We’ve seen and heard a lot about gang violence in the past few weeks. Brazen public shootings in Abbotsford, Langley and Kitsilano have increased public fears — and created a seemingly endless round of blame, anger and finger pointing at police, politicians, and the courts. A poll of Vancouver residents has found that only 55 per cent think police are doing a good job of handling crime; the results are much worse for federal and provincial governments, with more than 80 per cent viewing their actions as poor. And the courts fare the worst – almost 90 per cent say they aren’t doing their jobs properly.

Open blogs and forums are a good example of this impatience, “One more shotting (sic) and police chiefs should resign…people think that the sentences handed down by the courts was (sic) too light… well, if 89% of people think this way, shouldn’t the government shut up and put out?…Gordon Campbell get off your backside, stop making excuses, remove that joke Wally Oppal”.

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Ok, so this isn’t today, but it certainly wasn’t long ago and several feet of snow remain.

Three recent items in the news make the point that the tenets of science continue to suffer humiliating defeats at the hands of an unthinking moralism. First, San Diego television weatherman John Coleman is invited by CNN’s Lou Dobbs to debate global warming; his opponent is a scientist, trained in climatology. Second, opposition mounts to bus ads proclaiming, “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life”. Third, Michael Phelps, celebrated Olympian, confesses to letting young people down by inhaling marijuana from a rather large bong.

It seems fair to note that inviting a meteorologist to debate global warming is a little like asking a welder to debate the science of metallurgy. But Lou Dobbs, as a denier of global warming, has no reservations in extending an invitation to a man who has no knowledge of the science of climate change. Not surprisingly, Coleman’s evidence is mostly ad hominem attacks against what he calls the “fraud” of global warming. And then there is the “controversy” of advertisements that, sensibly enough, and in a rather understated manner, convey the point that the evidence for God’s existence is rather tenuous. As Richard Dawkins quite fairly puts it, theistic beliefs are something akin to a belief in flying teapots. Finally, pity poor Michael Phelps. He was arrested for drunk driving in 2004, but that action was apparently a relatively trivial matter. The act of smoking marijuana, though much less risk to an individual’s health than either impaired driving or tobacco smoking, is said to have sent a devastating message to young people. Tobacco and alcohol have the status of nice first world drugs, sold by companies with a thoughtful integrity. Never mind that the consumption of these nice drugs leads to tens of thousands of deaths every year in Canada alone — a statistic that cannabis cannot hope to rival, even when rates of use are factored into the equation. As Tabatha Southey has written, Phelps’ real “crime” is dorkiness. She puts it nicely and with a hint of facetiousness, “I like to think that years from now, long after we’ve seen sense and marijuana is sold legally across the drugstore counter, it will still be considered a bad idea to be photographed taking a hit from a big, glass bong at a party.” Fair enough. Or as The Wire’s Omar Little would have said, “True dat”.