbornly continue to be white. Having sampled 10,000 white swans, we can now have 95% confidence that the true proportion is less than 3/10,000 or 0.03%.

The notion of "95% confidence" can be made precise (but I won't get into the details here). It's also noteworthy that there are Bayesian analogues to the Rule of Three. Details are in Jovanovic and Levy, A Look at the Rule of Three, 1997, The American Statistican, 51: 137-139.

Unfortunately, there's a major difficulty in the application of the Rule of Three to the swan example: the assumption that the swans are randomly sampled! It turns out that the black swans were hiding out in Australia. But there's a message here: non-random samples can give very misleading information. That's one reason why anecdotal evidence is treated so skeptically by scientists.

For an atheist perspective on the "you can't prove a negative" idea, see here. And here's a page on burden of proof relating to claims of existence, from philosopher Philip Pecorino.

Update 12Dec2007: I sent a link to this post to Professor Hales and he kindly replied:

You write that you only have to see one black swan to know that not all swans are white, and that “this inference is certain because it is deductive.” But wait—the argument I gave about unicorns was also deductive, and you dismissed that as proving its conclusion. Therefore you can’t hold that the conclusion of your swan argument is certain because the argument form is deductive. If the conclusion of the swan argument is certain, then it is for some other reason. I suspect that you think it is certain because you are convinced of your premise that we have seen black swans. Of course, I’m rather convinced of my premises that if unicorns had existed, then there is evidence in the fossil record, and that there is no evidence of unicorns in the fossil record. Before you rejoin that we could find out that we are mistaken about the fossil record (as we would discover if we locate a unicorn skeleton), let me point out that we could also be mistaken about observing black swans. Maybe upon further study we’ll find out that they aren’t swans at all, but are merely related to swans. Or we could discover that they were phony, dyed white swans prepared to fool naïve naturalists. Or we might show that other even more skeptical hypotheses are true (mass hallucinations, dreaming, etc.). The real problem, as I see it, is your equation of proof with certainty. Most epistemologists don’t think we are certain of anything outside of logic, mathematics, and other things known a priori. There is always the possibility of error. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t prove things in some reasonable, real-world sense of prove.”

It's the law!

There's been quite a lot of reaction to a New York Times op-ed by Paul Davies titled Taking Science on Faith. (I read about it first on Adventures in Ethics and Science.) Davies argues that, like religion, science is ultimately based on faith. My main interest is not in his argument per se (but see here for some scathing critiques).

What struck me about Davies' essay was his use of the term scientific law. He uses it again and again, whereas he refers to a theory only twice, and not once does he refer to a model.

If there are laws, then presumably there's a lawmaker, and the obvious candidate would be God. If we are able to discover these laws, then we have identified Truth. Who can then disagree? Who can go against the law?

This seems to me a very arrogant notion. In fact the history of science is littered with "laws" that have subsequently been overturned or shown to be special cases or approximations. For instance, Newton's laws of motion (one of which, incidentally—his 2nd law, F=ma—is actually a definition) were superceded by special relativity and quantum mechanics.

Aren't scientific "laws" more accurately described as theories, or—my preference—models? I've previously quoted statistician George E. P. Box:

All models are wrong, some are useful

I would concede that in principle, it may be possible to get a model exactly right, but except in the case of a computer simulation, it isn't possible to be certain that it's right! To me, Box's aphorism is humble, epistemologically wise, and profoundly scientific.

It is my impression that for many years now there has been a movement in science away from the word law, with its implicit suggestion that the Truth has been definitively uncovered, and that somehow any deviation from the law is improper or even unimaginable. Nevertheless, use of the term continues (see the Wikipedia entries for scientific law, physical law, and laws of science). It might be argued that I'm reading too much into the word law. But consider how it affects schoolchildren who are learning about science. Rather that encouraging the idea that science is about curiousity, observing, investigating, and testing, I think it suggests that science is about memorizing rules.

Laws of chance

There is another class of "laws" that aren't exactly scientific, but still have an empirical aspect. In probability and statistics, it was at one time common to refer to probability "laws", the most famous being the curiously-named normal law. Today we refer to it as the normal distribution, or better yet the Gaussian distribution. The term "normal law" is a bit of a double-whammy: to go against it you would have to be abnormal and lawless!

Two fascinating "laws" relating to probability distributions are Zipf's law and Benford's law. I think that what makes probability distributions seem like "laws" is that they often hold—at least approximately—under quite general real-world conditions.

Law-abiding citizens

Why are we so prone to label models (among other things) as laws? I think it might be related to our abhorrence of uncertainty. For a law-abiding citizen, laws are a source of security. Everything seems neat and tidy and safe and predictable. But every so often, the world is revealed to be a bit different from what we expected. Maybe the laws don't work so well after all ...

It's complicated ...

It has been noted that when trying to explain almost anything, I have a habit of declaring—"It's complicated ..." And of course, it is (whatever it is). But is that just a cop-out?

Complexity is particularly challenging when decisions have to be made. There may be many factors beyond our control, that we understand poorly, or that we're not even aware of. And how these factors interact is often unclear. Complexity brings with it uncertainty, and uncertainty is always unsettling. One solution is to do nothing, and sometimes that's the best choice, as expressed in the aphorism "first do no harm". But, as in the case of climate change, the decision to do nothing ("more studies are needed") is often a poor choice.

Coping with complexity

Faced with complexity, we simplify. That is, we employ models that make it easier to think about the situation. This comes so naturally to us that we're often completely unaware that's what we're doing. For example, when we are "behind on sleep", we need to "catch up". This metaphor could be called SLEEP IS A RACE. The complexities of human sleep requirements are reduced to simple addition and subtraction, represented in terms of a racetrack (essentially a number line). This is an example of a mental model.

Mental models are more slippery than scientific models because they tend to be much less explicit. Scientific models are published and debated and put to empirical test. But we are embedded in our mental models, and like embedded journalists, our objectivity is profoundly compromised. And yet we can't do without mental models, any more than we can do without scientific models.

A double-edged razor

A well-known principle in science is Occam's razor, which argues for simplicity in modeling. But simplicity can go too far. Albert Einstein's take on this was:

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.

An extreme case of simplification is polarized thinking. George W. Bush's "You're either with us or against us" is an apt example. Thinking like this both justifies and perpetuates violent conflict. Bush's statement is an example of what I might call a polarized moral or perhaps theological model.



Logic's limits

Even when we're aware of our models, it's easy to mistake them for reality. This applies not just to the elements of a model, but also to deductive inferences (which I'll refer to simply as logic) obtained in the context of the model. Logic has a seductive appeal: it offers certainty provided we observe some elementary rules, known since at least the time of Aristotle. There's just one hitch: our model has to be correct.

In fairly trivial situations, it may be possible to know our model is correct. One example is when we're analyzing data from a computer simulation. We can know we're using the correct (or incorrect) model because we wrote the program that generated the data!

But generally our model is a simplified representation (sometimes called an idealization) of a more complicated reality. In the context of the model, logic is infallible, but that may not translate back to the real world.

The apparent certainty of logic may encourage polarized thinking—a trap I've fallen into on, ahem, one or two occasions. When all propositions are simply TRUE or FALSE, everything is so easy, so tidy. But so misleading.

I'm not discounting the value of logic, but I am pointing out that we have to be very careful not to make it something it's not.

Questioning our models

Rene Descartes famously questioned all of his assumptions, arguing that:

If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.

Finally, he was left with no beliefs that he felt he could justify but the fact of his own existence. Although this approach seems a bit extreme, the idea that we should subject our models to careful examination is of paramount importance.

In order to honestly critique our models, we need to "think outside the box". A model is indeed a kind of box, and often an opaque one at that. We can grow very comfortable inside our models, to the point where we can scarcely conceive of another approach.

In the field of statistics, there is a large literature on model selection. The simplest case is that of nested models, where one model is an extension of another. But, writes Malcolm Forster:

Models belonging to different theories, across a revolutionary divide, are usually non-nested. A typical example involves the comparison of Copernican and Ptolemaic models of planetary motion. It is not possible to obtain a sun-centered model from a earth-centered model by adding circles. Cases like this are the most puzzling, especially with respect to the role of simplicity.

This is closely related to what Thomas Kuhn called the incommensurability of scientific paradigms.

The fine print

Of course there's more to say. After all, it's complicated ...

First, I want to point out that I'm using the term "models" in a very general sense. I'm including scientific models, theories, paradigms, mathematical models, statistical models, mental models, metaphors, assumptions, beliefs, moral/ethical models, and even theological models. And probably a bunch of other types of models I haven't thought of. Some people use the term in a much narrower sense. But my point here has been that several issues around simplicity are important for many different kinds of models.

Models serve a variety of purposes. Models can be descriptive, explanatory, causal, predictive, or normative. (And again, I'm sure this list should be longer.) It would be interesting to examine how simplicity plays a role in these different cases. Of course I haven't really defined simplicity, and that's a whole other area.

Finally, here's an entertaining list of
rules of mathematical modeling.

In memoriam: Ram Myers

Goodbye, dear friend.

I learned of Ram's death on Tuesday evening, from the mother of Ram's wife (Rita, who is also a dear friend).

She added that Rita has requested that people not try to contact her.

It's now early Wednesday morning, and I am going to bed.

Beautiful Portugal!

I recently had the privilege of visiting Portugal. What a beautiful country! Ok, so I took a few photos. Want to see some? Stay tuned ...

"Software should be called HARD-ware"

The quote is from an acquaintance of mine. I'm sure somebody else has said this, but it's a good point!

Log base 2 recommends ...

Hershey's kiss-off

On February 16th, Hershey announced that they intend to close their chocolate factory in Smiths Falls, Ontario. The factory is about an hour-and-a-half's drive from my home in Ottawa, and as careful planning would have it—I was there today. (The photo of a lamp post that I took, shown to the left, provides some evidence of this.)

Like most members of our species, I have—shall we say—"a thing" for chocolate, and Hershey's make some very delectable chocolate treats. I happily carted home several kilos of the stuff from the Hershey Chocolate Shoppe that is attached to the factory. The Visitor's Center also features a "free self-guided tour from an elevated viewing gallery" to see the treats in production, which is pretty cool.

What isn't so cool is that a total of about 500 people will lose their jobs with the closure of the factory. As I understand it, 100 positions have already been eliminated and eventually about 400 more people will lose their jobs.

Incidentally, the population of Smiths Falls is roughly 10,000. The closure is expected to be devasting to the town. The outrage has only just begun.

This is only part of what Hershey calls a "Global Supply Chain Transformation". One of the cornerstones of this program is to:

Construct a flexible, cost-effective production facility in Monterrey, Mexico to meet current and emerging marketplace needs.

Hmmm ... "cost effective". Umm, does that include all the costs?

Here are a couple of other lines selected not-entirely at random from Hershey's description of how they plan to transform their global supply chain. First:

The program will result in a total net reduction of approximately 1,500 positions across Hershey's supply chain over the next three years.

And the second, a quote from David J. West, Executive Vice President, Chief Operating Officer:

We recently announced a manufacturing joint venture in China with Lotte Confectionery Company, another step in our disciplined global expansion.

Update 29-Mar-2007: "Hope impedes retraining for Smiths Falls Hershey workers".

A model of decency, responsibility, courage

Aristides de Sousa Mendes (1885–1954):

I could not have acted otherwise, and I therefore accept all that has befallen me with love.

Thought du jour from Log base 2

God didn't design humans. Natural selection did it for Her.

By the way, when I googled "thought du jour" just now, I got "about 23,100" results. Double by-the-way, does anyone have a roughly precise (if you know what I mean) notion of what Google means by "about x results"? Triple by-the-way, it almost goes without saying: props to Google!

Working for The Man

Note that the word "The" in the title of this post has a capital "T", because it's "The Man", not "the Man".

In 1962, Roy Orbison recorded "Working For The Man." Wikipedia says that the song is

about a mistreated laborer. After first thinking about killing the boss, the narrator later dreams of getting revenge by marrying his daughter and inheriting the business. In the final refrain, the eponymous hook is replaced with the line, "I'm gonna be The Man."

I wonder if there's a Brittanica entry for "The Man".

"For service in English, press 1 7"

I kid you not. (That's Bell Canada, by the way.) If I were writing a novel and I made that line up, my editor would say, "Come on, Nick, that's just not plausible."

As to why you have to press 1 7 for English, my best guess is as follows. Obviously for service in French, you must have to press 1 (after all, French is Canada's other official language). I'm guessing Inuktitut is 2, and if so, I applaud Bell Canada: it's about time Canada's First-Nations peoples got their proper respect. (You can probably see where I'm going with this: Mandarin, Cantonese, Hindi, Arabic, Urdu, ... all the way up to 17.)

Enough cheap wisecracks ...

But at this point I think I'll skip the silly jokes and instead use the mention of proper respect for Canada's First-Nations peoples as an excuse to comment on what I think is perhaps Canada's greatest shame: the way native people here have been treated ever since the first contact by Europeans.

On any number of measures (perhaps the most appalling example being suicide rates, which are staggeringly high among native people), Canada's First-Nations peoples are in dire straits. I really don't know too much about all this, but what I do know is very disturbing. And I think it's time that we Canadians face up to our responsibilities.

I recognize that the problems are complex, and I certainly don't claim to know what's going to work. But I do suspect that non-aboriginal Canadians just haven't made this enough of a priority. Speaking for myself, I can say that I'm often far too busy pontificating about problems in other parts of the world (over which I generally have zero influence) to think about what I can do (and what privileges I may have to give up) to make a difference regarding the plight of Canada's First-Nations peoples. And if all this sounds just a bit precious—well, I think that's not really very important.

Pet peeves (continued): non-intuitive ballpoint pen caps

Some time ago I blogged about some of my pet peeves. There's something very therapeutic about actually writing down the things that bug you, and exactly what it is about them that is so maddening. Well, whaddaya know: I have a few more. Starting with ballpoint pens with caps whose colour doesn't match their ink.

As an aside, I wasn't sure how to spell whaddaya, and neither of the two spellcheckers I tried allowed that it is in fact a widely used word. But Google knew better: whadaya (with one d) gives 55,700 hits. But "did you mean: whaddaya?" Well — yes, because whaddaya (with two d's) gives 466,000 hits. Yay Google!

Your call is important to us ...

Is that really true? I mean, couldn't you hire just a few more customer service representatives? 'Cause then I might feel like my call really was important. Instead, I feel like I'm being fed a line. And that irritates me. Maybe I'm too hung up on words. I mean, maybe it's just semantics.

Ok, I'm going to cut the sarcasm. Truth is, I think that notwithstanding certain rather specific situations and all things being equal (which of course they never really are) people and corporations should be as honest as possible. It seems to me that this is a rather rich blogging vein. I could probably have a whole blog devoted to the subject. There probably already are several blogs devoted to the subject!

Update 10Feb2007: Another line that really bugs me:

Please be patient as we are experiencing an unusually large call volume ...

Mighty fine!

Went to a CD release party last night. (Ok, so this is a first for me.) It was The Mighty Popo and guests. Popo is releasing his new CD, Muhazi. It was fabulous!

Lives before profits

Médecins Sans Frontières has a petition that is worth checking out. From their page:

Pharmaceutical company Novartis is taking the Indian government to court. If the company wins, millions of people across the globe could have their sources of affordable medicines dry up.

They go on to say that:

India produces affordable medicines that are vital to many people living in developing countries. Over half the medicines currently used for AIDS treatment in developing countries come from India and such medicines are used to treat over 80% of the 80,000 AIDS patients in Médecins Sans Frontières projects.

I recognize that the profit motive is a fundamental part of the pharmaceutical industry. But shouldn't lives come before profits?

Independent events

News of an interesting study caught my eye today. The CBC headline was "Ontario teenagers gambling as early as age 15: survey." The study was released by the Responsible Gambling Council. Now something about the name of that organization made me uncomfortable, so I had a closer look. Their website says:

The Responsible Gambling Council (RGC) is an independent, non-profit organization exclusively focused on problem gambling prevention. Through research, the Council seeks to better understand problem gambling and ways to reduce the risks. Through information, the Council shares this knowledge. Through its awareness programs, the Council provides people with the tools to make informed choices and offers resources for those affected by problem gambling.

But where does their funding come from?

The Ontario government commits two per cent of annual slot revenue from both charity casinos and racetracks to the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care and Ministry of Health Promotion for research, prevention and treatment of problem gambling.

RGC is funded through the Ministry of Health Promotion. We work closely with other research and prevention organizations, as well as with agencies in Ontario that provide problem gambling treatment services.

And their Board of Directors?

Tim Hurson Chair
President
Tim Hurson Enterprises

Larry Moodie Treasurer and Chair, Finance Committee
Detective Inspector
Private Practice

Wendy Rinella Chair, Strategic Directions Committee
Director, Government Relations
First Canadian Title

George Sweny Secretary
Senior Vice President, Lotteries
Ontario Lottery and Gaming

Lisa Root Chair, Nominating Committee
Team Leader
Problem Gambling Program
Niagara Alcohol & Drug Assessment Service

Dr. Colin Campbell Member
Dept. of Criminology
Douglas College

Terry Finn Member
Senior Account Manager
The Computer Media Group

Jane Holmes Member
VP Corporate Affairs
Woodbine Entertainment Group

Michael D. Lipton, Q.C. Member
Lawyer (legal counsel)
Elkind, Lipton & Jacobs

Marie Mullally Member
President/CEO
Nova Scotia Gaming

Susan Olynik Member
Vice President, Communications & Public Affairs
Manitoba Lotteries Corporation

Honourable Justice Reid Scott Member
Retired Judge

Howard Shearer Member
President
Hitachi (Canada) Ltd.

Aubrey Zidenberg Member
President
Casino Amusements Canada

Susan (Vincent) Butler Member
Past Executive Director
Ontario Problem Gambling Helpline

I guess I'm left wondering whether the membership of an organization's board of directors has any bearing on its independence.

Update 28-Jan-2007: The full report is available in PDF: Teen Gambling in Ontario: Behaviours and Perceptions Among 15 to 17 Year Olds.

From the report's Conclusions:

Gambling among 15-17 year-olds in Ontario appears to be quite pervasive, both in terms of its frequency and mentality. However, based on the results of the present survey, it appears that only a small proportion of youth gamblers (3.9%) can be classified as problem gamblers according to a standardized measure.

From the report's Methodology section:

In November 2006, the RGC commissioned Youthography, an organization that specializes in youthbased research, to administer a survey on gambling to youth 15-17 years of age in Ontario. Youthography randomly e-mailed 13,369 individuals in its database who fit this profile an invitation to complete the survey. (Individuals in this database had previously consented to receive notice for online survey research participation.) As an incentive, potential participants were told that their names would be entered into a cash draw for $1,000.

Of those individuals randomly selected to participate in the survey, 2,836 both opened the e-mail and clicked on the survey link; 2,140 then completed the survey. The absolute response rate was 16%, quite high for online surveys where the typical response rate is 3-5%.

Um ... 16%? As far as I can see, the report doesn't mention bias (except in connection with telephone surveys in one footnote), nor does it mention non-reponse.

Quaint provisions

The other day, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee and the topic of Maher Arar (shown at left, with his daughter) came up. In case you haven't heard his story, here's a quick summary courtesy of Wikipedia:

Maher Arar is a Syrian-born Canadian software engineer. On 26 September 2002, during a stopover in New York en route from Tunis to Montreal, Arar was detained by the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service who may have been acting upon false and misleading information supplied by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Despite carrying a Canadian passport, he was deported to Syria in accordance with a U.S. policy known as "extraordinary rendition." Arar was held in solitary confinement in a Syrian prison where he was regularly tortured for almost a year, until his eventual release and return to Canada in October 2003.

Appearing before the Committee, Gonzales wouldn't explain why the U.S. detained Arar and then sent him to Syria instead of to Canada, where he and his family lived. The chair of the Committee, Senator Patrick Leahy (D.-Vermont) delivered a blistering rebuke to Gonzales (captured on YouTube). Here's an excerpt:

SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: Attorney General, I’m sorry. I don't mean to treat this lightly. We knew damn well if he went to Canada, he wouldn't be tortured. He’d be held; he’d be investigated. We also knew damn well if he went to Syria, he would be tortured. And it's beneath the dignity of this country, a country that has always been a beacon of human rights, to send somebody to another country to be tortured. You know and I know that has happened a number of times in the past five years by this country.

It is a black mark on us. It has brought about the condemnation of some of our closest and best allies. They have made those comments both publicly and privately to the President of the United States and others. And it is easy for us to sit here comfortably in this room, knowing that we're not going to be sent off to another country to be tortured, to treat it as though -- well, Attorney General Ashcroft said, “We’ve got assurances,” though assurances from a country that we also say now, “Oh, we can't talk to them because we can't take their word for anything.”

ALBERTO GONZALES: Well, Senator, I dis--

SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: I’m somewhat upset.

ALBERTO GONZALES: Yes, sir. I can tell. But before you get more upset, perhaps you should wait to receive the briefing --

SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: How long?

ALBERTO GONZALES: I’m hoping that we can get you the information next week.

SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: Well, Attorney General, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll meet you halfway on this. I’ll wait next week for that briefing. If we don't get it, I guarantee you there will be another hearing on this issue. Canadians have been our closest allies, longest unguarded frontier in the world. They are justifiably upset. They are wondering what's happened to us. They are wondering what's happened to us. Now, you know and I know we are a country with a great, great tradition of protecting people's individual liberties and rights. You take an oath of office to do that. I take an oath of office to do that. I believe in my basic core nature in that.

Leahy's eloquence and moral indignation are compelling, and I wonder if his words won't be remembered for years to come. Gonzales has a lot to answer for. In fact this story begins years before Arar was detained.

The roots of torture

A Newsweek article from October of last year recounts Washington's growing infatuation with torture following 9/11, referring to it as "the road to Abu Ghraib". The article cites a January 2002 memo from then-White House Counsel Gonzales to President Bush:

"As you have said, the war against terrorism is a new kind of war," Gonzales wrote to Bush. "The nature of the new war places a —high premium on other factors, such as the ability to quickly obtain information from captured terrorists and their sponsors in order to avoid further atrocities against American civilians." Gonzales concluded in stark terms: "In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions."

Gonzales' cynical contempt for the "quaint provisions" of human rights conventions is instructive. Amnesty International describes the situation in this way:

The reality is that since September 2001, the US government has sought to rewrite the rules banning torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment -- and Guantánamo has been a testing ground for these new rules. Interrogation techniques developed for use in Afghanistan and Guantánamo subsequently emerged in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, where torture was exposed in photos that shocked the world.

The US administration's preferred version of events is that the abuses at Abu Ghraib were an unfortunate accident. But Amnesty International notes that:

On 7 February 2002, President Bush signed a memorandum confirming that Article 3 common to the four Geneva Conventions would not apply to any Taleban or al-Qa’ida detainee. This included all the detainees sent to Guantánamo. Common Article 3 prohibits torture, cruel treatment and "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment." President Bush had been advised that not applying common Article 3 would protect US interrogators from prosecutions for war crimes under the USA’s War Crimes Act.

Six months later a Justice Department memorandum advised that the President could override the prohibition on torture; that interrogators could cause a great deal of pain before crossing the threshold to torture; and that there were a wide range of acts that might amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment but would not amount to torture.

What sort of treatment are we talking about?

The euphemistically termed "stress and duress" techniques that emerged in Guantánamo and US detention facilities elsewhere included forced standing and crouching, sleep deprivation, subjection to noise, prolonged isolation, and hooding. Some techniques, such as the use of dogs, forced nudity, forcible shaving, sexual humiliation by female interrogators, and removal of religious items, have discriminatory undertones.

It strains credulity to imagine how this kind of treatment could be considered acceptable by civilized society. But as we know all too well, it's not so difficult to put a spell on the body politic.

The voice from the tower

All you need is to get the white right wizard, in this case Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz, to speak from the (ivory) tower. In his 2001 opinion piece published in the LA Times, titled "Is There a Torturous Road to Justice?", Dershowitz wrote:

I have no doubt that if an actual ticking bomb situation were to arise, our law enforcement authorities would torture. The real debate is whether such torture should take place outside of our legal system or within it. The answer to this seems clear: If we are to have torture, it should be authorized by the law.

When I first heard of Dershowitz's outrageous proposal, I simply couldn't understand why he wasn't being treated as a pariah by civilized society. Certainly his silver tongue had the power to enchant, but weren't his conclusions utterly nauseating? Could it be that the glittery garb of his position at the esteemed Harvard Law School was cloaking the loathsome stuff underneath? (For a well-written, albeit brief, analysis of Dershowitz's nonsense, see Seth Finkelstein's article "Alan Dershowitz's Tortuous Torturous Argument".)

A choice policy

I leave you with the following excerpt from the same Amnesty International report quoted earlier:

President Bush’s 7 February 2002 memorandum, which has not been withdrawn, states that detainees would be treated humanely, "including those who are not legally entitled to such treatment." There are no such detainees. All detainees, everywhere, have the right to be free from torture or other ill-treatment. This is not a policy choice. It is a legal obligation on all governments.

Update 24-Jan-2007: My brother pointed me to an article in today's San Francisco Chronicle: "Gonzales says the Constitution doesn't guarantee habeas corpus." If this doesn't give you the willies, I don't know what will.

Update 27-Jan-2007: Thursday's Globe & Mail had an editorial about the U.S. government's continuing refusal to allow Maher Arar to enter that country. The editorial notes that:

... as a Canadian inquiry concluded last September, there was no good reason to think [Arar] was any kind of threat. Canadian officials have now concluded the secret U.S. files add up to nothing. Yet [U.S.-ambassador-to-Canada David] Wilkins says it is a "little presumptuous" to say Mr. Arar should get his livelihood back ...

(Travel to the U.S. is an important part of Maher Arar's work in computer networking.) As the first line in the editorial opines, "If nothing else ... Wilkins gets top marks for gall."

Yesterday, in a letter to Maher Arar, Canada's Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, wrote:

On behalf of the government of Canada, I wish to apologize to you ... and your family for any role that Canadian officials may have played in the terrible ordeal that all of you experienced in 2002-2003.

About time.

Update 28-Jan-2007: Amnesty International are campaigning to Close Guantánamo. It's time to stand up for the "quaint provisions" of human rights for all!

Unfloppable?

As I noted the other day, a large part of the media has obediently lined up to proclaim the glories of Apple's "revolutionary" new iPhone. It seems that simply putting an i at the beginning of the name confers the blessing of the zeitgeist. With such an auspicious title, surely the iPhone couldn't flop. It's unsinkable unthinkable!

Or is it? Check out Kirk Sato's 10 reasons IPhone is going to be a Flop. (He also links to a hilarious Stephen Colbert segment.)

A purportedly potent rodent

And another thing: the iPhone has no buttons. Reminds me of another Apple product: the Mighty Mouse, which came with my iMac. The advertising copy is seductive:

Thanks to a smooth top shell with touch-sensitive technology beneath, Mighty Mouse allows you to right click without a right button. Capacitive sensors under Mighty Mouse’s seamless top shell detect where your fingers are and predict your clicking intentions, so you don’t need two buttons — just two fingers.

A smooth shill for a smooth shell. But--gasp!--Apple doesn't always get things right. For a more reality-based assessment of the purportedly potent rodent, check out the Wikipedia entry. The "Criticisms" section lists quite a number of purported shortcomings. I can personally corroborate these ones:

• Right clicks can be difficult. The fingers must be lifted completely off the left side of the mouse for a right click to work.
• The scroll ball is sensitive to dirt, and difficult to clean because it is not removable. It is often rendered inoperable and irreparable after only a few months of use.
• The squeeze buttons do not provide much tactile feedback and can be awkward to reach.

The issue of tactile feedback (or lack thereof) brings us back to the iPhone:

How can you dial the iPhone without looking at it? How can you reach in your pocket and press “1” for voicemail? How can you orient yourself with the interface without seeing it? With a traditional phone or device with buttons you can feel your way around it. You can find the bumps, the humps, the cut lines, the shapes, the sizes. You can find your way around in the dark. Not with the iPhone.

(Posted by Jason on 37signals).

Floptics

In the end, a flop may be in the eye of the beholder. And prediction without precision deserves derision. (That was original, by the way.) Whereas Nostradamus could get away with making vague and poetical prophecies, it behoves me as a scientist to make a falsifiable prediction. I haven't quite formulated this yet, but it seems to me that:

• Apple has obviously sunk a pile of cash into developing and marketing the iPhone.
• It's not clear that they'll recoup this investment.
• Nor is it clear that they'll still be selling phones three years from now.

This was the sort of thing I had in mind when I made my initial prediction (flop cit).

I'll conclude this post by taking a page out of Nostradamus' book:

I do but make bold to predict (not that I guarantee the slightest thing at all), thanks to my researches and the consideration of what judicial Astrology promises me and sometimes gives me to know, principally in the form of warnings, so that folk may know that with which the celestial stars do threaten them. Not that I am foolish enough to pretend to be a prophet.

(Open letter to Privy Councillor [later Chancellor] Birague, 15 June 1566.)

Apple's iPhone will be a flop

One of the gifts I received for my birthday was a 2nd-generation iPod shuffle. It's a triumph of minimalistic design, a near-perfect marriage of functionality and aesthetic. (I really like it.)

But the media are currently in an almost religious frenzy over a different Apple product: the iPhone. A lot of the coverage has seemed like it was lifted straight out of Apple's propaganda press releases. Hmmm ... where have we seen this before?

In reaction to this media love-in, I spent rather too much time today trying to convince anyone who would listen (including my long-suffering brother) that the iPhone will be a flop. I marshaled what I thought were some pretty good arguments. But a Google search of "iphone will flop" reveals that I was scooped! Back in December, CNET News.com editor-at-large Michael Kanellos published an opinion piece titled "The Apple phone flop". He predicted that:

As with any Apple product release, it will be ushered into the world on a wave of obligatory gushing. "It's the greatest advance in communication since cave painting," some will proclaim. ... It's predictable. If Apple got into medical devices, people would come out of Steve Jobs' speech proclaiming "The iBag is the easiest, most user-friendly colostomy device I've ever encountered."

But won't the iPhone do for cell phones what the iPod did for MP3 players?

The entire strategy ... is based on what I call "iPod magic." Apple succeeded with the iPod, the theory goes. Therefore, they can break into other categories and turn them upside down.

But the iPod looks like it may turn out to be a non-repeatable experience. Look at the historical record. When the iPod emerged in late 2001, it solved some major problems with MP3 players.

(At that time, the MP3 players on the market had very little memory, small screens, and what Kanellos described as "cheesy navigation".) But what about cell phones?

Cell phones aren't clunky, inadequate devices. Instead, they are pretty good. Really good. Why do you think they call it a Crackberry? Because the lumpy design and confusing interface of the device is causing people to break into cars? No, it's because people are addicted to it.

Samsung has scoured the world's design schools and hired artists on three continents to keep its phones looking good. Motorola has revived its fortunes with design. KDDI, a Japanese carrier, has a design showcase in the teen shopping area of Tokyo just to be close to trends. And Sharp doesn't skimp when it comes to putting LCD TVs on its phones.

Apple, in other words, won't be competing against rather doltish, unstylish companies like the old Compaq. The handset companies move pretty quick and put out new models every few weeks.

In addition, Kanellos made some other arguments I hadn't thought of. Of course, he was writing this more than a month ago, so he only had rumours about the iPhone to go on. In particular, the name of the new phone hadn't been released: nobody imagined that Apple would pick a name that was already taken. And then there's the rather hefty price tag: the cheapest iPhone will set you back US$500. (I'm not alone in thinking this could be a deal-breaker.)

I have occasionally (ahem) been described as a techno-geek, and I'll admit that I can get pretty enthusiastic about new technology. I also own an iMac G5, which I quite like. But I think the time has come to upset the Apple cart.

Supporting the troops the war

The Ottawa International Airport has a large banner in the arrivals area proclaiming that "We Support Our Troops". I think it's worth considering what this means, so let's take it word by word ...

We

Who exactly is "We"? Perhaps the Ottawa Macdonald-Cartier International Airport Authority, since they're the ones who presumably authorized the banner. But isn't the airport a public place? Nobody asked my opinion.

Support

Perhaps the key word. As a taxpayer, I suppose it's a given that I support the troops financially. But let's cut to the chase: we're talking about the Afghanistan mission here, and I don't believe Canadian troops should be in Afghanistan. My disagreement is not with the troops themselves, it's with the foreign policy of the Canadian government.

Our Troops

The trouble is, the wording of the slogan seems to suggest that if you disagree with the presence of Canadian troops in Afghanistan, then somehow you're "against the troops". It brings to mind George W. Bush's infantile pronouncement that "You're either with us or against us". Is it just me, or does this sound a bit Orwellian? The standard left-wing response has been a modified slogan: "Support our troops: bring them home". A clever rejoinder, but I still wonder if we shouldn't challenge the whole framework.

Criticizing the Canadian military adventure in Afghanistan is not equivalent to passing moral judgement on individual soldiers.