politics

Reasonable Doubt: Empowering Climate Catastrophe Denial

Climate researchers need the freedom to question widely accepted views but most find that theory isn't enough to inoculate them against the madness of millions shouting in unison - what they need is a simple, concrete, fact or illustration capable of producing a reaction sufficiently analogous to a child's response to the emperor's lack of clothes to free them to act on the facts.

Explaining the health care disaster in Canada (2011)

(First written Dec  2011, edited several times since.)

September 2011 featured a leadership race in the Alberta Conservative party - with the winner, Alison Redford, inheriting a legislative majority and thus the premier's job. All six of the candidates faced a continual barrage of complaints about the health care system and all six promised to find the money and policies needed to fix it - with four offering magical handwaves; one promising to break federal law to bring in private money; and Ms. Redford committing to increased public spending on nursing care.

 

The 2019 MacKinnon Report: healthcare recommendations

My impresson from the MacKinnon Report and Recommendations is that the panel was told to find ways to cut the overall budget, interpreted this in part as an instruction to find ways to justify an already made decision to cut the budget, and decided that recommendations based on comparisons to per capita costs for comparably named programs and services in other provinces would satisfy a political agenda they disagreed with while leading the politicans behind it to destroy themselves.

Alberta Traffic and Safe Speed Zones (2010 - revised 2017)

Alberta safe speed zones

(Written in 2010, revised in 2016)

Nearly everybody drives, and nearly everybody has an opinion on both traffic law and traffic law enforcement, but as a society we don't know what works, or what doesn't, because the answers aren't obvious; because police, journalists, and government all line up to favor more enforcement; and because access to the data needed to understand what's happening is largely restricted to those representing regulatory and enforcement agencies with regulatory and enforcement agendas.

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