Awsome movies that won't dissapoint me Part 1

STV: nice if you don't think about it too much.

Tomorrow, the BC electorate go to the polls. Included on their ballot is a referendum on whether to change to a Single Transferable Vote (STV) system. This new system would mean making electoral districts larger and with several elected candidates. The new ballots would mean rather than voting for one candidate in your riding, you would vote for up to seven candidates in a super riding. On the ballot, you rank your ordinal preference and the votes are counted. But each district has a different percent required to win (from between 12.5% to 33.3%) if a candidate gets that amount, they are the first to be elected, any "excess" votes get transferred to the next on the list in proportion to the excess until the district has selected its candidates. Proponents of this system argue that in first past the post, you end up with elections where for example 10% of the electorate vote for the Greens, but 10% of the legislature is not made up of Greens. Critics of this system argue that the complexity in tabulation require a computer to spit out the results with no paper trail or obvious correspondence between votes cast and votes received. Complexity is the least of it's problems.

Problem 1 Electors are failing with current workload.
I believe this system has several main flaws. Those that believe the distribution of parties is the biggest problem with government, don't actually observe government. The scandals committed by politicians of all ideologies runs the gambit from gross incompetence to outright criminal. Yet every politician who was ever jailed, everyone that rose to his or her level of incompetence was dutifully elected. Our worst politicians were all vetted by the public. Clearly, the public does a poor job of looking into the people they elect. The trend over the century as governments become more powerful with larger and larger budgets is greater voter apathy, indifference and ignorance. This is a problem in any system to be sure. With STV, in a 7 candidate riding, each party will run 7 candidates forcing an already lazy electorate to compare 30 or more candidates.
Is this even remotely realistic to assume that the electorate could possibly weigh this much information? Seeing that we do a failing job at filtering out the incompetent and the criminal when there are only 3 or 4 candidates, I think this is a no-brainer.

As pathetic proof of my argument, surveys on voter knowledge revealed a full 85% of the Ontario electorate had little or no understanding of proportional representation during their own referendum. Yet these same people would be charged with increasing the amount of information they would weigh under the new system!


Problem 2 More parties in government create less representation not more.
This seems like an oxymoron to most people but it is the law of unintended consequences in action. Under STV, proponents argue that smaller parties will get a voice in government. This sounds true until you examine how it works in practice. The more parties with elected members, the less likely there will be 50 percent majorities to form government. So how would governments form? By forming coalitions thereby including the smaller parties that were once shut out. The problem is the disproportionate power a small party has when it can make or break government. In the last parliamentary crisis, the Liberals, the NDP and the Bloc formed a coalition to oust the Conservatives. I voted Liberal and had nothing but contempt for the NDP and Bloc platforms. But what parts of the Bloc and NDP policy would have made there way into legislation in a coalition with the Liberals? These deals happened after I had cast my ballot. I was sold a bill of goods that were then radically changed. I was so misrepresented, I sent a letter to the party canceling my membership. My vote ended up being a vote for someone else (transferred if you will.) This was a perversion of representation. Without provisions for ensuring that parties can't hijack their voters intentions, leaders vying for power will make a mockery of representation by political deal making. With STV, the electorate can look forward to more of this. Negotiations between parties vying for majority status horse trade policies and projects in the interest of those that elected them. But the point is that the people who voted for them never had the opportunity to vote for or against those policies. Concessions get made not on their own merits but because they are politically necessary for getting majority votes for legislation.

The nice idea of having a small party in legislative branch is offset by the problems of top down deal making in the administration branch. When people imagine the consequence of STV, I'm not convinced, they think this far ahead.


Problem 3 Smaller parties finally get representation.
Advocates of STV would consider this a good thing. Existing parties currently shut out of government need to look past their own self interests. I'm not sure how they will welcome the Jesus's Wrath party that elects a dozen members that hijack the political process for their own social engineering. The current system favours the center of opinion. It rewards the middle of the road. People may think this leads to unresponsive legislation and to our detriment, the status quo. They're right, it does. But it also means that change is predictable and life is sort of stable. The extremes are trimmed off and if you want to look around the world, this is an undeniable good. I believe that if an idea has merit, a majority of people can be convinced. If a majority can't be convinced then perhaps it deserves to be on the fringe. As much as I deride the average person, bypassing the majority rarely leads to justice. By suggesting that ideas most people don't like ought to be acted upon for their own good, is even more contemptuous of people than I am.

Problem 4 "Ought's" pushy brother "Is"
What this all boils down to is a judgment that the results of our elections don't look like what they ought to. Like when a better team loses to an inferior team one might think about how you could tinker with the rules to make sure the better team is more likely to win. That way, the results of the contest would be more representative of the teams. Of course one has already concluded what the result ought to be. Proportional representation advocates do the same. They conclude what the results ought to look like then fix the rules to get that outcome. Without examining the realities of how voter fatigue already contributes to bad government, without understanding how political necessity hijacks voter intent in coalition building, without understanding how the center is actually preferable sometimes to the fringe, one will be subject to the tyranny of "IS." The best of intentions for creating the world the way it ought to be are so often railroaded by the reality of how things actually are. Sure it would be nice if every party no matter how small got to have its "say" in the legislature. The reality is that at the end of the day, one group has to govern. We should pick that group in such a way that takes advantage of society's best qualities, and limits its worst. STV seems to ignore that there are such qualities in society and hence becomes a victim of those qualities.

May the 4th be with you...

After 25 years of work, Ford presents: the Accord

So I saw an ad for this 2009 Ford Fusion the other day making a pretty big deal about the fact that it had such amazing fuel economy. Working from the supposition that whatever claim is being made, the exact opposite is probably closer to the mark, I looked into it. I also wondered whether the Ford was as efficient as an 80s import.


2009 Ford Fusion 3.0 litre hiway: 30MPG

(from Ford's website)




1985 Honda Accord hiway: 29 MPG









Ford is all excited about making a car that Honda made better 25 years ago? And this is the one auto maker that isn't inches from bankruptcy? Okay, thats my last post about cars.

Endangered Species

I copypasta'd the BIG 3's 2009 SUV models into a lovely collage. When you see them all together its hard to imagine that this industry is surviving in its present form. I doubt enough debt holders will bite on the equity swap proposed by GM to keep it out of bankruptcy. Now, I don't know much about marketing, perhaps excess product differentiation is the key to selling cars, but 30 models of SUVs from 3 companies seems pretty stupid.

Socotra: Greatest island on earth

This little island off the coast of Somalia is only 100km by 40 yet hosts the most diverse terrain and plant life. The debate over whether life exists on other planets seems pretty inconsequential knowing I will likely never set foot on this island.

The Hangman by Maurice Ogden

Suzuki outs his own Fascism

News Item: Class Action lawsuit against casino.

This week, a class action lawsuit was filed for 3.5 billion dollars against Ontario Lottery and Gaming. Let me put aside the issue of whether the state should be operating casinos in the first place. What I found most interesting was the affidavit filed by litigant Peter Dennis:

"I could not stop myself from gambling."

I'm not a lawyer but isn't this a pretty undeniable admission of personal liability? I could not stop myself from gambling. Doesn't the very statement acquit the defendants? But after reading a little further, I see the suit claims that problem gamblers put their names on a "do not let me in" list which was then ignored. That shows negligence doesn't it? So let me get this straight. I tell the casino to not let me in. And then I sue them when I don't get caught for defying my own wishes. Attention unemployed mortgage-backed asset portfolio managers, I have a new business model for you!

News Item: NDP gets chaffed for opposing Carbon Tax

I'm enjoying the election in BC these days as the NDP is having to defend its opposition to BC's carbon tax with environmentalists in and outside of the party. You couldn't concoct better parody of informed dialogue than listening to the NDP debate carbon tax with the Suzuki Foundation. NDP leader Carole James defended her arguably populist and mainstream position by claiming among other things that the new tax hasn't limited demand as it ought to. Someone explain to Carole what price inelasticity is. Suzuki gave the NDP an earful and led the charge against the NDP.

“If [Liberal Leader Gordon Campbell] goes down because of axe the tax, the repercussions are the carbon tax will be toxic for future politicians,” David Suzuki said Friday.

“No politician will raise it. That's why environmentalists are so upset.”

"Toxic for future politicians" is pretty clear. Don't give people the opportunity to express their wishes since it will be harder to contradict those wishes in the future. He's never come so close to just being open about his contempt for public discourse. This very clearly admits that Suzuki et al have abandoned using reason and argument to persuade people and instead must use blunt power before people get a chance to express their will. Suzuki, rather than convincing people resorts to power justified by his own vision of the public good. The ends justify his means.

Finally, the NDP is forced to defend itself from its own brand of poorly reasoned and ill considered criticism.

Freedom to/from Sprawl in Calgary

-Google view of North Calgary where citizens are indentured servants to automobiles.



Much applause from me this week for the Plan It Calgary group that released its findings on city planning and sprawl. They actually quantified the extra cost of servicing low density neighborhoods on the edge of Calgary versus more higher density projects closer to the center.
11 billion dollars.
It's hard to believe this isn't a ubiquitous metric at city hall. Traditionally city growth is at the whim of land developers whose only interest is making a king's ransom from buying land and subdividing it on the periphery.
This week Plan It suggested that high density was the only way the city could afford to grow. The developers cried foul with suggestions that the market should decide. Freedom and fairness, they suggested, was being violated. The interface between city rules and a free, unfettered, organic development is interesting. Like many other markets to date, the housing marketplace has only appeared to act freely.
Up till now, developers and the market have been free to build at improbable distances from the core, while everyone else subsidizes the additional cost of providing what few services are brought to these areas. Public transportation is hardly viable in these areas and the high cost of automotive infrastructure is not borne by the people who chose to live there. If these ridiculous costs were fairly borne, the marketplace would very quickly reveal that not many people would freely chose to live there after all.
Suburban living is incommensurate with my lifestyle but I am sympathetic to it. A new 3 bedroom house in my neighborhood currently sells for $850 000 while a similar house and yard in the newest suburb sells for $550 000. Under those conditions its easy to see where demand concentrates but that cheaper house in the suburbs only exists when everyone in the center defrays the extra costs of infrastructure. The tens of billions of dollars that Calgary will spend over the next ten years could be put to far better use elsewhere. Imagine what a city could do with 11 billion extra dollars! So Hurrah for Plan It and the hard money math that few in city hall can now avoid.

I'm all for a free market in real estate. When one appears, I'll support it.

The Barbarian States of America

With regard to the latest mass murder in America, I notice everyone asking :

Why?

An easier question to answer is: How? He did it with two concealed handguns.

The Barbarian States of America claims a dozen more victims. How do thinking, considerate Americans live with this slaughter? Why aren't people rioting in the streets over the infestation of handguns? A pox on republicans, democrats and gun lobbyists. I can't wait for Lou Dobbs to build a wall between Canada and America.

Encana building takes Shape. Dave achieves sense of Calm

After much construction teasing (the 6 underground floors,) the Encana building is finally taking shape. "The Bow" footprint as well as the first atrium floors have been welded into position. Steady progress is expected to follow in the spring and summer months.




Rendering of the new skyline. The Bow is the big silver one.







Most buildings are concrete core with glass curtain walls on the outside. The Bow is all steel construction which means frenzied cranes hoisting tinker toy frames and a spider web network of steel-work at blistering speed. Fellow construction voyeurs can follow along this spring and summer with a live camera feed.


-with thanks to everyone at "the bow" thread on skyscraper.com for insight, information, pictures and zeal.

David Suzuki: Televangelist Fraud Artist

A less than bright idea brought to you by the Law of Unintended (but occasionally foreseen) Consequences.





We've all been preached to about getting rid of our light bulbs. The David Suzuki Foundation with others managed to convince the Ontario government to legislate against the little devils. I recall my father, who after thinking over the matter for but an instant realized what took everyone else a couple years: the furnace will have to work harder to make up for less heat in the new bulbs so its all the same except now you have a ton of mercury in the water table from discarded compact fluorescence. When I saw this article about the utility companies confirming this I searched my mental archive of Dad Rants ( meatworld://kitchen table/forums/obvious to me+when will they learn)

Curiously, a spokesdroid for the foundation demonstrates the kind of blind dogma they usually accuse everyone else of having. In addition the foundation zealously and successfully pushed these bulbs into legally mandated occupancy in the marketplace in spite of being a menace to groundwater with their mercury content. After getting a list of who works at the Suzuki Foundation, I learned that the Climate Change department consists of communications people except for 1 research analyst who has no academic credentials. Nice.

These are televangelists.
Who need to think.
Even just a little.
Before they tell everyone else what to do.

And screw everything up more than it already is.

Bush Visits Calgary

Today, on traditional QNY, I went to protest George W Bush's visit to Calgary. Bush was speaking at the Telus Convention center for $400 per person. The scene at noon was of a thousand identically well dressed business elites lined up in a large "U" one block long in the Stephen Ave. pedestrian mall outside the convention centre. In the middle was the organized protest shouting various slogans from the profound to the inane. Intent on surveying the scene, I walked past the line of patrons and when I stopped to talk a picture, I noticed a understandable sheepish look on the people I photographed. Who wouldn't be a little off put by a stranger talking their picture? but in that expression was a pang of guilt. Next I noticed 3 young, ambitious looking suits snickering at the protest going on in the middle. They oozed superiority that would infuriate even the mildest person. I walked up to them and took their picture as a statement to them that their support for Bush is not happening in a vacuum. Their expressions changed instantly.
I staked out some geography at the entrance to the center behind 4 calm but serious police officers and waited for people to start filing in. The expression on the faces of the men waiting to get in was fear mixed with a little guilt but masked over with faux confidence and nervous laughter. The more I studied these faces, the more I realized that these were mostly wealthy businessmen who were really just there to be seen and mix with other business elites on their lunch hour. My alderman was there looking for people he recognized.




-this man ignores my querys while his buddy pretends I'm not there. They imagined their support for a tyrant would have no negative consequences to themselves.

I suppose there were plenty of businessmen who actually were there to politically support Bush but the networking fascists were really getting under my skin. It really started to bother me that these men would reward Bush with thousands of dollars in exchange for the privilege of being seen at a must attend social event. To reward someone who undeniably violates international law that Canada is a signatory to. To support such a villain and purveyor of injustice for their own personal networking and career advancement was a cowardly and banal kind of evil.
And so I looked each person in the eye as they passed and challenged them to explain why they were giving money to a torturer. Why were they giving money to a war criminal. "Why aren't you outraged?" I casually asked a suit who looked me in the eye. He smirked dismissively. I told him he was a coward as I shook my head with very real disappointment. "How can you pay money to someone who ignored every freedom he claimed to defend?" I ask another smug businessman. He laughs a nervous laugh and I tell him that you would have to have no soul to laugh at such blatant injustices. I found that the most effective scolding came in the form of making eye contact (I'm standing about 3 feet from these people) and just shaking my head and saying "shame" as I look them dead in the eye.

Shame on these cowards. Shame on these wealthy businessmen for divorcing themselves from their actions. Shame for putting their own networking above the cause of justice. Shame for their cowardice.


Traditionally on QNY, "getting told" often represents the exercise of one's freedom. Well, after "telling" a thousand people today, I feel as though I've accomplished in a very small way, the same thing.

Another Businessman robs the people blind with Government help

News Item: Peter Pocklington arrested for Bankruptcy Fraud

With all the attention down south on American Captains of Industry stealing money whilst authorities followed the lead of the Absent President and did nothing, I thought it would be quaint to remember just one of Alberta's own high profile robbers. Back in the 80s as a car dealer(perfect) he would divert money from the Ford Financing wing into his own pet projects. Kind of Fargo-esque. But when things started going south, he secured a 10 million dollar loan to his worthless Fidelity Trust shell company. His buddy buddy relationship with Alberta's public held bank, ATB, in concert with showering its highest employees with skiing and golf holidays managed to run up a never ending line of credit totaling over 100 million of Alberta's dollars by the 1990s. Not to mention the 12 million dollar loan guarantee he secured for his failed meat packing plant that he never re-payed. When Fidelity Trust finally failed, it secured another 300 million from the public purse.
A useful quote from his personal website:

• If you can't win, change the rules!
• If you can't change the rules, ignore them

These quotes were intended to brand him as a leader with a creative business acumen who wasn't afraid to think outside the box. His main page notes his 3 divisions are food, sports, and "other." We now know that "other" means stealing public money abetted by public officials.
Anyway, added to his list of business laws is the following, when authorities are hot on your heels, flee the country. Which he did. To California. But after telling bankruptcy officials that he only had 2900 dollars in assets, (really? did that include the 800 dollar suit he was wearing at the time?) he was later seen repaying a local debt with $80,000 worth of art he retrieved from a storage locker. Oh yeah, and he drew cheques from 2 different bank accounts he forgot to mention to bankruptcy court! Meanwhile the Alberta government, or more accurately, those who weren't paid off by Pocklington in the 80s and 90s, are down in California trying to get some of the peoples' money back.

Here's a picture of Pocklington's tax lawyer Mike Lusby, who looks every inch the scumbag parasite. Photo courtesy his own website.



Pocklington's tax lawyer Mike Lusby (who makes $1000/hour except from clients who obviously only have $2900 to their name and therefore couldn't possibly afford such rates???!!!) defended Pocklington by claiming that it was a witch hunt.
He's right, it is a witch hunt. And this witch owes us millions of dollars.

In the media's newest story arc, the business tycoon gone bad, I hope it can find the time to expose the regulators and the bankers and the public officeholders who handed these robber barons their fortunes.

Dusting off the Key for QNY 19

Thanks for eroding freedom, Lou Dobbs.

The letter I got today from the Lou Dobbs show really was a nice touch. Of course if they had actually read my letter I'm sure they would have sent me their Haters form letter instead. The other day Lou was heroically defending the right to bear arms from the Liberal Menace. "Freedom Under Fire" the segment read. Normally I wouldn't give Lou's show the time of day but instead I watched and wrote a short letter inviting the show to contemplate the 100 billion dollars a year that gun deaths and injuries cause every year in America.
I thought if senseless death doesn't cause one to rethink "freedom under fire," then money might. But just to be sure, I sent some gun stats:

Since 1962, more than one million Americans have died in firearm homicides, suicides, and unintentional shootings. Handguns were used in more than 650,000 of these fatal shootings.

In homes with guns, a member of the household is almost three times as likely to be the victim of a homicide compared to gun-free homes.
-from VPC

Why write a letter to the show? Well to celebrate QNY19 this week I thought I would either dig a hole to China or bring reason to the internet.

Stupidity exacts toll from Montreal Skiers

News Item: Quebec skiers die in BC resort

The news has been chock full this week over how bad the RCMP are for not rescuing a Montreal couple fast enough. While I can't speak to their decisions regarding an SOS reported scratched into some snow, I can speak to the incredible stupidity demonstrated by this couple. The couple were incorrectly called experienced skiers. Nothing could be further from the truth. This pair defied posted warnings, crossed a fenced off area and headed into the back country with no food, no GPS, no compass, no map, no fire making equipment, no avalanche beacons or probes, no extra clothing, no route finding skills and most importantly, without anyone knowing where they were going or when they were to be expected back. Out of this list of 9 must-have essentials, even one of them could have saved their lives. You might as well jump out of an airplane without a parachute. I routinely travel in far more isolated mountain locations than this couple was "lost" in, but I equip myself with such supplies to ensure my safety and have a check-in procedure complete with intended route description. Traveling in the back country isn't a sneer at death, unless you make it so by taking no precautions or placing yourself in situations beyond your skill, experience and equipment.

The climbing bible for my neck of the Rockies, written by local legend Alan Kane says it best:

"Select a route within your level of ability and skills. If you don't know what your abilities are, maybe you don't have any."

Blaming anyone but themselves only excuses their stupidity.

Bush to visit Calgary:legal authority to arrest him.

GW Bush is making one of his first newspeeking engagements in Calgary. Under Canadian law pursuant to international treaties, it seems we have plenty of legal justification to arrest him. With thanks to Observer151, Huffington Post:

Here's the relevant Canadian law on the matter - Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act. This Act incorporates the 1998 Treaty of Rome regarding war crimes, as well as the Agreement for the prosecution and punishment of the major war criminals of the European Axis, signed at London on August 8, 1945; and the Proclamation by the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, dated January 19, 1946.

http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/ShowTdm/cs/C-45.9//20090214/en?command=search&caller=SI&fragment=war%20crimes&search_type=all&day=14&month=2&year=2009&search_domain=cs&showall=L&statuteyear=all&lengthannual=50&length=50

Read the section entitled 'Offenses Outside Canada'. Nothing in that section exempts Bush from avoiding arrest under Section 6 of this Act.

In fact, it appear that nothing in the Criminal Code of Canada precludes an ordinary citizen of Canada from making a citizen's arrest of Bush for crimes under this Act. Section 494 of the Criminal Code provides citizens with all the power they require.

http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/showdoc/cs/C-46//20090214/en?command=search&caller=SI&fragment=494&search_type=all&day=14&month=2&year=2009&search_domain=cs&showall=L&statuteyear=all&lengthannual=50&length=50

Mandatory life imprisonment is called for where intentional death occurs as a result of the accused's actions:

2) Every person who commits an offence under subsection (1) or (1.1)

(a) shall be sentenced to imprisonment for life, if an intentional killing forms the basis of the offence; and

(b) is liable to imprisonment for life, in any other case.

From the Albigensian Crusade to the Route4 Express

News Item: Atheist Ad Campaign on Calgary Buses

A PSA has arrived in Calgary after obviously stirring up controversy in the UK. To balance this campaign, the United Church with nothing better to do with their congregation's charitable donations, has launched a counter-ad saying "There probably is a god. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."
"Probably is a God"?? Christians spent 14 centuries torturing and killing people for heresy and blasphemy and now they've been whittled down to "probably. " Well, that's the United Church for you. No wonder Catholics think everyone is going to Hell. A brief survey of the Catholic Encyclopedia about the inquisitions yields such apologetic gems and outright lies as:

"St. Augustine, on the contrary, was still opposed to the use of force" (not true)

"opposite of historical truth to assert that the imperial edicts punishing heresy with death were due to ecclesiastic influence" (hilariously wrong)

"In short, no blame attaches to the church for her behavior towards heresy in those rude days." (OMG!!!!!)

Thankfully, the church is no longer slaughtering heretics by the tens of thousands as Pope Innocent III did (this period is the origin of the phrase, kill them all let God sort them out). As the world marks Darwin's 200th birthday this week, I will try to remember that now the church only psychologically tortures people by telling them how they descended from, and inherited Adam's original sin. The American numbers are too scary for me to quote but even in Canada a full forty percent either don't believe evolution or aren't sure.
Sorry Mr. Darwin, you'll have to sit at the back of the bus.

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"In the red" carpet

It's forecasting season once again! Yesterday, the Screen Actors Guild released its forward statements for the fiscal year. It estimates that the 850 billion dollar recovery package will lower unemployment by 1.8 percentage points and create 3.7 million jobs. They also suggested that the ensemble cast of "Slumdog Millionaire" was the best of several submitted tenders.

Opposing this outlook was the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences which declined to see the same merits in any of the "Slumdog" cast. Further frustrating the Screen Actors Guild, the Academy projects lower unemployment by 2 percentage points in 2010 but with a much lower unemployment baseline than SAG predicts. Academy voting member Mark Zandi implied that the actual path of unemployment could resemble what the Obama team is projecting if nothing is done.