I blame the wackos

Vincent J. Curtis

18 Feb 2019

[although this is Hamilton specific, it contains observations about environmentalism in general.]

  

Trouble with the Red Hill Expressway?  Water doesn’t drain away quick enough?  Road weaves too much?  Asphalt a little slick?

I blame the wackos – the environmentalist wackos who have afflicted the Expressway project since the 1970s.

You have to be of a certain age to remember the vigor and intensity of the opposition to building a road that became part of Hamilton’s official transportation plan in 1963.  Remember the save the valley campaign of the 1970s and early 1980s?  The professional integrity of every engineer who supported the plan was unscrupulously attacked.  The NDP government of Bob Rae withheld funding.  When construction finally began, wackos were trying to live in trees to halt it.  This die-in-the-last-ditch resistance was based ostensibly on environmentalism.

The environmentalist wackos claimed that the rare Red Hill flying squirrel would go extinct if the road were built.  The wackos claimed that the Red Hill valley was a “lung” of the city, purifying the air, and the city would be overwhelmed with air pollution if a road was run down the “lung.”  No objection went unused.

The Consolidated Hearings Board of 1985 recommended approval of the project to the Ontario government with a proviso that the design of the road take into account some of the concerns of the wackos.

An important thing to understand about environmentalism is that it places a higher value on the “environment” – whatever that means - than it does on human life.  One concern of the wackos was that storm run-off from the road would “scour” the bed of the Red Hill creek, whose course, being natural, mustn’t be touched.  Well, some modification was inevitable, but the engineers took the rate of run-off concern seriously.  There are large catch basins at the top of the Expressway that collect run-off, and the flow into the creek is throttled.  The initial design didn’t work out so well, and some flooding of homes occurred.

The banking of curves in roads is important in the speed at which those curves can be safely taken.  The greater the banking, the higher the safe speed.  But the higher the banking, the faster the run-off of water.  If the degree of banking were low to reduce the speed of run-off, and hence the “scouring” of the creek bed, it would mean that water would remain on the road longer and the safe speed of the curve would be lower – wet or dry.

If, in addition, the road were made curvy rather than straight in order to accommodate the existing creek bed and to reduce the rate of run-off, you create a road that imposes more lateral forces on the traffic than is necessary.  Lateral forces that engage with the low banking in the unnecessary curves.

Two other gestures to the wackos were: to call the road a “Parkway” rather than an “Expressway” and to set the speed limit at a low 90 kph.  Under normal conditions, a highway speed of 100 kph would be expected, and I’m sure a speed study would show that average traffic speeds are at least that or more.  The difference between normal highway speed and posted speed limit tends to create a differential of 30 kph under normal conditions, on a curvy road with low banking.  On dry pavement in daylight, no big problem.

On wet pavement or at night, a large speed differential could become a problem if drivers don’t adapt to the conditions and if slow drivers don’t politely stay in the right lane.  Straight road, less of a problem.

It’s rich to watch vengeful wackos laugh in grim triumph as the city encounters alleged problems with the Expressway.  If the city is having problems is it because the traffic engineers who designed the road didn’t follow the purest principles of good road construction but shaved at the edges to accommodate the concerns of the wackos?

The climate of recrimination created by wacko tactics in the past may be corrupting management of the problems caused by accommodating wacko concerns.

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Vincent J. Curtis testified in support of the Expressway before the Consolidated Hearings Board in 1985.

Spec reported Matthew Van Dongen confirmed my point about margins of safety being compromised by meeting environmentalist's objections in an article headlined, "More light needed on crash-prone Red Hill." 20 Feb 2019.

Inglis. Hi-Power. 75 Years. (Get Some!)

Vincent J. Curtis

12 Oct 2018

As Esprit de Corps’ resident Colonel Blimp, an “old Cold War warhorse,” an archaic ‘death or glory type’, I’d like to put a good word for Canada’s old armaments makers.  Specifically, John Inglis and Company.

You would be correct to associate John Inglis with Bren guns, of which it made some 186,000 examples during the Second World War.  But it is also famous for the Inglis Hi-Power pistol, which the Canadian army adopted as its standard sidearm in 1944.  These self-same handguns are now completing their 75^th year of continuous service in the Canadian armament inventory.

The Inglis Hi-Power eclipses in duration of service the Colt M1911, which was the standard issue U.S. sidearm from 1911 to 1985, a total of 74 years.  The M1911, another John Browning design, was manufactured in several batches: for World War I, in the 1920s and 1930s, and then in another massive wave during World War II.  None of the guns made in 1911 served all the way through to 1985.  The handguns made by John Inglis and in service to this day were made between February 1944 and October 1945.

The Hi-Power was John Browning’s last design, and he did not live to complete it.  Working with Fabrique Nationale, Browning sought to develop a pistol that would meet the requirements issued by the French military in the 1920s for a new pistol: a high capacity, semi-automatic in nine millimetre calibre and with a magazine disconnect safety device.  Browning’s collaborator at FN was Dieudonné Saive who developed the double-stacked, single feed magazine that is now standard today in practically all modern high capacity pistols.  Browning looked to improve upon his M1911 design, and he had to get around the patents he had sold to Colt.  The trigger mechanism in particular had to be changed, in part to incorporate the magazine disconnect mechanism.

Ultimately, the French didn’t buy, and it was the Belgian military that adopted the model in 1935.  Hence, it is also sometimes referred to as the P-35.  When the Germans overran Belgium in 1940, Saive escaped and fled to Britain, taking with him several examples.

 

The Nationalist Chinese government came to Canada shopping for Bren guns, and in passing asked if Inglis could also make them the Browning Hi-Power which the Chinese liked and had bought directly from FN before 1940.  Canada’s lend-lease agency, the Mutual Aid Board, agreed to fund the purchase of 180,000, and Britain wanted an additional 50,000.  With orders of this scale, Inglis set about to manufacture the Browning Hi-Power in Toronto.  With the help of Saive, Inglis developed its own version built upon English measurements instead of metric.

Mass production began in February, 1944.  The first allotment was sent to India for transshipment over “the Hump” but the logistical absurdity then became apparent.  Besides this, at that point of the war, the Nationalist Chinese were more interested in fighting the Communists than the Japanese, and so the bulk of that Chinese order was cancelled.  Canada had thousands of these handguns just sitting around and, with all this production capacity, the Canadian army decided to appropriate them for its own use  The Inglis Hi-Power replaced the venerable Webley revolver in Canadian service in late 1944.

Eventually the Canadian army received nearly 60,000 Inglis Hi-Powers in the Chinese and No. 2 Mk 1* patterns.

After the war, the Hi-Power became a de-facto military standard, and was adopted as a side-arm in about fifty countries.  Most of these were made by FN in Belgium after the war.  Today, the original Inglis Hi-Power remains in service in Canada and Taiwan.  The Inglis tooling and dies were shipped to India’s Ishapore factory and were used to make side-arms for India.

After 75 years of continuous use in the Canadian military and with roughly 14,000 left in inventory, the Inglis Hi-Power is coming to the end of its useful life.  FN ceased production in 2017.  Fashions are changing.  Given the newer materials of construction, it is unlikely that any of the possible replacements – the plastic wonder 9s - will serve as long as the all-steel Inglis Hi-Power.

Will the government surplus these old warhorses to the Canadian market place?

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Global Warming, Polar Vortex: Don't believe your lyin' eyes

Vincent J. Curtis

1 Feb 2019

Don’t believe your lyin’ eyes and keep the faith.  That was the gist of the Spectator editorial. (Get out of the cold and think about global warming.  1 Feb 2019)

 Apparently, a polar vortex is a sign of climate change caused by man, even though these things aren’t supposed to happen until fifty to eighty years from now, according to the models.

North America experienced a polar vortex during the winter of 1977, when Buffalo had a snowfall every day for two and a half months straight.  The belief in those days was of a coming ice age, and the polar vortex was a sign of it.

Cold being a sign of coming cold makes more sense than cold being a sign of coming warmth.  But the coming ice age theory gave way in the late 1980s to the coming thermal catastrophe theory.  And so the same phenomenon is explained by diametrically opposite reasons.

Climate change has become a cult or religion, and the editorial urged continued belief in the religion in the face of contra-indicating facts.  Baal, the god of environmentalism, must be pleased.

***

The editorial offered a number of facts in support of its position that simply aren’t facts, though one can understand why the editors would be misled.  In the first place, it consults with people whose job depends upon the continued belief in the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis.

The hottest decade “on record” is without doubt the 1930s.  The year 1934 is the hottest “on record” with 1936 being the next hottest.  The earth entered a period of consistent cooling between 1940 and 1970, with a couple of spikes in the 1950s.  This period of consistent cooling is what led to the coming ice age hypothesis.  The year 2018 is not the forth hottest year “on record”, and if it were, it would require an explanation for the cooling that occurred from the three hotter years – a cooling that should not have occurred.

I put “on record” in scare quotes for a couple of reasons.  First, is that the “record” doesn’t begin until 1880, when the United States established its continental weather network.  The “ record” from around the world did not become much good until about 1950, when weather stations became established truly around the world - in significant numbers and in significant places other than the United States.  Hence the 1930s may not be part of the “on record” period.

The second reason is that NOAA has been tampering with the historical data in order to make it appear that there is a continuous warming trend.  They call what they do “normalizing.”  Hence, terrestrial thermometric readings appear to show an upward trend in temperatures, when satellite temperature measurements show no significant change in global temperatures since 1998.  This failure to observe global warming by satellite is the global warming pause that requires an explanation, and this pause is why climate changers are talking about warming of the deep oceans: the oceans ate my warming.

I would have hoped that the series of pieces I sent in December would have at least given pause to the Spectator’s editorializing on global warming, but I guess the faith in Baal, the god of environmentalism, is too strong.

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My Hair is on Fire, why isn't Yours?

Vincent J. Curtis

28 Jan 2019

RE:  Climate change as a social justice issue (Hamilton Spectator of this date)

The brainiacs among the McMaster University professoriate announced a conference on the social justice of climate change on the day when a polar vortex is bringing frigid temperatures and heavy snowfall to Hamilton.

Climate change is a social justice issue.  All the solutions proffered by the cossetted brainiacs, like carbon taxes and expensive electricity, screw the working class and the poor.  In France, the peasants are revolting - because they can’t carry the latest burden for saving the world eighty years from now.

The cossetted brainiacs aren’t affected by the consequences of their ideology.  They don’t have to drive to work or drive for work, like the rioting French peasants do.  Social justice is at stake, just not as the brainiacs see it.

I always thought of a university as a place of learning, not of social activism by the professoriate.  Social activism led by professors probably means they are getting too emotionally involved to remain objective and scholarly about the subject.  But, I suppose climate change being a science matter, it’s okay for artsies to jump in head first.

Hosting a conference which ought to be entitled, “My hair’s on fire, why isn’t yours?”, we have a professor of English saying, “We need to approach climate change from a number of different lenses.” And “We need to incorporate that Indigenous knowledge with science.”  How did she get to be a professor of English when she can utter so failed a metaphor as ‘approaching from different lenses’?  How do the science professors feel about being told their knowledge is lacking and requires the incorporation of ‘Indigenous knowledge’?  How would she know?

The professor must have got her Ph.D. in the culture studies part of “English and Culture Studies for I observe no familiarity with Bill Shakescene in her utterances.

The professors unintentionally give cause to wonder at their employment as professors.

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An anti-Rape Culture in Canada?

Vincent J. Curtis

20 Jan 2019

In her Hamilton Spectator column of Saturday, January 19, 2019, Lathan Hunter, Ph.D., declared in the second paragraph that there were 436,000 rapes per year in Canada, with only 3 percent convicted, or 12,780.  On that basis of these numbers, Hunter proceeds to make recommendations to teach boys not to rape girls.  This is the “anti-rape” culture of which she writes.

Hunter’s numbers are nowhere near correct.  Although rape is a kind of sexual assault, not all sexual assaults are rape.  Statistics Canada does report that, for example, there were 646,000 self-reported cases of sexual assault in Canada in 2014.  But of these, more than half (567 per 1,000) were not charged; one fifth (221 per 1,000) were charged but didn’t go to court; a tenth (95 per 1,000) went to court but were not convicted; and a twentieth (52 per 1,000) were convicted, not sentenced to custody, and a final twentieth (65 per 1,000) were convicted, sent to custody.  That last figure would would amount to 4,200, not 12,700; and a conviction rate of 0.66 percent, not 3 percent.

Allowing that same rapes may go unreported and for a perpetrator not to be caught or identified, really only those sent to custody could objectively considered “rape”.  Most sexual assaults seem to be matters of opinion.   It is not the case that men are getting away with rape most of the time in the Canadian justice system, as Hunter seems to indicate.

Repeal of laws against homosexual sodomy  turned on the argument that while homosexuality may not be normal, it is commonplace enough not to be considered heinous.  Hunter faces a similar dilemma:  If rape were as common as Hunter alleged, she would be faced with the problem of explaining why such commonplace behavior should be considered so heinous.  Rather, the argument is that because rape is so heinous that explains why it is not commonplace.

I don't know how Hunter escapes the dilemma she fell into, arguing that all men are potential rapists, rape is commonplace, and that men needed to be trained from boyhood not to rape.  Yet how can something so commonplace not be thought of as natural rather than heinous?  The trap is escapable but it requires something more sophisticated than the rigid, categorical thinking that Hunter usually exhibits.
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Ranked balloting: can't they ever learn?

Vincent J. Curtis

23 Jan 2019

Supporters of rank balloting are either obvious to opposition or must love rejection.  The latest call for ranked balloting offers the usual confection of nonsense to justify this hobby-horse of progressivism. (Hamilton Spectator of this date)

Aside: rank balloting and proportional representation are two progressivist hobby-horses, and are utterly at odds with each other.  No matter.  Both are simply spaghetti against the wall attempts to screw up our electoral system.

Ranked balloting is only interesting when the second or third place finisher vaults over the highest vote-getter on election night and is declared the actual winner.  Such an event actually happened in the Second Congressional District of Maine in the 2016 election.  There were four candidates: one Republican, one Democrat, and two independents.  On election night, the Republican won by a plurality of 2,000 votes, but was short of an overall majority.  The second preferences of the ballots were then used to readjust the “vote count” and lo and behold if the second place Democrat wasn’t declared the actual winner by 50.5 % to 49.5 %.

So unpersuaded of the validity of those results was the governor of Maine, Paul LePage, that he wrote “stolen election” on the certificate he had to sign certifying the election.  LePage tweeted that ranked balloting “didn’t result in a true majority as promised – simply a plurality measured differently.”

And therein lies the fatal flaw of ranked balloting.  It only produces a plurality measured differently, not a majority as it promises.  Ranked balloting is inferior to the practice of holding run-off elections - and if valid majorities are the highest goal, then cost is no object.  Don’t argue the economy of ranked balloting over run-off elections.

The system we have of plurality election has an 800 years long  history of producing legitimate and accepted outcomes.  Progresses can’t stand that and so come up with ranked balloting and proportional representation just to mess things up.

If we’re smart and aware, we’ll reject this latest call to screw up an electoral system that works.

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Blame Trump for Canada-China woes.

Vincent J. Curtis

23 Jan 2019

If the Covington High School incident proves anything, it is how many people are ready to damn Donald Trump and his supporters.  Even erstwhile conservatives abandoned the basic journalistic standard of ascertaining the facts before making a fool of yourself.

The article by Ethan Lou, (Hamilton Spectator of this date) blaming Trump’s retreats for China’s aggressiveness with Canada, is of that ilk of ignorance before commentary.  Lou’s argument is a failure of logic and facts.   As for logic, Lou admits that China’s “hardline president” Xi predates Trump, and that China has been uncharacteristically aggressive in its neighborhood for years before Trump.  Yet, “It’s Donald Trump’s fault.”  That the effect is observed before the alleged cause existed is Lou’s failure of logic.

This is an example of ignorance.  China began its “Anti-Access and Area Denial” strategy in 2011, when Obama was president.  It follows from China’ uncharacteristic imperialism, which itself arose due to domestic political needs.  Only about half of China’s population has been lifted out of abject poverty, and any slowdown in economic growth could set off a rebellion.  Because of China’s “one-child” policy, it created a generational cohort of something like 131 males for 100 females, leaving a lot of youngish men without families to raise and time on their hands.  That is another cause of discontent and rebellion.

To tamp down social tensions that could cause the outbreak of revolt against the communist regime, China has stoked nationalism, racial chauvinism, and military aggressiveness.  Military aggressiveness justifies a heavy-handed clampdown on domestic dissent.

Trump’s aggressive trade policies and tariffs actually have the Chinese afraid of him.  Trump the businessman can see the weaknesses of China’s communist regime, and is exploiting them for American benefit.  But Lou doesn’t know any of this, or admitting it would destroy the reason for his blaming of Trump for Canada’s woes with China.

Lou is obviously the kind of person who would have condemned America ten years ago for being the world’s policeman, and carrying the big stick; and now he condemns America for pulling in its horns under Trump.

Facts, logic, and knowledge of history are of no concern when it comes to attacking Trump and those who support him.

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