News roundup, 11 May 2026

- Municipal elections were held across the England on Thursday; Scotland and Wales held their parliamentary elections on the same day. The results show crushing defeats for Labour across much of the country. The blogger behind Council Estates Media seems to think Starmer's unwavering support of Israel has something to do with it; I'd say it's a stretch to say that's a big factor in the defeat, but it definitely says something about the way the party has gone when they tried to play the antisemitism card against Green leader Zack Polanski, who is Jewish. Ironically, while the Greens did respectably well in the elections, the main beneficiary was Reform UK, which has a fair number of actual antisemites. While it's fair to say the swing away from Labour is an indictment of that party, the fact that a plurality of those voters chose Reform is an indictment of the English people. The Scots and Welsh did a better job in their parliamentary elections, though.

- Three more passengers on board that Dutch plague ship now moored in the Canary Islands have tested positive for hantavirus, all after flying home. The incubation period for this virus is substantial; four Canadians who were on the ship have been ordered to isolate for 21 days.

- An Edmonton couple on vacation in Mexico got notifications from WestJet saying that their flight home from Los Angeles was cancelled; they had to be rerouted through Victoria and got home some 16 hours late. Under Canadian legislation this is a long enough delay to trigger compensation as per the Air Passenger Protection Regulations (APPR) - but the airline claims to be exempt because the cancellation was due to an unexpected safety-related issue with the aircraft. The problem is, the aircraft in question had been grounded several days previously; WestJet apparently switched which aircraft was to be used for the flight immediately before cancelling it in the hope of getting around paying compensation to passengers.

- Jana Ronne, a high school teacher in BC, got in hot water after confronting a student for the use of the word "pussy" as an insult. She responded by saying "Do you think women are weak? Women can be stronger than men"; somehow the discussion got steered into religion, and she responded to this by disputing the validity of religion (not clear how she got there; I suspect the kid cited the Bible/Koran/whatever). Subsequently she appears to have brought up the incident in class, unprompted. Apparently this made students who witnessed the interaction feel "uncomfortable", and they complained to the vice principal; the BC Commissioner for Teacher Regulation has given her a one day suspension of her teaching certificate and forced her to take courses on "creating a positive classroom" and "intercultural dialogue".

- A motorcyclist was seriously injured in a collision with a car on Scott Road, which forms the boundary between the cities of Surrey and Delta, BC. What is remarkable about this case, though, is that the motorcycle somehow ended up hanging from a traffic signal standard.

It looks like I'll have lots of company in Hell...

...including almost 25% of my countryfolk:

Fewer than three-quarters of Canadians believe in a god, suggests a new Canadian Press Harris-Decima survey.

"Religion in Canada today is not a particularly divisive subject and tolerance levels for different beliefs are high," said Harris-Decima president Bruce Anderson. "This is evident in the fact that one in four people feel comfortable saying they do not believe in a god."

The poll found 72 per cent of respondents said they believed in a god, while 23 per cent said they did not believe in any god. Six per cent did not offer an opinion.

Results may not total 100 per cent because of rounding.

Polls have told a different story in the United States.

"Canada's secularism stands in clearer distinction, when compared to the cultural and political influences of religion in the United States," said Anderson. "In one Harris Interactive study in the United States, conducted in 2007, the number who said they were non-believers was only eight per cent."

From here, via babble. Other highlights:

- Women (76 per cent) were more likely than men (67 per cent) to say they believed in a god.

- Canadians over the age of 50 (82 per cent) were far more likely than those under the age of 25 (60 per cent) to say they believed in a god. More than one in three (36 per cent) of those under the age of 25 said they did not believe in any god.

- English Canadians (73 per cent) were more likely than French Canadians (67 per cent) to say they believed in a god.

- Belief in a god is higher in rural Canada (76 per cent) than in urban Canada (69 per cent).

None of these particularly surprise me, except maybe the fact that women are more likely to believe than men. Interesting that more than a third of under 25s are nonbelievers, though.

Is credulity adaptive?

This past Tuesday, while my boss and I were driving out to the sort centre, there was a feature on The Current about a self-help film called The Secret. It's really a rehash of old ideas like "the power of positive thinking" (as touted by the "deep philosopher" Norman Vincent Peale). My boss likes most of the proponents quoted on the show. One thing that he mentioned in passing is the fact that most of the proponents of this sort of thing are quite religious (as he is) while most of the critics are atheists or agnostics (like yours truly). This seems to be true (Peale, for instance, was a preacher) and it got me to thinking about why this might be. There's nothing obviously wrong with the idea of positive thinking, though I agree with the critics that, pushed too far, this could lead to a blame-the-victim mentality (Lost your job? Got mugged? Raped? You must not have been thinking positively enough!). The thing is, though, if you're an atheist or an agnostic, your beliefs are going to depend on such annoying little things like evidence- and if so, you're likely to have a hard time thinking positively about yourself unless you're already doing well. I know that I do.

Given this, it's not too big a stretch to suggest that a certain amount of credulity might be adaptive. Not too much, obviously (otherwise everyone would take advantage of you) but some. This might go some distance towards explaining why so many people fall for shit like this, this, and this.

A mysterious comment

In response to this post, I got a rather puzzling comment:

Astrology is the ancient practice and study of the stars and planets. Its history goes back to Babylonian times. Astrology is not the same as astronomy. Astronomy studies only the science of the planets, stars and universe.

horoscope, astrology (http://astrologyquestions.com)

I'm not sure what to make of it. The website it directs you to is fairly basic, seemingly directed at people who have never heard of astrology (and how many people, at least in our culture, can that be said to apply to?) The comment was cut and pasted from that website. I'd like to find out more about the poster's motivations, but since the comment is anonymous I can't do that. It reminds me of nothing so much as those religious zealots who think that directing you to John 3:16 will be enough to make you say "Gosh, I didn't know that! I guess I'd better accept Jesus as my saviour right away!" (They tend to be selective in that regard; they usually don't direct you to 4 Kings (aka 2 Kings) 18:27 for some reason).

I got my bike back from the shop yesterday- just in time for the return of shitty weather. Looking out the window, it looks like we got a couple of centimetres of snow last night.