Vancouver Sun Headline -- Meh

This A.M.: "Battle for B.C. Tory quest for a majority could be determined here"

In a word: claptrap. Two more words: poppycock, horse-hockey.

So long as Québec belongs near-exclusively to the Liberals and the Bloc, B.C. is irrelevant and any rhetoric to the contrary is nonsense.

Any questions?

The Writ! The Writ! (Fourth Canadian election in seven years about to start)

It's a Spring (just don't tell Newfoundland) and that means it's time for an election!

The issues haven't changed much. It's being called "Historic!" because <gasp!> the government fell when the Prime Minister was found in Contempt of Parliament. But let the blood pressure drop: it was on a party line vote that wouldn't have seen the light of day under circumstances we usually call normal. Corruption there may have been, but it still doesn't come anywhere close to HRDC (look for the name "Pierre Pettigrew" in Jane Stewart's wikipedia article) or the Sponsorship Scandal.

One thing is certain: this election will not be decided in BC or Alberta, probably not even in Québec or the Maritimes. Nope, 905 will continue to dominate. We're sure to have another hung parliament with the Conservatives at the front, unless those Conservatives can capture the vote- and riding-rich outer Toronto area. I predict. I do not prefer. Here's my take on our leading politicians (in alphabetic order by surname).

Gilles Duceppe, Bloc Québecois: The senior of the current four leaders, he has run a well-informed and serious caucus. They have been notable to me in that when I have written e-mails to my MP, a cabinet minister, and the shadow ministers from the other three parties, the critics from the Bloc have sent me the most cogent, replies. My message to Québec (chanted): Nous avons besoin des vous; vous avez besoin des nous. So I oppose the ends for which the Bloc stand but with a shadow cabinet like that, I would be tempted to vote for them notwithstanding.

Stephen Harper, Conservative: After all this time, he's still a wonk. You have to admit that he has managed his minority parliaments very skillfully. But his facial expressions still look unnatural. One headline in the Vancouver Sun this week asked if he had maneuvered the opposition into calling this election for him: with popularity rising and not having to pay any price for foisting an election on people who don't want one this time, one could argue he has nothing to lose. For my part, though, he looks too much like Margaret Thatcher to suit me and I fear that Canada's enviable social safety net will only suffer more if he is granted a majority government. Campaign finances are also likely to become more American as a Conservative majority is likely to do away with proportional funding from taxes and may with the same stroke take spending limits off, too.

Michael Ignatieff, Liberal: He may have been born here but he has spent the bulk of his adult life in other countries, especially the USA. The Conservatives have driven this point home in repeated attack ads but it sticks because it's true. He has written to Americans as though he were a fellow American and then, after spending all but fragments of his childhood in Canada he returns and asks us to vote for him as our Prime Minister? If the were the US, his lack of residency would disqualify him from running for president. 'Nuff said.

Jack Layton, NDP: After all these years, he still feels like an over-achieving Toronto City Councilor. The NDP were on the ropes when he took over their leadership and he hasn't helped their fortunes much. In my view, he is too closely allied with big labour (which can be just as oppressive in its own way as big business) for me to view him as a fit guardian of my interests. Also, he hasn't a hope of gaining more then twice as many seats as he currently has -- which would still leave him in charge of a still-all-but-invisible rump.

Elizabeth May, Green: Desperately trying to get even one seat with a popular vote equivalent to the one that gives the Bloc 50 ridings in Québec, she's come out here to BC to try getting into parliament from one area the Greens might actually succeed from. I'm not in love with Green policies, either, but in my Sock-puppet-for-Conservative riding, I have voted for her party as an investment in a more diverse legislative future.

I am a disillusioned voter. I see confrontation and multiple dualisms ("my way good; their way bad") going on and all the while the legislators have forgotten that government should be there to protect the little guy from the big guy, first and foremost: from the large multinational company with enough money power to enrich or impoverish at will, without concern for the results, from the large labour union that has become more concerned with power than protecting the worker, despite their noble beginnings (if you've never belonged to a union as a Canadian worker, as I mostly have not, you owe it to yourself to visit the Crowsnest Pass area between Fernie and Lethbridge to see what it meant for the unions to look out for the workers' interests, for instance), from criminal gangs and other bullies, and even occasionally (but only occasionally) from ourselves.

But if we don't get involved, if we don't at least vote (with or without clothespin attached to our noses) we resign what little chances we have to affect our country as we might want to see. What policies would I like to vote for?

How about these for a start?
* more commitment to education
* more commitment to scientific research into a much wider array of energy alternatives (not just the current fads like wind and solar, how about a Canadian project investigating polywell fusion? or more support for Burnaby's General Fusion?)
* stronger commitment to the Canada Health Act -- and strengthening it into the future
* re-direct the Gas surtax back into Transportation infrastructure (especially mass transit) within the general area where it is collected
* stronger commitment to peacekeeping and independence from American agendas, including going back to a made-in-Canada refugee policy
* aggressive trade development with nations other than the US -- nothing against the US, but our trade surplus becomes a deficit when you remove our sales to the US and that makes us unacceptably vulnerable to every downturn they experience: This is nothing more than a sensible hedging strategy
* national security of supply -- if we are not self-sufficient on our own supplies for dailyl staple commodities, especially food, we may become vulnerable to nonlocal price shocks, and in any event, our resource-use footprint will be higher than necessary. Also, our resources should go first to supplying our own needs and foreign capital should not be permitted to have a controlling interest in any vital supply chain from our resources to our citizens: water, food, energy (all forms), telecommunications and so on

One party is beholden to big labour, others to big business and none will support this kind of hybrid platform. If they did, I could support them gladly. Until they do, I have no clear choice for any election.

Comments on Software Engineering Radio

It's been so long since I posted to this blog that it probably qualifies as a slum but I'm still here. It hasn't been personal tragedy that has kept me from writing here but a large dose of personal busyness. Some of that has settled down to a dull roar -- and I've arrived at a bit of a milestone that bears marking in some way -- and this way seemed the best choice -- so the time has come to dust this blog off and write something, in this case, something a bit more substantive than Yet Another Haiku.

About six months ago, a colleague introduced me to the podcast from Software Engineering Radio, specifically mentioning Scott Meyers' interview regarding C++0x. When I saw that it was Episode 159, I decided to go back and listen to the rest of them: my travel times can be long, auditory input is good in the context of multi-modal commuting and more training in any form is always a good thing.

So now I've listened to the first 50 -- nearly the first 70 by now, actually -- and it's time I should mention my impressions. Here they are:

1. Given that the first episode is over five years old by now, these pod casts have aged quite well. The approach of sticking to just one topic for an hour-or-so or less allows for many things to be covered reasonably and well without becoming ponderous.
2. And where a topic can't be exhaustively covered in that time frame, going back to it again and again also gives the opportunity to cover them well.
3. Further, not necessarily going back to a large topic sequentially, again and again has kept the collection, so far, from being ponderous in that way either.
4. I found the rationale for choosing to podcast in English despite the fact that the original podcasters are all German speakers amusing: especially the part where most Germans wouldn't understand them because of their strong regional accents. On the question of accents, I was occasionally tempted to write a note about pronunciations, of "meat-ah-model" for instance, but five years on, someone else seems to have put in a word or two and it's been metamodel, properly for some time. My condolences go out to any ESL speaker to get English pronunciation right the first time. It's crazy to keep so much of our linguistic history alive in our orthography, but I digress.
5. Occasionally I have been put off (a very little) by blanket statements about how some thing is wonderful in Java, or Ruby, or with Spring or whatever whereas "you just can't do that in ..." C or especially C++. Particularly, when it comes to memory or object management (or indeed management of any kind of resource) stating that "it's just so hard in C++" again and again struck me as naïve about C++. Admittedly, it may be easier to do bad things in C++ (which has been my favourite language for about 10 years) but by the same token, it is often more possible and indeed cleaner to do the right thing in C++ than in Java, for instance. I have just begun using Java and I find the constant use of the acquire-try-doSomething-finally-release idiom really clunky. In C++ I would create an auto-release object around what I wanted to acquire and the destructor (whose invocation time is known precisely) would take care of releasing it at the point I would choose, without further ado. And Java is somehow better at that point? As for memory leaks, my impressions are that when Java programs leak, the leaks can be far harder to find than in otherwise well-written C++.
   
6. This being put off has gone the other way as well: along with denouncing what I find useful, the podcasts have sometimes praised things which when I have met them seem wrong-headed. In the Java work I have begun to do, I have been exposed to Spring's dependency injection. After hearing it praised so highly in the podcasts, I was disappointed to see that it was essentially a way to acquire the use of something implicitly, without the costs of instantiation and management being exposed to me. It's all very well to say "@Component" or "@Autowired" about some piece and have it magically instantiate at the right time and the right place, but it strikes me as the kind of thing that would encourage sloppy practices rather than make good practices easier. But to each his own. With the way that Java mashes up the interface with the implementation in an individual class, I can see the benefit of pushing away these details. I've just seen so many people do all kinds of things without understanding their costs that I am not by default convinced that this is the right approach.
   
7. At times, I have also been struck by the blind faith placed in garbage collectors (which have admittedly gotten a lot better since I saw someone showing off Smalltalk's wonders in the mid-80s) while conventional memory management, especially in C and C++ is maligned: inherently leaky etc. etc. Ten years ago, this would be a relative criticism that stuck but with good class library support (such as that in a modern version of Boost, for instance, with a good modern compiler) the explicit control given to these things through reference-counted pointers, auto pointers, strong and weak references etc. seems to me to be preferable by far to the periodic holiday that, for instance, my Java-based cellphone goes on at the mercy of its need to collect the garbage. Others may disagree, and indeed, I have said enough in the last three items to spark several religious wars. Don't get me wrong: I'm not saying that Java, Ruby or Spring are always "wrong" and C++ is always "right". I suppose I have fallen prey to the temptation to defend C++ to the death when hearing it falsely accused from other quarters. Add a grain of your favourite salt at this point and long live the free exchange of ideas!
   
8. At the time it was posted, one podcast was described as an experiment in a hands-on how-to in using meta models in developing a simple Java component. Even on a bus, far from a keyboard, this sounded interesting and one of these days I'd still like to sit down and test drive what they were talking about while listening to it again.
   
9. In the mean time, there have been many VERY profitable things to hear on the pod casts: discussions about various agile approaches to software development, basic topics (error handling) and more advanced ones (concurrency, ultra large scale systems), daily-use ideas (refactoring) and arcana (internals of GCC, C++0x and Corba -- all with people who actually knew what they were talking about!) as well as interviews with folks (whether as well known as Grady Booch, or not) whose ideas and/or tools we have been depending on for years: it's an impressive collection and has been profitable. I expect the rest of it will be as well.

I am very likely to continue listening to the podcasts because even where I disagree with the presenters, it's exposed me to ideas that I have not gotten from other directions. Some 18th or 19th century poetic piece said that "even fools have their story" and neither the SE-Radio team nor their guests are fools. I commend their work-product as an effective tool to continue enriching any professional software developer's toolbag, to continue exposing oneself to new ideas and not least to help realize that there are more ways of solving every day problems than the one vendor, system or language that one uses all the time.

Thanks, guys, ever so much, even as I finish with one more tiny critique: the ID tags of the MP3 files are occasionally very inconsistent, claiming, for instance to be by team@se-radio.bet or @se-radion.net but perhaps that, too, is something that has been taken care of in a more reliable way since the episodes I am currently listening to were put out four years or more ago.

Haiku #28

It's somewhat better
To be useful than happy
But only somewhat.

To Friends Who may be Using Gizmodo, LifeHacker and other services...

This story came through on slashdot on the weekend, stating that Gawker  had been compromised.  Gizmodo and LifeHacker are among the compromised password sets (as are Kotaku and io9):

'Our user databases do indeed appear to have been compromised. The passwords were encrypted. But simple ones may be vulnerable to a brute-force attack. You should change the password on Gawker (GED/commenting system) and on any other sites on which you've used the same passwords. Out of an abundance of caution, you should also change your company email password and any passwords that may have appeared in your email messages. We're deeply embarrassed by this breach. We should not be in the position of relying on the goodwill of the hackers who identified the weakness in our systems.'

If you don't understand this story, perhaps it doesn't apply to you. So don't worry about it. I know of at least one reader who does use these services.

Trying Chrome

I have been trying Chrome out for a few months now but ultimately, I'm walking away because it lacks a simple feature that I find needful while others (the seriously visually impaired) find it absolutely crucial. I can't over-ride page fonts with user fonts in Chrome.

Somebody please let me know what setting I've missed if it's already there. Somebody please let me know, too, if a new version of Chrome includes this feature.

Despite the potential for search-traffic analysis and Chrome sending my address-bar contents to Google after every character, there were lots of things to like about Chrome and I could be tempted to come back. It seems all browsers are doing that now anyways, with no option of turning it off. My objections are purist, possibly to the point of Luddism: it's a text-entry field, for pity's sakes! Kindly wait until I hit return before sending it anywhere.

If you use Linux

With the purchase of Novell by the Microsoft-backed Attachmate, it is imperative that users of -- especially large users of, as well as users of large numbers of systems running -- Linux consider the final dispostion of 882 patents formerly held by Novell, and considered by some to be covering elements of Linux.

I point to this article from groklaw, and encourage you to consider the deadline imposed by the finality of the sale. Members of the Open Invention Network will be held to have a license for those patents by Novell at least until January 23 and in perpetuity after that for those who were members at that date.

So far as I can see, joining is as simple as subscribing to their newsletter, which you can do through their "Contact Us" web form. If this is not enough, then as soon as I find that out, I will post a follow-up to these instructions at that time.

Headline puzzles -- moment of redemption and Puzzle #N0

I am content. I've gotten my headline-puzzle-maker script working. Here are the results:

ISZ QLDP DJNPLKIPKO OJ RMK UPZO BJMZO OMKHPL OLMEEYB
XYPJL GOLIWBGGQW SGJQILPY PZIXGIQ IKJNPT
QBYBQGIVBU MGAUNR'I NCXIIAX DENR GNHQAX IVBE VN RTECAE HGBEJA
IRXHGKHG SIR YLGRL BHWGB KH OWVEHGVWG MHS AHK RLKI
PJDQKGZ-AGJJUXN ZPMWPH EP ONEROM EP QUOINE UE HGXMGVGZUME KOGZN ZREH

For the record, I am from Greater Vancouver, BC and these headlines are from a recent issue of our venerable (some would say stodgy) paper, the Vancouver Sun (quite a different paper from the Calgary, Edmonton et al. varieties, let me tell you! Not even our other rag, "The Province" descends to such depths).

I will post an answer in two weeks or so. If you need help brute-forcing the headlines, try the applet at this location (thanks to The Phoenix Society for their link). If you need an introduction to solving headline puzzles, try this document (also from the Phoenix Society). Happy solving! Feel free to create your own headline puzzles and send them to me -- you can use my tool if you want.

Haiku #27

Cultural distances:

Today's slashdot poll

Means quite different things

Based on your locale.

Haiku #26

Excessive adverbs

Detract from the gravity

Of important words.

Headline puzzles -- moments of shame

Some years ago, I tried to put up some headline puzzles. They seemed a cool idea but I wasn't equal to the task of generating them by hand. It took way too long and I always suspected the result of being wrong.

This fall, under the guidance of the guide given at the Phoenix Society, I wrote a python program that produces headline puzzles and I looked back at the puzzles I had generated. They were so, so wrong. There are parts that are clearly correct but they were not right. So... I'm going to get one of my guys to use my script to generate a puzzle for me to solve and once I've solved it, perhaps I'll start posting puzzles here once again.

Given that it'll be a program generating them, it should be easier to get them out regularly, and it'll be a simple matter to get them correct. Thank you, Phoenicians. I appreciate the straight-ahead directions you posted on your website.

Riddle for a Friday Afternoon

Q: How many iPhone users does it take to change a light bulb?

A: Nobody knows. There isn't an app for that yet.

Český Sen -- what a hoot!

I watched Český Sen with the family this evening. And laughed. And cried. And had sober thoughts. Imagine a jingle that ends with a choir's mellow crooning:

It will be a big bash
If you don't have the cash,
get a loan and scream,
'I want to fulfill my dream!'

It's funny, sad and sobering all at once. And I can heartily recommend it. I hope the people who got camera time have recuperated from the experience.

Haiku #25

So much to learn but
so little time to learn it:
that's what frustrates me.

Haiku #24

The story behind this one is too long for this space. Written for all those thus vaccinated: may the vaccination expire soon!

Nothing vaccinates
Any heart against truth like
its caricature.

Open Letter to Carole James and the BC NDP

Dear Ms. James,

Three-letters have become a tub to thump in BC right now: HST. As many other BCers do, I oppose it, too, not necessarily because I think it's bad policy, rather because this government had no mandate to bring it in -- in fact, if anything they had an anti-mandate. And I am appalled to see Mr. Vander Zalm acting as though the referendum against it is his baby or something. He, if anything, is even more corrupt than this government, or indeed any other of the last eight former premiers of BC. If we are to have a once-and-future premier, is this is choice to give anyone hope?  Pfui.

But there is another three-letter acronym that is even more important and will make your next mandate overwhelming if you adopt it: If you will promise to bring in the STV election reform in your first term in the legislature no seat in the province will be safe for the Liberals.

The number 1 thing I want for my province is neither your party's policies, nor specifically those of the current government. The number 1 thing I want for my province is transparency and elections that are not run on the basis of collectivized fear-mongering. ("I can't vote for what I really want because it'll let those Other Guys get power and that would be the Most Awful Thing" -- I've heard these words during every provincial election of my adult life. Pfui, again!)

In the next provincial election that collectivized fear-mongering will undoubtedly grant your party an overwhelming mandate -- who knows but that enough Liberals can be recalled on the current rage to give you a mandate in midstream. But such a mandate will only be temporary no matter what you do because the winds of fear will swing. The best legacy your next government can give the people of BC will be elections that may never yield another majority but that will teach our politicians to play nice and force them to do it in the open more than has ever been done: STV.

I don't want police raids of the legislature any more than I want Bingogate. ICBC and HST may both be equally good as long-term public policy -- if sometimes onerous in practice. But I'd like these choices to be made after public consultation and not as the result of back-room deal making and ignoring the chorus of dissenting voices because a 60% seat mandate trumps a 40% popular vote.

I have never voted NDP and I am not planning to as of yet. But if you promise this one thing, I promise to do something I have never done before: vote NDP. And I am sure that many, many others would strongly consider it. My MLA has about as safe a Liberal seat as any in the province but I am sure that not even the Kelowna ridings will be safe for Liberals if you will make this one pledge, that the 2017 campaign will be an STV election.

Sincerely,

Arthur N. Klassen
address, etc....

HST in BC: Jon Kesselman asserts, I rebut

In the Vancouver Sun for today, Jon Kesselman wrote in support of the HST. I posted this to the digital edition of the paper but it doesn't seem to be sticking there, so I'm cross-posting it here:

Opponents of the HST are accused of being hysterical, ignorant and blindly acting in opposition to their own interests but such name-calling is not helping this debate in the least.

Decrying lack of transparency is not hysteria. Objecting to politicians turning 180 degrees from a not-very-well-publicized answer during a campaign is not hysteria. Alarm because governments are listening to some elite economists instead of the voters who sent them to Victoria is not hysteria.

Notwithstanding that Mr. Kesselman's remarks may be the last word in wisdom on the HST, the failure of the government to walk through this reasonably and transparently is serious enough that I will sign the petition and vote against the HST -- and in doing so, I will object in the strongest possible terms to anyone who calls it hysteria.

Fears that HST will drive more of the economy underground are well-founded. Whenever I deal with an independent contractor whose services are taxable under the GST, I still regularly get quoted a cash price -- clear evidence that collecting, tracking, paying and being rebated the GST is unacceptably burdensome to the lower end of the economy. The HST will only make this worse. If opposing HST can be construed as hysterical, cheerleading for it can just as easily be construed as naive and out of touch with ordinary folks. I don't see Mr. Kesselman dealing with that risk, at all.

As for the savings of business that will be passed along to the consumer once they begin to flow, did any of these savings result after the GST came in? I don't remember the price falling and I expect the businessmen to pocket the difference again when the HST arrives. That's what happens to savings passed along to all businesses at the same time. That may be cynical, but it's not hysteria.

PST, whatever its ills to B2B commerce in BC are, has the compassionate, enlightened, valuable exemptions on groceries, books, school supplies and childrens' clothes. GST has no such exemption -- one of the reasons I still oppose it -- and HST will not either. Maybe this exemption no longer has value to BC's families but if that's the case, they should come under public scrutiny and widespread debate before we turn and walk away from them. If opposing HST is hysterical, supporting it strongly can be construed as heartless, uncaring and ignorant of the needs of the least well-off families of the province.

Of course these families will receive HST rebates (which will, hopefully be at least twice what the GST rebates are now) but that requires the knowledge that the rebate should be applied for and the freedom to save up that rebate to apply to the no-longer-tax-exempt necessaries that need to be bought every week of the year. Anyone who knows such families understands how unreasonable it is to believe that this "no addded burden" for greater benefit. Unawareness of this segment of society isn't just heartless and uncompassionate, it's willfully so, and therefore an even more culpable condition.

Maybe HST is better for the province. The way the Liberals are bringing it in and imposing it on us is even more heavy-handed and anti-democratic than the introduction of the GST was under the over-sized majority enjoyed by the Mulroney government. If the government of British Columbia thinks this is such a good idea, the time to convince BCers of this is before negotiations with Ottawa began, not as the regimen is about to be imposed on us in a manner that is impossible to escape from for a period of five years.

This is not the mandate they earned in the last election -- in fact, given one (to my knowledge) campaign-trail answer before the last election, the mandate runs the other way. Scrap the HST and make sure we want you to bring it in or as surely as Bill Vander Zalm and the NDP are the most unlikely of political allies, I will sign this petition and vote to defeat the current HST when the question is put to me.

More articles by Gwynne Dyer

A bunch of new articles have been posted by Gwynne Dyer. Everything here, from "The 2010 Question" onward is new. I just finished reading it. I couldn't agree with the final sentence more, and I desperately hope that sanity will prevail to prevent the same outcome as the earlier ignorance in the face of similar questions.

What I Want from My MP

To the Hon. Mark Warawa, Canadian Member of Parliament for Canada:
cc the Rt. Hon. Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada:

Mark,

I'd like to bring this article from the BBC's website to your attention:

It includes a 42 minute excerpt from the British House of Commons which I found very interesting, not so much for the content of the debate (which is interesting) but for the number of stern questions Labour backbenchers posed to a minister of their own government. The outline of the clip is as follows with comments from Labour MPs in bold:

Statement: David Miliband (Lab.), Foreign Secretary
Rebuttal: William Hague (Cons.), Shadow Foreign Secretary
Counter: 14:15 David Miliband (Lab.), Foreign Secretary
19:00 Ed Davey (Lib. Dem.), Foreign Affairs Critc
21:14 David Miliband (Lab.), Foreign Secretary
23:30 Diane Abbott (Lab.) Hackney North
24:30 David Miliband (Lab.), Foreign Secretary
25:38 David Davis (Cons.)
26:45 David Miliband (Lab.), Foreign Secretary
28:45 David Winnick (Lab.)
29:33 David Miliband (Lab.), Foreign Secretary
30:45 Julian Lewis (Cons.)
31:22 David Miliband (Lab.), Foreign Secretary
32:17 Keith Vaz (Lab.)
32:46 David Miliband (Lab.), Foreign Secretary
33:12 Douglas Hogg (Cons.)
34:07 David Miliband (Lab.), Foreign Secretary
35:10 Dari Taylor (Lab.)
36:01 David Miliband (Lab.), Foreign Secretary
36:20 Andrew Tyrie (Cons.)
37:12 David Miliband (Lab.), Foreign Secretary
38:21 Jeremy Corbyn (Lab.)
39:02 David Miliband (Lab.), Foreign Secretary
39:44 Henry Bellingham (Cons.)
40:03 David Miliband (Lab.), Foreign Secretary
40:52 Paul Flynn (Lab.)
41:14 David Miliband (Lab.), Foreign Secretary
41:53 Martin Linton (Lab.)
42:16 David Miliband (Lab.), Foreign Secretary

Especially scathing were the comments from David Winnick (at 28:45) and Diane Abbott (23:30), no less those of the MP representing the riding where Binyam Mohammed's family resides, Mr. Martin Linton (41:53).

I don't recall the last time a non-cabinet member of a Canadian ruling party did that sort of thing and I think it's a sorry lack. Several times now I've sent you comments about the ACTA legislation that keeps bubbling up in the House -- and I'm sure I'm not the only Canadian to complain to his or her Conservative MP about that measure. When will you MPs stand up for the concerns of your constituents against your own Primer Minister and Cabinet? We elect you. You! for crying out loud. So please start thinking of things from your constituents' point of view and show some spine.

Again, on my "pet issue", I ask you: Do YOU want your children or their friends to be criminalized by not necessarily well-founded accusations leveled at them, not to a due-process-bound law enforcement agency, but to their ISP? accusations not made by individual Canadians, or even Canadian firms guarding the interests of Canadian aritists, but by large American conglomerates? The American DMCA and laws of its ilk (like ACTA, as the leaks have helped to inform us) are headed in that direction. Will you be complicit in stripping away our freedoms like this? Don't be. Again, show some spine!

And Mr. Harper, if there's one thing you can do for the welfare of all Canadians that will put paid to the ongoing whispers that you're scary and people can't trust you, it would be to shrink the offices of Prime Ministerial power back down toward the size they were before Pierre Trudeau's tenure in office and to put the power back in the hands of the MPs, the committees and ultimately the people. I recognize and appreciate the intentions you have of reforming the Senate: make it more accountable. But even before you do that, work to reverse the structures that turn a newly elected MP's loyalty away from his or her constituency where it ought to be, and toward caucus and to cabinet where (valid!) concerns about his or her career drive them to place it. That would be a worthy goal, and one that all Canadians would grow to appreciate.

Sincerely,

Arthur N. Klassen

Haiku 23 -- Sober Second Thoughts Always Timely

In response to this story from the BBC:

Vegetative states
may mean other than was thought
of Terri Schiavo,

Driving while yakking bans make how much difference?

Today I feel a little vindicated. Now let me be a little freer tomorrow, please -- but I know better than to hold my breath. According to this article, cellphone bans reduce the use of cellphones while driving but they make no difference to the accident rate. Well-intentioned law, disappointing results.

I was discussing this with a co-worker in a hallway this week and s/he implied that the wholesale ban on cellphone use is an unavoidable expansion of a wish to ban reading and writing text (SMS or e-mail) while driving. While these things weren't on your phone, a ban was unlikely. Now that they are (not to mention music, games, streaming and stored video, etc.), they can't just ban some hand-held activities, they've gotta ban them all.

Is the law really as coarse-grained as all that? I've often said that laws will always get something wrong because they're unavoidably using a large brush: you can't paint the Sistine Chapel with a tool made for a "lick of paint". But a grain this coarse? I wouldn't have believed it. If anyone knows about this, I'd appreciate hearing from a horse's mouth.

This co-worker went so far as to say that police (in BC) will not be ticketing people who are talking on phones, only those they see holding them and staring into them. I don't plan to tempt that differentiation (and I suggest nobody else do so, either) but I am intrigued. And I still say the law is unjust so long as there isn't some kind of exemption for people travelling at less than some threshold (I'd suggest 40km/h, but I could live with a lower figure) in a traffic line-up.

Google facing censorship in China

When I read this blog entry from google about a change to their policy in China referred from the Register. I wondered aloud about how this would play out: how big is Google in China. Here's a Chinese guy's opinion: not too much.

Some programming links and Haiku 22

This morning on Hacker News, an item called Three blog posts I'd love to read (and one that I wouldn't) caught my eye. Of course, the article was more interesting than the posts about it. The three wanted blog posts were

1. What I learned from Language X that makes me a better programmer when I use Language Y
2. Something surprising that you probably wouldn't guess about Language X from reading blog posts
3. My personal transformation about Idea X

The unwanted post was "Here's why such and such [is truly lame]."

But it wasn't the article that got my attention so much as the follow-on conversation. Don't get me wrong. The article mentioned a couple of books that I think I'm going to want to take a look at some time (The Little MLer and The Seasoned Schemer) but the follow-ons to point one were interesting:

What I Learned from Haskell that improved my C++ was of special interest. Recently, I watched a couple of videos about Haskell from Channel9 (you don't have to install Silverlight to watch them) by Erik Meijer and some of the functional aspects of Haskell and Erlang seem really interesting, especially immutability and how that enables parallel evaluation.

I've also used Python here and there -- even using it to teach programming to my sons, so "How learning Python made me a better C++ programmer" was also really interesting. His contribution was a change in orientation towards using templates and boost. There was a commenter who echoed the prejudice I've seen (and complied with, to the point of echoing) at my current job against using Boost, too. The very next comment was a good balance point. Some of these prejudices made sense once upon a time, but it seems to me that the compilers have gotten a lot better than they used to be.

Jamie Bullock's follow-on to this second article (although the link mentioned on ginstrom didn't work well) was also interesting: "What I learned from Python that makes me a better programmer when I use C". Both of his comments, on readability and on better algorithms, are things that are also worth remembering.

But a Blog post should be about more than pointing at other people's words. So let me finish off with yet another Haiku:

Others can teach you
More about your field than might
At first glimpse seem clear

Thanks for Speaking Up

(cc to my own MP: the Hon. Mark Warawa, MP for Langley
and to the responding cabinet minister: the Hon. Tony Clement)

Hello Mr. Angus,

I was reading one of my usual sources of news, this morning and I came across this piece which included a link to an exchange between yourself and the Hon. Tony Clement. I wish my own MP had the fortitude to stand up to his own party on this issue. Failing that, I wish some other candidate who had the courage to speak up thus had a ghost of a hope of unseating him. You may not be my MP but on the subject of Copyright Law and the insidious ACTA-inspired legislation that keeps trying to get through the Canadian parliament (in the face of a mix of strong opposition and apathy) you are representing me and my interests, along with the interests of younger Canadians everywhere, just fine. Keep up the good work.

The derisive and dismissive way in which Mr. Clement referred to Michael Geist's columns in response, not dealing substantively with any of the issues Mr. Geist raises, reflects badly on the competence of the minister and on the openness of whatever process he claims to have pursued with Canadians.

I have little hope, ultimately, that this bill will be prevented from passing. On issue after issue, at level after level (provincially, federally and even municipally) I feel less and less that our forms of government are "by the people", that they are devolving into more and more autocracy, are more and more controlled by not-even-Canadian moneyed interests. I am pretty sure that the big legislative battles on this issue have to be fought and won elsewhere, ultimately, but how I wish it were otherwise. I can see my liberties slipping away one after another and I am sad that my children and grandchildren will be less free than my parents were and they won't even know what they're missing.

Keep up the good fight and inspire some of your colleagues, regardless of party affiliation to do the same.

Sincerely,


Arthur N. Klassen

Pulling over to place a call

Well... we have the latest Nanny-State law in place and I'll obey it. No more cellphone talking while driving. What a stupidly intrusive law.

I know. I know. I'm flying in the face of "best informed opinion". I agree with parts of BC's law, anyways: texting (even reading texts!) while driving actually is mad. And I'll agree that there are drivers who shouldn't drive while talking. Most of them shouldn't drive while breathing either, not to mention that I've seen them drive while applying makeup, while reading the newspaper, while drinking coffee and eating a hamburger -- and sometimes all at once, too! Apparently other things have been seen in the driver's seat, still more absorbing than that.

If you think I'm being a pig-headed fool, let me show you where the oinker-faces really are: when I'm stuck in a rush hour lineup, to tell me that I shouldn't talk on my cellphone even then, that's pig-headed. That's tyrannical. This law shouldn't even have been considered before the invention of Star Trek transporter technology or at least before the absolute banishment of rush hour lineups -- or at the very least, there should be a rider added that says if you're in a stop-and-go traffic area that doesn't exceed 40km/h or whatever... get my drift? I know I haven't a hope in asking for the outright repeal of this invasion of my freedoms, I'm only asking to be trusted to act responsibly in managing my otherwise less than manageable schedule in the use of a cellphone during unavoidable delays.

But today I feel a bit like I'm going to get a bit of my own back. I've hit on a small piece of civil disobedience to go along with my unwilling compliance to this restriction on my freedoms. If I need to stop to use my phone and there's a fire hydrant by the road, that's where I'll do it. I won't park in front of a fire hydrant -- no, that would represent a safety risk in case of a fire in the area, not to mention that it'll draw a ticket -- and my suggesting that you should do any such thing would be counseling to commit offenses, also something I don't want to do. I'll only stop there. If I'm not parking, only stopping for a brief chat on the phone, I don't see how that should be citable. Still, I'll keep my ear open for approaching fire trucks (and ticket writers) while I'm doing it.

So, if you have a stupid law like this in your jurisdiction, why not consider doing the same thing.

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.