Tag: Non-partisan blog posts

Screw You Pluto!

Hah! The new newest planet is also bigger than the old newest planet:

An icy, rocky world reported last year to be orbiting the Sun in the distant reaches of the Solar System really is bigger than Pluto, scientists say. New observations of the object, which goes by the designation 2003 UB313, show it to have a diameter of some 3,000km – about 700km more than Pluto.

This is great. I have always really really hated Pluto. The most extreme…sorry…X-treme planet without really anything to really show for itself. What other ball of methane gets such good press? Anyway, 2003 UB313 or Vulcan or whatever they choose to call it (I prefer “Marzipania” myself…the planet of marzipan) kicks Plutos arse all over town. Soon we will be hearing no more about Pluto than Uranus and that ain’t much.

Off To Canton

Off to do my part for NPR by helping NCPR think about what it might do with the internet. I am really looking forward to this but I am a bit worried about my Cantonese.

On the up side, I have established where the ales are, have scoped out First Prize Hots for the way home and also plan to buy some tickets for the big game against Yale on the 20th. It has been two years since we were there for a game.

Trucks On Sand Dunes


From Dirk von Zitzewitz’s Blog and Dakar 2005.

It is that week again and the channel formerly known as the Outdoor Life Network is playing the Lisbon to Dakar rally as a four night summary. Apparently on Saturday there is a four hour repeat broadcast starting 2 pm, a festival of broken drive trains and motorcycles flying mid-air into jagged rock faces.

Last year I promised myself to take this on by moped. This year I renew that pledge for 2007 but with sidecar mopeds. Vintage experimental Italian ones.

Shards

Yesterday was a big day. Sunny. Plus five or so by the eastern edge of the big lake. I found myself at an auspicious point hydrographically speaking. All around there were shards of ice packing together for chill as if to to keep themselves. Ususally ice like this would be far across the lake, deep within the cap, holding back the big lakers until spring, keeping commerce at bay. Todays rains will melt whatever is left.

Short short slow loading and uncompressed .AVI silent but entirely lovely movies of the same: #1 [13 MB], #2 [8 MB], #3 [10.5 MB]. The sound was like a gymnasium filled with tinkling crystal glassware. Click on any pic for larger scale.

Where Do You Place 9/11?

That great voice of contemplative thought, the NYT op-ed, published a really interesting essay yesterday by Joseph J. Ellis, a professor of history at Mount Holyoke College. Entitled “Finding a Place for 9/11 in American History”, it posed that interesting question from a historical perpective. What caught my eye most of all was that, even though we are four and a half years past 9/11, we may be only read these sort of thoughts now. Here is the full essay in a non-subscription-only format:

Here is my version of the top tier: the War for Independence, where defeat meant no United States of America; the War of 1812, when the national capital was burned to the ground; the Civil War, which threatened the survival of the Union; World War II, which represented a totalitarian threat to democracy and capitalism; the cold war, most specifically the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, which made nuclear annihilation a distinct possibility. Sept. 11 does not rise to that level of threat because, while it places lives and lifestyles at risk, it does not threaten the survival of the American republic, even though the terrorists would like us to believe so.

His last point is interesting. The terrorists would like the US and other free nations to fall into the belief that freedom is at risk. This is different that saying freedom is under attack, of course. But reacting as if it is at risk creates the real danger, Ellis argues:

It is completely understandable that those who lost loved ones on that date will carry emotional scars for the remainder of their lives. But it defies reason and experience to make Sept. 11 the defining influence on our foreign and domestic policy. History suggests that we have faced greater challenges and triumphed, and that overreaction is a greater danger than complacency.

Of course, there is nothing as interesting as someone who agrees with something you have written before. In the fall of 2003, I was very surprised to find that the relative fear level of 9/11 was considered greater than in the Cold War, the latter end of which framed my youth. In March 2004, I thought about it again and did so again in October 2004.

Where do we stand now that we have learned that 9/11 will not be repeated annually, that we have seen great changes or perhaps only admissions as to the way we are watched and interogated when suspected, that we now know that giving people the right to vote will not ensure those people will vote for what you want? I don’t mean this as a telling “gotcha” sort of comment so much as an invitation to ask yourself it is now acceptable to consider and perhaps reconsider given almost half a decade of subsequent history.

Censoring Over

Odd numbers so far. The Grits are leading in the popular early vote and did well in Atlantic Canada. NDP vote solid.

Update: Who thought the Liberals would get over 100 seat and over 30% of the vote?

Further Thoughts: What will it be?

Tories + NDP + a slightly wacko shock radio host… or

Liberals + Bloc + NDP anyone but Harper coalition

That second scenerio has about as much mileage as the Bloc’s future vision. What a weird result. It is truly the time for the Beacon of the Flea to guide us.

Day Fifty-Six: Election Day

I think there was a mistake made by someone when the election date was picked. We were given too much time to think and too much time to talk. And what did we talk about over Christmas and New Years? The season of giving to the good and to the needy passed in semi-silence politically speaking but the polls show it was then that the fates of the candidates changed. We all have our thoughts but I think it was less about the news and more about the lull. Perhaps to create revisionist comforting unhistory in the mind. Perhaps to be angry…or likely just angrier than usual. Perhaps to be open to change.

Today we vote. Only today. I like to vote and I would vote more often if given half a chance. My vote will not elect a Member of Parliament. It never has. It will express my view, however, and that is more important. I feel badly for those who vote to pick a winner but not whose view aligns with those who will take their seats.

Update: Interesting to note that SES polling results for Sunday, the final day of SES polling in their last 3 day rolling poll [Warning PDF!] announced last night at 7:45 pm before the deadline (therefore not infringing s.328 to repeat by me here), shows a weird shift away from the Tories:

All voters

Tories – 33.2%
Liberals – 30.4%
NDP – 22.2%
Bloc – 9.4%
Green – 4.8%

Likely voters

Tories – 32.7%
Liberals – 31.0%
NDP – 23.3%
Bloc – 9.0%
Green – 4.0%

If there turns out to be a weekend collapse of Tory support, has SES seen it? If there is not, who was SES calling? All very slim information to be sure but as a NDP voter one has to grasp at straws.

Upperdate: I just noticed the best report from a all-candidates meeting over at Chris Taylor’s blog. Check out the scoring methodology.

Day Fifty-Five: Election Blogging On Monday

Interesting to note discussion of the wording of section 329 of the Canada Elections Act:

Prohibition — premature transmission of results

329. No person shall transmit the result or purported result of the vote in an electoral district to the public in another electoral district before the close of all of the polling stations in that other electoral district.

Pretty clear that blogging is transmission but is reporting popular vote at a national level? That is not the vote in an electoral district but it is a aggregation of votes and votes are only cast in electoral districts. This handy dandy timeline explains the back story and here is the May 2005 ruling from the BC Court of Appeal on the constitutionality of the transmission ban in s. 329. Here is the nub:

[59] In my opinion, when the s. 329 publication ban is seen as having the same purpose or objective as the staggered voting hours, that is, to eliminate the information imbalance that can result from disclosure of results before all of the polls have closed, the respondent’s argument concerning the lack of evidence to support the ban falls away.

[60] One of the contextual factors referred to in Harper was the apprehension of harm in relation to the electoral process. While the Lortie Commission Report stated that the availability of election results in Newfoundland and the Maritimes before the close of the polls in western Canada was not of “great concern”, assuming staggered voting hours were in place, it was clearly open to Parliament to decide what measures to adopt in meeting public concerns about the information imbalance. Parliament chose to implement the solution of staggered voting hours but also chose to maintain the publication ban on election results. Public perception of electoral fairness is obviously critical in a democracy. Given the extent of the public concern the Commission had identified about voter information imbalance, Parliament’s choice to leave the ban in place appears to me to be unremarkable.

[61] In determining that the Attorney General had failed to demonstrate by the evidence adduced that the objective of the s. 329 ban was pressing and substantial, it appears to me that the appeal judge overlooked the findings of the Lortie Commission about the very large percentage of Canadians who had expressed concern about information imbalance coupled with perceptions of electoral unfairness. In my opinion, this was not a case in which scientific proof of harm was required to justify the limitation on freedom of expression. What was required, and what the trial judge had before him, was evidence from which it could be inferred that there was a reasoned apprehension of harm to the legitimacy of the electoral regime if the publication ban, aimed at preventing information imbalance, was not continued.

[62] I note as well that McLachlin C.J.C., for herself and Major J, dissenting on the third party spending issue in Harper, agreed that the promotion of electoral fairness was a pressing and substantial objective. Her observations respecting the characterization of electoral fairness as a pressing and substantial concern are instructive in the present context (at para. 26):

Common sense dictates that promoting electoral fairness is a pressing and substantial objective in our liberal democracy, even in the absence of evidence that past elections have been unfair; see Harvey v. New Brunswick (Attorney General), [1996] 2 S.C.R. 876, at para. 38. A theoretical objective asserted as pressing and substantial is sufficient for purposes of the s. 1 justification analysis; see Thomson Newspapers, supra, at para. 38; Harvey, supra, at para. 38; R. v. Wholesale Travel Group Inc., [1991] 3 S.C.R. 154, at p. 191; McKinney v. University of Guelph, [1990] 3 S.C.R. 229, at p. 281; Edmonton Journal [Edmonton Journal v. Alberta (Attorney General), [1989] 2 S.C.R. 1326], at pp. 1343-45.

[63] Two of the other important contextual factors that need to be considered in this case are the nature of the expression the s. 329 ban limits and the period of time during which the ban operates. I agree with the appeal judge’s description of the type of expression being limited by the ban as falling “at the margins of political speech”. The ban in issue here is directed at information about election results and is intended to operate for only a brief period. The nature of the expression to which the ban applies and the brief time period in which the ban operates does not limit participation in political debate.

[64] It is convenient to note here that the respondent submitted that the ban in s. 329 is now obsolete because the advent of such things as satellite and cable television and the Internet makes enforcement difficult, if not impossible. He referred to some passages in the Lortie Commission Report to support his argument. In my view, difficulty in enforcement of the publication ban is irrelevant to the constitutional question. Many criminal and quasi-criminal offences are difficult to enforce but that does not mean that Parliament ought not to make them offences. The fact that the ban may be violated does not logically lead to the conclusion that the information imbalance between voters the ban seeks to remedy is not pressing and substantial. I would not accede to the argument that the relative ease by which the ban may be violated demands its constitutional demise.

Mind your step tomorrow.

Day Fifty-Two: Activitist Judges

There is nothing more embarassing about human existence that the principle “if you say enough, it it will be true”. No greater example of this exists than the phrase “activist judges” which has been successfully shoved into the parlance by axe-grinders. Sadly, though not unexpectedly, the current poll leader in the Federal election has trotted out this sham:

Stephen Harper says some judges appointed by the federal Liberals are activists working to promote their own social agendas, statements that drew heavily from his tenure in the old Reform and Canadian Alliance parties. The assertions by the Conservative Leader, whose party leads the public opinion polls, mark one of the few times during a tightly scripted election campaign that he has strayed far from the centre of the political highway.

A thinking person’s first response to this ought to be somewhat similar to hearing that our Foreign-Minister-in-Waiting, Stocky, will have difficulty dealing with visits to Kenya giving their obviously heretical and slanderous position on the meaning of the Rift Valley’s contents.

How is it that claims of a secret agenda of the right is a farce but the secret agenda of judges is lapped up by the willing and the weak? How is it that one part of the constitutional structure can so misrepresent another part of it and not be labelled as disloyal to the core by traditionalists (not to mention the sentient) as finger-pointery folk offer up freely for anyone who suggests, say, that Arctic paratrooper capability as a defence against sub-ice-cap submarines might not be the best use of military resources? It is clear from all objective considerations that, by body count at least but more so the right to hit the brakes, the responsible authors of constitutional change brought on by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms were the mainly conservative premiers who signed up for it and did so rightly as it expresses the complex nature of Canadian democracy and details it more and more as it is unfolds through each ruling. The courts, in doing so, play the role demanded of it with honour and intelligence (but without political pressure though as humans) through the combination of the facts of its historical constitutional existence and the task asked of it by the legislators.

“Activist judge” is just another way of saying “person who disagrees with me”. Shammery and wilful blindness from the same folk who would restructure the Senate to actually give it power and distribute that power unequally to the low population zones of the nation. Another step by a political minority seeking to remake the nation and impose it on the rest of us. You have to at least admire their gall.