AI and machine learning have something of an image problem.

Theyve never been quite so widely discussed as topics, or, arguably, their potential so widely debated. This is, to some extent, part of the problem. Artificial Intelligence can, still, be anything, achieve anything. But until its results are put into practice for people, it remains a misunderstood concept, especially to the layperson.

While well-established industry thought leaders are rightly championing the fact that AI has the potential to be transformative and capable of a wide range of solutions, the lack of context for most people is fuelling fears that it is simply going to replace peoples roles and take over tasks, wholesale. It also ignores the fact that AI applications have been quietly assisting peoples jobs, in a light touch manner, for some time now and people are still in those roles.

Many people are imagining AI to be something it is not. Given the technology is still in a fast-development phase, some people think it is helpful to consider the tech as a type of plug and play, black box technology. Some believe this helps people to put it into the context of how it will work and what it will deliver for businesses. In our opinion, this limits a true understanding of its potential and what it could be delivering for companies day in, day out.

The hyperbole is also not helping. The statements we use AI and our products AI driven have already become well-worn by enthusiastic salespeople and marketeers. While theres a great sales case to be made by that exciting assertion, its rarely speaking the truth about the situation. What is really meant by the current use of artificial intelligence? Arguably, AI is not yet a thing in its own right; i.e the capability of machines to be able to do the things which people do instinctively, which machines instinctively do not. Instead of being excited by hearing the phrase we do AI!, people should see it as a red flag to dig deeper into the technology and the AI capability in question.

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Machine learning, similarly, doesnt benefit from sci-fi associations or big sales patter bravado. In its simplest form, while machine learning sounds like a defined and independent process, it is actually a technique to deliver AI functions. Its maths, essentially, applied alongside data, processing power and technology to deliver an AI capability. Machine learning models dont execute actions or do anything themselves, unless people put them to use. They are still human tools, to be deployed by someone to undertake a specific action.

The tools and models are only as good as the human knowledge and skills programming them. People, especially in the legal sectors autologyx works with, are smart, adaptable and vastly knowledgeable. They can quickly shift from one case to another, and have their own methods and processes of approaching problem solving in the workplace. Where AI is coming in to lift the load is on lengthy, detailed, and highly repetitive tasks such as contract renewals. Humans can get understandably bored when reviewing highly repetitive, vast volumes of contracts to change just a few clauses and update the document. A machine learning solution does notnget bored, and performs consistently with a high degree of accuracy, freeing those legal teams up to work on more interesting, varied, or complicated casework.

Together, AI, machine learning and automation are the arms and armour businesses across a range of sectors need to acquire to adapt and continue to compete in the future. The future of the legal industry, for instance, is still a human one where knowledge of people will continue to be an asset. AI in that sector is more focused on codifying and leveraging that intelligence and while the machine and AI models learn and grow from people, so those people will continue to grow and expand their knowledge within the sector too. Today, AI and ML technologies are only as good as the people power programming them.

As Oren Etzioni, CEO of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence put it, AI is neither good nor evil. Its a tool. A technology for us to use. How we choose to apply it is entirely up to us.

By Ben Stoneham, founder and CEO, autologyx

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Removing the robot factor from AI - Gigabit Magazine - Technology News, Magazine and Website

Of the many ingredients that go into quality healthcare, comprehensive patient data is close to the top of the list. No one knows this more than Mayur Saxena, CEO and founder of Droice Labs. Saxena created his startup while he was pursuing his doctorate degree at Columbia University, and working at healthcare company conducting clinical trials on new medication. Hes energized by the plethora of opportunities to improve healthcare using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning.

Mayur Saxena, CEO and founder of Droice Labs, is energized by the plethora of opportunities to improve healthcare using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning.

Patient data is notoriously disorganized and complex, he said. With machine learning, healthcare professionals can organize that information to better understand the disease of every patient and reach them faster with interventions that improve their lives. Its an amazing feeling when you talk with someone whos recovered from an illness because they received the right care.

The idea behind Droice is to make messy data neat, so people can spend less time organizing it and more time analyzing it.

Insights drive personalized patient care

The startup has collected data from 50 million patients in working with healthcare providers, payors, and government organizations in the U.S. and Europe. Healthcare professionals in hospitals, pharmaceutical firms, medical device manufacturing, and insurance rely on Droice Labs natural language understanding (NLU) technology. NLU make sense of patient information in multiple languages from anywhere such as electronic medical records (EMR), insurance claims, research reports, and medical devices.

Our machine learning system takes all the data about an individual into account, and breaks it down so that a doctor, pharmaceutical scientist or healthcare insurer can understand patients better and faster, said Saxena. Instead of repetitive, disparate one-on-one diagnoses and follow-up care, were automating personalized care for a much larger patient population. With shared insights across a large patient population, physicians can chart disease progress and prescribe the best treatment plan. Clinical research into new drugs that took years could be reduced to days or weeks.

Saxena said that one hospital reduced the amount of time it took to arrive at an appropriate diagnosis for patients by over 20 percent.

SAP.iO Foundry opens up world of healthcare opportunities

Droice Labs recently participated in the latest healthcare-focused accelerator program at SAP.iO Foundry New York. It was one of seven up and coming startups working with hospital system providers, employee health and wellness solutions, medical devices, and health IT.

Weve learned so much about customers in the healthcare industry from SAPs sales and product teams, said Saxena. These large organizations have unique needs, and were grateful for the opportunity to partner with SAP, a company with a massive presence across so many geographies. Weve gained valuable insights about strategic global selling and scaling our technology to meet the unique requirements of these customers.

The Droice Labs machine learning platform is now downloadable on the SAP App Center.

Turning long-time passion into thriving startup

Droice Labs reflects Saxenas long-time personal and career commitment to healthcare. After earning his undergraduate degree in bioengineering and biomedical engineering, he worked in high-performance computing in Singapore before arriving in the United States. Thats when he acted on his passion, exploring how AI and machine learning can help improve patient care, and potentially eradicate disease.

Were looking at data from hundreds of thousands of patients a day, helping improve their care pathways across the healthcare system, said Saxena. We have the technology to work with patient data at scale. Im most excited about working together with recognized healthcare experts using state-of-the-art technology to address major challenges in this complicated, regulated industry.

Digitally trustworthy strategy

In an environment where patient concerns and regulations around data control continue to increase, Saxena emphasized his companys strategy of digital trust.

Everything we do is designed to respect individual patient privacy, he said. We dont possess related identifying data on patients, and we remove any identifiers. Working in a mission critical environment like healthcare brings a set of responsibilities. If there is a population suffering from disease, and by looking at their information we can partner with healthcare providers to help make their quality of life better, thats what well do. But we dont participate in business models targeted to specific individuals.

Saxena expected his companys rapid growth trajectory to continue, and it was easy to see why. According to Gartners 2020 CIO Survey, AI is the healthcare industrys top game-changing technology. These analysts predicted 75 percent ofhealthcare delivery organizationswill invest in an AI capability to explicitly improve either operational performance or clinical outcomes by 2021.

Originally posted here:

AI Is Top Game-Changing Technology In Healthcare Industry - Forbes

Jim Prosers new biography on Jordan Peterson portrays him as a Christlike figure plagued by personal demons. Yet the real devil here is in the details.

What does one say about Jim Prosers new biography of Jordan Peterson, Savage Messiah: How Dr. Jordan Peterson Is Saving Western Civilization? The first thing is that its not a biography, at least not in the modern sense of Boswells Life of Samuel Johnsona text thats extensive leveraging of archival records, eye-witness accounts, and interviews effectively bestowed the genre with a veneer of objectivity thats defined it ever since. By contrast, what Proser offers us hereas can be inferred from the titleis essentially a Christ allegory: one in which Peterson is portrayed as being the lone individual capable of saving Judeo-Christian Enlightenment values from the vipers of postmodern neo-Marxism, resurgent since the anti-Western movement of Occupy Wall Street. And should one dispute Petersons candidacy for comparison with Christ on the grounds that the latter was put to death for his sermons whereas the former has become rich off of them, Proser constantly reassures us of the mental anguish Peterson has endured on account of neo-Marxist aggression, which at one point, literally surrounded him, invaded his classroom, threatened his career and the future stability of his family.

Given the apocalyptic sense of importance Proser assigns to Peterson, many readers may be curious as to just who he is. In 2016, Peterson first attracted widespread notoriety for his publication of a video on YouTube, Professor Against Political Correctness: Part 1. The video, which featured Petersons voiceimagine Kermit the Frog trying to evince the air of a truth-telling patriarchdubbed over a handful of black-and-white PowerPoint slides, was austere. It was also factually dubious: in it, for instance, Petersona Canadian, who currently teaches at the University of Torontoconfuses Canadian jurisdictions, waxing on about the threat posed to academic freedom by the Canadian governments effort to legislatively protect gender-nonconforming individuals seemingly unaware that his own vocation falls under provincial mandate. Naturally, few noticed, and Petersons was able to parlay his burgeoning star as a professor capable of legitimating the intellectual pretensions of the alt-right into a best-selling book two years later, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. 12 Rules for Life, which builds on Petersons efforts to map Jungian archetypes onto neuroscience in his earlier book Maps of Meaning isat bottoma pop psychology book sprinkled with a few inchoate philosophy references (Peterson succeeds in misreading numerous thinkers throughout the book, including Heidegger and Derrida). However, by this point, the question of Petersons academic bona fides was largely a moot one. His nonstop polemicizing against the leftwhose ideology he coined the neologism postmodern neo-Marxism to describe, sloppily compounding differences a more rigorous thinker wouldve bothered to delineatesupported by his nonstop lecture tours, had already resonated with a mass audience. 12 Rules was just the tour souvenir.

That Petersons elevation to fame occurred relatively recently poses a distinct problem to Proser as a biographer. Jordan Peterson is 57 years oldhardly an upstart. Yet as he was not a public figure prior to his fiftieth year, writing a genuinely comprehensive biography wouldve required undertaking substantial research to supplement Petersons own accounts (part of the appeal of Petersons books and lectures lies in the way he frequently recounts stories supplied from personal experience). But whether out of laziness (or whether out of a desire not to impinge upon the soupcon of prophecy Peterson has built up around himself), Proser instead elects to use the books first half to furnish his readers with an assemblage of chronologically organized anecdotes about Petersons life derived from none other than Peterson (and virtually all readily available elsewhere). The best thing that can be said about this part of the book is thatin so far as the events in question occurred prior to his transformation into the public intellectual par excellence of the Rightits impossible to say categorically that theyre wrong (though one does get the sense that taking them at face value would be a bit like seeing a long cut of Purple Rain and mistaking it for authentic biography). The worst thing that can be said is that Proser here does the exact opposite of what a biographer should do, inflating Petersons personal mythology rather than slicing through it.

The word mythology is not used here loosely. Peterson, who believes that the world is not made of matter but out of what mattersdeep, brohas in his past works compared his travails to those of mythological and religious figures. Given that Peterson makes clear in Maps of Meaning that he believes there is a symmetry between neurobiological structures and mythic archetypes, it can be argued that this is less preposterous than it seems (even as this argument itself is complicated by the fact that the mythological examples Peterson makes to use it are disproportionately Western). For Proser, however, it is not enough that Peterson simply be an avatar of common experience. Instead, his stress on Petersons world-historical confrontation with SJWs (social justice warriors) infuses even his relaying of the events of Petersons early life. When Peterson refuses to go to church and rejects religion, he, may have felt something like Dantes Inferno. When he experienced depression as a young man, he was, Odysseus traveling through the land of the dead to learn of his future. To top it all off, in Prosers account, Peterson was dogged as a youth by none other than Satan (!) himself, who decided to,be patient with the young man who was so bright and seemed so enthusiastic. Not that his patience was infinite: after Peterson interrupts a college drinking party by shouting about God and war and love and other things he didnt know a lot about, the, Prince abandoned his drunken prospect to suffer in his well-deserved vomit. These kinds of descriptions, coupled with the books title, make you wonder if Proser hasnt forsaken the vocation to which he wouldve been best disposed: that of a metal lyricist.

Petersons reception during the early stages of his academic career, was, as Proser explains, not much different than the one he encountered assailing besotted college students with his philosophic theses at house parties. At least so far as his colleagues were concerned. After serving as an assistant professor at Harvard for five years, Peterson failed to acquire a tenured position there due to, in his own words, a lack of presence of mindwhatever that means. Even at the University of Toronto, a prestigious albeit considerably less prestigious institution, Peterson was nearly rejected by the psychology departments search committee on the grounds that he was too eccentric. Throughout his description of these events, Proser is so committed to portraying Peterson as a concentrate of titanic significance that he fails to countenance the possibility that his academic work just might not be that good. But while hardly a model of intellectual rigor, whats also clear from this part of the book is the way that Petersons indisputable skills as an orator furnished him with opportunities well above his academic station. At Harvard, he purportedly built up a cult following among his studentswho also nominated him for the Levenson Teaching Award in 1998, which he subsequently won. And a few years into his stint at the University of Toronto, he landed a gig delivering lectures on Maps of Meaning for a publicly-funded broadcaster, TVOntario (which also invited him to frequently serve as in interlocutor on The Agenda with Steve Paikin). Predictably, Proser fails to notice the irony thatwhile Peterson frequently rails against the oppressive diktats thrust upon him by politically correct government apparatchikshe is also a product of government, having received a quotient of support throughout his career denied to many of the postmodern neo-Marxists whom he regularly decries.

Its at this point in Prosers bookas Petersons public visibility begins to increasethat it degenerates into deep nonsense. Absent extensive research, and unmoored from the coming-of-age narrative that undergirds its first half, the latter part of Savage Messiah is a mess of phrases copied verbatim from public websites, tidbits of Petersons lectures, and Prosers crass polemicizing. Much of it is, moreover, factually inaccurate. The competition for the worst burst of prose in Savage Messiah is a fierce one. But in Prosers description of the political ascent of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, we seem to have found a winner:

Arriving just in time, young Justin ascended quickly to the leadership of the NDP. Then riding the wave of progressive outrage over the repeated defeat of their agenda and the rise of traditionalist voices like Jordan Peterson, he led the Liberal Party to a sweeping national victory in 2015. The Liberal Party went from third place with 36 seats to a dominating 184 seats, the largest increase by a party ever in a federal election. He was sworn in as prime minister of Canada on November 4, 2015.

To be clear, the Liberal Party and NDP (New Democratic Party, though Proser elsewhere refers to it in the text as the National Democratic Party) are, in fact, completely different political organizations. Nor is this the only example of Proser sloppily conflating different political traditions: at another point, he declares that Sartre and French pro-fascist writer Louis-Ferdinand Cline as exponents of different forms of Marxism (though perhaps Cline is indicted here because he actuallyunlike Peterson or Prosertook the time to read Capital). And for the coup de grace, we learn that anti-fascist Antifa fighters are none other than the modern-day version of the violent Black Shirts, the voluntary, paramilitary wing of Benito Mussolinis Fascist Party of Italy. Oh, and in case you wondering: the cause of the violence of Antifa is possibly the theory of toxic masculinity.

Whats disturbing about these kinds of claimsapart from the fact they made it by an actual copy editoris that its not clear that describing them as errors fully does justice to the mind in question. Some may be oversights. But one also harbors the suspicion that Proser is so in the thrall of a conspiratorial vertigo that he thinks hes offering up the unvarnished truth. This speaks to the fundamental flaw of Savage Messiah: that it never even momentarily allows the facts to stand alone. Of course, narrative structuration is the essence of biography, and it would be unreasonable to expect any author to not bring some kind of predisposition to a project dedicated to a figure as divisive as Peterson. But if Prosers goal is to honor Petersons work, his exaggeratedly hagiographic approach actually has the opposite effect. If Petersons brilliance is so self-evident, why is it necessary for Proser toin arguably the most surreal moment in a book rife with themcite student ratings on ratemyprofessor.com in order to attempt to discredit one of his ideological opponents? Moreover, one gets the sense that Proser, who identifies openly as a follower of Petersons work, has not even fully assimilated it. Where Peterson, for instance, has criticized the adoption of identity politics by both the right and leftalbeit been more severe in his condemnations of the latterProser is alarmed by an Amazon.com product review that refers to a two-decade-old journal as, seeking to abolish the white race. Likewise, where Peterson couches his misogyny in improperly applied statistical data, Proserwhos elsewhere described women as having a last fable dayis hardly so discreet. For him, should we examine the subtext of one of Petersons lectures, it is clear that its not right-wing authoritarians, but women who most wanted to control speech.

Savage Messiah is a colossal embarrassment. But if its most disquieting passages can credibly pass themselves off as analyses of Petersons work, is it solely Prosers? Petersons has mastered the art of disavowal: of selectively deploying statistical data in order to infer bigotries he then can subsequently distance himself from. This book is just another example: as Proser explains in the books epilogue, Peterson gave it his assentbut never in a way that would impede him from later disowning its contents. Maybe, then, its not Peterson but, rather, Proser who manifests the archetypal traits of the Messiah. Jesus, after all, let himself be pinned down.

Conrad Bongard Hamilton is a PhD student based at Paris 8 University, currently pursuing research on non-human agency in the work of Karl Marx under the supervision of Catherine Malabou. He is a contributor to the text What is Post-Modern Conservatism, as well as the author of a forthcoming book, Dialectic of Escape: A Conceptual History of Video Games. He can be reached at konradbongard@hotmail.com, and a catalogue of his writings can be found on Academia.edu.

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A Jordan Peterson Biographer Missing the Mark - Merion West

Im not a disciple of Dr. Petersons. But he has inspired and helped to heal me with his words, and I admire him most for the example that hes set with his own life: the courage to stand up, with shoulders back and face the darkness.

Fred Hammon, a sixty-five-year-old bass player and mechanical engineer living in Los Angeles, was the subject of Tony D. Senatores November, 2019Merion Westarticle The Best Argument For Jordan Peterson: My Friend, Fred.

Hammon discovered Jordan Peterson by chance on the Internet one day, while caring for his wife who is suffering fromFrontotemporal dementia. Upon seeing Petersons lecture where he describeshow his father-in-law lovingly cared for his wife during an illness, Hammon was particularly struck by Petersons advice to,stand up straight and fully face the darkness, and what you discover is at the darkest part is the brightest light. Hammon describes this as a transformative moment for him, which led him to re-center his own approach to taking care of his wife and dealing with his own sadness at witnessing the state of his wifes health.

Hammon, who self-identifies as a centrist liberal and was influenced by the counterculture movement of the 1960s, does not consider himself a disciple of Petersons. Rather, he simply finds some of his Petersons lessons and advice to be intensely helpful in his own life. In light of the discussions generated by Senatores article about Hammon, as well as Jordan Petersons own recent health issues, Hammon joinsMerion West to provide more background on his relationship to Jordan Petersons work.

Mr. Hammon, you were the subject of a widely-read Merion West article in November about how Jordan Peterson personally helped you so much. Can you briefly explain how Jordan Petersons work has been so impactful in your life?

From when I first was exposed to Jordan Peterson, I liked him. Sometimes, of course, its hard to know when someone is mirroring your own thoughts but just saying it betteror is actually providing you with new information in a way that resonates and inspires. As far as helping me, Im going through the most difficult chapter of my life so far. My wife is suffering from and ultimately dying from the advanced stages of Frontotemporal dementia (FTD).

I had been living in fear and hopelessness, as well as from guilt for not being able to save her. I had pretty much shut down in many aspects of my life and started drinking a lot in order to avoid the day-to-day terror. If you read the article in November, you already know the story about me hearing Jordan talk about standing up and facing that horror head on with courage and seeing a brightness beyond. I believe him when he says that what it is that I need to find is to be found precisely there. It has helped to pull me out of my despair. Im functioning much better and looking for value, as opposed to throwing in the towel and dying along with wife.

I realized that I can be of no real use to her if I continued to circle that drain. I now think more about how I can help her on her journey and find sweetness and value along the way. It still isnt easy, but Ive managed to crawl a good way out of depths of that hole that I was living in, and hearing Jordan Petersons advice was very important for doing that.

In a sense, Tony Senatore, the author of that article, asserted that so many criticisms written about Jordan Peterson are academic or theoretical; however, the fact of the matter is that Petersons work is practically helping many peopleand that latter point ought to take precedence. Is this a view you share?

If you mean that the proof is in the pudding so to speakI suppose. People listen to Jordan Peterson, and they find him inspirational in positive ways. Im not an academic; Im not in a position to judge Jordan Peterson along those lines, and neither, for that matter, are most of his critics. Beyond that, if you take the time to review his lectures and debates, he answers a lot of the questions posed by his critics, if people would listen. He spends a lot of his time answering tough questions. I wish he werent so ill at present. I enjoying hearing him debate his detractors.

From a football blogger citing Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll as problematic because of having invited Jordan Peterson to talk to his team, to efforts to draw a connection between Peterson and Nazis, to the vitriol Peterson received when his recent health problems came to light, what is driving this anger towards Peterson?

This is asking me to understand the mind of some people on the Left who get angry and highly emotional towards anyone who holds an opinion just to the right of theirs. When he gets slammed by university humanities professors like the one who was gloating over his illness, my first reaction is: The lady doth protest too much, methinks. Its as if they fear that they cant defend themselves against his arguments using reasoned language, so, instead, they express hatred and vitriol towards him.

As we have learned recently, Jordan Peterson has, unfortunately, been undergoing a number of health issues in the past few months. Is there anything you would say to other people wholike youhave found Petersons work so impactful and are trying to deal with learning about his health issues?

Jordan Peterson is human, and, therefore, he is both vulnerable and fallible. He has neverin my recollectionever claimed to be anything other than that. He often sounds like he thinks that hes right all the time and comes off with arrogance, but then he admits to changing his mind mid-lecture sometimes after hearing his own thoughts said out loud. It happens in debates too, in real time, when he is presented with a better argument. Ive seen it.

The man is intellectually honest, in my opinion, which doesnt mean that hes right. Hes been open about his depression and health issues. How can he not be seen as anything other than courageous or, at the very least, admirable given, what hes been doing with his life: both helping people who need help, as well as courageously being open about his own health issues?

In addition to the points you already mentioned, are there any other lessons from Jordan Peterson that you think have the potential to be particularly helpful to other peopleand not just young peoplebut perhaps people of all ages?

Im not a disciple of Dr. Petersons. But he has inspired and helped to heal me with his words, and I admire him most for the example that hes set with his own life: the courage to stand up, with shoulders back and face the darkness. The first time I ever noticed him, he was doing precisely that. Hes not perfect, and I would warn anybody against those kinds of perceptions. Its his own life. That doesnt take away from his good examples and advice.

Im a pretty good bass player now, and I might even inspire some younger bass players locally; but, there will become a point when Im not as good. Having said that, I wish Jordan the best on his recovery, and I expect more lectures and writings from him. No pressure.

Editors note: If you would like to share an account of how Jordan Peterson has helped you, please get in touch with us at submit@merionwest.com

Articles authored or co-authored by Staff.

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Jordan Peterson: the One Who Helped Me When I Most Needed It - Merion West

Video shows the driver of a yellow Mustang dragging a truck through a downtown Boise parking garage on Valentine's Day.

BOISE, Idaho A driver accused of causing extensive damage to multiple vehicles in a downtown Boise parking garage, should not have been behind the wheel, according to Idaho court records.

The driver of the Ford Mustang was caught on camera dragging a truck while hitting 10 other cars in the hit-and-run crash on Friday, Feb. 14.

The video, provided to KTVB by Jordan Peterson, has been making the rounds on social media.

He could've killed somebody, that really freaks me out, said Paul Pacheco, the owner of the truck seen dragged in the video.

Less than 24 hours after Fridays hit-and-run, police identified Demariea Dawkins as the Mustangs owner and a person of interest. On Tuesday, they called him a suspect.

According to Idaho Court Records, a judge sentenced Dawkins to seven years probation after he pleaded guilty to DUI and resisting arrest in Ada County in 2018. Records also show Dawkins driver's license was suspended for five years.

He knew what he was doing, he was purposely ramming my truck into other cars to get it unhooked off of his car, Pacheco said. So that's how the other 11 cars got taken out in the process in the garage.

Pacheco and his wife were downtown for Valentine's Day when they realized they forgot something in their truck.

When we got off the elevator, there were cops everywhere, there was debris everywhere, Pacheco said.

He first thought someone stole his truck, but later spoke with police and saw the video.

"When I saw the condition of it, what went through my mind was how can people be this way? It's frustrating, it hurts, Pacheco said.

Boise Police later found the mustang abandoned, but Dawkins was nowhere in sight.

As of Tuesday, police told KTVB, they still don't have Dawkins in custody but say once they do, he'll likely be arrested.

We are going to be charging him with multiple charges, one count of reckless driving, one count of driving with an open container and 11 counts of leaving the scene of an accident, due to the 11 vehicles that were damaged at the scene, BPD Sgt. Loren Hilliard said.

Here is the original post:

'He could've killed somebody': Victim in Boise 11-car hit-and-run crash reacts to wild video - KTVB.com

A Bombardier advertising board is pictured in front of a SBB CFF Swiss railway train at the station in Bern, Switzerland, Oct. 24, 2019.

Denis Balibouse/Reuters

Letters to the Editor should be exclusive to The Globe and Mail. Include your name, address and daytime phone number. Try to keep letters to fewer than 150 words. Letters may be edited for length and clarity. To submit a letter by e-mail, click here: letters@globeandmail.com

Re Democracy Gets Schooled In Quebec (Editorial, Feb. 14): It is with sadness that we are witnessing the demise of school boards in Quebec. School boards are one of Canadas oldest forms of democracy and, despite their occasional flaws, have permitted local priorities to be addressed in our school systems. Now, such initiatives in one province must emanate from the bureaucracy in Quebec City.

Would a provincial government ever have introduced French Immersion in elementary schools? It was a school board in Saint-Lambert, Que., that pioneered this, responding to demands of parents wanting to ensure their children would be able to participate in a bilingual country.

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This led to boards in Ottawa and elsewhere to pick up on what has proven to be a very popular and successful program.

Provincial control of curriculum, testing, teacher negotiations and funding has, over the years, reduced the scope of school boards to innovate. Now, with Quebecs example, they look to be an endangered species.

Alex Cullen Ottawa

While Section 23 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms does offer guarantees of minority language instruction across the country, it makes no specific mention of the right to elect and maintain minority linguistic school boards.

In Mahe v. Alberta from 1990, the Supreme Court was asked to determine whether the clause implicitly gave this right. It concluded that Section 23 clearly encompasses a right to management and control and in some circumstances warrant an independent school board. However, these circumstances were never clearly outlined nor defined.

Moreover, history shows that in any case, since 1982, successive Quebec governments have shown no compunction in attempts to ride roughshod over Charter rights whenever it suits a purpose. Now that French boards will be legally abolished, it will surely only be a matter of time before those pesky English boards suffer the same fate.

History shows that centralized government control of education has remained a major objective in Quebec since the days of la Rvolution tranquille. With all school boards gone, that aim would come to fruition, and along with it another nail in the coffin of the Anglo community in Quebec.

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Alan Scrivener Cornwall, Ont.

Re Bombardier To Depart Commercial Plane Business (Report on Business, Feb. 14): Imagine if Canada had invested more than $1-billion into medical research and the hospitals to house it, instead of supporting Bombardiers airplanes. Quebec would have first-rate hospitals full of first-rate professionals, and we would have a very useful result of such an investment.

Could we keep this idea in mind for future use of public money? We will always need hospitals.

Barbara Klunder Toronto

Re Family Control Preserved Bombardiers Independence But At Huge Cost (Online, Feb. 7): The story of Bombardier, a great Canadian business that looks to have lost its way, could have been easily avoided. I do work in succession planning and corporate culture, and this seems like a classic case of the founding family not having the insight to plan for bright new leaders to further build a strong culture of innovation and global competitiveness.

Sometimes, family-run businesses in this country lose sight of their critical stewardship and the need to embrace change, along with deeper commitments to preserving Canadian identity and protecting taxpayer investments where government money is involved. I find it heartbreaking, to say the least.

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The C-series (now renamed the Airbus A220) is one of the most sophisticated aircraft flying, built from the ground up in Canada. Now, our Canadian engineers are left to work for the other guys. Airbus scored big on this with a bargain-basement price.

Alexander Lutchin CEO, Executive Coach Global; Toronto

Re Toronto Police Chief Orders Officers To Stop Using Clearview AI Software (Feb. 14): If this software can be used to catch and incriminate those involved in child torture or pornography videos, I say to hell with privacy concerns. Sometimes we have to submit to things for the common good.

Alison Dennis Kingston

It is well documented that eyewitness testimony is notoriously inaccurate, fraught with human error and complicated by individual bias, even when it is sincere. So what is a police service to do? If a reliable application in the artificial-intelligence toolbox can be more accurate, why not put it to good use?

Lets say we perfect facial-recognition software to the point where it dependably separates multiple sets of identical twins, then it is ready.

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Honouring offenders rights to privacy should be lower on the rights and freedoms hierarchy than the right to safety. Might there be abuse of the application? Of course. That is why it should be regulated.

Hugh McKechnie Newmarket, Ont.

Re In The Ghoulish World Of Online Snark, Toasting To Metastasis Is A Virtue (Feb. 13): I believe columnist Robyn Urback is right to to criticize how social media weaponizes the illnesses of outspoken persons for odious gotcha payback, falsely framing it as karmic justice. Serious critics of Jordan Petersons exclusionary ideology should know better and separate his person from his public persona.

When a public person becomes sick, their humanity should deserve our cathartic pity. Instead of defaulting to ill will and schadenfreude, we should identify with the sufferer and express compassionate solidarity. If ad hominem attacks are wrong in debates over ideas, then they should be wrong when involving ailments. In battle, doctors are known for treating the wounded enemy with the same dedication afforded their own. As current events show, there is no connection between good ideas and good health.

When it comes to illness, we should all be on the side of goodwill toward others. The state of his ideas is a different matter worthy of rigorous disagreement. I wish Mr. Peterson well his ideas, like everyone elses, need a healthy defence.

Tony DAndrea Toronto

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I believe the online virtue of schadenfreude points to something even more disturbing: We hypocritically prize ourselves as a society intolerant of hatred, while at the same time indulging in it. The only issue becomes who or what should be its proper target: the right or left? Conservatives or liberals? Jordan Peterson or his opponents?

To hate at all is to corrupt ones soul. Disagreeing or even condemning others should only be justifiable in so far as we dont lose sight of their humanity. And thats what happens when we hate the antithesis of genuine virtue.

Paul Salvatori Toronto

Robyn Urbacks column reminded me of graffiti I once read on the wall of a university washroom stall when I was a grad student. It read: God is dead, signed Nietzsche. Below that was written: Nietzsche is dead, signed God.

Frank Foulkes Toronto

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Feb. 18: The story of Bombardier could have been easily avoided. Readers react to Bombardiers fortunes, facial recognition, Jordan Peterson, plus...

Last Monday night, BBC2 aired of one of the weirdest and most horribly gripping documentariesI've ever watched.

ComedianDavid Baddiel presented Confronting Holocaust Denial and even before the programme went out, people were complaining that he was "giving a platform" to Holocaust deniers.

The controversy went back and forth in the English papers and everyone took a side.

That the Holocaust happened is, of course, not up for debate. But Holocaust denial is something that should be debated wherever it is confronted.

As I've repeatedly argued in this column, the best way to destroy a stupid argument is not to suppress it, as some believe, but to debate it in the open and expose its flaws for all the world to see.

Baddiel, the son of Jews who fled Nazi Germany, was determined to explore the motivations behind this most pernicious of lies, while others argued that giving these odious people a stage would simply encourage people to follow the deniers.

As he travelled through eastern Europe, it became clear that denial remains strong in some formerly occupied countries because they simply don't want to confront their own role in the single greatest crime in human history.

In a weird way, the motivations of some of those people made a degree of horrible sense - if you think your grandfather was a hero of the partisans and fought against the Nazis, would you really want to know that he was actually a collaborator who forced Jews on to cattle trucks?

That's not to excuse this position, but at least it comes from a place of very human frailty - the reluctance to condemn your grandparents.

But the other form of Holocaust denial, the ideological one, is far more dangerous.

Baddiel met Deborah Lipstadt, who beat the Holocaust denying historian David Irving in a famous libel trial. Her lawyer argued that giving any denier airtime was simply giving them publicity and urged the comedian to refrain from doing so.

Baddiel refused, so who was he going to meet? An unreconstructed neo-Nazi? Irving, or one of his supporters?

Um, no. In fact - and this is where the weird bit kicks in - he travelled to Ennis in Clare, of all places, to meet Dermot Mulqueen, the man arrested in 2015 for putting an axe through a TV to protest against Holocaust Memorial Day - as you do.

The decision to interview Mulqueen was an inspired one. Rather than giving oxygen to hatred, he gave Mulqueen enough rope to hang his ideas. And what batty ideas they were.

He claimed that Auschwitz was a holiday camp with swimming pools and bakeries. He asserted that it was impossible to burn that many bodies (it wasn't). He even repeated the old blood libel that Jews eat Christian babies. He also said one of the reasons why the Holocaust never happened was because Jewish people drive German cars.

Funny enough, Sarah Silverman - when she was still funny - used to have a song called 'Jewish People Driving German Cars.'

Not that our hero would know that. I doubt he spends much time listening to potty-mouthed Jewish comedians.

Rather than being confronted by some sinister but strangely convincing Revisionist, Baddiel met someone who came across as deeply sad and truly pathetic.

Rather than being intrigued by his ideas, anyone watching would have been forced into laughter.

Rather than taking on 'the Jew' and winning, Mulqueen was exposed as complete buffoon.

While there's nothing funny about his ideas, he came across as laughably weak and frightened, happy to spend his days immersed in conspiracy theories - the perfect way for an idiot to think he's an intellectual.

I've interviewed Holocaust survivors in Ireland, and I've dined with many of them in Israel. You just sit there in stunned silence and hope that you don't break down as they talk about what happened to them. Even listening to them is a difficult experience, and the scale of the horrors they endured is just too incomprehensible for the rest of us to process.

But here's the thing - did Mulqueen make me ashamed to be Irish? That was the response from many Irish people who had watched, jaws agape, as he spoke about the 'Holohoax'.

People were quick to express their 'shame' and 'embarrassment'. Numerous messages were sent to Baddiel from Irish people apologising and expressing their revulsion.

That's an undoubtedly sincere reaction but it's the wrong one.

Mulqueen represents nobody but himself. He doesn't speak for the rest of us because the rest of us look at him with scorn and contempt.

In fact, expressions of collective shame feed into the idea of collective responsibility - and we all know how that ends up.

But Baddiel proved his point - by dragging these people away from their chat rooms and exposing them to facts, they always make fools of themselves.

Remember - you should never make a martyr out of a moron.

Link:

Should we suppress Holocaust deniers - or expose them to scorn? - Independent.ie

HONEY, WE MOLESTED THE KIDS!

I wonder if any liberals are re-thinking their insistence that the Boy Scouts allow gay men to take 13-year-old boys on overnight camping trips.

HEADLINE: Boy Scouts Files Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in the Face of Thousands of Child Abuse Allegations

The Boy Scouts of America have long been on the lefts hate list. Any organization that has the temerity to train young men in the virtues of integrity, patriotism and self-reliance is putting itself on the fighting side of liberals!

At the 2000 Democratic National Convention, a little group of Boy Scouts took the stage as part of the opening ceremony and were promptly booed by the delegates.

For decades, the BSA has fended off lawsuits demanding that they embrace the holy trinity of Gs: girls, gays and godless atheists. (If only it had occurred to the plaintiffs to start their own organizations! They could have given them names like The Girl Scouts.)

Why would any liberal want to join an organization that was, according to them, sexist, Bible-thumping and bigoted? They didnt. The lawsuits were kill shots.

For the left, whats not to hate about the Boy Scouts? Their oath is: On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law; to help other people at all times; to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.

Nearly 200 NASA astronauts were Boy Scouts. The great outdoorsman, Teddy Roosevelt, was such a BSA booster than he was made the one and only Chief Scout Citizen, a scout for life.

A Louis Harris & Associates study in 1996 found that men who had been scouts placed a higher value on honesty than those who had not.

But now the lawsuits have killed them. Congratulations, Democrats, The New York Times and corporate America. (I hope all their future employees steal from them, after being raised on Grand Theft Auto instead of the Boy Scout oath.)

From the beginning, BSA has had to deal with child molesters eagerly signing up to go camping with 13-year-old boys in isolated areas away from all observation.

Within a decade of its 1910 founding, the BSA began keeping internal files on ineligible scouting volunteers, known as the perversion files.

Scout leaders were not to be alone with boys and, starting in 1988, all adult applicants were subjected to aggressive background screening. The organization promptly removed any scout leaders based on mere suspicion and alerted law enforcement in about a third of the cases.

Nonetheless, between 1970 and 1991, up to .04% of Boy Scouts may have been molested. Thats about 2,000 out of several million boys.

Given all of this, what sort of escaped mental patient would demand that the Boy Scouts admit openly gay scout leaders?

Yes, we know most gays arent child molesters. How could we not? Its part of our secular catechism, along with the one about most Muslims not being terrorists and most immigrants not being criminals.

But men who molest boys are a small slice infinitesimal really! within a larger category known as gay. Its not two totally different things, like an architect and a dentist. Some men like blondes. Some like brunettes. But theyre all within the category of heterosexual.

No parent is going to send their young sons camping alone in the woods with an openly gay man for the same reason they wouldnt send their adolescent daughters to be alone in the woods with an openly heterosexual man.

And now the BSA has been whiplashed into bankruptcy by liberals demanding, on one hand, that the scouts allow gays to be troop leaders and, on the other hand, filing lawsuits accusing the scouts of not taking strong enough measures to prevent gay troop leaders from molesting boys.

Couldnt liberals get together and decide for themselves whether the Boy Scouts should have been more aggressive in preventing child molestation or less?

For their defense witnesses, the Boy Scouts should call New York Times editors, Democratic politicians and corporate CEOs.

Back in 1980, when a gay guy lost his lawsuit against BSA for dropping him as a scout leader, Wells Fargo, the United Way of San Francisco, Levi Strauss and the Bank of America cut off funding to the organization. San Francisco and Oakland schools prohibited the scouts from using their facilities on weekdays.

After the Supreme Courts disturbingly narrow 5-4 decision in 2000 holding that the Boy Scouts could not be forced to admit gay scout leaders, the Times denounced the decision in an editorial, calling the courts ruling one of its lowest moments of the term.

The following month, the Times ethicist, Randy Cohen, advised a reader to pull her son out of the Cub Scouts, saying it was the ethical thing to do. The ethicist explained: Just as one is honor bound to quit an organization that excludes African-Americans, so you should withdraw from scouting as long as it rejects homosexuals.

Also in response to the Supreme Courts decision, Chase Manhattan Bank, Textron Inc. and dozens more United Way chapters withdrew millions of dollars in contributions. More cities dropped their support of the Boy Scouts.

In his pre-Super Bowl TV interview in 2013, President Barack Obama was still harping on the Boy Scouts refusal to allow gay scoutmasters: Gays and lesbians should have access and opportunity the same way everybody else does.

On CNN, host Carol Costello haughtily informed a guest opposed to gay scoutmasters, Well, Ill just say that the American Psychological Association has studied the issue that you just mentioned. Homosexuals arent any more likely to molest kids than straight men.

Throughout the lefts 30-year assault on the Boy Scouts for discriminating against gays, the Catholic Church was embroiled in its own molestation crisis. More than 80% of the molester priests were accused of victimizing teenage boys.

Instead of saying, Oh I see what the Boy Scouts are doing, liberals responded to the gay sex-abuse crisis in the priesthood by blaming ... celibacy!

Isnt it a thought crime to question whether sexual preference is determined at birth? But liberals not only believed gayness was the result of an adult lifestyle choice celibacy but they knew how to cure it: Allow priests to marry!

Since the one thing we know is that men molesting boys has nothing to do with being gay, I guess this time its camping that causes sodomy.

Ann Coulter is the writer of 12 best-selling books,

including In Trump We Trust.

More here:

ANN COULTER:The Boy Scouts have long been on the left's hate list - MDJOnline.com

I wonder if any liberals are re-thinking their insistence that the Boy Scouts allow gay men to take 13-year-old boys on overnight camping trips.

HEADLINE:Boy Scouts Files Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in the Face of Thousands of Child Abuse Allegations

The Boy Scouts of America (BSA) have long been on the lefts hate list. Any organization that has the temerity to train young men in the virtues of integrity, patriotism, and self-reliance is putting itself on the fighting side of liberals!

At the 2000 Democratic National Convention, a little group of Boy Scouts took the stage as part of the opening ceremony and were promptly booed by the delegates.

For decades, the BSA has fended off lawsuits demanding that they embrace the holy trinity of Gs: girls, gays, and godless atheists. (If only it had occurred to the plaintiffs to start their own organizations! They could have given them names like The Girl Scouts.)

Why would any liberal want to join an organization that was, according to them, sexist, Bible-thumping, and bigoted? They didnt. The lawsuits were kill shots.

For the left, whats not to hate about the Boy Scouts? Their oath is: On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law; to help other people at all times; to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.

Nearly 200 NASA astronauts were Boy Scouts. The great outdoorsman, Teddy Roosevelt, was such a BSA booster than he was made the one and only Chief Scout Citizen, a scout for life.

A Louis Harris & Associates study in 1996 found that men who had been scouts placed a higher value on honesty than those who had not.

But now the lawsuits have killed them. Congratulations, Democrats, the New York Times, and corporate America. (I hope all their future employees steal from them, after being raised on Grand Theft Auto instead of the Boy Scout oath.)

From the beginning, BSA has had to deal with child molesters eagerly signing up to go camping with 13-year-old boys in isolated areas away from all observation.

Within a decade of its 1910 founding, the BSA began keeping internal files on ineligible scouting volunteers, known as the perversion files.

Scout leaders were not to be alone with boys and, starting in 1988, all adult applicants were subjected to aggressive background screening. The organization promptly removed any scout leaders based on mere suspicion and alerted law enforcement in about a third of the cases.

Nonetheless, between 1970 and 1991, up to .04 percent of Boy Scouts may have been molested. Thats about 2,000 out of several million boys.

Given all of this, what sort of escaped mental patient would demand that the Boy Scouts admit openly gay scout leaders?

Yes, we know most gays arent child molesters. How could we not? Its part of our secular catechism, along with the one about most Muslims not being terrorists and most immigrants not being criminals.

But men who molest boys are a small slice infinitesimal really! within a larger category known as gay. Its not two totally different things, like an architect and a dentist. Some men like blondes. Some like brunettes. But theyre all within the category of heterosexual.

No parent is going to send their young sons camping alone in the woods with an openly gay man for the same reason they wouldnt send their adolescent daughters to be alone in the woods with an openly heterosexual man.

And now the BSA has been whiplashed into bankruptcy by liberals demanding, on one hand, that the scouts allow gays to be troop leaders and, on the other hand, filing lawsuits accusing the scouts of not taking strong enough measures to prevent gay troop leaders from molesting boys.

Couldnt liberals get together and decide for themselves whether the Boy Scouts should have been more aggressive in preventing child molestation or less?

For their defense witnesses, the Boy Scouts should call New York Times editors, Democratic politicians, and corporate CEOs.

Back in 1980, when a gay guy lost his lawsuit against BSA for dropping him as a scout leader, Wells Fargo, the United Way of San Francisco, Levi Strauss, and the Bank of America cut off funding to the organization. San Francisco and Oakland schools prohibited the scouts from using their facilities on weekdays.

After the Supreme Courts disturbingly narrow 5-4 decision in 2000 holding that the Boy Scouts could not be forced to admit gay scout leaders, the Times denounced the decision in an editorial, calling the courts ruling one of its lowest moments of the term.

The following month, the Times ethicist, Randy Cohen, advised a reader to pull her son out of the Cub Scouts, saying it was the ethical thing to do. The ethicist explained: Just as one is honor bound to quit an organization that excludes African-Americans, so you should withdraw from scouting as long as it rejects homosexuals.

Also in response to the Supreme Courts decision, Chase Manhattan Bank, Textron Inc., and dozens more United Way chapters withdrew millions of dollars in contributions. More cities dropped their support of the Boy Scouts.

In his pre-Super Bowl TV interview in 2013, President Barack Obama was still harping on the Boy Scouts refusal to allow gay scoutmasters: Gays and lesbians should have access and opportunity the same way everybody else does.

On CNN, host Carol Costello haughtily informed a guest opposed to gay scoutmasters, Well, Ill just say that the American Psychological Association has studied the issue that you just mentioned. Homosexuals arent any more likely to molest kids than straight men.

The defense rests.

Throughout the lefts 30-year assault on the Boy Scouts for discriminating against gays, the Catholic Church was embroiled in its own molestation crisis. More than 80 percent of the molester priests were accused of victimizing teenage boys.

Instead of saying, Oh I see what the Boy Scouts are doing, liberals responded to the gay sex-abuse crisis in the priesthood by blaming celibacy!

Isnt it a thought crime to question whether sexual preference is determined at birth? But liberals not only believed gayness was the result of an adult lifestyle choice celibacy but they knew how to cure it: Allow priests to marry!

Since the one thing we know is that men molesting boys has nothing to do with being gay, I guess this time its camping that causes sodomy.

.

View original post here:

Ann Coulter: Honey, We Molested the Kids! - Breitbart

Jewish UC Berkeley student senator Milton Zerman resigned Wednesday night in protest after a resolution he introduced to condemn a controversial Palestinian photo display was voted down.

In a letter, Zerman said the decision alienated a vast majority of Jewish students, drained the legitimacy and moral authority of the student government and revealed a culture of anti-Semitism at the university.

It was the right decision to resign, Zerman wrote in a text message to J. It took a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get elected to UC Berkeleys student government as an openly Zionist Jewish student. But its come to a point where the ASUC is no longer an institution I can affiliate myself with in good conscience.

The resolution, struck down on Feb. 10 by the ASUC External and University Affairs Committee in a 4-1 vote, called for condemning a photo display that includes photos of two Palestinian women involved in deadly civilian bombings and hijackings of planes going to and from Israel.

The photos are displayed in the shared office space of Bears for Palestine, a campus group that promotes Palestinian history and culture.

In his resignation letter, which was shared with other members of the student senate, Zerman said he will now refocus his efforts on helping more Jews and moderates get elected to the Associated Students of the University of California.

Zerman, a member of the Berkeley College Republicans and Tikvah: Students for Israel, has himself been a source of controversy. At a Feb. 3 vote for his resolution, which was later tabled after the meeting devolved into chaos, Zerman described the Bears for Palestine as godless, according to the Daily Californian.

Though the resolution had the support of some pro-Israel students, a number of Jewish students distanced themselves from Zerman.

In an opinion piece published yesterday in the Daily Californian, Jewish student Josh Burg said Zermans resolution was ironic considering some of his past activities, including last November when Zerman urged students to attend a campus lecture by conservative media pundit Ann Coulter. Coulter has peddled in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, Burg wrote, calling Jews globalists and claiming they are encouraging Muslim immigration to the United States.

Burg described Zermans assertion that Jewish students feel alienated by the vote as ridiculous.

Zerman has been able to co-opt representation of the Jewish community, Burg said in an interview. From the very beginning, the Jewish community wasnt behind him.

Burg also pushed back on Zermans claim that UC Berkeley is anti-Semitic. Jewish life on this campus is thriving in many ways, he said.

Some Jews have been oddly comfortable cozying up to right-wing voices, he continued. What is actually dangerous to Jews? Are a few pictures on the third floor of a room dangerous? Or is cozying up to Ann Coulter? There needs to be a much larger conversation about our values.

On Tuesday night, Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ responded more fully to the turmoil, issuing two nearly identical letters written to both sides those who opposed the resolution and those who supported it.

Christ wrote that the display of Palestinian militants who killed unarmed Jewish civilians is an affront to our Principles of Community. In the next sentence, she denounced an inflammatory comment made by a pro-Israel student during one of ASUCs meetings.

See the article here:

UC Berkeley student senator resigns over resolution against Bears for Palestine - The Jewish News of Northern California