asylum of the furry hat

I put off writing this post for awhile, but seeing as my last shred of optimism died today, you all get to hear about why science in Canada is currently sucking and is only going to get worse.

Over the past few months, the state of science in Canada has taken 3 critical hits, from which it will be very, very hard to recover from, and they all stem from the government.

1) The current stated goals of the Harper government in regards to the funding of science. This can be broken down into 2 sub-categories, each of which are equally ire-riling.

-- A) Government funding to colleges and universities so they can build buildings. There is no money to pay people to work in the buildings or fill it up with equipment, but plenty of cash is going out to put those buildings up. This is a major problem, because the universities will gladly take the money from the government (because they're not stupid, and that is all the money they're getting any time soon), but the money to furnish and staff up these buildings will come directly from the students. That's right, tuition rates are going to increase, especially as the normal funding agencies are handing out less cash (item #2).

-- B) An emphasize on commerciable science. This means that the government is only going to actively support research that will eventually (read: quickly) lead to a marketable product. The ground floor, base research, otherwise known as 'discovery science' is going to be frowned upon. This point, right here, is where you can tell that Harper has no idea of how academia and research works. It's rarely a straight A to B or idea/problem to grand solution, but when those big achievements are made, they're based on years of solid 'discovery' research. You may not understand why someone is studying specific protein or gene in zebrafish, but down the road, that research may lead someone else to figure out how that one gene fits into a network that is responsible for Parkinson's and can then be modified to treat the disease, as an example.

2) The latest budget (late January) came down with barely any money for science research. Funding agencies such as NSERC and CHIR received the bare minimum, while Genome Canada got none. This means that there's significantly less money to fund any kind of research, and they're going to be more stingy with it. Universities are already feeling the pinch on this. Or, rather, university professors are starting to feel the pinch. (I'll explain this more at the end.)

3) The absolute moment when every single scientist in Canada knew we were doomed... our Federal Science Minister Gary Goodyear, when asked "Do you believe in evolution?" answered "I am a Christian, and I don't think anybody asking a question about my religion is appropriate." Granted, the question asked was worded very, very poorly, but his response is just embarrassing. Though really, what more can you expect from a Creationist chiropractor. (I'm not kidding. Really not kidding.)

So, why am I bitching about this today? Because Genome Canada has finally (frickin' finally, those slow assed wankers) said that they won't be funding this big project at work. This leaves me without my extra part-time contract work (which is what kept me solvent on a grad student's budget) and no job prospect for when I'm done my Masters (they were going to hire me back on). Not only am I screwed, but about a dozen other people there will be out of work in the next few months because there is No. Money. At all.

But this is not only hitting at work (which is grant funded research) but at school (which is also grant funded research - partly). My supervisor has said that this will probably be the last year that grad students are allocated funds for out of town conferences, so we should go while we can, which is why I get to go to Iowa City in June and lament the fact that I missed last year's conference which was in Barcelona. (Just for the record, Iowa City is like, 18 gazillion steps down from Barcelona. I'm still pissed about this.)

What all this is leading to, is that science in Canada is suffering just as much as any other industry. (Mostly because we have idiots in office, but that's another topic.) Where the US is throwing money at research left and right, trying to get their science machine working at full capacity again, Canada is slowly grinding to a halt.

So, unless we get someone who actually cares in office with the next election (which should happen in the next 6-10 months), I and many, many others will be looking for work in the States. And when politicians start complaining about the Brain Drain (again), all we'll do is point to this time and say 'It's your own damn fault.'

So, first there was the unannounced removal of Basic journals. The big kerfuffle over this was not that they removed them (even though when SixApart bought LJ they specifically said they wouldn't), but about the fact that it wasn't mentioned. The same day they got rid of them was the same day SA did the big '100 days' post in news, yet not a word about losing Basic accounts was mentioned.

They have since apologized...sort of . I think. Someone posted a big 'wow, you guys are loud' post in news but didn't actually say anything useful. Or, you know, at all.

Next, it was the discovery that the popular interests page was being censored for 'hot topic' words like sex, boys, bondage and fanfiction. And depression, which is right up there with fanfiction for the stupid interests to censor.

This has since been fixed, mostly. I think.

The latest one - LJ is grabbing personal data on you through the Plus accounts. Go here and see how it's LJ's very own version of BEACON, and we've all been affected.
ETA: The post in question has gone to friends only (of which I am not one). I can try and remember what command to use in the admin console to limit the damage, but you might be better off googling it.
From the post:

...anytime you visit an LJ page with ads on it, your gender, birth date, country, 10 most popular interests and the content of your first public post are sent to an ad-targeting server. If none of those things are available, the server starts scanning the public content of your journal. You don't even have to have a Plus account for this to happen; if you've ever visited an LJ page with ads on it, or even have someone with a Plus account on your f-list, they've done this to you already.

The post details how you can limit the information shown, but that's about it. There's nothing you can do about it, unless you defriend every Plus account and never visit any in the future. Though, now that they've gotten rid of Basic accounts, that's going to be harder and harder to do.

Personally, I'm annoyed by all this, though it's mostly the lack of communication (which they still don't comprehend, even after all the events of last year) and the data they collect on me. Plus accounts have never bothered me, but that's because I have Ad Blocker Plus and NoScript, which hides ads before I even realize they're there. I honestly don't know what an LJ with advertising looks like, and I'm glad.

I'm also considering not friending any one who has a Plus account, and making a special flist filter that doesn't have any of them, either. I don't know if maybe that's going too far, but tough. I don't want Google knowing what sites I search for, and I don't want LJ to know my birthday or where I was born. I'm very careful about what personal information I make public, and the only reason I did that on LJ was because I understood that the only people who would use that data was either LJ - for internal statistics(maybe) - and people on my flist or people who want to join my flist.

In no way, shape or form did I agree to having it sit on some advertising server just waiting for a marketing monkey to use it to tell me what I want to buy next.