Affirmative action set for Ottawa overhaul

Time to review the employment policy in the government of Canada. I am glad that someone is more open-minded for revision.

Nick Aveling, National Post · Thursday, Jul. 22, 2010

The Conservatives have ordered a review of federal government affirmative action policies, saying the public service should hire based on merit, not race or ethnicity.

Cabinet ministers Stockwell Day and Jason Kenney announced the review of the Public Service Employment Act, along with any related practices and policies, on Thursday. “While we support diversity in the public service, we want to ensure that no Canadian is barred from opportunities in the public service based on race or ethnicity,” Mr. Day, the Treasury Board President, said in a statement.

Mr. Kenney, meanwhile, was more blunt in his calls for a meritocracy.

“I strongly agree with the objective of creating a public service that reflects the diversity of Canada, and with fair measures designed to reach that goal. But we must ensure that all Canadians have an equal opportunity to work for their government based on merit, regardless of race or ethnicity,” said the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism.

Under the current policy, the federal government targets four “employment equity groups” identified in the Employment Equity Act as being reflective of Canada’s wider diversity: visible minorities, aboriginals, people with disabilities and women. The Public Service Commission of Canada says on its website that most positions are open to all applicants, but that “from time to time, certain positions may be limited to applicants from members of employment equity-designated groups.”

According to the commission’s latest figures, published in 2009, 18.8% of public service employees are visible minorities, 4.2% are aboriginal, 3.3% are people with disabilities and 57.1% are women. Canada-wide, according to the 2006 Statistics Canada census, 16.2% of Canadians are visible minorities, 3.8% are aboriginal and 51% are women. There were no statistics for people with disabilities.

Yesterday’s announcement prompted outrage from the Opposition Liberals.

The Liberals characterized the move as an attack on affirmative action.

“I just think it’s a shameful case of political pandering at the expense of a lot of groups, whether it’s aboriginal Canadians, new Canadians (or) Canadians with disabilities — all of whom we need in the public service,” said Human Resources critic Michael Savage. “They talk about having diversity in the public service, but they have no commitment to it.”

Mr. Day, who is also minister responsible for the Asia-Pacific Gateway, dismissed Opposition concerns on Thursday.

“As usual, the Opposition is being accusatory, narrow-minded and judgmental because we’ve said we’re looking into something. They’ve gone ballistic based on their own prejudices,” he told the Post. “I can’t account for an irrational response to us doing the responsible thing.”

Mr. Day said the review, to be undertaken by the Treasury Board, was prompted by constituent complaints of discrimination.

“We’ve got competing interests here that are both Charter-based and court-based. Fundamentally, of course, people should not be discriminated against because of ethnicity. At the same time, we want to be inclusive and we want to embrace everybody,” he said.

The review is expected to proceed as quickly as possible, beginning with an investigation into how current policies are being “manifested … day-to-day” within the public service, as well a summation of court rulings related to the Employment Equity Act and related policies.

National Post
.

Read more: http://www.nationalpost.com/news/Affirmative+action+overhaul/3311196/story.html#ixzz0uTg1XyhD

Olympic Medal Plaza II--- Whistler

There is a guest book area for visitors to sign in memory of Nodar Kumaritashvili, a luger who died in the crash during a training run at Winter Olympic Games 2010.

He died of the sport that he liked, probably one of the fastest race in all the winter's games.

When I walked by the children's slide area of playground, I can imagine he probably was enjoying the slide like most of other kids do and it was his courage and passion which made him a higher level in sport.

His spirit and dream will always be admired and remembered in the Olympic History...

黎廣德﹕政改行差踏錯將愧對子孫

The Basic Law's Articles stipulate that the ultimate goal is universal suffrage for Chief Executive and the Members of Legislative Council.

When and how to achieve that goal, however, still remains open and controversial although National People Congress interpreted in 2007 that those universal suffrages will be "allowed" in 2017 and 2020.

It does not say they will be "held".

The procedures and eligibility of nominating the candidates are still disputable.

Without agreement, things could not be done.

To reach the agreement, both sides have to listen and understand where they are coming from.

The reality is that Pan-Democrats have too little bargaining power to reach their goal.

There is also no leverage gained in the past few years.

When you don't have money to buy the best product, you can only choose to buy the average one, counterfeit one or nothing at all.

It seems like this is the counterfeit one for some people though lawlful with the Basic Law and here is their analysis...


黎廣德﹕政改行差踏錯將愧對子孫

【明報專訊】「我寧願原地踏步，也不要行差踏錯。」這是余若薇在總結政改辯論時的肺腑之言。究竟怎樣才會行差踏錯，這是所有政黨在未來幾天將要決定的頭號大事。

)


余若薇在電視辯論中把反對曾蔭權2012政改方案的理由，發揮得淋漓盡致。辯論前港大民調已經發現有65%的市民要求政府撤回方案，而觀看辯論後有逾四成市民更加反對方案，因此曾蔭權只能面對不肯撤回方案、便遭否決的命運。


就在政府方案面臨觸礁之際，各方焦點忽然集中在民主黨提出的區議會功能組別修訂方案，以一人一票的方式（但已有其他功能組別投票權的選民除外）選出先經區議員提名的5個立法會議席。但是，「終極普選聯盟」原先提出兩個達至真普選的前提條件，即普選特首時沒有篩選，和普選立法會時廢除功能組別，卻仍然得不到中央政府的承諾。


在沒有真普選承諾的前提下，接受區議會功能組別修訂方案，會否讓香港起錨後漂泊到風高浪急的汪洋大海？


「區議會功能組別」內藏魔鬼


常言魔鬼在細節中，這個修訂方案最少有3隻魔鬼。


第一是「政治分贓」：這個方案需要由區議員互相提名，才把候選人交給市民投票。因此，有意問鼎立法會的區議員，必須先要出盡法寶，在400人的小圈子中取得足夠的提名票。提名門檻愈高（例如需要50票），難度愈大，每張提名票的叫價便愈高。區議會目前充斥大量親建制的所謂「獨立人士」，毋須依據政黨取向提名；由於立法會選舉在他們當選區議員一年後才舉行，投票支持他們的選民無法影響他們的取態。屆時這些區議員的提名票便可以「善價而沽」，只要不愚蠢到觸及刑法，種種利益交換的勾當便會大行其道，禁之不絕，區議會劣質化指日可待。


第二是「易請難送」：當400多名區議員成為功能組別的得益者，他們理所當然地變成功能組別的守護神。在政府管治威信日益下降的今天，區議會的角色日益吃重，以掩飾政府認受性不足的窘態。例如，縱使是一個地區規劃議題，皇后碼頭應該原址重置還是易地重置，政府也要找來18個區議會表態護航，抗衡民間專業意見。當區議員討價還價的籌碼愈來愈多，下一步政改時，要把他們已經吃到口的肥肉拿走，廢除功能組別，真是天方夜譚。


第三是「以假亂真」：全國人大常委會副秘書長喬曉陽早前公開向港人表達對普選的看法，即是僅限於選舉權的普及而平等，而對於國際人權公約所要求的被選舉權和提名權卻隻字不提。按照這個「中共特色」的普選原則，實施區議會功能組別修訂方案後，幾乎可以宣布立法會普選「大功告成」。因為屆時全港市民一人兩票（一票地區直選加一票功能組別），還不算「普及而平等」嗎？至於為什麼300多萬市民手中的一票，只能平均60多萬票才產生一個區議會功能組別的立法會議員，而其他商界選民，可以百多票便產生一個立法會議員，喬曉陽已經說清楚，「必須兼顧資本主義發展」的需要。若中央官員心情寬暢的話，到了2016和2020年，取消一些無關痛癢的公司票和團體票，誰還敢說「真普選」沒有在香港落實？


一旦開門讓這3隻魔鬼入城，誰來捉鬼降魔？支持方案的議員是否心中有數？


「恐懼戰術」違背事實


曾蔭權在電視辯論中運用「恐懼戰術」，嚇唬市民，一旦政改方案像2005年一樣「原定踏步」，香港便「無出路」。但他又同時聲稱：2005年後他已經取得重大成就，讓中央在2007年給了香港一個普選時間表。這項前後矛盾的邏輯不僅是個大笑話，更點出一項重要事實：正因為香港人在2005年拒絕倒退方案，中央才開出一個政制向前走的時間表。


中央的積極回應遠不止此：為了紓緩政局矛盾，中央加大中港經濟融合的力度，單是CEPA便在2005年後加簽了5份補充協議，再加上港珠澳大橋、新口岸和高鐵等跨境基建，更鼓勵廣東省和深圳市配合香港規劃發展。香港經濟發展的動力不減反增，這都是有目共睹的事實。


由是觀之，否決政改方案便令香港「無出路」一說，絕對與事實不符。反之，當議員面對一個無助化解深層次社會矛盾，並且任由特權繼續膨脹的政改方案，否決的動作絕非消極，而是具有積極意義、促使中央勇敢回應香港困局的一步。

作者是公民黨副主席

Matt Hartley: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to blame for privacy mess

It is always human nature that there is some part of our life that we may or may not want to disclose at some different time with different social groups.

In modern term, we simplify it as "privacy".

I admire Mark's vision and I call it "communism" of modern media.

I understand more why he put "Friends" as the core connecting step in Facebook but its future survival is worrisome if it deviates much from the nature of human being.

Fine tuning is needed and he seems to be listening...


Matt Hartley: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to blame for privacy mess

Read more: http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=3084666#ixzz0pHpTeljJ

Matt Hartley, National Post
Published: Friday, May 28, 2010


The big mess surrounding Facebook's privacy controls -- the disgruntled users, the angry government watchdogs, the organized boycotts -- should all fall squarely on the shoulder's of the company's 26-year-old founder and chief executive.

After all, Mark Zuckerberg is the one with the vision of a world where the Internet is no longer a private and anonymous experience, but rather a social tapestry, where people share their daily digital travels with not only their friends, but the rest of the world.

He's the one who wanted to make it so that Facebook's nearly 500 million users would be forced to share more of themselves with the outside world. He's the one who believes that social norms are changing, that privacy is no longer the default setting coveted by Web users and that "a world that's more open and connected is a better world."

Clearly, this recent backlash over privacy at Facebook is all his fault.

Then again, maybe we shouldn't be so quick to condemn Mr. Zuckerberg.

Truth is, many of us still don't really understand Facebook. Sure, we know it's a site where we can chat with our friends, share pictures and play games that allow us to cultivate small armies of farm animals, but when it comes to understanding just how intertwined Facebook has become with our day to day lives, with the fabric of our emerging connected culture, we just don't know what to make of it.

Not anymore, anyway.

Never before has the world seen something like Facebook. Not since the birth of the Internet itself has such a disruptive technology changed the way we interact and experience the world around us. Average users and privacy watchdogs have only recently begun to understand the intricacies of the House that Zuck Built.

For many Web users -- including more than 15 million Canadians -- Facebook is their base of operations on the Web. Facebook is literally the public face they present to the world, it is their social circle and it is a perpetually updated yearbook all rolled into one. It's the little piece of online real estate they can call home.

In just six years, the population of Facebook has exploded from a few thousand Ivy League students to eclipse the combined populations of the United States and Canada. Indeed, among certain demographics in North America, non-Facebook users are something of an anomaly.

It barely classifies as a social network anymore. Facebook is a category unto itself. An island nation in cyberspace, governed by Mr. Zuckerberg from the company's Palo Alto, California headquarters.

The problem is, the laws of Facebookland keep changing.

Over the past six months, Facebook has unleashed a number of alterations to its privacy controls that not only made more of its users' personal data public by default, but also swelled the company's privacy options to 50 buttons, 170 choices and a word count that surpassed even the United States Constitution.

This week, Facebook bowed to public pressure and simplified its privacy settings, creating one single page where users can control whether their information can be seen by their friends, friends of friends or everyone on the Web.

Facebook also enabled users to block outside software developers -- the makers of the addictive games and quiz features that have become a staple of the service -- from accessing their personal information.

To ensure that companies aren't viewing your details, however, means shutting down your Farmville account and deleting the "Which Simpsons Character Are You?" application for your profile.

Still, if you talk to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, even with the changes announced this week, Facebook is actually more open today than it was a year ago when the office concluded its 14-month investigation into the site's privacy controls, forcing sweeping changes.

Just how upset are users? When four New York-based college students started taking donations to help fund a project that would develop an open sourced Facebook rival where users' data would remain private, they raised more than $100,000 in a matter of months.

"Quit Facebook Day," an online protest started by a pair of Toronto men, will take place on Monday. As of press time, nearly 25,000 Facebook users had pledged to permanently erase their profiles from Facebook's database.

Facebook's citizens are angry. Many feel betrayed by a site which started out by offering them a chance to reconnect with long lost friends, organize parties and share photos in what felt like a closed, personal -- even private -- setting.

It's as though Facebook has broken an unwritten social networking contract with its users.

According to some philosophers, including the 17th century writer Thomas Hobbes, society or "the social" is only possible through the social contract, whereby citizens agree to surrender certain freedoms in exchange for order, peace and a relief from chaos.

With Facebook, users were willing to enter into the social networking contract offered by the company. In exchange for a personal homepage, a mechanism for connecting with friends, users were willing to let Facebook make money by helping marketers advertise to them based on the information in their profiles.

As Facebook's audience grew, so did the company's value to marketers. Based on the information at Facebook's disposal, advertisers could tailor their marketing to smaller and more targeted groups. Instead of advertising on car Websites outside Facebook, marketers could have their messages appear beside only the Facebook profiles belonging to users who said they liked Honda Civics or Ford Mustangs, thereby maximizing the return on their investment.

The problem is, Facebook kept changing the terms of the user contract. Information that wasn't meant to be public became widely available. Default settings were changed so that more information could be shared with the wider Web.

Of course, this was all part of Mr. Zuckerberg's plan to gradually spread Facebook's tentacles across the Web, through new social features and open graphs. The idea was that Facebook would become the default social standard that would blanket the Web.

Mr. Zuckerberg's vision is a world where newspaper Websites can show you stories recommended by your Facebook friends, where retailers can suggest items you might like based on your Facebook interests and where Internet radio stations customize playlists based on your favourite bands and the songs your friends say they like.

Just as newspapers and magazines are only as valuable to advertisers as their reader base, Facebook's value lies in its collection of members. Mr. Zuckerberg knows this. Without its captive user base sharing their lives with each other and with Facebook, the company wouldn't be worth an estimated US$15-billion.

Facebook's challenge lies in finding ways to encourage its users to open up about themselves, to share more information publicly, safe in the knowledge that it's not just good for Facebook, but it's good for them too.

But after this recent user backlash, questions are now being raised about just how social we're willing to be online. In an op-ed piece in the Washington Post this week, Mr. Zuckerberg admitted that perhaps Facebook moved too quickly in its quest to find new ways to "connect with the social Web and each other."

Mr. Zuckerberg believes that the social norm has evolved over time and that people are less concerned about privacy and more willing to share today than ever before.

Maybe he's right. How else do we explain our obsession with Facebook, reality television, blogging and services like Twitter?

Of course, the mere existence of Facebook as a central tenet of Western culture will continue to alter our notions of privacy. Things we consider private today may seem inconsequential in five years time.

Still, how social is too social? It's a question that will need to be answered by not just Facebook, but also by Twitter, Foursquare and other social connection services. As social networking gravitates towads mobile devices and smartphones -- and advertisers are able to target users based not just on their information, but also their location -- people will have to decide just how plugged into the social Web they're willing to be.

If anything, this recent rebellion from the citizens of Facebookland shows that at least some users aren't quite ready to share in Mr. Zuckerberg's vision of the future.

At least, not yet.

mhartley@nationalpost.com



Read more: http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=3084666#ixzz0pHop9PRA

無私助人5個好人

It is so encouraging to see a newspaper media is reporting "good news" in A1.

Way to go for "Ming Pao" and those 5 brave and generous people who contribute.

"Good News", a truthful one with overt intention, always exists and needs to be known!

無私助人5個好人

紅十字會「香港人道年獎」嘉許


【明報專訊】香港社會以金錢掛帥，股市樓市暢旺，不少人為覓蝸居窮半生精力，有人則追求心靈富有。工程師高永賢於10年前毅然辭職，放棄屋仔、車仔、老婆仔、人仔的「四仔」大計，加入無國界醫生，付出黃金十年，四出救災扶貧；建築系教授吳恩融於內地義務建設，成立基金籌募建築費，為窮孩子搭起求學之橋。


香港紅十字會昨頒發香港人道年獎予連同上述兩人在內的5名義工，嘉許人道精神。眾得獎人不約而同說，獎項只是里程碑，人道救援工作的路仍遙遙。


明報記者 陳嘉婉 謝少莉

研究：兩歲懂說謊 出人頭地有機會

Hey Lucas, should I congratulate your sister?

研究：兩歲說謊 出人頭地有機會


【明報專訊】小孩兩歲就懂說謊，長大後有望出人頭地當總裁？姑勿論閣下是否認同，但這確是加拿大多倫多大學兒童研究所的一項研究結論。


《星期日泰晤士報》報道，研究員對1200名年齡介乎2至16歲的小孩，進行「說謊研究」。實驗中，有小孩夠膽謊稱「狗兒吃了我的功課（所以沒功課交）」，也有5歲小女孩明明被告知不准回頭偷看背後有什麼玩具，但卻照舊設法偷看，事後還向大人聲稱，知道它是恐龍玩具，是因為「上帝來到房裏悄悄告訴她」。 但研究員聲言，即使孩子年紀小小就能說出如此離譜大話，父母也許不用太擔心，因為幼童學懂說謊，實際反映他們的智能發展，已達重要的一步。


說謊出色者 認知能力佳


研究員發現，接受研究的孩童，大多數都會說謊，但謊話說得「最出色」的，都是那些認知能力較佳的小孩——他們已發展出「執行能」（Executive Function），懂得如何將真相拋諸腦後，好讓謊話說出來更具說服力。根據心理學概念，「執行能」協助兒童去注意哪些是重要的活動或任務，並決定先去執行哪一項任務；透過「執行能」，人可以規劃與組織活動，管理自己的情緒和想法，專注地把事情做得更有效果。


研究發現，兩歲的幼童有兩成會說謊，3歲時會升至50％，4歲時更幾乎達90％。到12歲時數字見頂，在這年紀幾乎所有孩子都說謊，之後走勢會回落，到16歲時，70％會說謊。


沒證據顯示會變騙徒


研究員稱，隨接近長大成人，青少年會學懂說善意謊言（white lies），以免傷害他人感受。研究員稱，沒證據顯示孩童說謊，與在考試出貓或長大後變成騙徒有任何關係；是否家教嚴厲或有宗教養育背景，亦沒有任何影響。反而健康聰明的孩子，會較快學懂講大話。一名教學專家說﹕「聰明的孩子說謊技巧較高。當某事不能容於他們的生活圈子中，多數少年人都會選擇說謊。若你長大後做生意，有時你也會希望『不盡不實』，避免說出真相的全部。」


星期日泰唔士報