So far, based on the three-day sample Nanos works with for their daily poll release, there hasn’t been a lot of identifiable shifting support among the parties in spite of the leaked AG report:
Update: Of course, not all polls agree, but the Compas poll for the Toronto Sun has radically different numbers based on the regional breakdown:
H/T to David Akin for the image (via Twitpic).
My Rogers email account appears to have a nasty case of rot-13 encoding in the address book. I’d include a screen capture, but now that I’ve told you the trick of decoding it, it’d expose folks’ email addresses, which would be a bit unethical of me. At first, I thought it was just a garble, but I noticed that a lot of the addresses ended in “.pbz” and “.pn” (that’d be “.com” and “.ca” rotated 13 characters).
It’s not crippling, as I can just copy and paste from existing email messages, but it is annoying.
Update, 14 April: It appears to be fixed now.
Jon sent me this article by Jeffrey Tucker which re-interprets Rebecca Black’s “Friday” as a libertarian allegory:
Far more significant is the underlying celebration of liberation that the day Friday represents. The kids featured in the video are of junior-high age, a time when adulthood is beginning to dawn and, with it, the realization of the captive state that the public school represents.
From the time that children are first institutionalized in these tax-funded cement structures, they are told the rules. Show up, obey the rules, accept the grades you are given, and never even think of escaping until you hear the bell. If you do escape, even peacefully of your own choice, you will be declared “truant,” which is the intentional and unauthorized absence from compulsory school.
This prison-like environment runs from Monday through Friday, from 8 a.m. to late afternoon, for at least ten years of every child’s life. It’s been called the “twelve-year sentence” for good reason. At some point, every kid in public school gains consciousness of the strange reality. You can acquiesce as the civic order demands, or you can protest and be declared a bum and a loser by society.
“Friday” beautifully illustrates the sheer banality of a life spent in this prison-like system, and the prospect of liberation that the weekend means. Partying, in this case, is just another word for freedom from state authority.
The largest segment of the video then deals with what this window of liberty, the weekend, means in the life of someone otherwise ensnared in a thicket of statism. Keep in mind here that the celebration of Friday in this context means more than it would for a worker in a factory, for example: for the worker is free to come and go, to apply for a job or quit, to negotiate terms of a contract, or whatever. All of this is denied to the kid in public school.
This news was rather unexpected (that is, I didn’t expect it):
Ontario is one step closer to the legalization of marijuana after the Ontario Superior Court struck down two key parts of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act that prohibit the possession and production of pot.
The court declared the rules that govern medical marijuana access and the prohibitions laid out in Sections 4 and 7 of the act “constitutionally invalid and of no force and effect” on Monday, effectively paving the way for legalization.
If the government does not respond within 90 days with a successful delay or re-regulation of marijuana, the drug will be legal to possess and produce in Ontario, where the decision is binding.
This is great news for those who need pot for pain relief: even though medical marijuana has been theoretically available for years, in practical terms, many could not get their doctors to sign the necessary paperwork.
In what will be a very obscure reference to non-Ontarians, Andrew Coyne twittered, “A place to grow . . .”
Update: However, carbon counters may be less than impressed, as a new study claims that marijuana “grow ops” alone consume 1% of the energy of the US:
Stoners are helping destroy the planet. Not by excessive snacking, but thanks to the high-energy demands of indoor marijuana cultivation. So says a US Government policy analyst with a Puritanical streak and an EYE for a SHOUTY HEADLINE.
Evan Mills, who works at Lawrence Livermore Labs but conducted the study in his own time, estimates that indoor pot growing accounts for 1 per cent of energy usage in the United States, with each spliff representing two pounds of CO2 emission. Heavy.
About 32 per cent of energy in the cultivation process is used by lighting equipment, including motorised lamp rails; 26 per cent by ventilation systems and dehumidifiers; 18 per cent by air conditioning; and the rest… uh, we can’t remember.
So, on current trends, just as the drug war heaves its final dying breath and marijuana is legalized in the United States, it’ll be banned under Green economy rules, right?
I didn’t bother watching the first debate on TV last night, as I didn’t think there would be any purpose in doing so. Lots of people seem to have felt the same way, as polling immediately after the debate showed little change in support:
It was Stephen Harper’s debate to lose — and he did not.
It was Michael Ignatieff’s debate to win — and he did not.
A poll done exclusively for QMI Agency immediately after Tuesday night’s English-language debate shows that English-speaking Canada was, by and large, unmoved by the two-hour duel among the four party leaders.
Asked who won the debate, 37% of those surveyed by Leger Marketing said Harper was the victor. About 21% said Ignatieff won.
Those numbers roughly mirror voter support in polls Leger has done before and during the election campaign.
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