Quotulatiousness

May 9, 2011

Next federal election will include 30 new ridings in Ontario, Alberta, & BC

Filed under: Cancon, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:18

There will be 338 seats up for grabs in the next federal election, up from the 308 seats in this election:

Last year, the Mowat Centre for Policy Innovation at the University of Toronto examined the national parliaments and congresses in several major Western democracies. Of the 113 provinces or states examined, the aforementioned three Canadian provinces were all among the five least-well represented, when their share of seats in the national legislature was compared to their share of the national population.

If the average weight of a voter in such an international survey is taken to be 1.0, the weight of a vote in Quebec is 1.01, almost exactly what it should be. In Alberta, though, the average is just 0.92, in Ontario 0.91 and in B.C. just 0.90. Meanwhile, in Manitoba, each vote is worth 1.22. New Brunswick votes are worth 1.34, Saskatchewan 1.39 and P.E.I. votes 2.88. Far from there being one-person, one-vote in Canada, a vote in PEI is worth more than three times what a vote in B.C. is worth.

Put another way, the average riding in B.C. contains about three times as many voters as does the average riding in P.E.I. — which means B.C. votes are diluted by a factor of three vis-à-vis P.E.I.

The disparities are so large that the Mowat Centre warned “the situation as it now stands is seriously undermining the principle that all citizens should have an equal say in choosing their government.”

March 18, 2011

West coast earthquake zones

Filed under: Cancon, Environment, Pacific, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:44

According to an article in The Economist, the well-known San Andreas fault in California is not the most likely to cause an earthquake of the magnitude of last week’s quake in Japan. The most likely source is the Cascadia subduction zone:

wikimedia.org - Cascadia subduction zone The most likely megaquake on the West Coast would be much further north — in fact, 50 miles off the coast between Cape Mendocino in northern California and Vancouver Island in southern British Columbia. This 680-mile strip of seabed is home to the Cascadia subduction zone, where oceanic crust known as the Juan de Fuca plate is forced under the ancient North American plate that forms the continent. For much of its length, the two sides of this huge subduction zone are locked together, accumulating stresses that are capable of triggering megaquakes in excess of magnitude 9.0 when they eventually slip. As such, Cascadia is more than a match for anything off the coast of Japan.

What makes Cascadia such a monster is not just its length, but also the shallowness of the angle with which the encroaching tectonic plate dives under the continental mass. The descending plate has to travel 40 miles down the incline before it softens enough from the Earth’s internal heat to slide without accumulating further frictional stresses. Could the fault unzip from end to end and trigger a megaquake — along with the mother of all tsunamis? You bet. By one account, it has done so at least seven times over the past 3,500 years. Another study suggests there have been around 20 such events over the past 10,000 years. Whatever, the “return time” would seem to be within 200 to 600 years.

And the last time Cascadia let go? Just 311 years ago.

Cascadia subduction zone image from wikimedia.org.

March 6, 2011

Don’t worry, liquor fans, they’ll soon stop over-serving you

Filed under: Cancon, Economics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:05

Did you know that the US shot glass is ever so slightly larger than the Imperial one? These guys didn’t, but they do now:

To be fussy about it — and who’s fussier than a liquor tax auditor? — a U.S. fluid ounce works out to 29.574 millilitres while the imperial (that is, Canadian) ounce is 28.413. While that may not sound like a big discrepancy to you, it means Canadian bars using U.S. shot glasses, as virtually all of them do, have spent years serving countless more litres of liquor than legally required. The upshot for your shots is that they’ll soon be 7% lighter.

Owners had no idea there was a difference between a U.S. shot and a Canadian one. “I’d say it’s totally unrecognized,” Tweter says. Finding imperial shot glasses proved impossible, and Tweter and Wilson took matters into their own hands. They sourced a factory in China to make a slightly smaller-than-usual vessel. Meet the Can-Pour, probably the only imperial ounce shot glass on the Canadian market.

As a result of rounding, the standard U.S. shot glass actually works out to 30 millilitres while the Can-Pour pours an even 28. Tweter points out this falls within Weights and Measurements Canada’s tolerances. A chart on Tweter and Wilson’s website shows how a bar with annual liquor purchases of $360,000 could save more than $25,000 by pouring a little less. Doesn’t that cheat the customer? “The two-millilitre difference is virtually undetectable. It’s literally drops,” Tweter says.

So drink up, Vancouver shot fans: you’ll soon be paying the same for slightly less alcohol per drink.

November 26, 2010

British Columbia: Canada’s Banana Republic

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Government, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 13:50

A story in the Globe and Mail on how Elections BC rigged the rules after the fact to reject a petition:

Elections BC rejected a Fight HST recall application as too lengthy — but did so using rules that were drafted after it received the application.

The rejection has led recall organizers to suggest the province’s chief electoral officer deliberately thwarted their attempt to get approval to launch a petition to oust a Liberal MLA who supported the harmonized sales tax, and should step down.

While Elections BC has defended its new rules — which pushed the Fight HST application over a 200-word limit by counting the acronyms MLA and HST as eight words instead of two — recall organizers expressed concern that they were not included in the application form when they downloaded it from Elections BC’s website.

“It’s a total joke. This is the kind of thing they do in banana republics … when they don’t want to have elections or they don’t want people to win. And we’re doing it right here in Canada,” said Chris Delaney, an organizer of the Fight HST campaign.

H/T to Steve Muhlberger for the link.

July 29, 2010

BC government finds an issue to distract the media

Filed under: Cancon, Health, Law — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:44

Adrian MacNair linked to this Vancouver Sun article, saying “”B.C. halts penis-arousal test for youth sex offenders” Say whaaaaaaatttt?”

A moratorium has been placed on tests done on B.C. youth sex offenders measuring their penis arousal in response to sexual stimuli after the province’s top child advocate launched an immediate investigation Wednesday.

The device in question is called a “penile plethysmograph” — or PPG. In a lab setting, it is attached to male genitals so technicians can measure changes in “penile tumescence” — essentially erections that reflect the state of arousal in subjects shown photographs of adults, children and even babies in varying states of undress while at the same time being read a story that describes coercive or forced sexual activity.

So, until it came to light, the government was showing provocative images and reading pornographic stories to teenage boys to find out if they got erections during the process? Would anyone be surprised to find that teenage boys found this whole exercise sexually arousing? Teenage boys are hard-wired to find all sorts of things sexually arousing!

The point of the test is to reportedly predict whether offenders have gained control of their deviant arousal patterns through treatment or if they have not learned how to suppress deviance and will be a strong risk for re-offending.

Again, we’re talking about teenage boys . . . I’d be more suspicious if they found that one of them was managing not to react to such stimulus!

Okay, yes, I’m unfairly stereotyping, at least to some degree. But this sort of “test” or “experiment” would be flagrantly illegal if it were being done by anyone other than a government-funded health organization, wouldn’t it?

July 1, 2010

Happy Dominion Canada Day

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government, History — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:53

It’s the 143rd anniversary of Confederation. The prime minister’s Canada Day message is here.

Oh, and remember, if you live in Ontario or British Columbia, you’ll find lots of things are more expensive now that Harmonized Sales Tax is being added to what you buy. Even if (as the Fraser Institute says) the HST is more efficient than the Provincial Sales Tax, it will still mean higher prices at the point of sale for most of us. Thank your respective provincial governments for the sneaky way it was implemented.

February 17, 2010

Is “Own the Podium” the end of Canadian niceness?

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Sports — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:23

In another common refrain, Canada’s “Own the Podium” slogan appears to be doing irreparable damage to our international image . . . according to a few bored reporters. Again, it seems to shock and dismay people that Canadians might actually want to compete and win in the Olympics — apparently that’s not “Canadian”. Dahlia Lithwick looks at some of the “we can’t believe it” coverage:

Someday, someone is going to explain to me why it is that journalists so frequently speak about Canadians as though we are all about 2 feet tall and 7 years old. See, for instance, this exceedingly strange New York Times piece about how those tiny little Canadians are building a “giant laser” or some such thing, in order to bring home more Olympic medals than ever before. Look! Look at all those funny little Canadians in their funny little hats, trying to be good at sports! Look at them spending their whole allowance on a top-secret program to create a human slingshot for speed skaters and “super-low-friction bases for snowboards and [to find out] whether curling brooms really melt the ice.” The Seattle Times describes this effort as “Canada’s non-nuclear Manhattan Project.”

It was bad enough when they were calling us “un-Canadian” and “inhospitable” just for wanting to win medals. It got uglier last Friday when Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili was tragically killed in a practice run. The Canadians’ decision to limit outsiders’ use of Olympic facilities before the Games began — a maneuver that every other host country pulls — got spun as “an unfortunate nationalistic impulse” that put patriotism ahead of safety. The subtext: When Canadians care about winning just as much as the rest of the world, can there be any more warmth and goodness left in the universe?

The flip-side of all this is . . . the world barely even knows that Canada exists. Why do we get all worked up about how the world “sees” us? More evidence that Canada still needs to grow up a bit and get over the teenage angst. It’s unbecoming in teenagers, but it’s much worse for a nation.

Of course, this effort to caricature Canadians has been aided most of all by Canadians. You know you’re suffering an international feistiness deficit when your prime minister begs his fellow citizens to show the world a little more testosterone. “We will ask the world to forgive us this time,” declared Stephen Harper in an effort to rouse Canadians into showy displays of patriotism, “this uncharacteristic outburst of patriotism and pride, our pride of being part of a country that is strong, confident and stands tall among the nations.”

What’s strange about all this deep Freudian analysis is that Canada has done pretty darn well on the hardware front in recent years. It jumped from 13 medals in 1994 to 24 at Turin in 2006. Canada ranks seventh overall in winter medal wins. Not bad for a country of 33 million people where per capita spending on Olympians has historically been a fraction of what some other countries spend. Is it possible that Canada has been doing just fine at the Winter Olympics but nobody ever bothered to notice?

However, I have to take issue with one thing she writes:

It has always seemed to me that sweeping efforts to identify a Canadian national character are pointless. It’s a vast country built on compromises between French and English, Canadians and the British. The nation differs so fundamentally from east coast to west that, Olympics notwithstanding, it’s hard to know what a Newfoundlander and a British Columbian might find to talk about.

Get two Canadians together from different parts of the country, and they’ll immediately have something to talk about: their shared loathing of Toronto . . .

Fleet Street, in unison: “Worst. Games. Ever.”

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Sports — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:10

British journalism is a bit less respectful than the Canadian variety (not that “respectful” is all that common here). British journalists also tend to look for lines of attack, rather than lines of inquiry. It works for them: the British newspaper scene is far more entertaining than anywhere else in the world, but it doesn’t do much for those in the scrutiny of the Fleet Street flashmob. Vancouver and the VANOC folks are squarely in the crosshairs at the moment, and bored British journalists are bringing their patented approach to Olympic criticism:

If there was a gold medal for premature Winter Olympic whining, the British would be perennial occupants of the middle podium.

Right on schedule, on the fourth of 17 event days, U.K. scribes have written off the Vancouver Olympics as a “worst-ever” Games in the making, an “abomination” for producing the accidental death of a luger and an organizational “fiasco” for slow buses and venue meltdowns.

Well, in fairness, never before at an Olympic venue has there ever been a weather delay or mechanical breakdown. Only in Vancouver have these things ever . . . oh, what? There have been problems before? Funny, the way it’s being reported — with ice-ruining machines and immobile buses — you’d think this was an absolutely unprecedented series of disasters.

There’s no obvious explanation for why London reporters are the most caustic of the contingent, having elevated Vancouver-bashing into an unofficial Olympic sport.

Perhaps they’re dreadfully bored. After all, the BBC alone has more personnel at the Games than the kingdom’s entire 52-member Olympic team. There’s also dispiriting news that bookies back home predict the U.K. will experience a medal shutout in Vancouver, with only an outside shot at the curling podium.

What’s that? You think they could have a motive for painting the Vancouver games in the worst possible light?

Guardian columnist Martin Samuel went postal in his attack in the aftermath of the luge fatality. “Canada wanted to Own The Podium,” he snarled. “This morning they can put their Maple Leaf stamp on something more instantly tangible: the nondescript little box carrying the lifeless body of Nodar Kumaritashvili back to his home in Bakuriani, Georgia.” Good grief.

Other U.K reporters predict financial disaster for Vancouver, a defensive move given that London’s 2012 Summer Olympics are already $1.8-billion over budget.

They complain of heavy-handed customs officials and no-nonsense security, which is a tad rich from a country where police will have the right to enter homes without a warrant while Olympic officials storm residences or enterprises near Games venues to search for protest material.

Of course, Canadians are not being as polite in response to what they see as provocation from the British press:

Not surprisingly, thin-skinned Canadians are filling British newspapers with backlash sneers and jeers.

“London will be worse (in 2012). It will also be dirtier, smellier, and have worse teeth,” mocked one offended Canuck. “Just because you long ago abandoned any ambitions in the world – or for that matter basic sense of identity or dignity – and became a lethargic nation of elitist whiners who no one really likes, don’t fault those younger nations who do enjoy and embrace life,” snapped another.

Which will, in turn, provide more fuel for the fires. Exactly the sort of reaction they were hoping to get.

February 15, 2010

QotD: “I was disappointed in the opening ceremonies because . . .”

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Media, Quotations, Sports — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 13:00

Holy smack people. We spent about a billion gazillion dollars on this thing. Every fourth person in the country has had their picture in the paper after getting a chance to carry the Olympic torch on some weird relay race around the country. We’ve been warned that anyone hinting these games aren’t the absolute bestest thing that ever happened in Canada will be drawn up on treason charges. And when the thing finally gets underway (hallelujah!), all we can think of is finding people who are “disappointed” because their particular race/creed/colour/language group wasn’t better represented.

My God. Vanoc should have asked Stats Canada to drawn up a statistical breakdown of the country, and then awarded spaces at the ceremonies strictly on that basis: 4.2 French-speaking non-Quebec First Nations people; 0.6 Presbyterian Metis single mothers; 1 Catholic that everyone else is allowed to make fun of; exactly 50% female representation, subdivided among the top 34 national racial, ethnic and religious groups; no men.

Then everyone would be happy, right? Actually, I doubt it.

Kelly McParland, “I was disappointed in the opening ceremonies because . . . (fill in beef here)”, National Post, 2010-02-15

December 14, 2009

QotD: BC does a sneaky anti-PC move

Filed under: Cancon, History, Quotations — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:56

Don’t tell anybody, but I’m rather tickled that the Queen Charlotte Islands have been given back the name of the slaveholding empire that was once centred there. Such a cheeky gesture! So politically incorrect! So contrary to the stifling liberal spirit of our age! It is almost literally as if Mississippi got renamed Whitetopia; and yet the progressives are simply falling over themselves with naïve praise. I raise a glass to you and shoot you a sly wink, Government of British Columbia!

Colby Cosh, “Come to think of it, why use ‘volunteers’ to run the Olympics?”, Macleans, 2009-12-11

« Newer Posts

Powered by WordPress