Commenting on Schneier commenting on Eric Schmidt

I've wanted to say something about Eric Schmidt's foolish words on the needlessness of privacy. Bruce Schneier did most of the talking for me. I replied thus:

Right on, Bruce.

Foolish comments like those of Mr. Schmidt indicate the danger that could occur if the world becomes a hydraulic empire. The Internet has become necessary to us all. What will happen if attitudes like this allow it to come under the control of the would-be Big Brothers who administer the mediacracies we find ourselves in?

(mediacracy is a term I've coined about the end result of a democracy: rule by those who control the dissemination of information, by the media, in other words, rule by the media, whatever axe it is busy grinding)

Haiku 21

(Almost exactly one month later, my office was announced to be shutting down, mostly. Corporate guillotine.)

I didn't mean to
predict with my last haiku.
Depressingly right.

Canada on US Naughty List?

This story on Canoe-Money from the Canadian Press elicited the following response from me:

I am appalled at the unbalanced reporting this issue (the state of Canada's copyright law) regularly gets in the mainstream media. Creative content producers have a right to be protected in the digital age, but if anyone should be put on a naughty list on copyright it should be the US. Why?

1. For on-going renewal of the "Mickey Mouse" copyright laws which have starved the commons (of copyright-lapsed works that enter the public domain) for the last part of the 20th century and forward.
2. For preferring to protect the jobbers of creative content (large media companies) instead of the creators of that content. (witness Pearl Jam's statements on breaking free of their recording contract this year)
3. For failing to uphold the public's right to fair use with laws like the DMCA and for leaning on other countries to follow in their anti-competitive, anti-creative legislative practices.

Could you please give some balancing cover to those who think that DMCA-like legislation is wrong headed, badly motivated and over-sweepingly implemented wherever it has come into force? They're not all anti-social nerd types although there are a few of those. Failing to do so gives the impression that the providers of news have become shills for the MPAA and RIAA -- press freedom has to cut both ways: from government control but also from control by the large monied interests.

Please do better than this.

Sincerely,

Arthur N. Klassen
(address redacted)

Any other Canadians should consider making similar comments. Let's not leave it all to Michael Geist.

Haiku 20

(on quarterly corporate rah-rahs)

Whenever I hear,
"We must execute better,"
I think "guillotines"

Haiku 19

Teabaggers sound like
"Talking to Americans"
without Rick Mercer.

Harmonized Sales Tax in BC? I'm feeling bullied

(A letter I sent to my MLA, Rich Coleman, member for Fort Langley - Aldergrove; why not send something similar?)

Dear Mr. Coleman,

I'm writing today to plead with you not to adopt the Harmonized Sales Tax measures currently before the government of BC. This measure has caught me -- and many in my acquaintance -- absolutely by surprise and not in good ways. I feel a bit bullied -- and I see others less well off than me about to be bullied even more.

We have our PST that exempts food, school supplies and children's clothes -- and otherwise only covers goods. HST as a harmonization with GST which applies more broadly cannot but be inflationary to the consumer and will hurt all British Columbians, especially those who are less well off than myself.  HST keeps us from fostering family-friendly policies at the cash register and I urge you to refuse any proposal from the Federal government that fails to address this inequity. They cannot write such amendments to the GST, so therefore this proposal should be denied.

Alternatively, the rate of the HST should be significantly lower than PST + GST -- yet I cannot think it possible that a rate that will be fair to the individual tax payers will be advantageous to the province in the long term.

The only remaining alternative is clear: HST is bad for British Columbians and your government should be ashamed to be the ones bringing it to the floor. And this, especially in the face of the general silence on the subject in the previous election and the specific denial that it was a possibility in one forum during that election. This is the kind of issue that requires a mandate from the people of BC and it was not raised in the last election. You have no such mandate, so to foist it on us now is highly dishonest and irresponsible.

I write this with the admission that regardless, your seat is probably safe. Still, you ought to look out for the well-being of the individuals and families of this province, even if their ballot-box voice will never be strong enough to bounce you out of your safe seat.

Sincerely,

Arthur N. Klassen
(my contact information)

Haiku 18

Is there any pride
like that of a father who
sees his son excel?

Haiku 17

Few things grieve the heart
like friends whose common ground has
washed away like sand.

DMCA is back in the commons

Here's the slashdot post. And my reply. Call or write your MP, sign Geist's petitions again, post to the consultation website. Let's see if we can't kill this stupid approach once and for all.

It's not the most important issue out there but it is an issue.

(my apologies to those who were enjoying my Haiku)

Haiku 16

Qom's silent scholars
Watch but don't congratulate,
Free not to express.

Haiku 15

Can someone explain
mimetic theory in
one syllable words?

Haiku 14

Living while coloured
diff'rently from the mighty:
tort-uous burden

(double-entendre intended)

Haiku 13

moments of triumph
in getting work accomplished:
makes much else worthwhile

Haiku 12

Has haiku time passed?
What came as torrent, trickles,
Fun while it lasted.

Haiku 11

Marks long awaited
arrive bringing fear? hope? joy?
Joy in excellence!

(My son got some "Advanced Placement" marks back today. He deserves a massive shout of "w00t! w00t!")

Haiku 10

Lacking enough time
to write real analysis,
what's left but haiku?

Haiku 9

On Michael's best tune
he wrote, "we are the children."
'cause he thought he was.

Haiku 8

subversive poems
have always added value
to prosaic lives

What Haiku is (in case anyone else was wondering, besides one friend)

five seven and five
three lines, seventeen word beats
sparsely spoken thoughts

Haiku 7

the right to dissent
is more precious by far than
the right to assert

Haiku 6

no quotes like mis-quotes
clever words made cleverer
if perhaps wryer too

Haiku 5

What helps more? Fluent
dissent or a single act
of neighbourliness?

Haiku 4

Giving blood again
Simple gift that helps up to
three fellow trav'lers

Haiku 3

holiday fliers
caught on the tarmac but for
mechanic inside

Haiku 2

hobbit dvds
i've seen them once too often
give me the books please

Haiku 1

time to write haiku
looking for more clarity
in three arid lines

They're WHAT!!???

Just a glance at slashdot and this story made me howl. The possible comedic reads on this are literally endless.

Translink -- Be Part of the Plan

In answer to the ads on radio here in the lower mainland for the Be Part Of The Plan portal into Translink, the local bus and transport authority, I have joined up there and begun posting. I confess my first couple of posts have bordered on rants: the off-loading that governments did in the 80s and 90s still rankles. And in part, I think this site is an attempt at manufacturing consent for untenable ideas. Still, if there's a chance to be heard, I'll jump at it.

Disappointed with the results

After completing the last entry with the line "disappointed with the results", I realized that I had yet to respond to the failure of the STV referendum in BC. It's been awhile since I was so intensely disappointed by anything in politics. I saw the polls last Monday and I knew it was going to fail. Still, as some folks wondered during the US election last year were, I wondered if the polling were skewed because the polling companies were only calling land lines. I was disappointed to see that they were not.

The FUD density (Fear-Uncertainty-Doubt) in ads like this, which was only aired in the last week before the election, cannily during hockey games, challenged the mass density of lead. And that's without mentioning all the mis-information in its content. Once again, we have to get used to that. And we have to see the changes that we need brought about some other way.

And the FUD wouldn't have been so effective if the times weren't as troubled as they are. The votes for the Liberals, as the votes against STV, were votes for the status quo, for staying the course, for battening down the hatches and hoping we all survive with our houses and families intact. So be it. I guess we'll have to wait this one out for awhile. I wonder when Next Time will be?

"I was not born to be a hero..." but

Has anyone heard what happened this week in Guatemala? "If you're watching this it's because I'm dead" is a great way to start a story or to introduce a major plot twist. It's not often that you see it in reality. Youtube has a number of versions of the two part video from Guatemala that starts that way. But these two have pretty good sub-titles in English right up to the last. The don't have as many explanatory notes going by as some other versions but that's okay. There are others that have been over-dubbed in English. And doubtless, soon, there will be so many versions that nobody will be able to find the one they want without a link (which happened to me by-the-by about another version I wanted to cite here as well, with more background info in sidebars).

"Cry for Guatemala with a corpse at every gate..." Bruce Cockburn sang, back in the 80s, in one of the two or three signature tunes of his that anyone besides Burnheads know. And the crying can continue.

(For anglophones, actually, scanning through Cockburn lyrics of the 80s will get you a mini-education on Latin America and the Caribbean seen through eyes other than those of an American neo-con or a Marxist.)

Señor Rosenberg, I salute you. I don't often get the chance to hear the words of heroes as they speak but today I think I did. I hope your death is the beginning, as you hoped, of a new road. If we accept deaths like yours as normal then things will only get worse.

Sr. Rosenberg's death is the kind of thing good lawyering and newspaper reporting should be instrumental in cleaning up and preventing. That's why we have to keep on caring even when we're disappointed with the results.

No to STV?

After some looking around, I finally found a "No to STV" web site when someone at work posted it to an internal bulletin board. I hadn't seen, yet, what the electoral areas proposed under STV were going to be so when there was a link at nostv.ca with that label, I decided to take a look at it and saw what was, in effect, the grossest attempt to mis-inform that I have ever seen. Again and again, the phrase, "but only One Vote per Voter".

Now, admittedly, that phrase is true in substance, but given that each person's vote under STV is a set of preferences, that one vote has a much broader reach than the image that phrase alone conjures up. But it would be seen as patently misleading to anyone who has read the STV materials. Of course there's only one vote per voter but if you get to designate at least as many preferences as there will be sitting members from your district, the phrase "but only One Vote per Voter" in this context is a red herring.

I looked around to see who was endorsing this "No STV" position and among them was Dr. John Redekop, a political science professor whose common sense has impressed me less than his learnedness. My point of closest contact with him was as guest lecturer to an upper-class interdisciplinary course run in 1983/1984 which focused on responding to Marxism. The course felt anachronistic at the time, even though the fall of the Berlin Wall was still five years out. I was only just aware at the time of the democratic movements in Central America that were being demonized as Marxism in disguise and only barely aware, after events in Grenada (for which the available information still looks highly politicized), that the US might be unleashing covert power against them. Days of innocence, indeed. With 26 years of perspective, I now see that the he was essentially carrying water for American Religious Neo-conservatism more than anything else -- and in a course required for graduation, how ethical is that, anyways? Still, I felt myself in the presence of a dinosaur even then.

Looking further at No-STV's pages, there was a link back to the government's referendum office which I tried. It was borked in a way that wasn't immediately obvious, so I was taking that as evidence of further dinosaurism. It actually isn't, though. In this case it's the government's pages that were messed up -- now it looks okay but maybe that's an intelligent cache between hither and yon. I'm confused. This link works and re-writes itself to look like the one posted by No-STV, so that part, as out of touch as it appeared, was really not part of the problem.

Still, if the best opposition they can muster against STV relies on such a serious level of under-information, perhaps this is a referendum on how literate British Columbians are, and not on the merits of STV vs. FPTP at all. The rest of the information is essentially more FUD about how it won't work and it won't be possible to change it back later. Poppycock. If it turns out to be such a bad thing, the government would have to respond to the people's rage in at leats as timely a fashion as it responded to solid interest from four years ago in re-posting the question this year.

How disappointing. I was hoping there'd be something more substantive to understand on the "No" side and not just FUD propaganda.

Irony: "Who Killed The Electric Car?" and the News

I was struck by a strong sense of irony last night as my wife and I watched portions of "Who Killed the Electric Car" on CBC Newsworld. At the top of the hour there was a news break and beside everything else a story about GM re-structuring nearly made me laugh out loud. The synchronicity wasn't lost on either of us, actually. And that was in addition to the growing sense of outrage in Yet One More direction at the extent to which the "Captains of Industry" are messing with our future.

In their defense, their actions also protect, in the short term, a bunch of jobs. Electric cars are disruptive in enough ways that it's hard to imagine how their widespread adoption would affect wide swaths of society: oil and its products no longer distributed so widely, dropping demand for service, increased demand for electricity (a very labour-unintensive commodity) and increased reasons for individuals to pursue generate-your-own hobby projects.

Maybe there'd be a growing market for things like "pebble bed" nuclear reactors that would power clusters of neighbourhoods reducing the need for cross-country transmission? How about that polywell fusion reactor Dr. Bussard talked about on Google? Apparently the US Navy is funding that work again but I wish Canada would put some money on that square, too. The probability of a pay-off certainly exceeds the likelihood of winning consistently on an honest roulette wheel.

BC STV -- Why I still support it

STV or "Single Transferable Vote" was the system proposed by a "Citizen's Assembly" four years ago. BCers were selected randomly from across the province and brought together to study our current electoral system (First Past the Post or FPTP) and some other ways that people around the world elect their representatives. After looking at other options such as Mixed Member-Proportional, List-based and other systems, they chose STV as the proposed electoral reform to present to the voters four years ago.

For more of the history, how the choice was made and who was involved in developing the proposal, see this site, BC-STV.

For more of an up-beat, promotional site, see the campaign site.

For a local opposing voice, see the Langley Advance's Bob Groeneveld's BC-STV-opposition blog entry.

I support STV and I hope you would all vote for it. At the least, I would encourage you strongly to consider it. Here is why I support it although I admit that like any human institution it may very well be disappointing.

1. I have heard many people say that majority governments are best. I disagree. I think we are best served by governments that must govern by coalition. Minority governments that know playing "chicken" with the voters will not give them a majority are forced to seek consensus, compromise and the balancing of demands of diverse parts of society. The Liberal Party of Canada would never have brought in MediCare in the 60s without having the CCF/NDP (originally a Christian-motivated socialist party, though very far from that now) in their coalition and making that kind of law the price for their support. BOTTOM LINE: Having so many different voices in parliament that nobody can shout everyone else down is a GOOD, a VERY GOOD thing. It only becomes stalemate when one party harbours dreams of taking power entirely to itself. I think adopting BC STV may result in minority governments more frequently.

2. Many elections in the last 20 years have been run on fear, uncertainty and doubt that have fostered so-called "strategic" and other forms of plugged-nose voting. Would you vote for a party that you support if you knew that voting for that party would only make room for the candidate you strongly disagree with to win as opposed to the one with a chance to win that you objected to the least? No. It would be foolish. But that kind of voting has gone on in many quarters. BOTTOM LINE: Having a way to vote for what you REALLY want without the risk (or at least with a reduced risk) that your vote will allow a candidate whose policies you find exceptionally undesirable to win would be a GOOD thing. I believe BC STV gives voters the opportunity to give a "first vote" to a (potentially) marginal candidate and still prefer others as a second choice rather than having their vote become a "spoiler".

3. Part of the fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD for short) has been aimed at painting victory on the part of candidates from some other party as the Most Awful Thing, to be avoided at all costs, even if it means voting for someone you only find least distasteful of the possible other options. If a candidate sees value in attracting the conditional support of voters who would not choose them first, this kind of painting the other candidates as Spawn of Evil is less likely to occur. If I as a candidate know that a 2nd place vote from people who will choose someone else first can carry the election for me, I will look for common ground with as many voters as possible. Toning down the hysteria in political rhetoric is a GOOD THING. BC STV will force candidates to canvas for 2nd or 3rd choice support even among those who would choose other candidates first.

4. Our kids see how stacked our political system is. We live in ridings where members of some political party with a pulse will carry the vote by 3:1 margins. If those kids should (dare to) disagree with that party they will see no point in voting here. Let's do things that foster a habit of involvement on their part here and now. Opening the door for wider choice in the legislature so that they have varied options (but not necessarily crazy ones like the Rhinoceros Party or Natural Law) to express their political difference of opinion with us without being disillusioned is a GOOD THING. A vote for the Green Party is still a throwaway vote. A vote for the Rhinos, or a Jedi Council party would be so even more. BC STV may allow for more candidates at the (perceived) fringes without driving all but the true fringe out of that market.

5. This system, STV, has been used for both houses in Ireland (Dáil and Seanad) and for the Senate in Australia for a long time. It bears little resemblance to the list based system that (a) works quite well in the Netherlands and Denmark for instance but (b) seems to work out so chaotically in the Knesset in Israel and in Italy.

I'm tired of the disjoint relationship between the popular vote and the MLAs that get sent to Victoria. Changing our voting system to alleviate that disjointedness isn't the answer to all BC's ills but I believe trying to do so would be a good thing. I think choosing BC STV for the future has a good chance of resulting in better, more representative, more open government going into the future.

There are other options that the Citizens' Assembly could have chosen that I would not have been so keen to support. Regardless that my support for this idea is not so strong as some of the rhetoric on the STV campaign website, still I think this is a wise choice for our province, and indeed for our country.

Will you join me in placing your "X" beside "The single transferable vote electoral system (BC-STV) proposed by the Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform" on May 12?

Thank you for taking the time to consider it.

Sincerely,


Arthur N. Klassen

BC STV -- Sometimes re-runs are a good thing

I'm still a little bit surprised that it's coming up again. After coming so close four years ago, the referendum question is back on. Maybe this time?

For more information on what STV (Single Transferable Vote, that is) is, visit Fair Voting BC's referendum web site. There are two highly explanatory videos on the first page and a list of frequently asked questions, including some myths.

During this election, if STV gets any press from the parties, I expect it to be scare-mongering, mostly, because some of the control of the process will leave the party mechanisms and there will be a chance for other voices -- ones with enough community support to be credible, mind you -- than the whipped ones from being heard in the Legislature.

I support this system and I would offer more explanations of its mechanics if they weren't so well laid out on BC STV's web site. So, why do I support it?

I am troubled by the apathy of voters, especially younger ones. Our system is so well organized that new voices, especially those of younger citizens, are not likely to be heard: they are either caucused out or drowned out by the large noisy political machines of established parties. Regional concerns are not heard as safe riding after safe riding is delivered to this or that party while those who vote for other parties, spread out across these safe ridings, are never represented. Even in my own riding, both provincially and federally, the party nomination for one party or another is in effect as binding as the actual election -- in the absence of gross scandals coming out after the individual has been nominated, or of strong local personality such as that of the late Chuck Cadman. I see the Single Transferable Vote as a way to amend that, at least a little bit.

I am bothered by the stridency of political rhetoric. In a take-no-prisoners election campaign where every citizen has only one vote, there is no motivation for candidates to appeal to electors for whom they have no hope of being the first choice. As as happened in the even more well organized and polarized system to our south, without that motivation to appeal more broadly "red meat" rallies, "divide and conquer" strategies, fearmongering and "get out the base" drives will only increase. I cannot believe that this approach leads wise governance.

But if those who won't choose you first might choose you second -- and so get you elected -- you won't be demonizing their first choice at the slightest provocation over the course of the campaign, lest you be labeled as "the enemy of my friend" in too many of their minds. And if, in the resulting legislature, some kind of coalition is required, good! First of all, we've always had to manage coalitions in the rest of life (it's called "sharing" in Kindergarten), why not in our government? Second, if you may have to strike a deal after the election, you may be just a little less likely to call your opponent (figuratively) a spawn of evil before the election.

At the same time, this isn't the willy-nilly list-based voting used in much of Europe with mixed results (good examples: Netherlands and Denmark; classic bad example: Italy). I don't believe STV is loose enough that we will have some way-out-on-the-fringe party dictating to a government that most of us can otherwise put up with for some unreasonable accomodation in return for reliable support over the course of a coalition.

Please, British Columbians, on May 12, 2009, vote "YES" on the STV question.

We Can't Amend Our Constitution

I thought it would be a passing fantasy, but the more I think about an idea I heard this last month, the more I liked it, despite the fact that five years ago I would have been horrified to know that anyone was entertaining it. By the time I finished writing the following, I was convinced that it was a bad idea, not just an unneighbourly one. (But when your neighbours keep sending their dogs to urinate on your shrubs, that's how you start feeling.)

This editorial from the Vancouver Sun made me think about my idea again, especially when I came to this line:

So the Senate exists primarily as a monument to the failure of Canadians to amend our own constitution, which is the only way it can be reformed or abolished.

Why can't we amend the constitution? Because we don't actually have one. Why that is is a long complicated story that begins with the British North America Act and continues through the Canada Act 1982, the Meech Lake Accord, the Charlottetown Accord, all with special reference to the ambitions and/or good intentions of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Brian Mulroney and Québec.

Amending our constitution (as published here) requires 2/3 of the provinces representing more than 50% of the population to be accepted, and then gradual opt-in by all the other provinces. For something like Senate Reform, this just isn't workable. For one thing, Ontario and Québec enjoy too much power in the status quo. For another thing, since Québec doesn't even recognize the current constitution they will always vote "no" to any amendment because supporting an amendment would first require accepting the constitution.

So what's the idea? Threaten two things: first to strip Québec of Ungava -- a region which was not part of Québec's original territory and has consistently elected Parti Québecois MNAs but is decidedly against leaving Canada; then to expel the original Québec from Canada. If enough political will were generated in the rest of Canada to do this, it would not necessarily be a good thing but it could bring Québec's role as the spoiled child of confederation to a decisive end and it would relieve the rest of us from having our politics contorted by a political party in the Commons that doesn't believe in the concept (Canada) that the Commons exists to serve.

But then I started to do the math and the math didn't lie. This idea may rid us of a whiner but it will make an even bigger problem: a constitution that may as well belong to Ontario.

Here are the numbers. With Québec, here are the proportions that each province has:

Canada	31,612,897	100.00%
Alberta	3,290,350	10.41%
British Columbia	4,113,487	13.01%
Manitoba	1,148,401	3.63%
New Brunswick	729,997	2.31%
Newfoundland and Labrador	505,469	1.60%
Northwest Territories	41,464	0.13%
Nova Scotia	913,462	2.89%
Nunavut	29,474	0.09%
Ontario	12,160,282	38.47%
Prince Edward Island	135,851	0.43%
Quebec	7,546,131	23.87%
Saskatchewan	968,157	3.06%
Yukon Territory	30,372	0.10%

As you can see, it's impossible to get 50% of the population against the combined might of Ontario and Québec. That's actually a problem. But if we get rid of the whiners, here's what things look like.

Canada	24,066,766	100.00%
Alberta	3,290,350	13.67%
Ontario	12,160,282	50.53%
Northwest Territories	41,464	0.17%
Nunavut	29,474	0.12%
Yukon Territory	30,372	0.13%
British Columbia	4,113,487	17.09%
Prince Edward Island	135,851	0.56%
Manitoba	1,148,401	4.77%
Newfoundland and Labrador	505,469	2.10%
New Brunswick	729,997	3.03%
Nova Scotia	913,462	3.80%
Saskatchewan	968,157	4.02%

Now, is it possible that Ungava as a province has enough population (200,000 or so) to allow everyone but Ontario to gang up on Ontario? Probably not. And even if it did, what kind of an amending formula would that make? The regions have different enough interests that they would not unify like that. Ontario (new in its have-not status) would be able to veto anything that the rest of Canada wanted in most if not all situations. And as pleasant as it would be not to have to listen to Québec constantly saying "gimme or I might leave", it would be even less pleasant for us in BC (or those in Alberta) to have Ontario tell us what can or can't happen.

No, the right thing is to get Québec to sign the constitution to start with. Then, as bad as the amending formula seems it would become a reasonable possibility, not something that'll just never happen.

Following that, there has to be a reason to make economic prospects strong enough in the maritime provinces to attract people to stay there and emigrate there, especially from Ontario and Québec, so as to make it more possible. The road is long, winding and tortuous and sadly, I don't believe that we'll get there.

Cluster Bombs

I'm in a riled up mood this week because some countries think they're too big to promise to play nice. Neighbour to the South, why are cluster bombs so important to your National Security that you can't join with other nations to ban cluster bombs? Land mines, too, while you're at it. And, oh yeah, why do you have to plant long-term poisons from depleted uranium on your various battlefields? And yes, those are your allies not your enemies who are backing away from these various harvests of death and asking you to do the same.

Does "Yes We Can" apply to those things as well? Can't we (the citizens of Earth) abolish the ownerless slavery these things inflict on the people who live around the battlefields where this evil troika have been deployed? I hope so. I sincerely hope so.

If Programming Languages were...

Cars or Religions. The best use of a car metaphor in my view, was in Neal Stephenson's classic essay, "In the Beginning Was the Command Line" (wiki, Neal). And then there was the classic "If operating systems drove your car..." (which is getting hard to find, but not impossible).

I know. I know. It's all brain noise. But it amused me, even where I disagreed with the way he described his categories. For the record, I use C, C++ and python I've begun to play around a bit with erlang. I'm beginning to be surrounded by C#-of-borg minions but I was just as amused to see no entry in either list for Objective-C. Let me see if I can come up with one.

Objective-C as a religion would be whatever is believed by children of a couple where one is from a Jewish and the other from a Christian background. Neither is very religious, and only periodically remember that, "oh yeah. It's Passover. I was going to stay away from the ham for Passover."

Objective-C as a car would be like a Fiero. Nice sporty exterior and sometimes it can run really, really fast. It's not so great on the corners, though and if you park it in one place for too long, there are oil stains on the ground.

John Nash on the Economy

I was intrigued to read this critique of the structure that the economy has used in developing over the last few decades. I wonder if it's worth wishing that we take these steps back from insanity? What would it do to my house debt? I've always scratched my head as to why it was to my overall benefit to live in an economy where I had to re-negotiate my mortgage every few years. And now John Nash (of A Beautiful Mind fame) says the same thing. Is that "Great Minds"? or "Fools"?

That said, if there's going to be a 30 year mortgage, I'd rather it got counted back from when I first bought a house and not from now. John Maynard Keynes' economic theory always reminded me of William Aeberhardt's (in how they matched with common sense, not in their details, you understand). It's nice to see someone who's earned the right to say so out loud agreeing with me.

I thought I was dreaming

The evening was winding down and I saw something so ridiculous that I thought I must have been dreaming. I thought I was seeing a youtube-quality doctored video on my (not connected to the internet) TV of someone throwing shoes at George W. Bush. I was only sure that it wasn't a figment of a tired imagination this morning when I saw it mentioned on multiple news sites. So I guess I wasn't dreaming.

Who would have thought that anyone would want to throw perfectly good shoes at a duck? I mean, how do you retrieve them? And what effect would the water have on really goo shoes (mixing the metaphor here)? And isn't "the target" lucky that it wasn't (a more competent) Richard Reid in that press corps! But there's a more serious side: the level of contempt displayed by throwing shoes (and I didn't realize this until I saw the main page at the BBC this AM) is pretty high. The rest of the world have been in a much bigger hurry to say good-bye to the 43rd and greet the 44th president of the US. I wonder if B. H. Obama would get flying shoes if he happened to go to Iraq? I suspect not now. It will be interesting to see if it turns out to be likely as his term in office proceeds.

Gwynne Dyer on The Future of Tibet

The latest article on Tibet (part of which is known as Xizang Autonomous Region) from Gwynne Dyer finishes with a question:

Or do you think I am being too cynical?

Gwynne, I'm very much afraid that the answer is no.

You shouldn't have lowered the GST... No, wait! Lower it some more!

In the continuing drama of economists critiquing Canadian government economic policy in the midst of economic turmoil, it's amusing to hear the contradictions. Earlier this week, and for months past, various economists have called the lowering of our Goods And Services Tax (what many other countries call a VAT, but it's unfortunately not included in sale prices) irresponsible on the part of the government. Suddenly, yesterday, some economist was reported as saying just the opposite. In the face of our tough economic times it's felt that lowering the GST will help us spend our way out of a recession. Me, I'm not so sure either way. But I chuckled to hear the dissonant voices, not even sure that it isn't the same voice giving a different message.

Michael Ignatieff: Not Canadian Enough

Send Dr. Ignatieff to the UN, back him in a bid to become Secretary-General, let Harper co-opt him as Secretary of State for External Affairs or Minister of Finance. He's bright and accomplished, pragmatic and shrewd. But he's not Canadian enough to be Prime Minister. Shortly after his undergrad years in Toronto, he left the country and largely stayed away until it was time to pull out the knives on Paul Martin's political career.

He never had to live through the near-dissolution of confederation and deficits spawned by Trudeau. He didn't have to struggle through the interest rate spike in the 80s and the economic turmoil it caused here in Canada. He wasn't here for the recession of the early 90s and he hasn't experienced the changes (good or bad) that were wrought here by the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement or the later NAFTA.

If you want a Prime Minister whose academic record is prestigious and impeccable, Dr. Ignatieff is your man. But why not be concerned that he is gut-familiar with what it means to be Canadian today, and how we got here -- familiarity that can only come through living through it at first hand. Dr. Ignatieff's record has qualified him for many things, president of the IMF for example, but I don't believe it's the kind of background we need in a Canadian Prime Minister.

Fifteen Minutes of Fame, yet again
It's visible right now, here, but I'll quote it in case it disappears. The title of the page is "We Heart Robots" but the question was, "Who's your favourite animated character?" This was my answer:

Mr. Incredible is my favorite. What a parable for modern fatherhood?
Always feeling responsible for everything.
Often feeling utterly dis-empowered
In conflict by default with those closest to him.
Wanting to protect them but unable to.
Always looking back wistfully to the good old days when we were gods, could do many things and did so, always in the best of causes.

If only I were a Super, then maybe I could fulfill some of the dreams I share with my overweight-father animated counterpart.

I don't own a police scanner and I'm not an adjuster for a corrupt insurance company (is that a tautology?) but that's how I feel, so much of the time...

Meme alert: "The stain is on the move"

Today's Dilbert is in serious danger of engendering a new meme, if it isn't already one.

Quote Jests...

Those who know me in person, know me as one who commits creative mis-quotation. In fact, I often call myself the Quote Jester. Which is itself a jest in a quote from the title of an instrumental number by Phil Keaggy not to mention being a misquotation of "Court Jester".

So, here's my misquotation for the day. "There's no quote like a mis-quote."

And if you want to exercise this noble art, you can do it yourself by tacking a simple phrase to any stative sentence, which is a misquotation from the BareNaked Ladies' song, "If I Had A Million Dollars." It goes like this:

"I went out and got a library book -- but not a real library book, that's cruel."

Obviously there are some situations where it's funnier than it is in others. I am not responsible for inappropriate uses to which you may apply this idea.

Letter to cbc.ca about archive format

I just sent the following note to cbc.ca regarding the file format of their archive material. Maybe this is a pointless rant but it would be nice not to have to funnel their WMV content through some other tool before being able to watch it. The "At Issue" segments tend to be worth catching if you want to stay on top of what's what in Canadian politics.

I noticed this awhile ago but I've never thought to mention it until now. I am gradually moving to a Microsoft-free computing life at home and all the video at www.cbc.ca/national/archive is only playable on Microsoft Media Player.

What would prevent the CBC from using a user-platform independent format for this archive footage? I would really appreciate it if it were some technology (flash? like youtube and google video) that didn't require me to use a particular supplier's software in order to view it. I do have MS-machines in the house. I would just rather not have to use them for this if I didn't have to.

thanks...ank

Good-bye Bertie

So the on-going scandal of dodgy campaign financing in Ireland has come to an end that could have been predicted ages ago. How corrupt was Mr. Ahern, really? And if he was corrupt, how corrupt was he compared to other politicians whose career started at the same time or before as Mr. Ahern's career?

I have the handicap and advantage of not actually being from Ireland, so I can't continue either of those conversations except as a listener -- and I'd love to hear some pithy, non-polarized opinions from people who know better than I on either of them. I feel happy for Bertie that he can still have his little jaunt to the States before he goes. I think I have a small notion of how important that is for him and for his country. I'm even gladder that the Good Friday accords don't look like collapsing just because one of the leaders' hands appear unclean.

But in listening to this story unwind, I couldn't help wondering if he's no more than a victim of surviving from one era of accountability standards into the next? I'm not denying that Bertie was corrupt. The details from the Mahon Tribunal has made this much clear: corruption happened. And worse, he was consistently economical with the truth and forgot too many of the details, whether inadvertently or not (the old "Incompetent or Crooked?" question rears its head).

My mixed feelings on the outcome lead me to wonder if, when financial/political accountability measures become more concrete, more rigorous, if the people would be better served (with the longevity of their most senior, most experienced leaders) if such laws included riders of amnesty and/or some kind of owning-up commissions -- with penalties like this only exacted for those who don't make a clean breast of the past. I have little faith that the laws are capable of keeping the politicians and their funds honest -- but I am sure that without the freedom to own-up with amnesty I feel they are likely to be even less effective. Further, I fear that the more stringent the measures are, the more creative corrupt politicians and power-purchasers will get in the buying and selling of influence.

Bernanke gives color to J. R. Saul's analysis of economy

Within the last few months, I read and thoroughly enjoyed the now 16-year-old Voltaire's Bastards by John Ralston Saul. I had begun to see hints of one of Saul's central assertions echoed in the rescue of Bear Stearns by JP Morgan Chase with the help of the American Federal Reserve. I don't have my copy to hand right now but let me reiterate the thoughts:

In 1992, Saul wrote that we had then been in a near-20 year depression that was being hidden and shuffled out of view by pushing it around through manipulations of currency exchanges and interest rates. He went on to support that statement with a lot of facts which, all taken together, made a startling picture. I found that picture to correspond closely enough with reality that it has made sense to keep watching events in order to see if the evidence continues to pile up in its favour, or in contradiction. For myself, it also seemed to be a compelling interpretation of the on-going movie: rollicking cascades of currency crisis here; market "correction" there; and any number of other dashes of the Electronic Herd of stampeding gnu. Thomas Friedman called them just a commonplace of globalization in The Lexus and the Olive Tree. But if you look at the forces that keep the gnus running it soon becomes apparent that few of their movements fail to be started, turned or stopped by the acts of various governments and regulatory bodies. Who wants the malaise to set in where you are? Keep it moving with interest rate changes, tax cuts, import concessions, anything! The facts have continued to fit Saul's picture better and better all the time.

Now it struck me that the way in which Bear Stearns had been prevented from collapsing looked like another case of the hiding the depression and that force of déjà vú just came crashing down with this story. In it, Bernanke is reported to admit that preventing the US from slipping into a depression is exactly what he had in mind when he made the deal to rescue Bear Stearns. That rescue was made possible only by very deep manipulations of the Bear's value and by moving the remaining sub-prime risk on its books around in a most creative fashion. Suddenly this story has moved from being a hint that Saul was right to a full-blown case in point. What is now a nearly 35 year malaise has just been shoveled around for another swing about the pole.

I'm just not sure anymore whether to hope that the problem is like a tetherball, capable of endless swinging about the pole, or a maypole that will eventually wrap itself around the pole with nowhere left to swing. Can we stop the ball in ways that are non-destructive and re-invent things, or will things really have to get to a destructive "no-rope-left" state before this situation can be put on some other footing? And will we find out before or after I've retired? before or after my kids are up to their eyeballs in mortgage, marriage and parenting? Time goes fast, learning goes slow...

The Penny: "It's not a priority for us now" Whaaa...?

Dear Mr. Flaherty,

Regarding Private Members Bill, C-531.

Sir, I was stupefied by the summary dismissal the press is reporting you gave to the idea of discontinuing the one cent coin. "It's not a priority for us now," sounds alarmingly like, "We didn't think of it, so we won't consider it now."

I am not an NDP voter, so I have no party-axe to grind. This is an issue of common sense. The thing that will attract the voters your party will need in order to gain majority status is an ongoing exhibition of common sense, which in this case will lead to a lack of common cents.

Save our money! Don't spend any more on circulating a coin that has become entirely annoying and totally pointless. Let wire transactions continue to the nearest cent but let our pockets grow a little lighter -- and release a little bit more copper for the whole world to benefit from. (see this article from Scientific American as referenced at slashdot).

Good ideas are worth looking at no matter who had them first. Please give this one more than passing notice.

Sincerely,

Arthur N. Klassen etc. etc.

cc: Hon. Pat Martin, MP for Winnipeg Centre,
Hon. xxxxx xxxxxx, MP for my home riding

Discontinuing the Penny

To the Hon. Pat Martin, MP for Winnipeg Centre

Dear Mr. Martin,

In regard to your private member's bill to discontinue the penny, thank you. This measure is about 5 or 10 years late and should have been entered into
consideration around the time the $2 coin, what I call the doubloon, was introduced. The cost of all that copper to Canada should give it all the impetus it requires. That force is only strengthened by the moral dubiousness of hoarding copper this way when there is not enough of it in the world for everyone in the world to enjoy our lifestyle. What should it matter that the bill comes from an opposition bench? Wisdom should be commended regardless of the source.

Retaining the $0.01-precision for wire transactions and rounding up or down to the nearest multiple of 5 cents on cash ones is at least a partial return to the common sense that BC exhibited before confederation. Back in the day, political rhetoric here said that BCers were not so niggling as to figure things out to the nearest 100th of a dollar and pennies were routinely discarded in the Rockies by BCers on their way home from the money-grubbing east. That such an attitude has taken this long to even begin to resurface is a sad commentary on the rarity of common sense.

I wish your bill safe and swift passage.

Sincerely,

Arthur N. Klassen etc. etc.

cc: Hon. xxxxx xxxxxx, MP for my home riding

I had a nightmare last night

I turned on the TV briefly last night to watch the beginnings of The Trojan Horse on the CBC and the sight of the Stars and Stripes over Ottawa's Peace Tower, even in a piece of fiction, felt like a knife through my heart. It got too violent for my taste in evening family viewing pretty quickly, but I confess I am both attracted and repelled by the idea of watching it. I'd like to see how the whole story plays out but if I do see it, I'm going to dread every view like that one, not to mention grieve its possibility in advance, even when the reality is still so very unlikely..

Headline Puzzle from January answers...

Maybe I should just give up. Oh well... here are the answers from January 5. The headlines were

OUR BAD MICROSOFT COMPENSATE FOR XBOX LIVE HOLIDAY PROBLEMS
HUCKABEE OBAMA CARRY MOMENTUM INTO NEW HAMPSHIRE
CALGARY MAN SUCCUMBS TO CARBON MONOXIDE POISONING
DEFENCE APPEAL IN PICKTON CASE A NO BRAINER
CANADAS WORLD JUNIOR TEAM GOES FOR GOLD AFTER BEATING US

The key was "STORAGE", the setting was "CDROM" and the hat was "RETRIEVE".

Peut-être je suis mais un poseur...ank

"The mercury in one CFL bulb can contaminate 1000 gallons of water"
Recently, in an internal company bulletin board, someone posted this link, citing the title and asking "Is it true?"

My answer was, let's do the math.

How much mercury is in a bulb? According to wikipedia, anywhere between 1 and 12 mg. The best models seem to have limited it to 1mg but there is a limit in place of no more than 6 mg, so let's assume that we're talking about 6mg.

1000 US Gallons of water is 3890 L, 1000 Imperial Gallons of water is 4540L. Typically gallons nowadays refers to US gallons, but let's make it 4000, just in case (makes the later math easier, even if it's not a fair mid-point).

4000L has a mass of 4000kg. 6mg in 4000kg is 1.5 parts per billion by mass.
According to this link, the American FDA's "Maximum Contaminant Level Goal" for mercury, a cumulative neurotoxin, in drinking water is 2 parts per billion.

So, as usual, this kind of a headline looks like a little late-breaking hysteria. Mind you, if enough of the bulbs have 12 mg, that would be 3ppb which would fail the (arbitrary?) MCLG. Where the "safety line" actually is is probably a matter for debate that gets very political very quickly. Like, did you know that crematoria are a prime source of airborne mercury pollution? Years of dental fillings, all going up in smoke...

All that said, ever since the fad of CFL bulbs started taking hold, aside from my complaint that they don't emit enough light and what light they emit tends to be too cold, I have wondered aloud quite often where the infrastructure for safe disposal of expired bulbs was. A rhetorical question, I know. But then, such infrastructure must grow fast enough to take up the slack. Given the likelihood that "incorrect recycling" of CFLs is going to mean concentrations of mercury in landfills, I wonder how the neighbours of the various dumps in the western world are going to feel about those dumps becoming mercury magnets, alongside all the other wonderful things they've taken in over the years?

This stuff has all got to be solved a different way. Wish I knew what that way was...

The Return of the Headline Puzzle! #3

I missed last week's deadline in a good cause. My wife and I celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary -- away from any computers, in a lovely place across some water from where we live (I'm being coy about it because I may want to use it for a future headline puzzle).

Two weeks ago, I posted a puzzle whose solution was...

PASS THE SCREECH CROSBIE IS NEWFOUNDLAND LT GOVERNOR
HOUSING DEMOLITION PROTESTERS CLASH WITH POLICE IN NEW ORLEANS
ZUMA SAYS NO WORD FROM PROSECUTORS ON GRAFT
QUEEN NOW OLDEST MONARCH IN BRITAINS HISTORY
EIGHT GLASSES OF WATER A DAY AND OTHER MEDICAL MYTHS

KEY = MONEY, SETTING = PURSE, HAT = WALLET

The new puzzle is this:

LTJ FKM ZWNJLDLXC CL NLZAIYDKCI XLJ EFLE PWOI VLPWMKG AJLFPIZD

QSMWILKK FLIYI MIHHR YFYKZDSY UZDF ZKT QIYECQUHK

JDWFDLB VDQ GZJJZVKG RI JDLKIQ VIQITNHC SINGIQNQF

FRMRPLR GYYRGN JP YJLHOCP LGBR G PC DIGJPRI

ZWRWYWN CXVEY ODRTXV MUWG QXUN AXV QXEY WAMUV PUWMTRQ DN

Happy solving!

Kenya :: Rwanda -- the comparison was inevitable

A newspaper in the cafeteria caught my eye, running this story from the Globe and Mail (our Ontario paper that tries to masquerade as a national one). I was wondering how soon people would start to compare Kenya today with Shake Hands With The Devil Rwanda. Ouch.

The Return of the Headline Puzzle! #2

Somebody game me a tuit (it was round. I got a round tuit, er around to it...) and here I am with the answer to the last Headline Puzzle and the new one. If anyone sees me doing this "wrong" somehow, please leave a comment!

So the headlines were...

US TONING DOWN PLEAS FOR HELP WITH AFGHAN MISSION GATES SAYS
AT BALI CLIMATE CONFERENCE SIGNS OF COMPROMISE
HAMAS POLICE ARREST AIDE TO PALESTINIAN PRIME MINISTER
LEBANESE ARMY GENERAL LAID TO REST IN STATE FUNERAL
MUSHARRAF LOOSENS ELECTION GRIP AS HIS POLLS SLIDE

SETTING = FORCE;  KEY = WEAPON;  HAT = MILITARY

So here's the new puzzle...

DSCC QXW CBYWWBX BYPCRZW ZC UWGEPIUMASUM AQ VPLWYUPY

VUFQEXB ZSKUYEJEUX IDUJSQJSDQ OYTQV CEJV IUYEOS EX XSC UDYSTXQ

JDQW GWSG PR HRAT ZARQ YARGKVDCRAG RP XAWZC

AQUUT TSI SHBUFL RSTXGEM OT WGOLXOTF MOFLSGV

OCDYX DJNUUOU EQ PNXOK N GNH NAG EXYOK VOGCINJ VHXYU

Solution to be posted in another week...

UPS Ground to Canada -- Seriously Busted

In the US, there's a wonderful service, more cost effective than the Post Office for almost all package-delivery applications. It's called UPS and referred to tersely and fondly as "UPS Ground". It's so addictive that given the similarity of addresses between the US and Canada for the post, US residents who have parcels to send to Canada naturally assume that Brown will get the job done.

Well, it will but... There's the little matter of a border between the two countries, and it happens that when you send things via Brown, your "gift" suddenly becomes a COD parcel, possibly challenging the value of the gift in the first place. The thought counts, and we Canadians are too polite to complain loudly to our generous friends, but seriously. For all the tackiness of "gift cards", suddenly a gift card at amazon.ca, for instance, makes a whole lot more sense.

Now, it used to be a whole lot worse. There used to be a several week delay while Brown tried to negotiate the border and send the package around in Canada using their then half-baked delivery network up here. They've gotten a lot better and are no longer a byword in bad delivery. But they are a bad deal, and if you're in the US, shipping to Canada, they're a bad deal that you probably won't hear about from your friends north of 49. We like you. The gifts you send are thoughtfully chosen and highly appropriate, 95 times out of 100. Why should we quibble about how you choose to send them to us? But there it is.

For sending parcels to Canada from the US, the post office is a better deal, if not for you, then certainly for the people you're sending to. And if their rates are just over the edge, maybe an over-the-web gift cetificate will work better. Last time I checked, those really were duty-free.

The Return of the Headline Puzzle! #1

A long time ago I tried to produce these periodically. Here's another try. I will post the solution to this headline puzzle a week from today, 2007-12-21..

ZW CKFVFM IKOF GUPDW HKY RPUG OVCR DHMRDF TVWWVKF MDCPW WDBW

JA GJMS DMSZJAB DHOKBEBODB NSUON HK DHZLEHZSNB

BVJVK TEAFSM VLLMKQ VFNM QE TVAMKQFRFVR TLFJM JFRFKQML

KNOPCNZN PSRW HNCNSPK KPMG YD SNZY MC ZYPYN JXCNSPK

IQRGWMMWP JBBRZER ZJZNVKBE DMKA WR GKR ABJJR RJKOZ

Instructions for solving should be here.

Still More Banking Woes?

A news story caught me by surprise yesterday: that the central banks of many industrialized countries, together with the American Federal Reserve have banded together to keep a money supply going, even in the face of further sub-prime mortgage meltdown red ink. The best explanation I've read so far (of course, it's from Big Brother) makes no attempt to estimate how much damage is still to come, only that the current losses add up to $60Billion and that the full extent won't be known until March 2008. The current loss is over half the amount of money that was ear-marked for easier loans this week, so I wonder if the banks have estimated the total loss already, privately, at that level. Or is this an artificial quantity, floated out there just to keep the banks liquid?

The whole thing sounds scary. Until I realize how lucky I am that I'm warm, fed and dry enough to worry about how this will affect my next re-mortgaging negotiations which aren't exactly happening in the next year.

How to keep blogging?

Find quotable things and link to them. Here's one:

"Real Men don't attack straw men."

I love it. This sort of thing gets done on all kinds of fronts. Here's the original. For the rest, the next time you hear someone's position on something get ripped apart in twenty seconds or less, go back and check what the victim really said. In their own words. Without even straining the brain I can think of four or five of these, many of them high profile enough they might be familiar to you.

Copyright amendment was a tipping point

It's been a long while since I posted to this blog last. It's not as
though I've had no opinions, it just seems that I've found so few gaps
in what I'm doing to post here. I'd like to write piercing coherent
things that people will want to read, that may change some people's
minds but fitting that into being a husband, Dad, a software
developer, a commuter and a member of my community -- not to mention
continuing to service my reading addictions has been hard.

Call it a New Years' resolution a few weeks early but I mean to post
here more often -- perhaps with a little less attention to hotlinks --
I do like to cross-reference what I'm writing to other things so that
if you haven't gotten access to the background materials that lead me
to my conclusions already, at least you'll have a chance to do so.

For now, here's a fun link for the holidays:
http://www.guessthiscity.com/ which is run by a friend of mine. Just
simple sets of 20 pictures or so for, as far as I know, for about 43
cities. Share and Enjoy (an oblique reference to heads and pigs is
purely coincidental)

One Small Victory for Fair Use

An open letter to the Minister of Industry and my MP

Dear Mr. Prentice,

Thank you for withdrawing the so-called "Canadian DMCA". I was and
have been deeply troubled by the readiness of the government to take
the part of the purveyors of creative content against the interest of
its consumers and often of its creators as well. I urge you to take a
different, more balanced view of the issues that are driving this
field.

The purveyors of creative content have received a surcharge from the
sale of blank media on the presumption of guilt on the part of
Canadians in contravening copyright law. As galling as the presumption
of guilt is, it is a small price to pay by the consumer. It should be
sufficient for all time to preserve fair use rights. It should allow
consumers of content to time-shift, media-shift, even share moderately
and for non-commercial purposes with friends without fear of
surveillance, suit, damages or imprisonment.

The role of the Canadian government in this ought to be clear: to
balance the rights of ordinary citizens, creators of content and the
commercial entities that market and distribute that content. It is an
open secret that the commercial entities regularly abuse the creators
and they are doing whatever they can in any jurisdiction that will
listen to them to extend that abuse to the consumers of that content
as well. To have to pay some money every time a song is played --
especially to groups who manifestly do not have the best interests of
the artists at heart -- is untenable, unconscionable and an undue
intrusion into the lives of ordinary Canadians.

If the end result of "failing" to pass legislation like this in Canada
means that less and less large-company media comes to Canada that may
not be all bad -- but we all know that that end-game will result in
such widespread piracy that it will not be to anyone's benefit.

Do us all a favour and tell these extortionists (the MPAA, the RIAA
and others) to take their blank-media surcharge and be quiet. Once and
for all. The consequences of not doing so include all kinds of ills,
not least of which is the further disaffection of thousands of younger
voters who will get the message loud and clear if legislation like
this ever passes, that whomever the government of Canada is for, it's
certainly not for them. And that would be a serious breach of what you
were sent to Ottawa for: ultimately as the guardians of the
sovereignty of Canada, a trust too sacred for the kind of quick
sell-out a Canadian DMCA would represent.

Sincerely,

Arthur N. Klassen
(address & phone-number witheld)

An Open Letter to the BC Utilities Corporation

Here's a letter I just sent to the BC Utilities Corporation. Consider echoing your sentiments along the same lines to their complaints department.

Dear Sir/Madam:

My complaint about Natural Gas Marketing in BC is simple enough you may find it easy to write off as some crank. Please do not. It consists of no more than five words.

REGULATE RETAIL NATURAL GAS SALES.

I remember seeing a flakey survey go by that was worded in such a way as to elicit more yes than no responses and did not do anything to lay out the potential repercussions of deregulating natural gas sales in BC. Salespeople for these marketers have come to my home and those of several of my friends. The offer presented to us would have seen an immediate 12.5% jump in our gas rates, at least. Others have been told "Just sign here. You're not really committing to anything."

Deregulating phone service is not a bad idea since telecommunications bandwidth is practically infinite, totally fungible and easy to do without. Natural Gas, though, while being mostly fungible is neither infinite in supply nor easy to do without. Deregulating its distribution at all exposes the citizens of this province to the speculative vagaries of the marketplace in a way that government for the people ought not to do.

As for the advertising campaign unleashed at the same time, it is abusive in the extreme, implying that if you don't want choice on your natural gas, you must be a boring person who always wears gray socks, always eats turnips and always reads the same books. It looks to this citizen (not just customer!) distinctly like an attempt by yet another multinational corporation (Kinder Morgan) to use governmental agencies (the BCUC) to gain an opportunity to gouge its customers at will (through gas marketing proxies) and deflect the responsibility for the debacle back on the customer ("if only you hadn't signed that piece of paper..."). In all probability, what we are seeing is not such a nefarious conspiracy but it tastes bad. Really bad.

So I return to my five simple words. Get rid of this stupid situation and go back to doing your duty to the citizens of BC:

REGULATE RETAIL NATURAL GAS SALES.

Expect to get more letters like this in the coming days. I will be sending the above letter to my local newspapers, posting it to my blog and forwarding its contents to a number of my friends. With any luck (my luck, that is), some of them will forward similar sentiments to you. I hope there'll be enough to reverse this silly decision, whose public process I do not remember seeing any timely publicity on.

Sincerely,

name and address blinded, Aldergrove, BC

David Remnick's book, Lenin's Tomb

A friend loaned me this book a few weeks ago and I completed it this morning. I can only quote Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in the "Vintage Edition" Afterword: The heart is not yet glad. So much waste, so much betrayal, so much accusation of "you moved too fast!", "you moved too slowly!", "you betrayed our trust!" (in every possible direction). And yet, the book is out of date already because Boris Yeltsin has been out of power some time now -- died just this year -- and in his place the former KGB officer, Vladimir Putin, looks to be establishing himself as the next long-term autocrat. Of course he has some semblance of legitimacy but it is hard, in the face of his relations to politically interested oligarchs (e.g. MIkhail Khodorkovsky), Belarus and Ukraine (with regard to natural gas pipelines) to accord him more than the semblance.

May the heart yet be glad! Still, it's easy to ignore, in the Anglophone west, what a long hard struggle the progress from autocracy to civil, responsible government was. The French might still remember that Bastille Day was followed by the terror, Napoleon, the return of the Bourbons, another Napoleon or two before things settled down, decades after the ouster of the WWII Quisling government, to the (largely) civilized government we see today. But in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, the memory has to be a little longer -- okay, so the Americans have fought more recent wars, but their progress was accelerated by their English heritage and the Lessons Learned from the conflict by England helped the others along. These countries all mostly inherit the results of the Magna Carta (1215 or so) and the ensuing developments over the next 500 years until the last time (Queen Anne, 1707) a monarch over-turned an act of the Commons, outright.

These things take time, lots of time. It may not be in our lifetimes but there is still reason to hope that tyranny will come to an end some time in Russia (and the former SSRs). They are not doomed forever to swing from autocrat to autocrat, from corrupt bureaucracy to corrupt bureaucracy. We can hope and pray that it'll be sooner rather than later but we need not despair that it'll likely be never.

Northern Ireland

Today was the biggest day in Ireland's history since I was born. Rob Gifford's analysis made the most sense of past failures and current success that I've heard: Before the agreements were between moderates and the extremists on either side of them were always out-flanking them. Today, the extremists got together. Wonder of wonders, they found that they could understand one another and there was nobody left to out-flank them. May peace come to the 6 counties! Today was a glad day -- may there be many more like it.

According to Michael Geist, as reported on slashdot, something like DMCA may be coming to Canada this spring. Please, anyone who reads this, who lives in Canada, find your MP here (look for "Find your M.P. using your postal code") ou ici (à "Trouvez votre député au moyen de votre code postal") especially if Conservative, and write to them, by post, by e-mail, phone them and ask them to reconsider. We're already paying a piracy tax on blank media, so a law like this is unjust. It may be a little bit odious to pay a surcharge on media in order to maintain fair use, but to have paid the surcharge and then to have fair use hemmed in with severe consequences for attempting to retain it is just plain wrong. Not as wrong as withholding cheap vitamins from 3rd world children but wrong as in collecting fire insurance on a box of cigars you just finished smoking.

Some of my latest favourites

Cosmology: The Many Directions of Time -- I blogged this some time ago and tried to find it again talking to my Dad last night. Of course, when I wanted it, I couldn't find it. And then I see the guy's won a Pritzker Fellowship. Cool! I got excited, and so did some other people who could be expected to know better. Good-bye Dark Matter, good-bye tuning-fork model of classification of galaxies, hello possible explanation for quasars and Seifert Galaxies. This looks like it could be the next revolution in cosmology and physics. But it comes with a caution for anyone who hooks Genesis 1 and the Big Bang theory too closely. As usual, marrying theism too closely to one scientific hypothesis can always bite back later.

Literature: I feel like a kid again. Tomorrow, a brand new book by one of my favourite authors, now passed-on for 30+ years, is coming out. Christopher Tolkien has left publishing all of his Dad's doodles and scribblings and put the Narn î Hin Húrin out in book form. It's coming out tomorrow. I'm so excited. Time to go revisit Neldoreth after Nirnaeth Arnoediad, Nargothrond after Finrod's departure, to see what a real friend Beleg Strongbow was. Children of Hurin, coming out tomorrow. This one I think I'll bother to buy hardback.

Auditory pleasure: I am so enjoying the Drew Marshall Show, even if I wind up listening to most of it delayed over a week -- how can you justify spending four hours on a Saturday (1:00PM-5:00 PM EST/EDT Saturday) glued to your computer with a family and a house to deal with? I don't know. Check out the site, check out his (first and probably only ever) appearance on Huntley Street. If Joe Molson-Six Pack can relate to any Canadian Christian personality out there, it'll be Drew. Interviews of special interest to Canadians with Stephen Lewis, Roméo Dallaire, Bruce Cockburn, Stephen Harper, Valeri Bure (Pavel's brother), Don Cherry, Paul Henderson -- and most of them are archived for on-demand listening later.

To Gord MacDonald, presenter and host on CKNW

Dear Mr. MacDonald,

As a member of the news team for CKNW, I'd like to thank you for all the work you and your colleagues do to keep British Columbians informed about what is going on here. You are, overall, a rich source of information, and in general you discharge your responsibility to do so admirably, as your team's steady stream of awards appropriately confirms.

In regard to the one year anniversary of the sinking of the Queen of the North, there was one aspect of your coverage in the open line session that disturbed me, and if you were to give second thought to the things you were saying, perhaps they would give you pause as well. Before saying more, let me state that I share your frustration, that of all other BCers, even more those of the families of Mr. Foisy and his companion, and of the community of Hartley Bay who face an environmental disaster in the making with the 240,000 L of various oils still at the bottom near Gil Island, at the utter lack of candor on the part of the standing watch at the time of the sinking. It seems unthinkable that with two lives lost and a large cache of underwater diesel the consciences of these folks would not drive them to saying clearly and distinctly what was going on. But that is the state they are in, and if they persist in that state, ultimately they will be reprimanded by their employer and who knows but that they will face charges of negligence causing bodily harm or death eventually.

My concern is the zeal with which you were enjoining the Fourth Officer and the Quartermaster to abandon their rights to due process, implying even a moral obligation to doing so. I would remind you that if you yourself were accused, truly or falsely, of acts that could conceivably result in your imprisonment or significant loss of opportunity to earn income in your trade, that right to due process might be your only safeguard against unjust application of any penalty, or in the case guilt of a lesser offence, of an excessive penalty. These rights to due process are one of the most precious benefits we receive as citizens and we should not encourage others to abandon them, nor make them seem ridiculous or unduly cumbersome. I know individuals who have lived in regimes where these benefits are not bestowed on citizens -- some as citizens who have escaped, some as expatriates who saw co-workers harassed and were themselves expelled unjustly.

Your station's status as the primary source of local news in Vancouver give you a special responsibility, not just to hold the feet of the powerful to the fire when wrong-doing has been done (as seems clearly to be the case in this instance at some level or other), but also to honour and safeguard, in every possible way, these freedoms which keep us from living at the mercy of authorities who are free to assume that we are guilty at their whim and are already under serious threat in the low-level insanity North America has bought into in the aftermath of 9-11 as well as in the face of regular perceived breaches of justice that trouble the public when otherwise guilty persons get let off on technicalities. Those technicalities could very well defend one of us, you or me, from false accusation on some other occasion and we would do well to remember that when we -- and especially you, in this position where thousands of people listen to you and take what you say very seriously in forming their own opinions -- are tempted to deride these protections when they seem to obstruct us from finding out "what really happened" in some contentious situation.

Two Earthquakes -- Ireland and Québec

Yesterday was a huge day. I woke up to pictures of 11th hour meetings with Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley at the same table promising to form a power-sharing executive in six weeks. In this matter I have more praise for Sinn Fein and Gerry Adams than for Paisley, but not very much more. For the unionists, I understand that thirty years of conflict make them gun shy, and I understand that there's less of an official connection between the DUP and the so-called unionist, so-called militias than there was between Sinn Fein and whatever body the "volunteers" became in the last decade, but... It seemed petty to me that in the face of a hard, legislated deadline, the DUP could dig their heels in and threaten further unrest in the face of what some folks in the six counties could only interpret as double-charging on water. Good on Sinn Fein for acting to prevent the collapse. But both these parties are still working off of very different dictionaries. Until they can agree on what the end game will be (and their founding documents contain absolute contradictions there -- to join Ireland or to remain a province of the UK), any agreement will be in constant jeopardy. But I have more hope for Ireland than I did. No matter who holds the reins, all parties have to feel that they are full citizens in their own country, not systematically discriminated against regardless of how they identify themselves.

And then, in my own country, I had no idea what to expect in the results of Québec's provincial election. I turned on the telly just before supper and saw the ADQ in the lead and I've been shaking my head ever since. No sovreignty referendum for the next little while I think. Whew! What Mario Dumont is going to do with his huge rump is anyone's guess: echoes of the Reform Party sweep of the west after Mulroney stepped down as Prime Minister of Canada. It also remains to be seen what "Autonomism" (Dumont's idea of what Québec's relationship with Canada should evolve into) means and how easily it may transform, transmute, revert to "Soverigntism" (the Parti Québécois's position that the province should separate from the rest of Canada). I wonder, too, what this means for electoral results in Québec in the next Federal election which can't be that far away.

Panasonic Fluorescent Bulbs

So... according to Panasonic, Home Hardware carries these bulbs (regardless of what the packaging shouts about "Gen IV" etc, they're known within Panasonic as "EFA" bulbs). But before you go running down to your local branch, phone ahead. My closest store bought stacks of them when they first came out but they didn't sell well. He can order them in but they're not necessarily in stock just yet.

Also... I mentioned to the person I talked to at Panasonic, Canada, that the 23W bulb was a little too dim, that a brighter one would be nice. She said their supplier had chosen not to produce anything brighter. Perhaps there's some technical problem still to be overcome.

And... if you do go in for replacing your bulbs at home with any kind of fluroescent bulbs, you should be aware that they contain mercury and should really be recycled in some other way than through the trash (unless of course you want mercury in your local water table some decades from now). Not that any municipality that I know of has that kind of recycling infrastructure in place yet, but it's something that somebody should be doing something about.

Canadian Federal Liberals the new BC Protest Party?

I laughed long and hard when I heard the story.

For years, federally, British Columbians have tended to vote Progressive Conservative, Reform, Alliance or now, again, Conservative -- in part because the party in power, the Liberal Party of Canada could be trusted to ignore BC, to pour largesse on Québec, Ontario, even Manitoba but never on BC. We neither had a large population whose employability needed to be shored up (Ontario), nor a tendency to question our future within Canada (Québec). We even had an unnecessary recession in the 90s because of fiscal policy that was good for everyone east of the Rockies -- well, in deference to Alberta, everyone east of Lloydminster.

Yesterday, the minority Conservative government tabled their 2nd budget (a small wonder in itself), during which speech the MInister of Finance, the Hon. Joe Flaherty, betrayed his (and his staff's) oblivion to their being anything Beautiful in BC when he proclaimed that the Rockies were the country's westernmost beauty spot. Then he went on to lay out a budget which, while I as the head of a single-income household with three children will benefit from, shortchanges BC on several fronts, especially in federal infrastructure dollars towards better public transportation. Less than a fortnight ago, $1,000,000,000 was announced in spending for Toronto's system. So, perhaps we, as the 3rd largest city don't quite deserve that much but, no further money at all? I was surprised.

But I was not as surprised as I was to hear about a Liberal MP from BC loudly complaining about how the budget had abandoned BC. Hearing that, I laughed and laughed and laughed. The barefaced hypocrisy stunned me. Where were you, Mr. Liberal MP in the Trudeau years, the Chrêtien years, even the Martin years? Were you in the back of caucus meetings being sat on so that your constituents' reasonable requests got ignored? Actually, I think this MP is a relative newcomer to parliament but certainly other members of the Liberal contingent from BC were there before their current stint in the minority. Where were your voices then? Why should we take your calls for redress seriously, as in, "if only we vote for these guys, BC will be better off next time."?

And I laughed but my laughter was hollow. I don't suppose that trying to leave confederation will help BC much, but our population is growing and we have a similar unemployment rate to that of Powerhouse Alberta. Still, I think we would do well never to expect anything from Ottawa, save appeals for votes, even from parties that unseat the current government after years of promising us a better deal, if only we vote them in next time. Proportional representation in the Commons would be a better idea, but I see no political will for that among the haves: Conservative, Liberal, NDP. That might not fix things either but it might enable BC to have a stronger voice, a unified contingent, willing to become part of any and every ruling coalition, so long as the next government takes BC's needs seriously, instead of having them look west, see a scary Alberta and ignore anything from beyond that point. If BCers care less and less about Canada, Canada will have nobody to blame but successive Winnipeg-and-east-thereof governments that have treated BC as no more than that vacant lot beyond the Rockies. I like the idea of Canada and I hope things don't continue to develop along that vein.

Fluorescent Bulbs I Can Live With

It's happened. I never thought it would, but I have found a replacement fluorescent bulb whose light bulb doesnn't feel like a refugee from some under-lighted cavern, far from warmth or "real" light. It's a "Panasonic - Gen IV Light Capsule" -- UPC in Canada is 92281 09308. It uses 23W and puts out what feels like 45 or 50W incandescent worth of light. And it's a nice warm reddish colour. Much preferrable to the harsh fluorescent panels in the ceiling.

Translink Re-org

There have been a spate of things I have wanted to write about these last few weeks but have been unable to grab a moment here or there. So, there's a compile going on and I have a moment to mention this story that greeted me when I picked up the paper this morning. I wish I felt any confidence that this was going to improve transit and transportation in the Lower Mainland. The revised governance and the expanded sphere of responsibility is good. The missing link is still funding. Where is the funding for all these projects going to come from?

One aspect of the announcement is that public-private partnerships will be fostered by revised zoning and encouragement to develop around transit hubs in return for the private sector building certain parts of the transit system. Great. But where does infrastructure improvement that doesn't have a built-in opportunity for development get its funding from?

It's time, it's time, it's time for governments to admit that the steady stream of gasoline tax already being collected belongs not in general revenue where it's currently being sent, but in paying primarily for better transit, secondarily for better roads. Using that money for any other purpose is an illegitimate redirection of those funds that is tilting the playing field up hill for any sensible transit policy and downhill for whatever else it's being used for.

I despair of that conclusion ever being reached by the people who could make that idea a reality.