Women take to the skies (but we are not there yet)

I was struck by one item in particular on a recent episode of DNTO (Definitely Not The Opera) on CBC about inspiring Canadian women.
Judy Cameron was the first ever female Canadian airline pilot. She qualified back in 1978, in what seems in retrospect to be a different planet. As she explains, she was not like the many boys who wanted to fly planes almost soon as they could walk, and she tells the story of how she found her love of flying belatedly when a macho guy took her up in a plane and tried to scare her silly with barrel rolls and loop-the-loops. Far from being nauseated and petrified, Judy loved the experience, and therein discovered her vocation.
She enrolled in a pilot course, totally unfazed by the fact that she was the only woman, and she dealt with the testosterone-heavy atmosphere as best she could. In one story she tells, she responded to the ubiquitous girly pinups by pinning up a centrefold from the then-new (and quite shocking) Playgirl magazine, not noticing that the model happened to be one of the instructors at the air academy.
Once qualifed, though, actually getting an airline to take her seriously and offer her employment in the old boys network that ran the airlines in the 1970s proved to be even more difficult. Eventually, it was the staid and monolithic Air Canada, of all airlines, that was the one to take a chance on her. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Ms. Cameron retired recently, after 37 years with Air Canada, and there was a distinct catch in her voice as she related how she entered the terminal building after her final flight to an honour guard of 20 female Air Canada pilots, all following in her pioneering footsteps.
I was impressed with how unassuming and matter-of-fact this ground-breaking woman came across in the radio interview. She seemed like a genuinely pleasant and fun person, bursting with energy and full of the joys of life. She is clearly a strong personality, but does not present herself as a hard-nosed ball-crusher of a feminist.
The sting in the tail at the end of interview, though, was the disclosure that, nearly 40 years after Ms. Cameron's breakthrough, a mere 5% of Canadian pilots are women. I certainly don't remember ever being flown by a female captain or even co-pilot, which, given that there are no real physical barriers to women in such a profession, is perhaps surprising, even shocking. In comparison, politics, law and finance are positively awash with women.
All of which prompted me to take a quick look at a Status of Women Canada report on the representation and participation of women in the labour force. It is actually quite an eye-opener. Among other snippets:

• women make up 47.3% of the labour force, up from 45.7% in 1999, and 37.1% in 1976;
• 64.4% of women with children under the age of 3 were employed, up from 27.6% in1976;
• the unemployment rate for women is 6.3%, lower than the 7% unemployment rate for men;
• BUT... nearly 70% of part-time workers are women, a rate that has not changed significantly in the last few decades;
• the average annual earnings of women has remained at about 71% that of men since the early 1990s, largely due to the prevalence of women in part-time jobs and lower-paid segments of the job market;
• even looking at full-time employees only, women earned an average hourly wage of about 87% that of men, up from 77% in 1981;
• women have sole ownership of about 14% of small businesses, and only 4% of medium-sized businesses;
• just 15.9% of directors of the top FP500 companies are women, and 40% of FP500 companies had no women directors at all;
• 27.1% of women are employed in the sales and service sector, 24.6% in business, finance and administration, and 16.8% in education, law, social, community and government services;
• the percentage of healthcare and social assistance jobs held by women is 82%, compared to 12% of construction jobs, 19% of forestry, fishing, mining, oil and gas jobs, and 30.5% of agricultural jobs;
• and perhaps it comes as no surprise, but just 5% of skilled trades workers in Canada are women, and women account for a measly 2% of carpentry apprentices, and 1.9% of plumbing apprentices.

So, some things have improved (some dramatically so), but some have remained depressingly consistent. Either way, we are definitely not there yet. Plus ça change...

Why Forcillo was only convicted of "attempted" murder

With all the media frenzy over the trial of police Constable James Forcillo for the 2013 streetcar killing of 18-year old low-life Sammy Yatim, I was forced to look up some details of Canadian law, which is not something I do regularly or lightly.
Forcillo was found guilty of attempted murder in the case, which I naively assumed just meant that the murder was second degree (i.e. not premeditated). But then I got to thinking, how can it be called "attempted murder"? Clearly, Forcillo "succeeded" in killing the boy, not just "attempted" (no fewer than 9 shots made sure of that). So, what, then, does "attempted murder" actually mean?
According to Wikipedia (and I have no reason to doubt it), under Canadian law, murder is a sub-category of culpable homicide in which a person causes the death of another either by an unlawful act, or by criminal negligence, or by causing them to bring out their own death (through threats, fear of violence or deception), or by wilfully frightening them to death. The other categories of culpable homicide are infanticide (the killing of a newborn baby by a mother) and manslaughter (killing a person in a manner considered less culpable than murder). OK, fair enough so far.
Within murder there are two types, first degree (in which the murder was either: planned and deliberate; contracted; committed during a hijacking, kidnapping or hostage-taking; committed as part of a sexual assault; committed during terrorist activity or while using explosives; or committed in association with criminal harassment or intimidation), and second degree (unhelpfully defined as being not first degree, but basically meaning not premeditated). So, no mention so far of attempted murder.
Again according to Wikipedia, attempted murder in the United States is an "inchoate" crime (meaning a crime of preparing for, or seeking to commit, another crime) where a perpetrator either tries to carry out a murder and fails, or takes a substantial step towards committing a murder (such as buying a gun and writing about their intent to kill someone). So, no one actually dies, which makes sense given the label "attempted". I can't find anything to suggest that attempted murder is anything different here in Canada.
None of this, then, appears to make any sense in the case of Constable Forcillo and our man Sammy. Or does it?
The best explanation I have found for the verdict was in the National Post (and also on CBC), and it all revolves around the rather bizarre circumstances of this particular case, some arcane legal technicalities, and probably an attempt at some sort of a compromise by the jury.
It seems that the jury acquitted Forcillo of second degree murder for the initial three shots he fired, the shots that actually killed Yatim, concluding that his reaction was justified in the circumstances and that he was acting reasonably in fear for his own safety and that of others (argue with that however you will). During the second volley of six shots, though, Forcillo was actually intent on murdering the guy, but given that (unbeknownst to Forcillo) Yatim was already dead at that point, it is legally impossible to make a conviction for murder, i.e. you can kill a guy who is already dead. Ergo, Forcillo was only attempting to murder Yatim with his final six shots, but did not actually murder him.
If that smacks to you of following the letter and not the spirit of the law, you may well be right. But, by the same token, it may well have avoided some Ferguson/Baltimore-style riots right here in Canada, and it may still be enough to chasten the police force into making some serious changes to their training and approach to tense situations.
And don't for a moment think that all this is over. There will be appeals, filings for stays of proceedings, and retrials, and in the meantime Constable Forcillo will be suspended on full pay (which is a whole other conversation we need to be having...)

Mozart 1 Haydn 0

Apropos of absolutely nothing at all, I came across this (much less contentious) snippet in my daily bathroom calendar, and I thought I would paraphrase it for all the world because it's kind of cool (in a non-contentious kind of way).
Back in the 1780s, Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart were the undisputed preeminent composers and pianists of the day. Haydn, the elder statesman of the two, challenged the upstart Mozart to compose a piece of piano music that he, Haydn, could not play, but that Mozart could, and he sweetened the deal with the promise of a good meal and several bottles of champagne.
Mozart's response was an apparently simple little ditty, but one that involved a progressively wider divergence of the two hands, the left towards the bass notes and the right towards the higher tones. Then, Mozart inserted a single note right in the middle of the keyboard.
Haydn was dismissive, saying that of course it was impossible to play, but Mozart claimed that he most certainly could, and he proceeded to perform the piece. When he reached the supposedly impossible section of the music, he played the disputed middle note with his pointy little nose, thus winning the bet and ensuring his place in bathroom calendars throughout the world.
What a wag was that Wolfie!

York University mural pro-Palestinian but not anti-Semitic

I seem to make an inordinate number of posts about Israel in these pages. I'm not in any way anti-Jewish, or even particularly pro-Palestinian for that matter. It's just that, on a reasonably regular basis, the state of Israel and Israeli politicians have a tendency to make these sweeping claims about how everyone else is being so anti-Semitic and unfair to them, and then they go right ahead and continue their indefensible crusade against Palestine and the Palestinian people. And don't get me started on the use of the label "anti-Semitic", which I have covered before.
Anyway, this time it is a Canadian, not an Israeli, making the sweeping statements. Paul Bronfman, film and TV producer and member of the outspoken Bronfman dynasty which made its billions in the alcohol business, is objecting to a painting displayed in the student centre of Toronto's York University. The painting is one of about 20 murals adorning the student centre, which were picked by a jury of students and faculty, and which have been there for some time now. Legally, the mural falls under the jurisdiction of the York Federation of Students, and the university itself cannot force its removal.
Bronfman says he is "outraged" by the painting, which depicts Palestinian resistance to the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory, and he has withdrawn his support from the university (one of his companies used to provide free filmmaking equipment to York students, and also invited them to training seminars).
The York Federation of Students has responded to Bronfman, saying that, “This painting is not anti-Semitic, as it is merely critical of the state of Israel and its continued occupation of Palestine.” But Bronfman dismissed this as “a bunch of political rhetoric … a bunch of political nonsense.” He blusters, “This mural has nothing to do with criticizing Israel. It’s purely anti-Semitic, hate propaganda. It not only infuriates me as a Jew but mostly as a Canadian. It should outrage Canadians.”
This seems to me to be just another attempt by a prominent Jew to deflect and distort anti-Israeli sentiment by recourse to the use of the epithet "anti-Semitic", which is often seen as a safe way of trumping all other concerns. You could almost call it a deliberate abuse of the collective guilt over of the Holocaust. It is a deliberate and disingenuous conflation of Israeli politics with issues of race and religion.
I think the best rebuttal of Mr. Bronfman's outrage comes from Lorne Sossin, the dean of York’s Osgoode Hall Law School and himself a Jew, who has strongly criticized “the idea that any group … should be able to unilaterally declare the views of others in our community as ‘hate’ and call on the university to censor them.”

Climate change more important than Islamic terrorism?

A Salon article today points out that substantially more people were killed in this last weekend's American snow storm than by Islamic terrorism in the whole of the 14 years since 9/11.
41 people were recorded as dying during January 2016's freak snow storm (dubbed Jonas) alone, mainly in car accidents, whereas a total of 40 Americans have died at the hands of Islamic jihadists since 2001 (this includes the horrendous San Bernardino attacks in December 2015, in which 14 were killed). Another 43 died in the extreme weather in December 2015, and the magazine made the same point then too. This, of course, also begs the question of the snow storm being a direct result of climate change, but there is compelling evidence to suggest that climate change is making extreme weather in general MORE extreme, and effectively supercharging winter storms like Jonas.
In fact, as the New York Times pointed out earlier last year, Islamic and Islamic-influenced terrorists have killed fewer Americans than non-Islamic terrorists (white supremacists, antigovernment fanatics and other non-Muslim extremists), who have been responsible for 48 deaths in 19 separate attacks since 9/11 (that figure as of June 2015).
I am always a little suspicious of this kind of comparison for transparently political ends, but it certainly makes you think, and it presents a viewpoint distinctly at odds with the usual narrative we read so often in the press (especially the American press).
Salon's point is presumably to back up Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders' argument that climate change is a much more important and immediate threat to American national security than Islamic terrorism (and indeed that Islamic terrorism is to some extent CAUSED by climate change).
I'm not sure that it is particularly beneficial to press the climate change-change-is-worse-than-terrorism line too far, but I have to say that it is quite refreshing to see an alternative view on the two subjects in American political debate.

Sarah Palin's tour de force speech

I have thoroughly enjoyed listening to and reading about Sarah Palin's endorsement of Donald Trump's presidential campaign, and particularly that one wonderfully complex, but utterly nonsensical, sentence that provided its apotheosis (starting at about 3:25 in this video).
Here is that sentence, in all its glory:
"And he, who would negotiate deals, kind of with the skills of a community organizer maybe organizing a neighbourhood tea, well, he deciding that, 'No, America would apologize', and, as part of the deal, as the enemy sends a message to the rest of the world that they capture and we kowtow and we apologize, and then, we bend over and say, 'Thank you, enemy'...'
There were several other moments in the speech of almost equal distinction and literary splendor. It was a political speech almost certainly destined to take its place in the Pantheon of American Political Rhetoric alongside Donald Rumsfeld's "known unknowns" speech, and has been described as performance art, as a filibuster, even as slam poetry. I have no idea what she was trying to say, but in a way it doesn't even matter. It is a stream of consciousness tour de force that carries with it its own justification and (probably) its own peculiar internal logic.
Mr. Trump seemed pleased with it, though. Maybe he is more attuned to Ms. Palin's idiosyncratic mode of expression than us mere mortals. It is kind of difficult to understand why he would want the endorsement of a polarizing politician best known for losing rather than winning, and for the antics of her progeny. But The Donald's approach to politics does not follow the usual rules or conventions.
In many ways, they deserve each other.

Renewable energy sees a welcome paradigm change

According to a recent National Geographic article, the renewables industry is managing to remain reasonably robust, even in this new era of cheap oil.
Many economics commentators seem to have just assumed that, with oil languishing at below $30 a barrel, the demand for renewable energy will just dwindle away to nothing. Indeed, there does seem to have been an uptick in sales of air travel and gas guzzling cars, with 2015 setting a new record for new vehicle sales in Canada (and probably elsewhere), largely thanks to sales of SUVs, pick-ups and vans, with a concomitant decrease in the sales of electric vehicles. How fickle and self-serving Joe Consumer is!
The economies and stock exchanges of oil exporting countries like Canada, Russia, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia have also taken a battering. But the renewable energy industry has, surprisingly, stayed remarkably buoyant. According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, 2015 saw a record $329 billion invested globally in renewables, as well as a record installation of renewable power capacity (up 30% from 2014). For example, 60% of the new generating capacity in the US came from renewables in 2015, and the figure is expected to be closer to 70% this year.
National Geographic points out several reasons for this.
Firstly, even as the prices of oil and gas have fallen, wind and solar energy has also become substantially cheaper, and they are likely to become cheaper still as the technology continues to advance. Renewables are now competitive with natural gas in most countries (oil itself, and gasoline, are not in direct competition with electricity generation sources like wind and solar), and many jurisdictions are actively trying to phase out carbon-intensive technologies like coal-burning, and are introducing stringent new regulations in order to achieve that.
Secondly, public opinion and public policy are finally favouring renewables, as more and more reports bring home the scale and the immediacy of the climate change problem. After the Paris accord, most countries now have obligations to cut their emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Some countries, such as India and China, are also looking to renewables to relieve their embarrassing and dangerous smog and pollution problems, and some developing countries just see it as a cheaper and quicker way of developing new generating capacity. Even some oil exporting countries are investing heavily in renewables in order to reduce home demand for oil and gas and thereby maximize stocks available for export.
Thirdly, there is also now strong support for renewables, no just from governments and municipalities, but from industry. Influence Map reports that half of the world's major companies now support taking measures to reduce greenhouse gases, and a third are in favour of some kind of a price on carbon. Whether this is purely out of self-interest and public relations is surely a moot point.
So, although it may perhaps seem counter-intuitive, there are many reasons why renewable energy is continuing to enjoy a boom, even in this age of dirt-cheap oil. Who knows, this may even herald a new era for wind and solar, and mark a welcome paradigm change in the way we produce and use our power.

Marco Rubio's goal is apparently "eternity"

The bizarro religious advertising of Marco Rubio has to be seen to be believed, at least for those of us living outside the United States, and not accustomed to this kind of excessive religiosity in our politics.
Rubio is a Cuban-American mainstream conservative politician. He is currently lying in third place in the Republican primaries, and is considered a relatively sensible and moderate candidate (by Republican standards). If Trump and Cruz's campaigns implode, which is far from unlikely, he could be left as the official GOP candidate for the US presidency. He could even become the next President.
Rubio was brought up Catholic, became a Mormon for a while, and then a devotee of the Southern Baptist and vehemently anti-gay marriage "superchurch" known as the Christ Fellowship. Apparently, he now considers himself both a Catholic and a Christ Fellowship adherent (read into that what you will).
Like the other Republican presidential candidates, he is expected to wear his religion on his sleeve in an attempt to appeal to the fundamentalist Christian base of the Republican party. Hence this 30-second video.
Setting aside the cloying, sickly sweet impression the video leaves, some of the stuff he says is really quite alarming. It includes phrases like: "Our goal is eternity, the ability to live alongside our creator for all time", "The purpose of our life is to cooperate with God’s plan", and "I try to allow that to influence me in everything that I do".
This may be fine for a Sunday morning minister speaking from the pulpit, I suppose. But are they appropriate for a politician who purports to represent real people in this world? Are these really the thought processes we look for in the so-called leader of the so-called free world? I think not.