Can You Say “Ideologically-Based Hypocrisy”?
A commentator named ‘Runner’ pointed the following out on a CBC News/Politics story… it seems in a 2008 report entitled “Is Toronto in Decline? Worrying Trends from the Census”, the Fraser Institute says the following:
The best data produced in Canada are the census data. While no data are perfect, the census attempts to reach each and every Canadian. The most recent census was conducted in May 2006. However, the data which reflects directly on the questions raised in this paper were released on May 1 of this year (Income and Earnings) and March 1 of the year (Labor). This paper will present….
If you have been following the strange saga of the long-form census and the current Canadian government’s attempt to abolish it, ostensibly because of an outcry from a handful of people who think it is an invasion of personal privacy, then you might recall that the Fraser Institute is loudly supporting the government by insinuating that it is only (left-wing, progressive?) activists and academics that use census data and that if anyone wants reliable statistics that he/she should, like good little free-marketeers, commission his or her own polls. I am not sure if the Fraser Institute is suddenly wanting to get into the polling business and make oodles of money, but even before I read the above quotation, I found their reasoning very dubious on a number of different counts. In their world, statistics would be the province of those who could afford it (and there is already enough inequality in the world). That would include municipalities and think tanks. I guess that would also mean that governments, especially the federal government, would have to contract with private polling firms and hope that those private interests would not abuse the personal information they gather. In a world (think Facebook) where information is valuable as marketing data, it would be very tempting for a business to sell the data to Axiom or some other, large data-collecting corporation. Also, since the federal government is funded by tax-payers, why is it a problem if a government agency like Statistics Canada makes its aggregated data (where all personal identifiers are stripped away) to anyone in Canada? I mean, we live in an information age where access to reliable information is commonly regarded as a hallmark of living in an advanced country. Also, having Stats. Can. provide such information to anyone is highly efficient and can take advantage of economies of scale, and don’t we want governments/countries to try to be as efficient as possible?
But, perhaps that is too much to expect from an ideologically-driven think tank like the Fraser Institute. They, like many other politicized organizations (along any part of the ideological spectrum) often say whatever is politically convenient no matter how untrue or blatantly hypocritical. And the Fraser Institute prove it best themselves in the very words of their own report.
PS. a screenshot from the pdf version of the report is below:
I guess this was inevitable… Sock & Awe the video game
This is nothing ground-breaking… it is a little online game where you can throw shoes at George Bush as he pops up from behind a lectern or something. It is kind of fun and I am sure has a cathartic effect for millions around the world that have been dumbfounded by Bush, the Bush Doctrine, and the continued imperialism of the US empire. The thing that I found interesting was that the original creator(s) sold the website on Ebay UK for £5,000 (see listing here).