Quotulatiousness

February 24, 2012

Prohibition-era restrictions finally coming down: Making it legal to cross provincial boundaries with wine

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Law, Liberty, Wine — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 00:06

Of course, it’s only a private member’s bill, so there’s only a tiny chance that it will be enacted:

I recently spent four days in Kelowna, B.C. during the Canadian Culinary Championships, then another subsequent two days at home in Toronto, tasting B.C. reds. There are many intriguing and excellent new labels on the market. […] The vast majority however are not available on the shelves of the LCBO’s Vintages stores; and the prices of some that are available for order via local agents are bloated by 50% to 100% over retail in B.C., thanks to LCBO mark-ups.

Before you say ‘so what’s the point’ and click away, hear my tale. Their availability may improve dramatically before this year is out, and you may be able to access them at something closer to B.C. prices. Our archaic interprovincial wine shipping system is seeing its first official crack.

In the Air Canada departure lounge at Kelowna Airport I spent a few minutes talking to Ron Canaan, MP for Kelowna-Lake Country. He, along with MP Dan Albas of Okanagan-Coquihalla, have been championing a private members bill (C-311) that would make it legal for individuals to carry or import wines across provincial borders (which has been technically illegal since Prohibition almost 90 years ago). A website called freemygrapes.ca has the full story.

The bill passed Second Reading in the House of Commons in the last session, and Mr. Canaan is “confident” it will pass third reading and become law this year. He is hoping in early summer.

February 23, 2012

Reason.tv: Months later, still no charges in the Gibson Guitar raid

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Government, Law, USA, Woodworking — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 13:36

Earlier posts on the Gibson raid here, here, here, and here.

Michael Geist on why Canada should not appear in the US piracy watchlist

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Liberty, Media, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 13:16

You’d think, as Canada ranks 13th in the world for strength of intellectual property protection (much higher than the US at 24th spot), there’d be no question that Canada should not be considered as a “piracy haven”. But you’d be wrong:

In what has become an annual rite of spring, each April the U.S. government releases its Special 301 report — often referred to as the Piracy Watch List — which claims to identify countries with sub-standard intellectual property laws. Canada has appeared on this list for many years alongside dozens of countries. In fact, over 70% of the world’s population is placed on the list and most African countries are not even considered for inclusion.

While the Canadian government has consistently rejected the U.S. list because it “basically lacks reliable and objective analysis”, this year I teamed up with Public Knowledge to try to provide the U.S. Trade Representative Office with something a bit more reliable and objective. Public Knowledge will appear at a USTR hearing on Special 301 today. In addition, last week we participated in meetings at the U.S. Department of Commerce and USTR to defend current Canadian copyright law and the proposed reforms.

The full submission on Canadian copyright is available here. It focuses on four main issues: how Canadian law provides adequate and effective protection, how enforcement is stronger than often claimed, why Canada is not a piracy haven, and why Bill C-11 does not harm the interests of rights holders (critics of Bill C-11 digital lock rules will likely think this is self-evident).

3D-print your own robot dinosaur

Filed under: History, Science, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:58

Over at The Register, there’s a discussion on the latest frontier in paleontology — Xeroxiraptors:

Dino-loving boffins in the US have embarked on their very own Jurassic Park-esque experiment to bring the actions of Earth’s favourite prehistoric lizards to life.

The researchers, from Philadelphia’s Drexel University, are using 3D printing to create dino-bones and then attaching artificial muscles and tendons to create dinosaur robots.

“Technology in paleontology hasn’t changed in about 150 years,” paleontologist Kenneth Lacovara said. “We use shovels and pickaxes and burlap and plaster. It hasn’t changed — until right now.”

The 3D printers build the dino-bones by repeatedly putting out thin layers of resin or another material to build up the object based on a digital design.

Thomas Sowell on the “Fairness Fraud”

Filed under: Government, Media, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:49

It’s become endemic in political discourse — the “fairness” argument. Thomas Sowell explains why it’s a fraud:

During a recent Fox News Channel debate about the Obama administration’s tax policies, Democrat Bob Beckel raised the issue of “fairness.”

He pointed out that a child born to a poor woman in the Bronx enters the world with far worse prospects than a child born to an affluent couple in Connecticut.

No one can deny that. The relevant question, however, is: How does allowing politicians to take more money in taxes from successful people, to squander in ways that will improve their own reelection prospects, make anything more “fair” for others?

[. . .]

To ask whether life is fair — either here and now, or at any time or place around the world, over the past several thousand years — is to ask a question whose answer is obvious. Life has seldom been within shouting distance of fair, in the sense of even approximately equal prospects of success.

Countries whose politicians have been able to squander ever larger amounts of a nation’s resources have not only failed to make the world more fair, the concentration of more resources and power in these politicians’ hands has led to results that were often counterproductive at best, and bloodily catastrophic at worst.

More fundamentally, the question whether life is fair is very different from the question whether a given society’s rules are fair. Society’s rules can be fair in the sense of using the same standards of rewards and punishments for everyone. But that barely scratches the surface of making prospects or outcomes the same.

Canada considers delaying F-35 aircraft order

Filed under: Cancon, Military, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:38

In the Globe & Mail, Steven Chase on the Canadian government’s uncomfortable position on the RCAF’s next generation fighter aircraft:

The Canadian government is investigating whether it can squeeze more life out of its aging CF-18 fighters as it takes stock of decisions by cash-strapped allies to delay or trim orders for the replacement F-35 Lightning jet.

The Harper government must now decide whether there’s a benefit to postponing part of Canada’s order of 65 jets so that its Lightning fighter bombers are built in the same years as the bulk of orders placed by other countries — when the production cost is lower.

[. . .]

The Canadian government had planned to start taking delivery of new F-35 fighter bombers in 2016 or 2017 and has publicly described 2020 as the retirement date for most of its fleet of CF-18 Hornets.

A government official with knowledge of the file said the military is now assessing whether 2020 is the absolute maximum life expectancy for the Hornets or whether there’s a little bit more flying time left in the jets — planes purchased between 1984 and 1988.

Canada has already retrofitted the CF-18s in order to make them last until 2020.

Timelapse footage using tilt-shift makes everything look like a model

Filed under: Randomness, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:15

A time lapse of action in and outside the Port of Napier filmed mostly from the Bluff Hill lookout. Edited in Sony Vegas11 with Magic Bullet Looks 2 using the Swing Tilt pre-set that makes the machinery and ships take on a model toy appearance.

H/T to Nelson Kennedy for the link.

Wikipedia says:

“Tilt-shift photography” refers to the use of camera movements on small- and medium-format cameras, and sometimes specifically refers to the use of tilt for selective focus, often for simulating a miniature scene. Sometimes the term is used when the shallow depth of field is simulated with digital post processing; the name may derive from the tilt-shift lens normally required when the effect is produced optically.

“Tilt-shift” encompasses two different types of movements: rotation of the lens plane relative to the image plane, called tilt, and movement of the lens parallel to the image plane, called shift. Tilt is used to control the orientation of the plane of focus (PoF), and hence the part of an image that appears sharp; it makes use of the Scheimpflug principle. Shift is used to adjust the position of the subject in the image area without moving the camera back; this is often helpful in avoiding the convergence of parallel lines, as when photographing tall buildings.

February 22, 2012

Rick Mercer: Get a warrant, Vic!

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Liberty, Media, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:39

“Mr. Toews encapsulated both the intellectual bankruptcy of the post-9/11 security/freedom equation and the capricious, self-indulgent doltishness that sometimes infects the Conservative government’s policymaking”

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Liberty, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:19

Chris Selley in the National Post on the disappointing moment at the start of the fight against C-30, the Canadian government’s internet bill that would eviscerate what little privacy protection still exists:

The most disappointing moment in the otherwise heartening backlash against the Protecting Children from Online Predators Act came right at the beginning, immediately after Public Safety Minister Vic Toews issued his immortal Question Period ultimatum. Mr. Toews was defending a law that would, among other things, allow government agents to march into your Internet service provider, without a warrant, and “examine any document, information or thing.” In this regard, he said Liberal MP Francis Scarpaleggia, and by extension all Canadians, “can either stand with us or with the child pornographers.”

He deserved — Canadian democracy deserved — nothing less than a humiliating, well-crafted, immediate putdown. He didn’t even get a “for shame.”

[. . .]

In a dozen words, Mr. Toews encapsulated both the intellectual bankruptcy of the post-9/11 security/freedom equation and the capricious, self-indulgent doltishness that sometimes infects the Conservative government’s policymaking. Any high school student should be able to identify and debunk the fallacy Mr. Toews was employing; to defend the intrinsic value of freedom and privacy; to articulate the dangers of handing governments excessive and unnecessary powers.

[. . .]

So, I think Mr. Toews’ comment sealed the deal. In the light of day, the War on Terror-era “you’re with us or you’re with the terrorists” argument is cringe-inducing; sub in criminals for terrorists and it’s laughable. More importantly, though, I suspect Mr. Toews finally confirmed a certain suspicion among many Canadians: When the government tells you it needs to limit your privacy or freedom, what it probably means is that it wants to limit your privacy and freedom and thinks you won’t put up a fight. It’s delightful to see this government proved wrong.

Press reaction to the Guild Wars 2 closed beta event

Filed under: Gaming — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:22

There’s been so much material posted after the ArenaNet closed beta test event last weekend that there’s no way to summarize it. Over at GuildMag, Dutch Sunshine has been aggregating everything into a very long post (probably the most comprehensive list out there, he said modestly). I helped out with gathering material on Monday, and Dutch has been busy since then, adding more and more to the list.

Top-posting Update: The beta program is being widened. You can apply to join the next phase of the Guild Wars 2 beta at beta.guildwars2.com. No guarantees that you’ll get in, however, as they will be looking for people with various hardware configurations and (probably) different gaming backgrounds. Also note that this is not an open beta: it’s a closed beta and you have to sign (and be governed by) a non-disclosure agreement — which means the first rule of Guild Wars 2 beta is that you don’t talk about it if you’re in. Beta FAQ page is here. <End of update>

Just to give a sense of the (overwhelmingly positive) press reaction to their weekend access, here’s Sardu at Ten Ton Hammer:

(more…)

Peter Gleick’s career self-destruction

Filed under: Environment, Law, Media, Politics, Science — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:01

Megan McArdle’s post yesterday at The Atlantic on the further revelations in the Heartland Institute caper, where Peter Gleick’s confession of wire fraud is the central bit of news:

You receive an anonymous memo in the mail purporting to be the secret climate strategy of the Heartland Institute. It is not printed on Heartland Institute letterhead, has no information identifying the supposed author or audience, contains weird locutions more typical of Heartland’s opponents than of climate skeptics, and appears to have been written in a somewhat slapdash fashion. Do you:

A. Throw it in the trash

B. Reach out to like-minded friends to see how you might go about confirming its provenance

C. Tell no one, but risk a wire-fraud conviction, the destruction of your career, and a serious PR blow to your movement by impersonating a Heartland board member in order to obtain confidential documents.

As a journalist, I am in fact the semi-frequent recipient of documents promising amazing scoops, and depending on the circumstances, my answer is always “A” or “B”, never “C”.

It’s a gross violation of journalistic ethics, though perhaps Gleick would argue that he’s not a journalist — and in truth, it’s hard to feel too sorry for Heartland, given how gleefully they embraced the ClimateGate leaks. So leave ethics aside: wasn’t he worried that impersonating board members in order to obtain confidential material might be, I don’t know, illegal? Forget about the morality of it: the risk is all out of proportion to the possible reward.

[. . .]

Gleick has done enormous damage to his cause and his own reputation, and it’s no good to say that people shouldn’t be focusing on it. If his judgement is this bad, how is his judgement on matters of science? For that matter, what about the judgement of all the others in the movement who apparently see nothing worth dwelling on in his actions?

When skeptics complain that global warming activists are apparently willing to go to any lengths — including lying — to advance their worldview, I’d say one of the movement’s top priorities should be not proving them right. And if one rogue member of the community does something crazy that provides such proof, I’d say it is crucial that the other members of the community say “Oh, how horrible, this is so far beyond the pale that I cannot imagine how this ever could have happened!” and not, “Well, he’s apologized and I really think it’s pretty crude and opportunistic to make a fuss about something that’s so unimportant in the grand scheme of things.”

After you have convinced people that you fervently believe your cause to be more important than telling the truth, you’ve lost the power to convince them of anything else.

“More Americans fall off the roof installing solar panels each year than have ever been kiled by civilian nuclear power in the US”

Filed under: Environment, Japan, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:45

Tim Worstall responds to a Naomi Wolf panic-piece about the evils of nuclear power:

    Although there is a scientific consensus that no exposure is safe, no matter how brief,

No love, there isn’t a scientific consensus that says that there is no safe level of radioactivity. Forget hormesis for a moment and just concentrate on the obvious fallacy of the statement. We’re all bombarded with radiation all the time. Everything from cosmic rays through to uranium in the soil to bananas and Brazil nuts. And while we do all fall down dead eventually we’re not all falling down dead from the radiation from these sources.

[. . .]

And then we get the great one:

    Then, Japan was hit by a tsunami, and the cooling systems of the Fukushima nuclear reactor were overwhelmed, giving the world apocalyptic images of toxic floods and floating cars, of whole provinces made uninhabitable.

Well, yes, the tsunami killed lots of people, indeed. And the failure of the nuclear plant has killed no one. So we’d better abolish tsunamis then, eh?

Finally, what’s wrong with the whole piece, indeed, the basic mode of thinking behind it, is that it is looking only at absolute risk, taking no account whatsoever or relative risk. If we decide that we actually do want to have electricity then we need to look at which system of producing the electricity we desire kills the fewest of us. And in that nuclear wins hands down. More Americans fall off the roof installing solar panels each year than have ever been kiled by civilian nuclear power in the US.

Oh, and coal fired power stations distribute more radiation around the world than nuclear power plants do as well.

February 21, 2012

First it was the “he-cession”: now it’s the “she-cession” in Ontario

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Economics, Government — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:47

Frances Woolley in the Globe & Mail Economy Lab says that the next phase of Ontario’s recovery from the 2008 recession will disproportionally fall on women:

Men were hit hard by the 2008-9 economic downturn, with losses of construction jobs (98 per cent male), transport jobs (90 per cent male), and manufacturing jobs (70 per cent male). Male unemployment rose so quickly that people began to talk about a “he-cession.”

Three years on, a tenuous “he-covery” seems to be under way – male unemployment rates fell last year, and the percentage of men with jobs rose.

Now it’s the ladies’ turn. Ontario’s Drummond Report calls for deep cuts to financial, administrative and secretarial jobs throughout the public service. Strictly speaking, the report recommends cutting costs; automating, streamlining and consolidating the delivery of services. Yet administrative costs equal administrative jobs — jobs that are, 8 times out of 10, held by women.

The bulk of Ontario government spending goes to MUSH — Municipalities, Universities, Schools and Hospitals. Overall spending cannot be reduced substantially without making cuts in these areas. There are about 280,000 teachers and professors in Ontario, and 65 per cent of them are female. The Drummond report recommends larger class sizes for elementary and secondary school teachers, and “flexible” teaching loads for university professors. Yet more students per teacher mean fewer teaching jobs. Just as a downturn in the construction sector leads to male unemployment, a downturn in the teaching sector leads to female unemployment.

Death on the railways

Filed under: Economics, Government, India, Railways — Tags: — Nicholas @ 11:37

I didn’t realize the extent of the problem in India, as reported in the Guardian:

About 15,000 people are killed each year while crossing the tracks on India’s mammoth railway network, according to a government safety panel that recommended more bridges and overpasses should be built as a matter of urgency.

Most of the deaths occur at unmanned railroad crossings, the panel said in a report. About 6,000 people die on Mumbai’s crowded suburban rail network alone, it said.

Another 1,000 people die when they fall from crowded coaches, when trains collide or coaches derail.

[. . .]

The committee blamed railway authorities for the “grim picture”, saying there were lax safety standards and poor management.

It said local managers were not given adequate power to make crucial decisions and that safety regulations were also breached because of severe manpower shortages.

It does seem odd that one of the world’s most populous countries — once known for chronic over-staffing of government and government-owned organizations — has “manpower shortages” in this critical area.

The real problem with forcing employers’ insurance to pay for contraception

Filed under: Government, Health, Liberty, Religion, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:29

At the Adam Smith Institute blog, Tom Clougherty discusses the biggest problem with the current American debate over contraceptives and insurance coverage:

Now, I’m no Rick Santorum. I’m a fan of contraception. But there’s so much wrong with this story that it’s hard to know where to start. Should the government really compel you to buy a service from a private company? It’s probably better than the government nicking your money and providing that service themselves, but for a libertarian it still rankles. Then there’s the insensitivity to deeply-held religious conviction, which not only exposes the ‘liberal’ left’s inability to tolerate social mores that differ from their own, but also highlights the way big government inevitably tramples on diversity and choice with its one-size-fits-all monomania. And then there’s the idiot-economics which suggests that you can force a company to provide a service without anyone having to pay for it. In this case, assuming insurance companies can’t find a way of covertly passing on the cost of contraceptive cover to church-affiliated employers, then everyone else with insurance ends up footing the bills through higher premiums.

But perhaps the biggest problem is the one explained by Sheldon Richman in this Freeman article: contraception has nothing whatsoever to do with insurance.

    Insurance arose as a way for individuals to pool their risk of some low-probability/high-cost misfortune befalling them. It shouldn’t be necessary to point this out, but coming of child-bearing age and choosing to use contraception is not an insurable event. It’s a volitional act. It may have good consequences for the person taking the action and society at large, but it is still a volitional act. It makes no sense to talk about insuring against the eventuality that a particular person will use contraception.

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