Blessed by the Potato

Most of the time, I try to avoid politics since it’s a very cynical area of expertise, and I’m already plenty cynical as it is. However, I can’t help but think that a group of people making laws and budgetary decisions that affect all of us is, in some strange way, important, so I do tune into it from time to time.

There has been some noise made for quite some time now that Canada needs a new copyright act, and two sucessive heritage ministers have been pretty weasely about it: taking money from (largely American) companies in dubious fundraising events. First Sam Bulte lost her riding for lashing out against “pro-user zealots” who just wanted to prevent her from being so deep in the RIAA’s pocket that she couldn’t breathe. [in all honesty, it’s difficult to pin an election loss on any one item; it could be that the opponent was just that much better — but this really felt like the big issue in that riding]. Now Bev Oda has been caught at the trough.

I absolutely love the response from the NDP heritage critic. These guys are so on the ball sometimes:

I have done what I could to have a three point plan to maintain the ethical sobriety of the heritage minister: first, reveal the list of those she is putting the tap for money on so we know which lobbyists are rewriting government policy on copyright and deregulation; second, institute a remedial plan so she can learn how to listen to the groups and artists that she is supposed to be representing; and third, ask the House of Commons carpentry staff to head over to the heritage minister’s office and paint over the big for sale sign on her door.

[emphasis mine]

(First seen on Michael Geist’s site; original source)

In other political news, the municipal election for London is on Monday, and I find it really hard to care much at all. I’ve looked into a few candidates and will be voting for those who I think will be at least decent, but I think it’s almost dangerous to be voting with so little research done. I console myself by thinking that many voters don’t do any… What’s really interesting is just how nasty this really insignificant race is. There’s been an “organized campaign” of tearing down certain candidate’s ads, death threats, blackmail, and other such foolishness.

And in a little bit more time, we’ve got a federal by-election coming up to replace our MP (who’s now running for Mayor of London). It’s very interesting, because at the moment the race looks to be between the Green party and the NDP: those are the only street signs I’ve noticed, and I couldn’t even tell you the name of the new Liberal candidate. I like the Green’s new campaigning strategy: the guy came to the door and told Wayfare “don’t worry, there’s no chance of a Conservative getting the seat in this riding, so you can safely vote Green if you like.” At least they’re acknowledging that strategic tactical voting is killing them.

And speaking of strategic voting, I still haven’t written my letter for the Citizen’s Assembly. I wanted to read the other submissions first, and there are a ton of them there. I can tell you that I’m in favour of any system that focuses on electing individual members and not simply throwing your vote towards a party or party list: it’s all too easy in those systems to get party cronies elected who don’t really represent the people. It’s important to have the power to exclude individual members without necessarily rejecting the party outright (cf. Sam Bulte, and the Tories throwing in unelected members for the cabinet). So right now it looks like the type of system I’d like to see is a single transferrable vote type arrangement.

The problem is that some ridings in Ontario (particularly those that are far north) are so big that to merge them or add multi-district “proportional” representatives would be slightly ridiculous. Only slightly, because even though it would make the ridings huge, they would still be somewhat homogeneous since many issues tend to fall along GTA-vs-country type axes. I’ve got a lot more reading to do, but I’ll post a draft of my letter here before I submit anything.

The cost of postage in Canada seems to be going up really quickly: it’s at 51 cents now (as far as I know), but I still have quite a few 49 and 50 cent stamps. I got some penny stamps a while ago to make up the difference and use up my old ones, but I kinda wondered if they would work if I used them as-is. I think they would: after all, that was the cost of postage when they got the money from me, but I couldn’t be sure of that. I know that right after the price hike, I sucessfully got a letter from my mom with just 50 cents on it. In the office today, someone else had the same question: “think they’ll deliver this even though it’s a penny short?” “Heck,” I said “tape a penny on the front and see what happens.”

Turns out I’m not the first one to think of this.

As I’m sure most of you know, we have a very simple and relatively effective form of democracy here in Canada. Paper ballots hand counted in front of eyewitnesses who can be representatives of political parties or volunteers from the public, using a first-past-the-post system with multiple ridings. Unfortunately this simplicity hasn’t always been good for selecting a government that’s made up of representatives of everyone’s point of view. I’ve had a link to Fair Vote Canada on the right there for quite some time, and now I’m going to add one to the Ontario Citizen’s Assembly on Electoral Reform.

I’m adding this because Ontario is now (along with BC) considering the possibility of reforming its electoral process, and this is a pretty exciting process that I’m going to try to follow. I’ll post updates to try to keep everyone up-to-date on what’s going on (basically, to provide the digest version along with my commentary), but for now I’ll keep it short because I’ve got a lot of background reading to do still.

Basically, the government has called on 103 random citizens (one for each of Ontario’s ridings) to form a committee to hear input from various groups and individuals, and try to decide on an alternate voting system to propose to the legislature in May. From there, we could have a referrendum next fall. One issue that’s surfaced already is that the government is proposing that the threshold to accept a change in voting systems will be set at 60% of the vote plus 60% of the ridings in favour. That’s actually quite a feat to beat, and I think I might be writing my MPP to ask her to reconsider voting on that.

I love Halloween, and I don’t think anyone doubts that (though I’m a little troubled myself that I didn’t bother to make a new Halloween page layout… though my current theme is black all year long… :)

Anyhow, Halloween’s just a great time of year to be a kid, and I get kind of jealous of ones who are real kids (and not just pretend like me), and also feel like I’ve got to help the kids I see have a great Halloween. So it was so incredibly cute when Wayfare & I went to the Shriner’s Haunted Mansion this year and it was full of little ones.

The Shriners do a great job: lots of cool effects, including the ghost effects with split mirrors, an indoor waterfall with a projector, singing skeletons, a swami, a rotating tunnel, a tilted room, and lots of professional touches throughout. While most of the stuff is cool and freaky, not very much is actually scary, so it’s a good place for kids. This year they stepped it up a bit to make it a little scary, but still tolerable for families. At one point they had a long, cave-like tunnel with bats hung around. Then…

Spoiler warning!

… then, a screen came on at the far end and showed a movie of thousands of bats flying across the full moon. The room then went completely dark, and a stick with dangly bits of fabric flew over our heads, got to the other end and came back over us. It was really cool, and while I’ve been to many scarier haunted houses, I haven’t seen that effect before.

So just before we get to that part, two kids come running backwards through the place, telling us about the fright ahead, and that it might be too scary. “Bats! They fly in your hair!” “They might eat your ears!” When we went to go in, they came through with us. What was so cute was that the boy grabbed Wayfare’s hand to go through, and then the little girl sort of got a lock on her elbow… and we’re complete strangers! Wayfare’s just simply that kid & Halloween-friendly :)

So I had a nice weekend in Niagara Falls. It was a little chilly, and a little rainy, but we never got soaked, and it was never so cold that we needed a scarf or hats. And, for the first time, I actually won money at the casino! I hit a $100 payout on one of the slot machines, and it rang the bell and everything.

The casinos are looking a little sad over there. Fallsview is brand new and all, but really all they have going for them is the slot machines: the tables are so expensive that I just simply can’t play them. We were hoping that a cool weekend in October, late at night and early Sunday morning would be quiet enough that they might try a $5 table, but the cheapest we saw was $15 roulette. There were lots of empty tables, so I don’t quite see why they didn’t bother to put someone there to take my money. They can easily get a few hundred an hour even from a $1 table, so the economics seem to be there. And if all there is to do are slot machines, then why go all the way out there? London has slot machines; Woodbine has slot machines… And speaking of slots, they’ve gotten more ridiculous since I was last in a casino. There were some that were so complicated that we just couldn’t figure out why we were or weren’t winning, and we had no idea what to hope would show up. Some had up to 20 different “lines” which is just getting ridiculous. I really didn’t find them fun at all.

I’d recommend the Hilton Garden Inn again: it was a bit out of the way, just about equidistant from St. Catherine’s, Niagara Falls, and Niagara-on-the-Lake. It was no problem to drive into Niagara Falls, park for free at the casino, and walk around from there. Plus, the hotel restaurant was actually great for breakfast, which is a pretty rare thing in a hotel restaurant. I had a waffle with fruit topping and whipped cream, and Wayfare got pancakes, bacon, and hash browns (lots of each), and our total bill came to under $10. Usually, I find hotel restaurants are really over priced because of the “convenience factor”, so this was a really nice surprise. Especially since we ate at the Golden Griddle the day before for twice as much, and it really sucked.

I also had a costume idea: dress up as a ghost and follow people when they turn their back, then look away when they turn to look at me.