newsonaut
Turning inner space into outer space
Monday, August 25, 2025
The power of a drop in the bucket
What’s the point of making a contribution or doing my part when it amounts to little more than a drop in the bucket?
You may have heard people say this, or thought it yourself. I know I have.
But lately I’ve been thinking about the cumulative power of those drops. I asked ChatGPT to do the math for me.
Supposing a million people contributed. In terms of the world’s population, that’s a tiny, almost negligible, percentage. But if each contribution was the equivalent of a drop in the bucket, the bucket would soon be overflowing.
- 1 mm drops → ~0.52 L
- 3 mm drops → ~14.1 L
Drops that are 3 mm in diameter scale up in three dimensions from 1 mm drops — hence the massive increase in volume.
What if those drops fell in the form of rain over a period an hour?
- 1 mm drops: ~0.52 mm/hr (very light)
- 2 mm drops: ~4.19 mm/hr (moderate)
- 3 mm drops: ~14.1 mm/hr (heavy)
If you stood in a rainfall of 3 mm drops, you would be drenched. Even 1 mm drops would get you noticeably wet.
Again, one million is not that much when you think in terms of total population. Canada has a population of 40 million. If one million people took part in a movement, that would only be only 2.5 per cent of the population.
Don’t underestimate your contribution. Those drops in the bucket can add up pretty fast.
More posts in the Justice category
Saturday, February 20, 2016
Four reasons you should be on Apple's side
The FBI has a court order that would force Apple to create special software that would allow the agency to get into an encrypted word iPhone that was used by one of the two terrorists involved in a mass shooting in San Bernardino, California.
Apple is fighting the court order. Here’s why you should hope they win.
Your smart phone is a mini computer packed with sensitive data
Many people shrug off the idea of police or government officials having access to their phone or computer because they believe they lead mundane, law-abiding lives. But if you think about it, there is a lot of stuff you would likely prefer to keep to yourself. Some examples:
- Contacts: You would not only give up information about yourself, but also friends, relatives and colleagues.
- Photos: Yes, even those ones you didn’t dare post on Instagram.
- Purchases: Think about all the books you’ve ever bought — were any of them politically incorrect?
- Dealings with the government: It might turn out that you owe more income tax than you thought you did.
This doesn’t just affect bad guys
If Apple creates this special software for the FBI, there is no guarantee they won’t use it on other phones as well. How would we ever know? Also, what’s to prevent this program from slipping out into the wild where it could be used by criminals? All it would take is a corrupt insider or a sloppy technician.
This isn’t just a problem for the United States
If the FBI gets its way, it will be just a matter of time before law enforcement agencies in other countries demand the same. Even totalitarian states such as China have so far been holding back. Success by the FBI will open the floodgates. In Canada, you can bet the RCMP and CSIS are very interested in the outcome of this case.
Apples’s best interests align with those of the public
A big part of Apple’s business is selling hardware and software. We give them money and in return we own what we paid for and can do with it as we please. Companies such as Google and Facebook offer “free” services, but we have to give up some of our privacy in return. This may be acceptable in some cases, but it’s good to at least have the option of doing business with a company that is willing to stand up to the government to protect our privacy.
More posts in the Justice category
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
The misguided attempt to shut down the compassion club
I stood outside the Canadian Safe Cannabis Society storefront Tuesday morning as police executed a search warrant inside. And I talked to some of the customers outside who were holding what they called a protest. You can see the video I made in The Daily News website’s video section.
In the end, I’m hard pressed to think of any good reason for the police trying to shut the place down. Yes, it’s illegal, but there are a lot of illegal things people do that police don’t bother with. So it had to be a deliberate decision by the local RCMP detachment.
Was the compassion club, as it is also known, hurting anyone? Did it present a risk or danger to the public? These are the types of things we expect police to concentrate their efforts on. And I can’t think of how this store was placing anyone in jeopardy.
On the other hand, it could easily be argued that closing it would have both immediate and ripple effects that could harm many people. First, there is the obvious fact that clients would find it more difficult to legally obtain medicinal marijuana — a situation that would create mental and physical suffering for them. Second, many of them will wind up buying from dealers on the street — enriching the illegal trade that blights neighbourhoods, creates life-long criminals and puts drugs in the hands of children.
The law should be enforced and applied for the public good, but in this case it clearly is not.
More posts in the Justice category
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
What exactly is a sentencing circle, anyway?
A recent editorial in The Daily News and a followup letter to the editor have stirred some controversy about sentencing circles. Many people seem to think a sentencing circle is little more than a way to get around facing the full consequences of the justice system. That is simply not true.
I found an excellent primer on sentencing circles published by the National Post. While it’s true that the recommendation of a sentencing circle is sometimes carried out, it’s ultimately up to a judge to decide what happens. In cases where minimum sentencing is set out by law, the judge has no choice but to impose the minimum. And it’s not always the case that you get off easy even if the judge decides to go along with sentencing circle recommendation — in one case a rapist was banished to an island in northern Saskatchewan for a year.
The case of Christopher Pauchay is a good example. He’s the man who left his two young daughters outside in frigid weather, and they wound up freezing to death. A sentencing circle recommended that Pauchay reunite with his wife and seek counselling. The judge saw things differently and sentenced Pauchay to three years in a penitentiary for criminal negligence causing death.
It’s true that judges are obligated to consider an aboriginal offender’s background, but they can also decide that a sentencing circle is inappropriate in certain cases. Also, while sentencing circles are typically associated with aboriginal people, there has been at least one case where it was used by non-aboriginals.
More posts in the Justice category
Thursday, May 26, 2011
At last a Tory says something sensible about crime
It’s not often I agree with federal Public Safety Minister Vic Toews. After all, he’s the one pandering to public opinion by calling for more prisons so we can show criminals who’s boss.
But he’s on record now as saying that mentally ill people all too often wind up in jail when they should be getting treatment at a proper health facility.
“I think there are better ways to treat mentally ill people than to put them inside prisons.”
In the community approach to care, there is often a lack of supervision and mentally ill people can wind up getting in trouble with the law, he added.
He said he’s in discussions with provincial counterparts about the problem, but didn’t offer up any solutions. Any new mental health facilities would fall under the jurisdiction of the provinces.
The minister is on right track with these statements. It’s in the best interests of people with mental illnesses, not to mention society in general, for them to be given appropriate care.
The cynic in me says Toews may be looking for a way around the high costs of his tough-on-crime agenda. After all, if you send more people to jail, or keep them there longer, you need to build new prisons, hire more guards and pay a higher cost for warehousing the criminals.
If the provinces were to build new mental hospitals, that would free up space in federal prisons for criminals serving longer sentences. Taxpayers would still be on the hook for all this, but on the federal level Conservatives would find it easier to keep their promise of balancing the budget in the next few years.
Still, if we really must get tough on crime, this would be a more sensible way of doing it.
More posts in the Justice category
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
We really do need more lawyers
Some cynics have responded to the establishment of a law school at TRU with: “Just what we need — more lawyers.” They probably get cynical when they read news articles about smart defence lawyers keeping people out of jail who are obviously guilty.
High-profile cases like this are bound to make the news, but the vast majority of what goes on in the legal profession is relatively mundane — helping people who, for one reason or another, have managed to get in trouble with the law or who need the law to help them solve problems in their lives.
An article in Maclean’s magazine from two years ago points out that while Canada’s population has risen steadily over the past 30 years, the number of law schools has stayed the same.
As with any other product, “the price of [legal services] is a function of supply and demand,” says Vern Krishna, a lawyer and law professor at the University of Ottawa. When it comes to lawyers, “we have a deliberately constrained supply,” he says. “Our law schools have shut their doors tight.”
Over the past 30 years, Canada’s population and its need for legal services has ballooned, yet the number of law students who graduate each year is “virtually unchanged,” notes Krishna. Today, Canada has 16 common law schools, the same number it had three decades ago, when the population was smaller by a third. While some schools have opened extra spaces, the impact has been minimal—in 2006, 2,973 law students were admitted to the profession, just 133 more than a decade before.
A lot of people want to become lawyers, but can’t. A lot of people want a lawyer, but can’t find one. Be sure to read the whole article and you’ll agree that the law school at TRU is long overdue.
More posts in the Justice category
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Escorted leaves may just be the first step
There is almost universal outrage over the B.C. Review Board’s decision to grant Allan Schoenborn, the man who killed his three children, escorted leaves.
Sifting through the comments left on The Daily News website, some patterns emerge: he hasn’t been punished enough, he remains a danger to the public, the justice system has failed the greater good.
I won’t attempt to address these concerns, but I do see a nugget of truth in the raw anger being expressed. Our court reporter, Robert Koopmans, has pointed out that there is a pattern in these matters. A few escorted leaves will likely amount to nothing as far as the public is concerned. The chance of him escaping and hurting someone are pretty much negligible.
But what happens next? If these escorted leaves pass without incident, will the next step by unescorted leaves? Overnight leaves? A half-way house? Freedom with conditions? Full release?
It might not be long — five years maybe — before Schoenborn goes through all these steps and is a completely free man. That’s been the pattern in other cases, Koopmans says, and it may very well turn out to be the pattern here.
Will the public be outraged if or when this happens? Only if we know about it. By then, Schoenborn may be old news and no longer of any concern to the media. He could be free and we wouldn’t even know about it.
More posts in the Justice category
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
You're entitled to a fair hearing
The “natural justice” referred to in today’s story can be a tricky thing to sort out. It basically means you should get a fair hearing in court. In this case, Neel Chokker asked for an adjournment because he was confused and wanted time to sort things out.
The concept of natural justice is applied in Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom. It takes into account several guidelines, but here are the ones that appear most relevant to Chokker’s case:
• Proceedings should be conducted so they are fair to all the parties — expressed in the Latin maxim audi alteram partem: “let the other side be heard.”
• Each party to a proceeding is entitled to ask questions and contradict the evidence of the opposing party.
These are taken for Wikipedia: you can find more here.
A case from 1999 backs this up. An illegal immigrant was ordered deported, but she wanted to apply for permanent residence. At first she was denied, but the Supreme Court of Canada decided that, to be fair, the government should take into consideration the rights of her children, who were born in Canada. In other words, her side of the story had to be heard.
More posts in the Justice category
Friday, January 7, 2011
Excuses, excuses
You can’t blame a defence lawyer for trying to mitigate the circumstances of his client’s misdeeds — it’s all part of the give and take of sentencing in the justice system. But there were some particularly feeble excuses in the case of a 33-year-old Williams Lake man who talked a 14-year-old Kamloops girl into having sex with him via messages on Facebook.
Excuse number 1: He looked much younger at the time. The law doesn’t take into account what you look like. It refers only to your actual age. He was an adult, and it’s against the law for adults to take advantage of children.
Excuse number 2: He is “intellectually challenged,” and thus sought girls he considered to be his intellectual equal. Not to put too fine a point on it, but this phrase is a politically correct way of saying stupid, inferior, or uneducated. If we were to let people off for being “intellectually challenged,” we could close down at least half the prisons.
In a similar case last summer, a 24-year-old Prince Edward Island man was found guilty of almost exactly the same offence — trying to lure a 14-year-old girl into sex via Facebook. They apparently never did the deed, but what the man did do was clearly wrong. Here is what the Crown lawyer had to say:
“There may very well be people who have not yet realized that using a computer, or by means of a computer, (and) having sexual conversations with an underage person is an offence and they may well face charges.”
This time, the defence’s excuse was that the girl was an active participant in the Facebook conversations. The judge, quite rightly, said this was irrelevant.
More posts in the Justice category
Friday, December 17, 2010
What do we do with sex offenders?
It’s tough to know how to react to Lowell Swetman — the man convicted of leaving sexually explicit letters at North Shore schools — being sentenced to time served. He’s out on bail, and this immediately raises red flags. Will he offend again? Is there anything anyone can do to stop him from offending? And if he does re-offend, will it be something worse — possibly involving harm to a child?
No one can predict the future. Short of keeping him in jail permanently, it would appear the justice system has done all it can. He has several conditions attached to his three years of bail, including counselling, and he is now a registered sex offender.
Plus, there is some comfort in knowing that the odds on our side. Many people erroneously believe that children are at risk mainly from strangers. While there have been some high-profile cases of this nature, statistics show that the main risk comes from family members or trusted authority figures. There is also evidence that most offenders, once they’re caught, can indeed be treated and never again commit a crime.
On top of that, there are serious cases where people have been declared dangerous offenders. They are locked up and the key — as they say — has been thrown away.
Of course, all of this can be reassuring, but only up to a point. Parents will always worry about their children being hurt. And our governments and justice system must constantly be on the alert for new ways of protecting them.
More posts in the Justice category
