Stolen Initials

Heh, this guy has stolen my initials. I was a little upset at first and I asked around about remedies.

I've talked to some Liberal friends and they agree that the Government should set up some kind or registry to avoid this kind of confusion. Naturally, it would be revenue neutral because user fees would pay for it. The local riding president added as an afterthought that if Stephen Harper was elected only, the rich could afford initials.

The local Conservative added darkly that it was a provincial matter and the Federal Government had no business telling the provinces how to go about dealing with initials. The solution was obvious: tax cuts.

The guy next door works for ICBC, has always voted NDP, and assures me that things would work out better if we centralized responsibility for issuing initials.

The Green party fellow suggested that intials should be recycled. His wife offered the observation that I am a part of Gaia and don't really need any initials of my own.

But, after a little reflection, I calmed down and decided to let him keep them. He is, after all, a great read -- and probably someone you'd rather meet in a dark alley than a debate.

Harper Proves Martin's Point

It's easy to believe that PM Paul Martin is trying to paint Harper as way out of touch with mainstream Canadian values. That's not much of a surprise.

What is a surprise is that right out of the chute Harper proves Martin's point. The very day the election is called Harper says he wants to make Canada the lowest taxed country in the world. Even in jest that's a dopey policy and guess what, it is sharply different from Canadian values.

How many social policies will get the axe to reduce taxes to a level lower than the US let alone lowest in the world? Which ones?

You Know You're in Canada When

Mother: You're wearing a skirt now; you have to keep your feet closer together

Daughter: Mild confused protest.

Younger Sister: Yeah, you're not a goalie y'know.

Call the Election or Can the Ads

For christ sakes call the GD election or stop the GD electioneering.

By now, like almost all Canadians, or at least the ones I know, I've come to expect almost nothing of Federal politicians. My expectations of decorum and decency are less than nothing - that is I expect them to behave badly. Still, this election without calling an election is starting to grate.

Maybe I just don't get it. Perhaps there are innumerable subtle hand signals between Harper and Martin that let them prepare for the formal start of hostilities. Maybe it's like the ramping up of effort in a tug-of-war with both sides adding men to the rope and leaning into each other before the contest starts in earnest.

Nah. It's just an incumbent PM stacking the deck as best he can before actually calling the election.

I wonder if all the ads the Liberals have prepared and run will count as expenditures under the newly minted campaign spending limits? Is election spending only election spending after an election is called?

Election spending limits

Today the supreme court ruled, by a 6 to 3 margin, that the law which limits election time advertising spending by third parties is legitimate. Unlike our neighbors to the south, and more like our British and European friends, Canadian courts do not see free speech as the ultimate right; they see it as one right that needs to be balanced against others. That was the position the supreme court took.

There are good reasons to curb unlimited spending by third parties and there are good reasons to protect people's right to make their political views known. I think the supreme court drew the balance appropriately. Others disagree.

I listened to Ted White, the Conservative MP for North Vancouver, on the CBC today attack the court's decision. His main point seemed to be that there was no proof that unlimited spending made any difference in an election and so it should be OK. No harm, no foul.

Now, he doesn't seem particularly bright or articulate so I wrote it off as a backbench MP hyperventilating a bit.

Later in the day I heard Gerry Nichols, chief moonbat from National Citizens Coalition, use exactly the same argument. Well, actually he said there is no proof it harms the democratic process. This is just as daft but easier to defend.

Does anyone seriously believe that unlimited advertising expenditure does not affect election outcomes? Bollocks. If that is the case then why all the heart palpitations about the pending Liberal attack ads. If, as Ted White delares, people are smart enough to sift through the media material and make up their own minds based on their own values, why worry about Liberal ads that paint Harper as sharply right of mainstream values? Hint: you worry about them because they work.

Claiming that political advertising does not affect outcomes is stoopid.

Besides, can you imagine the bleating and yowling that would rise out of Conservative Central if those dastardly 'Liberal-friendly' firms spent 10 or 20 million dollars running 'issue ads' about Conservative party policy positions? My heard hurts imagining it.

Last Movie

The digital video camcorder I got on Saturday died monday morning. I took it back. No movies :(

First Movie

I got a digital video camera yesterday. This is my first attempt at creating a movie ( warning: it's 785k). It's a simple — and simple minded — effort but I now know how to used the editing tools to do the basics. It's got all the basics, video, sound, transitions and generated text.

More fun to come.

Comparing Atrocities

Nick Berg had his head cut off in front of a video camera by a bunch if psychopathic bastards on a political mission. Full stop. What else can you say?

Is there any point in comparing atrocities? None that I can think of, but I'm going to do it anyway.

Is hacking someone's head off on video better, worse or the same as, vaporizing a suspicious someone on an infrared gun camera video? Is shooting an innocent Italian in the head on video better, worse or the same as, a sniper shooting ambulance drivers and women carrying the wounded? I wonder if God — assuming there is one and that he's paying attention — sanctions one and condemns the other.

Does that mean I think the US action is morally equivalent to al-Qaeda? No. Maybe. Fuck, I don’t know.

I do know that I identify closely with Americans and watching a kid from Pennsylvania get murdered hits me a lot harder than watching some unknown guy from half way around the world get killed. It makes me want to pick up a gun and shoot the fuckers myself. I also know that a guy in Syria or Egypt or Palestine probably identifies a lot more with the Iraqi. His gut response is probably the same as mine. Only the victim would be different.

I got a subtle prod from Vancouver Island wondering, mischievously, whether I liked Bush yet. Short answer: nope.

As the Nick Berg video re-confirms, there are some nasty bastards out there. That knowledge does nothing to change the fact that, while Bush may not be a fool, he has committed the US to a fool’s errand in Iraq. Iraq has become precisely what the US sought to avoid: a failed state with inadequate security. Another home for Al-Qaeda.

How Women Think

Do you ever wonder if women think differently from men? Read this e-mail from my lovely wife.

1. Volvos should not come in red
2. i shouldn't get raisins (even yellow ones - which are better than the brown ones)
3. :)

You're an Idiot

“You're an idiot” (sometimes written as 'your an idiot’) is inevitably used near the conclusion of a lost argument or is spit out at the beginning of one when nothing more precise comes to mind. I should know. It comes easily to my lips when I’m too lazy to engage my brain and articulate why the argument on offer is stoopid.

It’s also mistakenly used to mean, “I don’t believe what you believe”. Intelligence and beliefs are, in fact, not well correlated. If the process of arriving at a position on any particular issue was a purely analytical effort, then, I suppose, intelligence and beliefs would be closer cousins and we would all take our advice from libertarians or liberals or conservatives or whatever group collected all the clever folk. But, the capacity for intelligent thought is only a small part of forming beliefs.

It’s no easy task to spot smart people either. It’s much harder than spotting dumb people.

I still recall sitting at my parents post dinner table in Connecticut playing a card game that was new to me and new to a peer of my Dad. It was the first time that I thought, wow, this guy is clearly processing stuff faster than I am. It has happened other times as well. Those are the easy cases. It’s obvious.

There are much harder cases. There are the pseudo-savants who seem keenly disinterested with the world most of the time and staggeringly insightful at others. Are they smart, really really smart, just lucky or do they need to stay out of the fray to focus their efforts on those insightful hand grenades?

When I worked in Australia everyone hired in had to be tested for aptitude and personality. The personality profiles were black magic junk but the ‘intelligence’ testing was somewhat more useful. In the group of software developers there were three massively bright kids – 5 sigma kids. One was obviously bright but hard to manage, one was categorically dysfunctional in almost every thing he did, and one you would never have guessed.

Mistaking people for dumb is easy to do as well. The quiet third of the wonderboys was often mistaken for being decidedly average. George Bush suffers from a similar problem. Although he’s not stupid, he is left open to that criticism because his verbal skills – one of the most used measures of ‘smartness’ – are plagued with problems. It’s easy to misunderestimate him.

Similarly, categorizing average people as smart people happens easily. A good memory, debating skills, charisma, and an unwavering belief in ones self are qualities that are often mistaken for intellectual horsepower. Those may be fine characteristics in themselves but are not necessarily indicators of intelligence.

Which leads to the point that kicked off this stream of consciousness: not only is intelligence hard to spot and easily mistaken for beliefs or something else, it is over-revered. Intelligence does not predict success.

Success, as most people measure it, is achieved by the very bright and the not very bright. It is achieved by the intelligent, by the cunning, by the affable by the visionary and sometimes by the merely dogmatic or pragmatic.

Intelligence is a much over rated quality. Still, it's pretty handy for the chronically lazy.