Ontario as a province is not faring well

Here's a slightly shocking article about the province of Ontario from TheHub.ca. Assuming that the source data is real, Ontario, Canada's largest and richest province, is also one of the country's greatest underperformers on a whole host of indicators.

(TheHub.ca has a centre-right political bias, but is considered High in terms of factual reporting, according to Media Bias/Fact Check.)

I have seen my province taking the wrong course for some years now under the populist leadership of a grinning Doug Ford. But, although Ford and his Conservatives also get a failing grade, this articles suggests that the rot set in much earlier, including under the Liberal governments of Dalton McGuinty snd Kathleen Wynne.

With its low-carbon power grid, world-class universities, and a diverse and well-educated population, Ontario should be a star among Canadian provinces. But according to this article, it is actually stagnant, slow-moving and structurally stuck.

Among the exhibits of evidence, the article lists:

• In the year 2000, Ontario's real GDP per capita was 5% higher than the rest of Canada; today it is 3% lower. Over that.same period, Ontario's real GDP per capita grew at 0.55% per year, while the rest of Canada grew at 0.91%.
• Real median incomes for young people (25-34) have grown about 9% since 2000, compared to 20% for Canada as a whole, and over 30% in Quebec and the Atlantic provinces. In Toronto, the real median incomes of young people actually fell by 4.5%.
• Ontario's current unemployment rate is currently 7.9%, compared to 7.0% nationally. In Toronto, it is almost 9%, and youth unemployment a staggering 16.3%, up from 10.9% just three years ago. This increase is also higher than on Canada as a whole, and higher than any other single province.

The article goes on to elaborate on the author's explanations for these alarming statistics, which strays into the domain of politics and opinions, rather than straight economics, so I will spare you that. But the bare stats themselves are certainly food for thought (although, annoyingly, the stats and graphs lack credits and sources).

The extraordinary Mr. Ramesh

I'm still trying to wrap my head around how Mr. Vishwashkumar Ramesh, in seat 11A, managed to literally walk away from the horrendous Air India plane crash in Ahmedabad, India, when all 241 other passengers and crew died.

The way he tells it, an "opening" appeared in the fuselage after the plane crashed into a doctors' residence in the busy city, and "I managed to unbuckle myself, using my leg to push through that opening, and crawled out". 

Well, that all sounds quite straightforward. But, hold on, the plane crashed into buildings, exploded and burst into flames! Everybody - and I mean everybody - else died! This guy literally walked away from the conflagration. "I walked out of the rubble", he deadpans. He was not even particularly badly injured, and was only kept in hospital for "observation" (they probably couldn't figure out how he survived either). He seemed more worried about his brother than anything else. (His brother was among the dead.)

If this was a movie, he would turn out to have superpowers, or be an alien or a shapeshifter or something. But Mr. Ramesh seems to be just a regular businessman living in Leicester, UK, of all places.

It's an extraordinary story, but I'm still waiting for some shock revelation to come out of it. I don't think Mr. Ramesh is who he says he is...

Eden Ecology and Indigenous Ecology

CBC recently re-broadcast an interesting Ideas episode called "Healing the Land" (actually in two parts: After the Fire, and From Eden Ecology to Indigenous Ecology).

I'm not normally too impressed with what I've heard about indigenous thought on ecology and environmentalism, which I find to be quite often overly simplistic and idealistic, often incorporating a lot of quasi-religious mumbo-jumbo. But this doc, particularly the second part, made me sit up and listen.

For one thing, it introduced me to the concepts of Eden Ecology snd Indigenous Ecology, and the differences between the two. Eden Ecology (not particularly well-named) is traditional mainstream ecological thought, based on the idea that, after a catastrophic event like a major fire, a wild area should be returned, as far as possible, to what it was before the fire. So, the same trees, etc, should be replanted, in an attempt to return it to how it was just before the fire, on the assumption that that is how it should be, and how it has always been.

Of course, there is no such thing as "how it has always been", as biomes constantly change over time (hence my quibble with the label "Eden Ecology").

Indigenous Ecology, on the other hand, at least as expounded here,  seems to be more flexible and more pragmatic. It is more concerned with returning the land to something healthy and productive. Whether that is the same as it most recently was is less important. Thus, if a region was ill-adapted to the current (and future) climate in a warming world, then Indigenous Ecology would say re-plant different trees, ones that are better adapted to the current (and future) climate. 

Interestingly, they would even be on board with technology like genetic engineering and CRISPR to make the land more resilient if need be, which surprised me. And, as for maintenance of the land, Indigenous Ecology has always been much more in favour of smaller prescribed forest burns in order to avoid larger catastrophic fires.

Interesting stuff. Maybe I will be less inclined to to write off Indigenous environmental philosophy as hopelessly romantic and idealistic in the future.

Trump's "war on science" summarized

Donald Trump's all-out assault on pure and applied science, and on academia in general, has been widely reported in the news media. But, as it has come in bits and pieces over a period of time, it is hard to get an overall picture of just how bad things are (which I'm sure was an intentional ploy by the administration).

An Economist article tries to collect it all together and put it in some perspective, something that The Economist does so well. The article's title, "Looming disaster", give a sneak preview of their analysis. Without going into the kind of detail the article provides, a quick summary might be the following: 

The US federal government doles out about $120 billion every year to research, of which about $50 billion goes towards tens for thousands of grants and contracts to universities and other higher education institutions, the rest going to public research bodies. The proposed cuts to federal research and grant-making agencies - like the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Defence (DoD), the Department of Energy (DoE), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Environmental Protection Agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDCC), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) - probably amount to about $40 billion a year, although that could well go up as new features are announced piecemeal (and apparently randomly and deliberately chaotically). 

Also, some areas that have  particularly attracted Trump's spleen are disproportionately affected, something that these overall figures do not reflect. Trump, and the administration that carries out his every imperial whim, seems to have a problem with science in general, but in particular he wants to clamp down on anything to do with DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion), sexual orientation and transgender issues, climate change, misinformation research, COVID-19 and vaccination.

Thus, the NIH and NSF between them have cancelled over 3,000 already-approved grants, some of them worthy projects like cancer research that just happen to mention words like "equity", " sexual orientation", even "Latinx". Anything that appears "woke", even superficially or incidentally, is a target. Any criticism of Israel, or even a perceived lack of enthusiasm in countering "antisemitism" (in its broadest, and often misleading, sense) will also attract financial humiliation, as in the cases of Harvard and Columbia Universities. In some cases, Trump or one of his henchmen may just have a personal grudge against an organization or an individual. And in some cases, it is entirely unclear why projects are being cancelled, and transparency and justification is not a requirement. 

The Economist article gives many more details and examples, and it makes grim reading. Other articles in the same issue look at how the cuts to science funding might affect ordinary Americans, and how all the uncertainty in American research, once the envy of the world, is resulting in a new academic brain drain. Compelling, but chilling, reporting.

Trump's tariffs will not bring in the revenue he expects

In addition to punishing successful foreign countries and supposedly encouraging the USA to produce more ofnits own goods instead of importing them, the Trump administration maintains that the ever-changing tariffs will bring in a huge bonanza of cash to America's coffers. That seems less likely than the administration would like to admit.

Peter Navarro, Trump's trade guru claims that the tariffs will bring in $6 trillion over the next ten years, or about $600 billion a year. This is based on a back-of-an-envelope calculation - actually, it doesn't even require an envelope - of last year's annual imports of $3.3 trillion multiplied by 20%, which is his guess of where the effective rate of tariffs might eventually settle down.

Such a calculation, however, ignores a whole bunch of economic dynamics and known unknowns, including the fact that tariffs reduce demand for foreign goods, shrink the tax base, depress income and payroll taxes, foment retaliation and levy-dodging by exporters, etc, etc.

Others have tried to come up with a figure for increased tariff revenues, and they are much more modest. The Penn Wharton Budget Model estimates revenues of about $290 billion a year. The Budget Lab at Yale forecasts $180 billion a year. The Tax Foundation estimates a paltry $140 billion a year.

Well, I say "paltry". These are huge figures, but much less than Trump is counting on, and much much less than the massive income tax cuts he is thinking of offering to his voting base. And in the meantime, he has pissed off the rest of the world and squandered any goodwill they may have harboured towards America, and most countries are looking for any possible avenues to avoid dealing with the US at all.

Requests for unvaccinated blood transfusions have spiked

While we are on the subject of vaccinations, another article brings up the idea - and the problem - of requests for unvaccinated blood for blood transfusions.

Yes, it seems that some people gravely ill in hospital are picky about where their lifesaving blood donation comes from. And, as happened after the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, the COVID-19 pandemic, and all the misinformation swirling around it, has led to a huge increase in requests for "directed donations". 

In the 1980s, this manifested as people requesting blood donations from friends and relatives, because they thought they couldn't trust the general anonymous blood supply. Ironically, as it happens, blood donations from family members actually turns out to pose increaed risks for blood safety, but that was not known back then.

Today, directed donations requests mainly stem from misinformation about the safety of COVID-19 vaccinations. Predictably, it has been proven repeatedly that "vaccination status has no impact on blood safety", but you try explaining that to a paranoid conspiracy theorist who believes everything they read on X.

Meanwhile, hospitals and blood transfusion suppliers still have to have these kinds of blood donations on hand in case they are requested. Every directed unit of blood needs to be collected, labelled and stored separately, and may have to be discarded if not used in time. Some transfusion patients have almost died due to the difficulty in getting such directed donations to the hospital in time, despite other (perfectly good) blood being easily and quickly available.

This is just one more example of the way in which medical and political misinformation impacts the health sector, and one I must admit I'd never even thought about.

Kennedy's justification for COVID vaccination changes is just plain wrong

Noted anti-vaxxer and all-around flake Robert F. Kennedy, inexplicably raised to the influential position of Health Secretary of the United States, is at it again.

First, he fires all the government advisors on vaccination and COVID-19, all 17 members of the CDC's vaccine advisory committee. Kennedy says that replacing the sitting committee members (mainly appointed by Joe Biden, as it happens) would help with the  "restoration of public trust". What?!

Then, he pulls the longstanding recommendation for pregnant women to get COVID shots. This one he tries to justify scientifically, but fails miserably.

Kennedy has circulated a document on Capital Hill which purports to explain the scientific logic of his decision, and cites "a number of studies" that he maintains support his position. Except that the authors of some of those studies warn that Kennedy's conclusions are misleading, and that "the results of our manuscript were misinterpreted". 

Using the raw study data alone gives a misleading impression of the results, as most scientists understand. After adjusting for factors like age, rurality, income, immigration status, and comobidities, the research found "no association between SARS-CoV-2 vaccination and an increased risk of miscarriage". Other studies, including ones cited by Kennedy(!), confirmed this. 

Furthermore, contracting COVID itself definitely IS associated with serious maternal and neonatal morbidity. So, given a choice of risking catching COVID or getting a vaccination shot, which has also been shown to protect the newborn babies, vaccination is most definitely the way to go. 

You would not get that impression from Kennedy's explanatory letter to lawmakers, though. In this hyper-partisan world we live in, Republicans will typically accept Kennedy's explanation, while Democrats (who also tend to be a bit more discerning and critical) will probably not. So, really, the whole exercise is pretty pointless and cynical.

But, of course, without a panel of independent health advisors, there is no-one to contradict Kenendy now (or at least no-one who might be listened to).

Companies pull back from environmental aspirations

Another day, and another outcry that environmental and other regulations must be sacrificed in order to achieve the current categorical imperative: building up the Canadian economy and showing those damned Americans that we don't need them. It's all about 'nation-building" and "fast-tracking" right now.

This one comes from GM Canada, never actually a model of environmental and moral probity, it has to be said. GM Canada President Kristian Aquilina gripes that Canada's electric vehicle (EV) mandate is totally unattainable and therefore should be scrapped. He says that none of his traditional automaker competitors are even close to achieving the targets either, so why should GM try?

The EV targets, brought in back in the heady idealistic days of 2022, call for 20% of new car sales to be battery powered in 2026, rising to 60% by 2030, and 100% by 2035. This, in the interests of, you know, the environment. Where we actually are is that, in 2024, 13.8% of new Canadian vehicle sales were EVs. So, not THAT far off, but still a steep hill to climb.

Sure, these are ambitious targets, but just because something is hard doesn't mean you don't do it, or don't even try to do it. Aquilina blames a lack of infrastructure investments and consumer incentives for the lack of uptake, but that's just him blaming someone - anyone - else. How much effort has he put into achieving the targets?

Demand for EVs, while still increasing in Canada, is increasing slower in recent months, not least because of Trump's anti-EV crusade south of the border, which affects us too for some reason. (EV growth is slowing gravely in the US.)

So, to some extent Aquilina is correct - as things stand, the targets will not be met. But rather than redouble efforts, efforts that have arguably been lacklustre anyway, he chooses to whine, and argue that the targets be withdrawn completely. Aquilina seems to forget that he has some agency too, and that he doesn't have to just sit back and hope that the demand magically appears. 

My feeling is that he (and GM) never really had any intentions of trying to achieve the targets, and was just waiting for a backlash like Trump has engineered to save him from the trouble of even going through the motions. Change is hard, and hard is to be avoided if at all possible.

This is just another environmental initiative that is suffering a perilous set-back in recent months, as the Trump effect takes hold here too. From "postponed" battery plant investments to increased interest and activity in fossil fuel pipelines, LNG plants, etc, there has been a marked pull-back from all things environmental. It pains me to imagine how things might have been right now had Trump lost that election.

Industry Minister Melanie Joly has recently announced that the federal government will bring back the EV incentive program (a $5,000 rebate for EVs and $2,500 for hybrids), but it's hard to see how much effect that will have in a climate [sic] where industry, individuals and governments seem to be looking for any excuses not to make the needed changes.

AI is making us dumber, and there is nothing we can do about it

It comes as no surprise, but some pretty robust research by Michael Gerlich at the Centre for Strategic Corporate Foresight and Sustainability (who comes up with these names?) in Zurich has confirmed what most people already knew: there is a "significant negative correlation" between the use of generative AI (think ChatGPT) and critical thinking abilities. 

So, higher dependence on AI is associated with lower critical thinking scores, particularly among younger people between 17 and 25 years of age. You'll note I say "associated with" rather than "results in", because technically the research does not show causation, merely association, but I think we all know what is really going on here.

This is not the only such study suggesting the same. A KPMG study last year found that 59% of post-secondary students are using AI in their school work, and two-thirds of those students admit that they don't think they are learning as much or retaining as much knowledge. A Chinese/Australian study found that using AI gave a "short -term boost", but "long-term skill stagnation" (and many participants used the AI to cheat in the study despite being specifically directed not to!) Most teachers and lecturers will tell you the same, anecdotally.

Part of the problem is that many students have a cynical attitude towards university and college education: they are not there to learn for learning's sake; they just want a qualification to get them into whatever job they have set their minds on. They will do that in any way they can, and preferably with the least effort possible. Imagine teaching in such an environment! "It's terrible to teach in times of AI", remarked one weary professor. But an aversion to putting in unnecessary effort is a general human failing too.

Of course, this debate goes on whenever any new technology comes in, whether it be calculators, computers, the internet, GPS, etc. Hell, it goes all the way back to Socrates, who warned that the newfangled fashion of writing things down would surely erode out memories and our debating skills (although, as the article points out, we only know about Socrates' views because Plato wrote them down!)

But that doesn't mean that the debate is moot. It has been proven that people who regularly use GPS to navigate their way through life have atrophied hippocampus regions in their brains (the hippocampus is the seat of our spatial memories, but also of a bunch of other learning and memory functions). And yes, the generations brought up using calculators are indeed worse at mental arithmetic. (I know, I am one.) It makes sense.

There have been attempts to play down the negativity. Teachers back in the 1970s argued that allowing students to use calculators for rote arithmetic freed up brain-power and time for them to focus on more complex and challenging mathematical concepts, which may have been true, at least in some general semse.

In the same way, researchers and educators have looked for a silver lining in AI. About the best they have come up with is that students could use AI as a kind of intellectual sparring partner, to push for evidence, alternative views and logical gaps before writing up their answers. They can bounce ideas off computers just as they can with their fellow students or professors. But this is not a natural habit, and students would need to be taught this new way of learning. And anyway, what's to stop them from going the whole hog and getting the computer to write the essay entirely?

It's a thorny problem, and not one that's going to go away. AI is being incorporated into everything, whether we want it or not. OpenAI recently gave post-secondary students in Canada and the US access to a premium version of ChatGPT for a limited time. These are commercial companies that want to spread their products as widely as possible. The horse has well and truly left the barn, and the genie is out of the bottle; there is no going back. 

The first step is to recognize that there is a potential problem. But how we deal with it now is anyone's guess - I haven't seen a convincing solution yet.

Trump's latest legal "victory" is a scary development for democracy

In yet another step down the road towards American totalitarianism, two Trump-appointed appeals judges have overruled a lower court ruling in Trump's favour.

The US Court of Appeals for the DC Citcuit has ruled that the Trump administration is within its rights to pick and choose which news media can access (and ask awkward questions at) media scrums at the White House Oval Office, on the Airforce One plane, and in other (unspecified) "restricted presidential spaces".

The initial law suit was brought by Associated Press (AP), one of the world's largest, oldest and most respected news organizations, which was banned from Oval Office for not following Trump's edict of calling the Gulf of Mexico the "Gulf of America". Given that AP is a global organization and the rest of the world still uses the historical and generally-recognized "Gulf of Mexico" label, that seems pretty reasonable to me, but the Trump administration has used this as an excuse to bar AP from Oval Office media events, despite them being part of the White House press pool. AP took them to court over it, and won in a lower court.

The ruling was appealed to a Trump-appointed majority appeals court, which has now reversed that decision, in a 2-1 decision, arguing, unconvincingly, that the Oval Office and certain other areas are "not First Amendment fora" (i.e. that freedom of speech does not apply there), and that the White House can indeed restrict journalistic access "on the basis of viewpoint" in the President's "private workspaces".

The (Obama-appointed) dissenting judge called this "a novel and unsupported exception to the First Amendment's prohibition of viewpoint-based restrictions of private speech", arguing that such a precedent would potentially lead to media outlets self-censoring what they write about Trump for fear of being "uninvited" to subsequent events. 

Which is, of course, exactly what Trump wants. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt (whom I am learning to hate at least as much as some of the many objectionable Trump press secretaries of the past) crowed online that "we will continue to expand access to new media ... rather than just the failing legacy media", by which she means friendly right-wing influencers rather than critical (or even objective) professional journalists.

AP say they are reviewing their legal options at this point, although recourse to the mainly Trump-appointed Supreme Court may be pointless, because these supposedly legal decisions have become purely political and partisan. It's a sad truth.

Is Israel carrying out war crimes and genocide?

The BBC has produced another of their excellent debates, this one on the Israel-Gaza conflict, and more specifically on whether Israel is carrying out war crimes and genocide.

Spoiler alert: No surprise - yes, it is. 

Decarbonized oil is magical thinking

Hmm. As Prime Minister Carney tries to square the circle and get all the provincial premiers pulling in the same direction, one phrase keeps recurring that gives me, at best pause for thought, at worst the heebie-jeebies. That phrase is "decarbonized oil". 

Carney talks a good Western Canadian game when he assures everyone that he is in favour of new oil pipelines to get Alberta and Saskatchewan oil "to tidewater", as the current idiom has it. But this is not just any old oil, this is "decarbonized oil", according to Carney. Even hardliner Danielle Smith seems on board with the idea, which she calls the "grand bargain".

Well, that's OK, then: if the oil is decarbonized who could possibly complain? But, wait, "decarbonized oil"? Is that a thing?

Actually, no, there is no such thing as decarbonized oil, it turns out. Oil executives even talk about "taking the carbon out of the barrel", as though such a magical thing were possible. It's not. Not is there any likelihood of such a thing occurring the foreseeable future.

What Carney and Smith appear to be talking about is Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage (CCUS, or more commonly, just CCS). So, the oil being produced, sold and used, either here or abroad, is not decarbonized at all. But, they argue, if at the same time we are able to scrub carbon out the production porcess, even out of the very air, and maybe even use it in other industrial processes, then it's as good as the same thing, right?

Unfortunately, CCS is not a thing either, despite what Pathways Alliance's advertising campaigns suggest. Currently, CCS captures just 0.5% of Canada's national emissions. And, even it were to be ramped up, the cost of scaling it up to such a level that it matched the carbon burden of our oil production would be astronomical. 

And this is to say nothing of the carbon emissions resulting from the subsequent  burning of that oil and gas (downstream emissions make up as much as 80% of oil and gas' overall emissions).

So, this is is some sleight of hand, then. To call it disingenuous is much too merciful. This is deception, mendacity. Mark Carney, once a committed environmentalist - or so he seemed - should be ashamed. I'm not saying that he shouldn't have been elected (the alternative was too horrible to contemplate).

I know he's stuck between a rock (Newfoundland) and a hard place (Alberta). And I know that he needs to respond to all the crap that's coming from the Orange Menace in the USA (although we don't have to emulate it). But, really, it's disappointing. At a time when the rest of the world is following the money into clean energy investment, Canada has to follow Alberta and the USA into the 20th century backwaters of fossil fuels.

Ostriches may be cute, but rules is rules

A small ostrich farm in northern British Columbia had been receiving outsized media coverage in recent weeks over a government cull order for several hundred ostriches in a flock where many birds have already died from H5N1 bird flu.

Governments across the world are acting to avoid a worldwide avian flu pandemic, instituting some harsh rules. If even a single bird tests positive for avian flu, the whole flock has to be killed and carefully disposed of, and the farms are quite generously compensated for their losses. Nearly 15 million birds (mainly chickens, geese and ducks) have already been culled in Canada alone as a result, and over 173 million in the USA. 

Now, most of these were in commercial operations, where the birds don't have names or come when called. But some were in backyard flocks, and I'm sure tears were shed. Universal Ostrich Farms has, thus far, deliberately ignored the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) directive, and is playing for time,  calling for a judicial rule, among other things. The CFIA has already ruled that the farm has often disregarded "regulatory compliance and animal standards".

Now, I'm pretty sure ostriches are no more affectionate than chickens, but they are strange and curious animals, and people from all over the world people have been captivated by the news of their plight. The farm has employed unabashed emotional appeals, and is actively inviting visitors, which seems ill-advised for a facility under quarantine. It has also been hitting social media hard, trying to make this into an anti-establishment cause célèbre in the mould of the "Freedom Convoy", I guess. 

The case has also become a political football, not so much in Canada but in the hyper-politicized USA, where ultra-rightwing Rebel News has taken up the cause, as have the likes of noted anti-vaxxer (and now US Secretary of Health snd Human Services) Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and broadcaster and discredited quack (and now Administrator of the US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) Dr. Mehmet Oz.

But rules is rules, as someone famous once said, and Universal Ostrich Farms need to comply with them. They have already paid out $20,000 in non-compliance fines. They would get $3,000 per culled bird in compensation, so they may need to kill a few to pay off their fines.

However cute ostriches may be, as they bat their huge eyelashes, there is an international public health crisis going on, and cute just doesn't cut it.

Spelling bees may have jumped rhe shark

Maybe you always thought that spelling bees were kind of geeky and ridiculous. I actually used to think they were pretty cool, but in recent years they may have got out of hand and jumped the shark.

The 2025 Scripps National Spelling Bee - the big one - was won by the correct spelling of the word "éclaircissement". The previous word, which almost caught the contestant out, was "commelina". So, kudos to 13-year old Faizan Zaki for getting these right. But these are not English words.

"Éclaircissement" is obviously French, and with a bit of basic French you can figure out what it means. "Commelina" is the Latin name for a flower, but most English-speaking people would just say "dayflower" should they ever need to reference it.

Now, I understand about loanwords, and how they have immeasurably enriched and broadened - made unweildy, you might say - the English language. But I would argue that these are not loanwords at all. These are foreign words, not in general usage. Sure, they may appear in one or two of the more comprehensive dictionaries, but they are not words that even the most erudite speakers would use in an actual conversation.

Their spellings are being asked in the Scripps Spelling Bee because modern contestants - principally Indian-Americans, as far as I can tell, obsessively coached by over-achieving fathers and dragon mothers - are so good, having spent years of their childhoods poring over dictionaries, that regular English words are just too easy.

So, what is a self-respecting national spelling competition to do? If they were to stick to regular English words, the competition would go on forever (or until one contestants fell asleep from exhaustion). There is, then, no real alternative to including all manner of foreign and technical words.

In the process, though, it has become a test of rote memorization of dictionaries, and it loses any human element an amateur spelling bee might once have had. And I hate to think what kinds of lives these young kids live en route to their brief stardom in the Scripps National Spelling Bee.