Blessed by the Potato

Jenn recently linked to an interesting article about post-doc pay, and how the low pay (and other issues, like the constant moving and uncertainty and short-term contracts and lack of benefits) right at the point where women’s fertility starts to drop is one factor keeping them out of science. Go and read that article, but I think this goes well beyond just women in science, post-docs and starting families.

I keep thinking of ways to dramatically reshape the way we do science. They may not be practical, but I like thinking outside the box from time to time.

One set of related ideas I keep coming back to are the issues of compensation and focus. Grad students and post-docs are paid terribly. How terrible? Well, in my department grad students made about $14k-16k as a base stipend (and that level has not changed in almost two decades, inflation be damned), top students with national scholarships could take home about $33k. Yes, per year, with restrictions on seeking outside work. This is in part because they are said to be trainees who are learning how to be proper scientists. Except if they make it through the funnel and up the pyramid, or whatever visual metaphor you may choose, they teach and write grants and supervise — skills they are largely not being taught.

So the idea I toss around is that of a permanent post-doc, or professional bench scientist: a position for someone who will spend their life doing hands-on research, and who gets paid a professional salary for it.

Along with that would be wage/stipend increases for grad students: there is a lot of catching up to do just to get back to the inflation-adjusted level of poverty they were at a decade ago, let alone getting to the point where it is recognized that they are the driving force behind science, and that a senior PhD student is a professional with years of training and specialized expertise making less than minimum wage. One related option might be to shorten PhD programs — it runs the risk of devaluing the degree, but did the 4th and 5th years of my own slog through grad school add much to my development as a scientist that the 2nd and 3rd years did not already? How has the average time to graduation changed over the past couple of decades?

It’s a tough issue, and would represent massive disruptive changes, with no real advocate to push for it. I’m really not even sure myself if these wild speculations I sometimes have are worth any further consideration at all. I mean, even if that is a place we wanted to move to, how would we possibly get there?

In a sense, science is powered by slave labour. If we restricted entry into grad school so that a higher percentage of PhDs could stay in academia (and let the industries that end up hiring PhDs instead hire MSc grads or some newly-created in-between research-intensive 3-4 year expert degree); or reduced the graduation hurdle so that they only did 2 experiments instead of 3, and graduated before 31 years of age — or really any change along those lines — we would limit the amount of science that could get done on current budgets. Unless we truly were able to hire more efficient and productive talent (or focus and dedicate the talent we have) with the increased compensation, the fact is that less research would get done for today’s research budget. This seems an insurmountable problem.

Then I thought, what if instead of thinking of slavery as a harsh verbal rhetoric, I looked at it as an actual model? After all, that problem has been solved. Slavery doesn’t exist in the modern civilized world, but did at some point in our past. Many countries weaned themselves off, with the US having a particularly dramatic and definite end to the practice after the Civil War. How did the transition work out then? What lessons can we learn for transitioning the economic model of science? Unfortunately I’m not enough of a historian to say, so I will have to end here as some food for thought.

Cyprus has been in the news a lot lately for the seizing (”taxing”) of some assets. Some have questioned whether the same could happen here. The sad truth is that there is always the possibility of the government deciding to seize your assets; whether they’re insured or not, in a bank account, mutual fund, or real; through legislation, crooked courts, or by military force.

But it is not an event that happens often or lightly. In general, governments do not suddenly seize assets — that’s not what good governance is about. Of course, if the hole is big enough and the options limited (as in Cyprus) they may not have a choice, which gets into a moral lesson about not choosing “bread and circus” leaders.

There’s a slightly higher chance of loss with more “virtual” assets and those that can be divided for tax (e.g., the income trust Halloween massacre). But the government could decide to appropriate your house, eliminate your principal residence capital gains exemption, or tax your assets instead of just your income.

This knowledge may not help you sleep well tonight. Do remember that it is quite unlikely. Ideally, your government would be open and logical, so you could anticipate such moves (or rather, sleep soundly anticipating the lack of such moves). Of course, for the Harper government that was my big beef with the income trust fiasco — not that they decided to tax them, but that they broke an explicit promise not to do so, with no justification given. How were we to know what the next materially important decision would be? Ditto with strategically important takeovers — there was next to no way to anticipate what might or might not be allowed. In the depth of the US financial meltdown some (e.g. John Hempton) complained that the FDIC just stepped in and closed certain banks over the weekend, arbitrarily deciding to make bondholders whole while wiping out equity and preferred holders — though in a more controlled liquidation and wind-up, it’s likely that either the bondholders would take a haircut, or the preferred shareholders would be left with some value. The process is often just as important as the outcomes…

When I first talked about Freddie Mac, political risk was one of the things I highlighted that might undermine what otherwise looked like an attractive long-shot bet. The US government has been requiring that Freddie Mac (and its sibling GSE, Fannie Mae) borrow more money than they need, and pay a punitive 10% interest rate on that — a worse deal than the TBTF banks who arguably had more to do with the cause of the global financial crisis. Part of what lead to the excess borrowing was the fact that Freddie’s been over-reserving for years now. It looks as though they’re getting to the point where even the most conservative accountants realize that those excess reserves will start unwinding, which will enable Freddie to start paying back the government — and after that, the preferred shareholders.

So it looks like the main investing thesis was playing out.

Unfortunately that political risk reared it’s head this week as the government announced it would change the deal to instead confiscate all future profits. I have no idea why the government decided to nationalize the GSEs but not AIG or the TBTF banks, or why they decided to change the deal at this late stage, just as the profitability was re-emerging. I suppose I’ll just have to pray they don’t decide to alter the deal any further.

I’m not quite sure what that means in terms of the preferreds being paid back, but my first take on it is that they’ll be worthless. The market seems to be equally panicked, as most issues were down about 60% on Friday.

The Ottawa Citizen had a great couple of articles on a joint NASA/NRC/CSA project to study snow storms and weather radar. While the first article about the project is not bad, what made it notable was the follow-up freedom of information release showing the ridiculous layers of bureaucracy and message massaging that had to happen before a non-answer was released. An op-ed the next day lamented the extreme information secrecy of the government.

I think scientific communication is important — indeed, it’s something I’m hoping to make a career out of here. So it’s kind of sad to see such an epic failure of communication in this case. What makes it especially sad is the number of people involved: I counted at least 4 different people in the FoI series of emails who were dedicating time and effort to not communicate, and there were more who appeared in just one or two short snippets. I bet you could not communicate with just one person in the department, or even an unhelpful sign on the door and a voicemail message. These guys, in theory, are supposed to help translate the science for the lay people and do the communications so the scientists can do science, though with the present government the entire goal may simply to act as a firewall between the scientists and everyone else. But wouldn’t everyone have been better off if one of the scientists just did the talking for himself?

So I see this kind of thing and can’t help but think “what are they getting paid for?” Couldn’t that money be better used for the main mission: science?

I recently was pointed to Canadian Doomer’s site, where I saw this comment:

“Ontario Hydro is paying $0.80/kwh to those who sell them electricity on the MicroFIT program. But consumers are paying $0.05 to $0.10/kwh. This makes absolutely no sense, unless Ontario Hydro knows that they will soon be charging consumers MORE than $0.80/kwh. Look at your hydro bill and imagine it multiplied by 8.”

Well, no, it’s the price they have to pay to get solar off the ground. Very few people wanted to pay ~8x the price of grid power to buy their own solar panels, so the companies weren’t making panels, so the panels were expensive, etc… By offering enough money that PV would be profitable, it bootstrapped the industry, and broke the vicious cycle. The industry has already brought the price down by huge amounts (panels now cost half or a third of the price in just 3 years), and the government is going to cut microFIT any day now (they’ve already started dragging their feet with applications).

That lead CD to ask the follow-up question:

“Why does Ontario Hydro care so much about getting solar off the ground when they’re not making money on it?”

The short answer is that it’s because it’s the right thing to do.

The longer answer is to first up realize that Ontario Hydro is not an independent company: this isn’t Capital Power or Emera or Fortis offering money to install panels, it’s the government. And sometimes the government subsidizes things for social rather than strictly economic reasons.

Consider other breaks offered recently for green technologies:

The federal government was offering up to $2000 to buy a hybrid car, until just a year or two later, they changed their minds and took that incentive away. Many provincial governments (including Ontario) also offered rebates of several thousand dollars ($2k in Ontario) for hybrid cars (and similarly, no PST on bicycles). Those rebates by our government as well as others around the world — notably the US, which had various tax credits as well as other incentives to buy hybrids like free parking and HOV lane passes — were very helpful in getting this fuel-efficient technology off the ground. Hybrids are now reasonably mainstream, something like 4% of the overall passenger car market, and still growing quickly. However back 10 years ago, a hybrid was a very difficult sell: they were more expensive than a traditional car, there was a lot of uncertainty over how reliable they would end up being (a sentiment that still persists, even with over a decade of experience), how much they would cost to maintain… and all that was on the back of gas prices that were still measured in cents per litre. So those subsidies helped level the playing field until the cost of the cars and the price of gas brought us to where we are today, where $1.20/L looks cheap, and it seems stupid to buy anything other than a Prius. And while I tend to focus on how awesomely quiet my car is and the gas savings, the fact is that the gas savings is in part a side-effect of the hybrid’s original goal, which was to reduce pollution — an important social goal in an urban country.

So back to the solar subsidy: by guaranteeing a certain return on the panels, people became interested in purchasing them. The government could stand up and say that, for at least the next few years, there would be a certain level of demand for panels, which allowed panel manufacturers to go to their investors and raise money to build factories and invest in R&D to make more efficient and cheaper panel technologies, and basically got the whole ball rolling. Ontario and Germany really lead that area*, and factories really started churning out panels to meet the new demand, and to build capacity in the hopes that a certain superpower with a lot of desert would also decide to start subsidizing solar energy in the future (let’s call it “Nerizonda”). In just a few years we’ve gone from a world where you had to be an eco-nerd and know someone at NASA just to get a panel, to one where salesmen call up on a weekly basis to let you know how much the panels are on sale this week. Indeed, the build-up has been so rapid that now we’re facing a glut (exacerbated by Germany and other nations scaling back their subsidies for new projects now that they can declare victory), and panels can in some cases be had for below cost.

Now, the solar subsidy could have come in many forms: the government could have directly purchased the panels themselves, and installed them in parks or on government buildings, or even installed government-owned panels on private homes. They could have subsidized the purchase price directly. Instead, they chose this strange scheme that involved all the overhead of metering the panels, and making regular payments (or deducting from the power bill) for 20 years running. And that decision comes down to politics: the budget looks cleaner with a long-standing trickle of money for a program than it does with a big buy over just a few years, even if the total cost is the same. Furthermore, to give Dalton a little bit of credit for being political operators, there was going to be a big delay between starting the MicroFIT program and when the bulk of the payments would start rolling out the door, and in-between was another election. So for the 2011 election, hardly any microFIT payments would have shown up on the budget, and by the ~2016 elections, the program will have ended; off the radar either way.

It’s also important to note that there were several levels to the FIT program: for large commercial solar farms, the rate was less than half what an individual could get under the MicroFIT program. So from a “this is how much OPG expects power to cost in the future” point of view, that might be the upper-end figure to use. Why pay more for smaller systems? Several good reasons:

• In part as an experiment. People have been talking about distributed generation for years, and the government wanted some data on what that would actually look like. Which meant that you had to find some way to get people to put some kind of generator in their homes, and test out how well the load-balancing and monitoring systems worked. So getting solar out there in particular was a bit of a bonus on that front.
• In part to raise awareness. You can give money to a big corporation like Samsung to build a giant solar farm in the middle of nowhere, and accomplish your goal of bootstrapping the industry. But if you can get it on people’s homes they’ll see it every day, they’ll talk about it with their neighbours, and it’s also nice to pay your own citizens rather than a faceless corporation. From a political point of view, that also helps make it an issue you can focus on in an election if you want to.
• In part for long-term efficiency synergies. A giant centralized solar farm is a great way to quickly get solar power on the grid if that’s your only goal. But one of the beautiful things about solar is that its nicely correlated with peak air conditioner demand: just as the sun is beating on your house is also when your panels are at their maximum output. That benefit could potentially go away if Toronto is getting sun while the solar farm on Lake Huron is experiencing clouds. Though you need more inverters and monitors, you don’t need any transmission capacity to be built or maintained, since the generation is right at the site of demand. And on top of all that, you get the synergies that come with rooftop solar: the panel itself helps to shade a house and keeps it cooler than a typical asphalt shingle, further reducing peak power demand.
• In part for short-term inefficiencies. The fastest, most efficient way to get X number of panels installed and tied into the power grid is to go with a giant centralized solar farm: make braces and connect panels in assembly-line fashion in a consistent, controlled environment. You can even bulldoze any hills if you can’t find a naturally flat spot. But when you’re introducing a program in the middle of a recession, maybe you don’t necessarily want to be as efficient as possible, maybe you also want a little bit of economic stimulus for good measure: help create jobs for guys to crawl around roofs and take measurements and figure out where the bolts should go.

As for that central question of why? Well, because it’s a green, emission-free, renewable energy source. It has some side-benefits (correlated with air conditioner demand, cooling synergies), but also some negatives (inconsistent, extremely difficult to plan power loads with, expensive even after the cost reductions from recent investments). It has a good image, and getting to some single-digit percent of our power mix being wind and solar is something we can do a little chest-thumping over (never underestimate the importance of chest-thumping, it’s a trillion-dollar industry). Plus, innovations that are created for stationary solar may translate to other applications (space systems, remote self-sustainability).

* - I’m going from memory here folks, apologies if I forgot any other pioneers.

A bit of a strange article in the Globe says that: “Mr. Cowen believes that overcoming stagnation will require an increase in the social status of scientists relative to other professions, so that our best and brightest will not prefer law or finance or view university science and math as a prerequisite for careers in medicine or dentistry.” I don’t think the social status of scientists is the problem, unless that’s code for “paying them better and revamping the career path.”

Now, I could probably get behind a “science tax” but I don’t think it has a snowball’s chance in hell in the real world. Heck, it would probably be counter-productive, and lead to public outrage against science.

So aside from paying them better, what do you think could be done to “raise the social status” of scientists?

The election is coming up soon in Ontario, and I still haven’t made my mind up about who to vote for.

I’m mixed on the Liberals and Dalton McGuinty. Though he has some good ideas over the years, the execution has been terrible. Coming out of the horrible Harris years, Dalton came to power on the promise that he’d fix the PC’s mess without raising taxes. That lasted what, a month? Ok, so he had to raise taxes (and unlike Harper/Flaherty, did seem to put forward a case for that being justified). Except instead of just owning up to it and raising income taxes or sales taxes, or even doing something truly innovative like bringing in a carbon tax, the Liberals brought in the Ontario Health Premium: a regressive tax that is very visible: what is it, 9 years later and that one still sticks in people’s craws; a less visible hike in the existing income taxes would have been both more progressive and may even have been forgotten by now. And no one was fooled into thinking that he kept his no tax increases promise.

Bringing in electronic medical records is a brilliant idea hailed by many in the medical and research communities, and solutions are being sought to digitize medical records all over the world. The execution became one of the province’s biggest scandals (e-health). Something called academic detailing is another neat idea: taking the tricks of the pharmaceutical sales trade and applying them to improve health outcomes, promote evidence-based care, and control costs. It involves sending educators out to provide short on-site visits with physicians, giving them information on proper prescribing practices and evidence-based medicine updates. Yet I don’t think it ever got very far — that document I linked is from 2009, and at the end of that year a new health minister came in and I haven’t heard anything about it since.

Oh, and don’t get me started on the Guidelines Advisory Committee. There we had a case of a small organization building up in the early years, in this case building human capital with specialized knowledge, tools, and training in its small staff, only to have that thrown away for apparently no reason (the GAC was well-regarded both in Ontario and internationally, and was cheap). Provincial funding was cut in 2008 and the GAC was enveloped by an independent non-profit organization. Then the Excellent Care for All Act was passed in 2010, and all of a sudden there was a legislated need for someone to do exactly what the GAC had been doing just a two years before. Yet rather than resurrect the GAC (which still existed within that non-profit, maintaining the expertise and human capital), the government started from scratch, giving the mandate to the Ontario Health Quality Council (now renamed Health Quality Ontario).

Promoting green energy is a good idea, but the solar FIT program has been unsuccessful because administration issues are preventing projects from getting approval, and the rate offered may have been too lucrative. The smart meter program should not have been introduced at the same time as a general hike in electricity rates, as now people associate the TOU pricing with the higher prices. Dalton made a commitment to reduce coal emissions, but has dragged his feet on getting a new nuclear plant constructed to replace the coal generation (the plant should have been an excellent infrastructure project to get the economy going in 2009, and instead it hasn’t even been decided on yet!).

Another example is the court system (this one also includes Harris): the administration systems around our courts are ludicrous. So there was a push to computerize some of the bookings. A privatized system seems to have worked, but rather than expand that one to the rest of the court system, the government is starting a new “e-court” program from scratch.

Lots of good ideas and good intentions, but the outcomes have left much to be desired. So I’m left feeling disappointed in the provincial Liberals, but disappointment from my government is nothing new. Still, that’s worlds better than how I remember the Harris years (insanity from the top, privatizing anything and everything, and deterioration in health care and education while strikes were constant). And the new crop of PCs leave little to consider as alternatives.

I encourage you to watch Jon Stewart’s interview with former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm

JS “The big idea floating around right now is that we must do everything we can for corporations…”

JG “Everything that’s happening to this country happened in Michigan first, because we never came out of the 2001/2002 recession. Everybody now is scratching their heads ‘how do you create jobs in this global economy?’ It’s not by the solutions that are being proposed by many, just cut taxes and cut government. Just as an example from the laboratory that is Michigan, I cut taxes 99 times in my two terms as governor… cut a lot of taxes, cut government more than any state in the nation, cut employees, cut spending. We were 48th in the country in terms of size of government by the time I left office. And you would think that with all those tax cuts, all that government reduction that we would be #1 in employment, right? If that were the solution. But, alas, we were #1 in unemployment for many years in the past decade. Why? Something else was going on. […] Those old theories were not applicable…”

JS “That’s what I was trying to say yesterday […] you could offer 0% tax rate to corporations, like Apple, but that still doesn’t mean they’re going to make their iphones, the parts, anyplace but China… don’t you think these corporations begin to look at us like a desperate suitor? […] What are we supposed to do?”

JG “…No state has the ability to compete against China […] the only thing that worked in Michigan, and the reason why in 2010 things started to turn around […] because the Obama administration gave us the opportunity to partner with the private sector to compete with federal grants and [targeted] state incentives and partner with universities […] it was only through that investment that we were able to go.”

In short, tax cuts do not work to stimulate the economy. Tax cuts do not work to create jobs. It’s been demonstrated again and again. So it’s with great dismay that I see one of the three main parties in this Ontario election put out their “jobs plan” and the central pillar is: tax cuts. Never mind that this was already a party with ridiculous notions (e.g.: the gutting of public education alongside the promise of money for religious schools; tax cuts alongside huge spending promises in their latest platform, yet while also promising to somehow balance the budget).

The NDP may be a good alternative in terms of policy (I honestly haven’t read their platform in detail yet), but they just don’t seem to have a chance in this race. While I’ve been critical of the Liberals at the beginning here, I think I will vote for them again. The problem is that their ideas are still the most closely aligned with mine, and I don’t see a strong alternative — though I am disappointed, they are still the best option before me. And, to be fair, I haven’t given them credit for the things they have managed to do right (sometimes in just one try!).

Sometime this week I’ll go through the NDP platform, but at this point I think I know which way I lean.

The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario is creating a new policy to guide physicians in dealing with CAM. There’s a bit of an uproar over the document, even down in the states. There’s a fair bit of good commentary around the web so I won’t get too far into it here, especially since there’s only a few days left on the consultation period. I did agree with the bit about using “their” word, allopathic, right in the title of the document. It framed the discussion all wrong right from the beginning.

My somewhat rhetorical questions for the College on the policy:

• If the College is willing to allow physicians to recommend CAM therapies on weak evidence of a chance of improvement then they should equally allow placebos. If the College currently has an ethical objection to physicians prescribing placebos, it should examine why the same rationale does not apply to CAM.
• The current regulations are quite rigorous for prescribing medications that have good evidence of safety and efficacy but which have not yet received Health Canada approval for use in Canada. Why is it much harder to prescribe a drug that does have some evidence than a CAM therapy that has none?
• The College permits in the policy draft physicians to associate with for-profit CAM clinics, even to offer such services themselves. Why is that not a considered a conflict of interest?

Note that I wasn’t able to quickly dig up the College’s current policy regarding prescribing of placebos, but I doubt it’s looked upon favourably.

Also note that in general I’m not all that hard-line on CAM, but though there may be a place for it, it’s not in the CPSO.

Was just at Canadian Tire and saw all the back-to-school stuff out for sale, and realized that this is the first time I won’t be going back to school in September! :(

A member of the Church of The Flying Spaghetti Monster — a competing “fake” religion to the true quasi-religion of Potatoism — has won the right to wear a holy collander in his ID photos.

Some Prius owners sell their used cars for a profit, hopefully putting to rest for good the belief that hybrids are somehow doomed to face higher depreciation.

Michael James comments on cap-weighting vs. fundamental weighting. I wonder not only if fundamental indexing can provide enough return to cover the costs, but also if they’re not trading one problem for another. One example of the problems with cap weighting is that when you get big bubbly stocks like Nortel back in the day, those stocks end up taking up huge proportions of a cap-weighted index, and the more over-valued those companies get, the bigger their share in the index! But that problem of lack of diversification doesn’t seem to be fixed by fundamental weighting from a 1-minute look at the two indexes: instead of having giant stocks, now we have giant sectors, with the fundamental index putting a 45% weight on financials, when the cap-weighted index was already a pretty hefty 30%.

Scott Adams puts out some quasi-serious ways for the US to get out of its budget crisis. For the carpool lane one, that’s actually a pretty good idea. Thanks to an experiment with hybrid cars, we know that being able to travel solo in carpool lanes is actually a valuable feature some people are willing to pay money for. You see, at one point LA (among other cities) gave a special sticker to hybrids to allow them to use the carpool lanes, as an incentive to get people to drive cleaner cars. Then, the quota for that program was hit and they stopped giving out the stickers. But the stickers were good for a few years and most importantly transferable, so what you saw happen is that cars with HOV stickers went for a premium over comparable cars — a few thousand dollars, perhaps as much as $4k. And that’s just for a few years of HOV access. So maybe there’s a group of people out there willing to pay on the neighbourhood of $1k/year to get solo HOV access, let’s ballpark it at 1% of a metro area’s population. Across a few major cities, that could hit a billion in tax revenue. Yes, a drop in the bucket for the problems facing the US budget, but a start. [And also, perhaps at the wrong level of government]

One of the Ford annoyances in Toronto commented on closing libraries, saying “And my constituents, it wouldn’t bother them because they have another library two miles one way and two miles the other way.” I’m all for eliminating waste in the city budget, but I’ve got a soft spot for libraries (and not only because Wayfare’s a librarian). Being no more than “two miles” (3.2 km) is about right — his ward is only about 6 km across, so assuming there are at least two libraries in it, that’s not far off. But 3 km is a long way to be from a library. Remember that the biggest users of libraries are not driving: the poor, the young, and I guess the cheap. Toronto has 99 libraries. Is that too many? It’s tough to say, but Toronto has 625 elementary schools (public, catholic, french catholic — not counting other private ones) and 135 high schools. Approximately one library branch per high school sounds about right to me. I’ll also just quickly say that the branches are more than just a place to check out books, so they are important to maintain, and maintain throughout the city.

I heard again recently the bit of reassuring spin from CMHC that they’re totally cool because the average equity of their mortgage portfolio is 45%. And note that that includes equity gained by price appreciation. To me, that average is nearly meaningless because it doesn’t break it down regionally, or bin it by equity. The defaults occur at the margin, and if the distribution of equity/LTV is large, then there will be plenty of people put underwater by even a modest correction that trouble will follow. Just for a point of comparison I tried to look up what a similar figure from the US would have been and found that in 2007, Fannie Mae’s average equity of the mortgage portfolio was 41%. That does not make me feel reassured that things are that much better here in the great white north, land of the conservative banks. I’d do a post on the “Canadian Moral Hazard Corporation” except it’s been done (with that exact title in several places). Maybe I’ll dig into Genworth later in the summer if I find some time (that one I can at least short if it comes up particularly spotty).

“Environment Canada now even has media officers in Ottawa tape-recording the interviews scientists are allowed to give.” Oh! I think I found where we can cut back on the budget!

Corning reported results and it was pretty much what I expected: display glass is facing troubles, but the company is expanding its other business lines to (partially) compensate. Given the price it looks like the display issues may be priced in, and allow for some upside if/when the other business lines grow enough to be meaningful. Still no position, but with it under $16 I’m becoming more interested, and have put in a bid at $15; let’s see what happens.

Cool random thing I learned: Saturn has two moons that share an orbit: Janus and Epimetheus.

In my riding, both this election and last, 58-59% of people voted for either NDP or Liberal (the centre/centre-left parties). Last time it was 40% Liberal, so the libs got it. This time, 34% Liberal, 25% NDP, splitting the vote and letting the cons take it. The same for my parents’ riding: 49% lib, 10% NDP last time; 40% and 18.5% now, splitting the vote just enough for a con to sneak in. As you may already know from previous discussions on electoral reform, I prefer STV to PR, but nonetheless, have a read of the comparison b/w FPTP and PR at Fair Vote Canada.

Anyway, as you may expect I was disappointed by the con majority result. To be fair, I’m a curmudgeonly cynical old spud who’s managed to find fault with every government at every level, but Harper enjoys a special level of asswaditude. I had a list of things I didn’t like about the Harper government as long as my arm going into this but I think my discontent can be best summed up by one thing: a contempt for data.

The day after election day and naturally the papers are full of articles with titles like “what can we expect from a Harper majority” and I can’t help but think “who can possibly know?” It’s been a pretty ad hoc government so far, and the implementation of most of the election promises were explicitly not even going to be attempted for years. Likewise with the “now that the cons have a free hand with their majority…” articles: were they really all that constrained by the minority status of their government before?

Anyhow, as much as I’d like a better system than FPTP, I have to say how impressed I am with Elections Canada. This was the second year I’ve worked the election, and the procedures put into place for our elections seem quite well designed. The paper ballot system is elegant and nearly fool proof: there’s no conspiracy-theory allegations of manipulating the machines, and hardly any opportunity for failure. The votes are hand-counted at the end of the night in full view of candidate’s reps and any members of the public that care to audit the process. We usually have a count within an hour or so, and accurate ones at that: I’m not aware of a recount ever overturning the initial count. A small army of temporary workers are employed so that polling sites are well-distributed for convenience, and generally there are less than 300 electors per poll site so the counting job at the end of the night is not too onerous (I had about 200 yesterday, and it was a busy day with good turnout). There are many features in the process to ensure the sanctity of the vote: that the ballot put in the box is the ballot the elector was given, that only the elector marked the ballot, that it is anonymous, etc. It’s also well-designed to allow said army of temporary workers to carry it out: simple instructions, every document and envelope is numbered for reference, and flowcharts and checklists to follow to make sure everything is done right. After all, a great many workers are doing it for the first (and only) time, and even the experienced ones only do it once every few years, so it’s essentially always training day.

Personally, it was a good experience. Some decent pizza money for a day of moonlighting. It felt good to interact with people and feel confidently competent at a job. One of the downsides of research is that often I’m doing something no one else in the world has ever attempted before, and I’m in competition with the ones who have, so I have few resources to seek help or even confirmation if I’m doing something right — if there even is a right way. There’s a lot of trial-and-error-and-disappointment involved, which makes it hard to ever be sure I’m doing something right. And even though I’m a smart cookie, on the grad student/scientist scale I’m of somewhat average intelligence/competence. So it was a nice pick-me-up to be the one who knew what was going on: even my CPS was turning to me for help with procedures and to help solve problems (and she said I should be a CPS next time around). It’s also a nice motivator to remind me that clerical work and customer relations is not really what I want to do with my life.