Canada – Page 95 – a sibilant intake of breath

Remembrance Day

After reading my friend Michael’s post on Remembrance Day, I find myself rethinking the event. I can think of three different potentially valid understandings of its purpose:

The day as a formalized period of mourning for the specific people who died in the wars commemorated.
A day meant to serve as recognition of the fundamental badness of war in general
A day meant to encourage contemplation of the specific conflicts being commemorated.

The first and second are clearly somewhat contradictory. You can get around that by either saying that war in general is bad, but these ones were noble and important or that waging war is honourable if done defensively, and all of these conflicts were defensive. Another way out is to say that the actions of those who died, specifically, were honourable, regardless of whether the broader endeavour in which they were engaged was.

The most easily justifiable position is to avoid the automatic taking of a moral stance – in response to the occasion – but rather use the chance to reflect on the specifics of the conflicts themselves: how they arose, how they progressed, what they resulted in, and what the importance of all of that is now. Such an approach has the virtue of independence of thought, but probably rather misses the point of a commemorative ceremony of the sort that Remembrance Day is meant to be.

Regardless of the conclusions you reach, the balance you end up contemplating is one between large-scale strategies and small-scale sacrifices. Whether it’s Canadians being blown up by roadside bombs while trying to aid negotiations between the central government and provincial warlords in Afghanistan today or Canadians dying to test the German defences in Dieppe in 1942, such examples force us to think hard about the aims of our foreign policy, and the purposes for which armed force should be employed in the world.

New blog on Vancouver speaking events

Most of what I write here is for people attending or interested in Oxford. Here’s a link for people in Vancouver. My friend Tristan is setting up a blog that lists speaking events in that fine Pacific city. If you have something to suggest, please email him through the links provided therein.

People with web design experience are particularly encouraged to help develop this into a useful service for academically inclined Vancouverites.

Another loan letdown

My student loan appeal has gone through and they increased my allotment by $623: not quite the expansion for which I was hoping. Essentially, the reason for this is that they have pre-set formulas for allotting loan amounts that adapt poorly to the nature of an Oxford education. They are based on the cost of living in Canada, and they do not reflect understanding of how Oxford terms work. They certainly do not reflect the extreme cost differentials between attending graduate school in Canada and doing so in a place like this.

A word of warning to future applicants: do not expect even half as much student loan funding in your second year as in your first; this, they ought to make clear before you go. In my case, seems as though some kind of additional fundraising is going to be required, if I am to make it through Trinity term and my exams.

See also: prior ravings about school related government bureaucracy.

An environmental strike against Canada’s Tories

As Tristan discussed earlier, the National Post has been producing some dubious commentary on the ironically titled Clean Air Act being tabled by the current Conservative government in Canada. The paper says, in part:

Worryingly for the government, the impression has already taken hold that the Conservatives are not serious on the environment, and when [Environment Minister Rona] Ambrose says the Clean Air Act represents a “very ambitious agenda,” people smirk.

The smirking they describe is well deserved. The fact that every other party in government sees the real effect the so-called ‘Clean Air Act’ would have is not evidence of superficial thinking – as the Post asserts. The government that decided to simply walk away from Canada’s commitment to Kyoto is carrying on in past form.

Perhaps the biggest problem with the act is the way in which it confounds issues that are quite distinct. When it comes to the effect of human industry on the atmosphere, there are at least three very broad categories in which problematic emissions fit:

Toxins of some variety, whether in terms of their affect on animals or plants (this includes dioxins, PCBs, and smog)
Chemicals with an ozone depleting effect (especially CFCs)
Greenhouse gasses (especially CO2, but with important others)

In particular, by treating the first and third similarly, the government risks generating policy that does not deal with either well. The Globe and Mail, Canada’s more liberal national newspaper, argues that this approach may be intended to stymie action towards reduced emissions, by introducing new arguments about far less environmentally important issues than CO2.

It is possible to develop good environmental policies that are entirely in keeping with conservative political ideals. Market mechanisms have enormous promise as a means of encouraging individuals to constrain their behaviour such that it does not harm the welfare of the group. While market systems established so far, like the Emissions Trading Scheme in the EU, have failed to do much good, there is nothing to prevent a far-thinking conservative government from crafting a set of policies that will address the increasingly well understood problem of climate change, without abandoning their political integrity or alienating their base of support. To do so, in the case of the Harper Tories specifically, might help to convince Canadian voters that they really are the majority-deserving moderates they have been trying to portray themselves as being since they were handed their half-mandate by those disgusted by Liberal sleaze.

Trading sub fusc for a shirt and tie?

Having thought about it a good bit in the last week or so, I now think it is more likely that I will work for at least one year after I finish this degree, rather than going straight into another one. The reasons this seems intelligent include the following:

When this program ends, I will have been in school for twenty consecutive years, with a few (mostly bad) minimum wage jobs mixed in. Actually seeing the world from the position of a mythical ‘real job’ will help me to make a smarter decision, with regards to whether I should do a PhD.
I am already positively daunted by the thesis. With that in April and four Oxford examinations in June, the stress of crafting custom PhD applications to excellent schools might be a bit much.
Seeing student debt numbers go down instead of up is an idea with appeal.
I will need three references from Oxford for PhD applications. My advisor is one. If I am forced to use both of the people teaching my optional paper this term, there is a lower chance of getting a really good collection of references. I didn’t really interact with the people who taught the core seminars last year for them to serve as thorough references. If, however, I make a point of cultivating the four optional paper instructors over the course of this whole year, there seems a good chance I can get two more better letters.
Right now, I really need to get the idea for my M.Phil thesis together. Having to come up with a whole other research proposal for a PhD is, again, a bit much.
Not having to worry about the GRE this year would be nice. It would allow me to do more academic work, as well as spend more time enjoying Oxford.

Of course, this decision forces me to do one of the things that I am by far the worst at – apply for jobs. I am not even sure of which country to begin looking for jobs in. Both Canada and the US are plausible, with the UK much less so. A job somewhere really far-flung could certainly be an interesting way to spend a year.

Where do people recommend looking? Options with some appeal include working for government, working for an NGO, writing in a journalistic capacity, or doing anything that provides hands on experience with either ecology or environmental policymaking.

Depressive Zeitgeist

Tonight, I spent more than six hours speaking online with a dozen close friends, mostly back in North America. The prevailing mood is one of exhaustion, cynicism, uncertainty, and anxiety. People are going broke and doubting their long-term plans; people are losing faith in the basic moral axioms they have followed, and the basic assumptions that have sustained their efforts.

Hopefully, it is just an analog to the changing of the seasons – as the tilt of this great orb drives us all to spend the greater part of our days in darkness.

Canadian thanksgiving in Oxford

Whether you are a Canadian in Oxford or just interested in meeting some, consider attending the Oxford Canadian Society‘s Thanksgiving party on Monday, October 9th. Thanksgiving doesn’t seem to be celebrated on this side of the pond, but in North America it is a tradition of papering over massive injustices perpetuated against the First Nations through the consumption of heaps of food and the propagation of a myth of harmony and cooperation between the original inhabitants of North America and European newcomers. Actually, Wikipedia is telling me that the American and Canadian versions differ significantly:

Unlike the American tradition of remembering Pilgrims and settling in the New World, Canadians give thanks for a successful harvest…

[O]n January 31st, 1957, the Canadian Parliament proclaimed…

“A Day of General Thanksgiving to Almighty God for the bountiful harvest with which Canada has been blessed … to be observed on the 2nd Monday in October.”

Certainly, I cannot remember anything about pilgrims. Mostly, I remember excessively large amounts of food at the houses of family friends. In particular, I have a craving for mashed yams (though who could guess why?).

The Canadian variant here is apparently to include pumpkin pie, Tim Horton’s doughnuts (which must be flown in), Canadian beer and wine, and hockey re-runs. Getting in will cost you £1, and the party begins at 8:00pm.

PS. I can scarcely suppress my amusement about how the Oxford CanSoc website seems to be modelled on those of the Canadian federal government: from the initial choice of language page to the structure of the menus at the top of most screens. Their composite image of the Radcliffe Camera, St. Mary’s Church, and the CN tower is quite odd.

Basic problems with biometric security

You have to wonder whether anything other than having watched too many James Bond films feeds the idea that biometrics are a good means of achieving security. Nowadays, Canadians are not allowed to smile when they are having their passport photos taken, in hopes that computers will be able to read the images more easily. Of course, any computer matching system foiled by something as simple as smiling is not exactly likely to be useful for much.

Identification v. authentication

Biometrics can be used in two very distinct ways: as a means of authentication, and as a means of identification. Using a biometric (say, a fingerprint) to authenticate is akin to using a password in combination with a username. The first tells the system who you claim to be, the second attempts to verify that using something you have (like a keycard), something you know (like a password), or something you are (like a fingerprint scan). Using a biometric for identification attempts to determine who you are, within a database of possibilities, using biometric information.

Using a fingerprint scan for identification is much more problematic than using it for authentication. This is a bit like telling people to enter a password and, if it matches any password in the system, allow them into that person’s account. It isn’t quite that bad, because fingerprints are more unique and secure than passwords, but the problem remains that as the size of the database increases, the probability of false matching increases.

For another example, imagine you are trying to identify the victim of a car wreck using dental records. If person X is the registered owner and hasn’t been heard from since the crash, we can use dental records to authenticate that a badly damaged body almost certainly belongs to person X. This is like using biometrics for authentication. Likewise, if we know the driver could be one of three people, we can ascertain with a high degree of certainty which it is, by comparing dental x-rays from the body with records for the three possible matches. The trouble arises when we have no idea who person X is, so we try running the x-rays against the whole collection that we have. Not only is this likely to be resource intensive, it is likely to generate lots of mistakes, for reasons I will detail shortly.

The big database problem in security settings

The problem of a big matching database is especially relevant when you are considering the implementation of wholesale surveillance. Ethical issues aside, imagine a database of the faces of thousands of known terrorists. You could then scan the face of everyone coming into an airport or other public place against that set. Both false positive and false negative matches are potentially problematic. With a false negative, a terrorist in the database could walk through undetected. For any scanning system, some probability (which statisticians call Beta, or the Type II Error Rate) attaches to that outcome. Conversely, there is the possibility of identifying someone not on the list as being one of the listed terrorists: a false positive. The probability of this is Alpha (Type I Error Rate), and it is in setting that threshold that the relative danger of false positives and negatives is established.

A further danger is somewhat akin to ‘mission creep’ – the logic that, since we are already here, we may as well do X in addition to Y, where X is our original purpose. This is a very frequent security issue. For example, think of driver’s licenses. Originally, they were meant to certify to a police officer that someone driving a car is licensed to do so. Some types of people would try to attack that system and make fake credentials. But once having a driver’s license lets you get credit cards, rent expensive equipment, secure other government documents, and the like, a system that existed for one purpose is vulnerable to attacks from people trying to do all sorts of other things. When that broadening of purpose is not anticipated, a serious danger exists that the security applied to the originally task will prove inadequate.

A similar problem exists with potential terrorist matching databases. Once we have a system for finding terrorists, why not throw in the faces of teenage runaways, escaped convicts, people with outstanding warrants, etc, etc? Again, putting ethical issues aside, think about the effect of enlarging the match database on the possibility of false positive results. Now, if we can count on security personnel to behave sensibly when such a result occurs, there may not be too much to worry about. Numerous cases of arbitrary detention, and even the use of lethal force, demonstrate that this is a serious issue indeed.

The problem of rare properties

In closing, I want to address a fallacy that relates to this issue. When applying an imperfect test to a rare case, you are almost always more likely to get a false positive than a legitimate result. It seems counterintuitive, but it makes perfect sense. Consider this example:

I have developed a test for a hypothetical rare disease. Let’s call it Panicky Student Syndrome (PSS). In the whole population of students, one in a million is afflicted. My test has an accuracy of 99.99%. More specifically, the probability that a student has PSS is 99.99%, given that they have tested positive. That means that if the test is administered to a random collection of students, there is a one in 10,000 chance that a particular student will test positive, but will not have PSS. Remember that the odds of actually having PSS are only one in a million. There will be 100 false positives for every real one – a situation that will arise in any circumstance where the probability of the person having that trait (whether having a rare disease or being a terrorist) is low.

Given that the reliability of even very expensive biometrics is far below that of my hypothetical PSS test, the ration of false positives to real ones is likely to be even worse. This is something to consider when governments start coming after fingerprints, iris scans, and the like in the name of increased security.

PS. Those amazed by Bond’s ability to circumvent high-tech seeming security systems using gadgets of his own should watch this MythBusters clip, in which an expensive biometric lock is opened using a licked black and white photocopy of the correct fingerprint.

PPS. I did my first Wikipedia edit today, removing someone’s childish announcement from the bottom of the biometrics entry.

[Update: 3 October 2006] For a more mathematical examination of the disease testing example, using Bayes’ Theorem, look here.

Ignatieff on track to win

Michael Ignatieff seems to be well ahead in the ongoing Liberal Party leadership vote. I would be happy if he won; he certainly seems to be an interesting man, and I think he would inject some high level debate into Canadian federal politics, regardless of how well the Liberals perform in the next election. I also think that if he is able to develop an overall governing platform, the support of his party, and the support of Canadians in general, he would be able to forge a good successor government to the problematic present conservative minority. He may also be the kind of man who can rebuild Canada’s role in effective peacekeeping, diplomacy, and foreign aid – all of which suffered under Harper, Martin, and Chretien governments.

Once Emily gets back to Oxford, I shall need to borrow another of his books, returning the copy of Blood and Belonging I finished recently.

The Economist on climate change

Catching up on the reading that accumulated in my absence, I have just gone through the Survey on Climate Change in the September 9-15 issue of The Economist. Their basic argument is that the possibility of catastrophic harm is sufficient to justify the costs of stabilizing the level of carbon in the atmosphere around 550 parts per million, compared with 280 ppm before the industrial revolution, 380 ppm now, and an estimated 800 ppm by 2100 is current policy goes unchanged. The most plausible dangers identified are disastrous shifts in ocean currents, dramatically cooling Europe, and the prospect of rising sea levels. Even modest amounts of the second could do enormous harm both in the coastal cities of the developed world and the lowlands of places like Bangladesh. Other problems include the possibility of an increase in the frequency and severity of extreme weather events, and large scale species migration or extinction.

Canada is singled out several times as unlikely to meet its Kyoto targets. We are committed to reduce emissions to 6% below 1990 levels by 2012, but seem likely to be 23% above. The survey quotes Environment Minister Rona Ambrose as saying: “it is impossible, impossible for Canada to reach its Kyoto targets.” The Economist had not previously been a supporter of Kyoto, though they surely support countries living up to commitments they have made. With this survey, the magazine seems to have changed tack from general opposition to the Kyoto Protocol to recognition that it may be a valid stepping stone towards a better organized and more all-encompassing climate change policy.

At the very least, the editorial change of heart signals strongly that climate change is no longer an issue whose reality is disputed, not suited to serious consideration by scientists, policy-makers, and the media. With my thesis in mind, it is largely the first group that I paid most attention to while reading this. At several points, the article asserts that it is at the 550ppm level that scientists in aggregate start to become seriously concerned about adverse and irreversible problems associated with climate change. That said, the survey also highlights a number of scientific disagreements and failed predictions. The interplay between science and politics is basically portrayed as a simple relationship between two internally complex dialogs. That is a model I certainly mean to unpack further in my thesis work.

As I didn’t actually manage to go see An Inconvenient Truth at the Phoenix yesterday, I am making another foray tonight for the 7:00pm show.