Here’s your Canadian Atheist Weekly Update for to .
![[Photo of Maryam Monsef holding up a sheet of paper with the equation for the Gallagher Index of election proportionality on it (which is just a simple least squares regression).]](https://www.canadianatheist.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/maryam-monsef-gallagher-index-200x171.jpg)
Yet somehow the Trudeau government manages to approve two pipelines, despite how much more complex pipeline flow equations are.
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[] What the Bible Says about Prayer Versus Reality
A deep, no-holds-bar dive into the history of prayer efficacy research, and its rather unsurprising results.
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[] Fake Science News Is Just As Bad As Fake News
The funniest part of all this, for me, is the bit at the end where Spears talks about his ongoing efforts at haggling down the price.
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[] Toronto lifts curtain on extremism prevention plan quietly operating for more than 2 years
This is a very interesting article that discusses at length the processes and challenges of the police’s deradicalization efforts.
h/t Derek Gray
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[] Dictionary.com’s Word Of The Year Captures How Much 2016 Has Sucked
Also worth mentioning is The Beaverton’s “word of the year” article.
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[] Peel board met behind closed doors with Muslim community over sermons
This is a follow-up to a story from a couple weeks ago about the Peel District School Board wanting to censor Muslim students’ prayers. No progress has been made yet; it was just a closed consultation to gather information.
h/t Derek Gray
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[] Archive.org Moving To Canada Over Trump Censorship Fears
This is pretty cool, actually. Not just for empty national pride at having a copy of the Internet Archive on our soil, but because it’s an indication that Canada is seen as a relatively safe place to store information. (Understandable, given what’s happened in the US, and what’s happening right now in the UK with regards to privacy and legal snooping.)
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[] First-ever Indigenous Freedom of Religion Case Heads to Canada’s Supreme Court
This is one of those sad cases where it doesn’t really matter who wins, reason loses either way.
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[] Maryam Monsef Tries To Use Math Formula To Mock Electoral Reform Committee
I’ve written about the Gallagher Index in the past (and for this blog, too), and I understand the math behind it quite well (it’s just a basic least squares regression; she’s literally just copied the equation off Wikipedia), so I know what Monsef is talking about… so I can say pretty authoritatively that she’s just insulting everyone’s intelligence, trying to frighten them with SCARY MATH!!!1!!11!
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“an indication that Canada is seen as a relatively safe place to store information”
Anybody who knows their stuff knows that Canada is one of the LAST places you want to store information.
It was probably a tradeoff between pragmatism and censorship, and they favoured pragmatism.
In any case, the real solution to preserving culture has nothing to do with centralized storage, and the Archive’s solution is sadly centralized.
“frighten them with SCARY MATH!!!1!!11!”
This reveals the lie that the Liberals are somehow more science-friendly. This quota appointee opposed her own partisans on the committee, and her own party’s election campaign, by complaining about a high-school math formula being too hard. She is an insult to women, an insult to Liberals, and an insult to Canadians.