Why the Canadian Senate will never be Reformed

For almost as long as the Canadian Senate has been around, there have been calls for its reform. Minor adjustments have been made. For example, Senators used to be appointed for life, whereas now, they must retire at the age of 75. Considering that Senators can be appointed as young as 30, while life expectancy is around 80, the maximum possible tenure as is reduced from an expected 50 to an exact 45. So a typical Senator will have to sit through one less House of Commons election. A lot can happen in 5 years, of course, but it's fairly small in comparison to a potential 45 or 50 year career.

Another change happened in 1982, when the Senate was given the right to veto constitutional amendments under certain circumstances. But there is little appetite in Canada for constitutional amendments in the first place, so it is unlikely that they will ever be able to use this power if even they feel the need to exercise it. The practical effect of this privilege is close to nothing.

Though these reforms have been made, their effect is small, and besides, they are not the reforms that need to be made, and the changes that do need to be made will probably require constitutional amendment. This is where the problem lies.

There are many who feel that the Senate should be elected rather than appointed (I'm ambivalent, but lean more toward elected for the simple reason that the potential advantages to an appointed Senate rarely seem to be realized). The legitimacy of an elected Senate, however, is severely undermined by the current seat distribution.

The number of Senate seats each province gets is the sort of thing that we might learn about in a grade school or high school history class, or perhaps on a class trip to the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa. I think my grade 10 history teacher tried to teach me about it. He was something of a bore, though, and his efforts were for naught. Those who did pay attention to their history teachers probably put in just enough effort to be able report the facts on a test and never gave it much thought after that. In that light, I probably shouldn't blame my teacher. Though he was truly a bore, even the most engaging teacher would have a difficult time making this topic interesting to most people (indeed, I'm wondering whether I should continue writing at this point, or just assume that you've all stopped reading out of boredom).

At some point, I can't recall when or why, I became interested in Senate on my own. After examining the numbers, I realized just how out of whack the distribution of seats is. One would expect that if Province A has more Senate seats than Province B, then Province A also has a larger population than Province B. There are many ways in which this fails to be true with the current distribution.

For example, every western province, from Manitoba to British Columbia has 6 Senate seats and all have populations of greater than 1 million. Compare this with Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, both of which have populations of less than 1 million and 10 Senators each. All 4 western provinces have a larger population but fewer Senators than these two eastern provinces.

We can also look at the way the seats are distributed across regions, rather than provinces. For the purposes of distributing Senate seats, the provinces are divided into four regions, Atlantic Canada, Quebec, Ontario, and Western Canada. Originally, Senate seats were distributed equally to these four regions, 24 for each. At that time, though, Newfoundland was not yet part of Canada, and thus did not have any of the 24 seats for the Atlantic region.

When Newfoundland did join confederation, 6 seats were added to the Senate for the province, rather than taking seats from the other 3 Atlantic provinces and giving them to Newfoundland. This results in a total of 30 seats for Atlantic Canada, compared to the 24 for any of the other three regions. But the total population of Atlantic provinces is smaller than the population of any of the other regions (in fact, the population is less then half that of any other region). So the region with by far the lowest population has the highest representation in the Senate.

In fact, the total population of the 4 provinces in the region is less than the populations of four out of the other six provinces. Atlantic Canada has a population of around 2.35 million, representing 6.75% of Canada's population, while holding around 28.5% of the seats in the Senate (30 out of a total of 105). The extent of the imbalance should be obvious. If it's not, it should become so when you consider the fact that Atlantic Canada has a smaller population than either of Alberta and BC, and yet has 5 times as many Senators as each do.

It's not unreasonable to over-represent provinces or regions with lower populations. Indeed, this may be considered a feature. The number of House of Commons seats allotted to each province is more reflective of the population (though the distribution has some significant flaws of its own). Since the region has such a small population, it is easy to ignore the interests of this region for the sake of other regions. Over-representing smaller provinces in the Senate makes it harder to do this.

With smaller provinces having more seats than some larger provinces and one region having 5 times as many seats as provinces with larger provinces, though, the over-representation of smaller provinces has become absurd. Because of this, a fully elected Senate with the current seat distributions would arguably be less democratic than the current appointed Senate.

Thus, in order for the Senate to be meaningfully reformed, providing a mechanism for electing Senators is not enough, and might even worsen matters. The seat distribution must also be changed. And this is where we run into problems. While some changes are possible, the seat distribution cannot be changed without changes to the constitution.

There is little appetite for this, but suppose it could be done. One way to address the imbalance is to add seats. The Senate is already large enough, however. At 105 seats, it is larger than the US Senate, despite the fact that Canada's population is only about a tenth of the US's. Adding more seats is unnecessary and should be out of the question. This means that certain provinces are would lose seats.

There are a few different options for adjusting the distribution. The two simplest are representation-by-population (or rep-by-pop, for short) and equal-representation. In rep-by-pop, the seats are assigned so that the percentage of seats that a province gets is roughly equal to that province's percentage of the total population. For equal representation, every province gets the same number of seats. Typical proposals for the Canadian Senate give 10 seats to each province (and 1 for each of the three territories, for a total of 103 seats, down two from the current 105). There are other possibilities that represent a sort of middle ground between rep-by-pop and equal, but they are harder to explain (and thus, are more likely to be rejected, since fewer people will understand them).

Regardless of the proposal, though, in order for it to pass, it needs to have the approval of 7 provinces representing 50% or more of the population. Although this might seem like a reasonable condition, the population distribution makes this a big hurdle, especially in the case of Senate reform.

Here is why.

If rep-by-pop is chosen, six of the provinces stand to lose seats. Nova Scotia and New Brunswick would go from 10 to 3 and 2, losing 7 and 8 seats respectively. Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Prince Edward Island would all lose 3 or 4 seats. Since Senate reform is more popular in Western Canada, it might be possible to convince Saskatchewan and Manitoba, despite the fact that they would lose seats. If they were on board, though, the four Atlantic provinces would likely object, meaning that at most 6 provinces would support the proposal, not enough for it to pass. (Ontario would also get 39 seats, up 15 from the current count. This massive increase in power for Ontario might make other provinces more reluctant to support the proposal).

If equal representation is chosen, then Ontario and Quebec both lose 14 seats, western provinces gain 4, as does Newfoundland and Labrador, while PEI gains 6. Nova Scotia's and New Brunswick's allotments are unaffected. Since 6 provinces gain seats, and 2 lose none, it might be easier to gain the support of these 8 provinces, but Quebec and Ontario would surely object. Ontario's population is the largest, representing nearly 40% of the population, but they only have 22% of the seats in the current distribution. It is unlikely they would be willing to let their share of the vote shrink by more than half to less than 10% (only a little more than one quarter of their population share). Quebec, due to its unique linguistic situation within Canada, is not likely to accept a share of seats in either the House of Commons or the Senate that is significantly lower than their share of population (around 24%). But Quebec and Ontario make up 62% of the population. Thus, although it might be possible to get the required 7 provinces on board, those 7 provinces will probably not represent than 50% of the population.

The above paragraphs take the negative view that, rather than act in a principled manner, the provinces would defend an obviously broken system out of self-interest. Perhaps I could be accused of not having enough faith in our elected officials. Perhaps the accuser would be right.

I also think I am right. Although the seat distribution in the House of Commons is better than in the Senate, it is not without its problems. Due to a number of rules that determine how many seats each province gets, Ontario, Alberta, and British Columbia, the fastest growing provinces, are severely underrepresented in the House.

This underrepresentation has been a problem for a while, and it's been growing. Legislation has been tabled that will rectify the situation, but when the Prime Minister announced that the three provinces would receive more seats, the smaller provinces grumbled about their loss of influence, despite the fact that their seat counts remain the same, and even under the new distribution, they will still all be over-represented in the House of Commons. Quebec also objected, and some were proposing that Quebec have a permanent 24-25% of the seats, regardless of their population share (their objections are somewhat justifiable, but the proposed solution is not). A few years ago, Ontario's premier criticised the Senate because he thought Ontario has too few seats (thus suggesting he might not understand the purpose of the Senate, but that's a matter for a different day). If he thinks Ontario should have more seats than currently, it's unlikely that he would accept a proposal that takes seats away from his province. Whenever a loss is threatened, even if it's just a relative loss, no matter how justifiable, there is opposition. Based on these examples, then, I would find it hard to accept that premiers would take a reasonable approach to Senate reform if their seat numbers could be affected.

As I wrote above, there are other ways to decide how to distribute seats among the 10 provinces and 3 territories, but they are not as natural as representation by population, nor as simple as equal representation. But the justification might not be easily understood or accepted, so I wouldn't expect them to gain much traction. Thus, it is likely a choice between the two I described. No matter which proposal is chosen, though, it is likely to fail, since either there will not be 7 or more provinces to support it or the seven or more provinces that do support it will not make up 50% or more of proportion. Therefore, meaningful Senate reform is likely impossible.

Presenting...

... Kabul Dreams, Afghanistan's first rock band.

Hat tip to Alan Cross of The Edge.

Earth/Stupid Hour

Tonight is the night of Earth Hour. From 8:30pm-9:30pm we are asked to turn off all appliances other than essential ones like the refrigerator. That means that people will be turning off their lights. The thing is, however, that most of us enjoy the ability to see our way around after the sun goes down. In fact, even those who are participating in Earth Hour seem quite unwilling to give it up. Although people are planning to turn off the lights that are powered by public utilities, many of them are still planning to illuminate their way by other means.

They're going off the grid, but they're not going off the light, and quite a lot more often than not, their preferred light source is candles. In Canada, for example, some people are going to march on Parliament Hill, candles in hand. I can't think of a stupider way to participate, except perhaps to idle the car and use the headlamps for light.

In terms of the amount of light produced compared to energy expended and emissions produced, however, candles are probably the most energy inefficient and CO2/hydrocarbon producing light source currently available (except for things like head lamps on cars, whose primary purpose is something else other than providing illumination). One might object that the total amounts of light produced, energy expended, and emissions produced by candles tonight will be negligible. And I would agree. It will be. Candles will otherwise be used only for emergencies, and birthday cakes, romantic dinners and Christmas programs, and banning them for those uses won't solve any problems that carbon emissions cause. But it's not the emissions that I have a problem with.

Although participants might be under the impression that they're doing something good for the environment merely by participating, nobody organizing the event should be under any illusions that the whole world going off the grid for an hour is going to have a significant impact on righting environmental wrongs. There are 8760 hours in a year (8784 in a leap year). Having a single-digit percent reduction in power usage for one of those hours is, like candle emissions, negligible in the grand scheme of things.

The event is mostly symbolic. Thus it would make much more sense for the choice of off-the-grid light source, if one must be chosen at all, to be symbolic of their goals, namely reduced emissions and energy use. At the very least, the advocated light source shouldn't be a candle, which symbolizes the very things that they are against. I would suggest an LED flashlight, since LED lights are probably the most efficient light source currently available [1] (and I would suggest walking to the store to get it, for reasons that should be obvious to any environmentalist with a functioning brain). It is, after all, Earth Day, and not Live-in-the-past Day.

But even choosing to light the way by private means rather than public means has a slight scent of hypocrisy, regardless of the efficiency of that choice. We are told to shut out the lights that are plugged in, but almost encouraged to use other light sources that are not. Why should we draw the line between a power source whose usage can be detected by the gauges of the utilities providers and one that might only be detected by the profit margins of the businesses that sold us the flashlight and batteries to power it?

Even as as a symbol, I'm not really impressed with events like this, where people are called on to abstain from a certain activity for a specified period of time. That which is not spent on Buy Nothing Day will have been spent by that day, or will be spent some time after. Earth Hour fares just as well. One hour is not that long to go without light. Nobody is really making that much of a sacrifice, even if they choose, though very few will, to sit silently in the dark by themselves for that time. Most people who can bear the whole hour will are not likely to try and bear another, or even a whole evening, never mind a week, a year, or a lifetime.

The sacrifices that were made for an hour will not become lifestyle changes. They will not spend countless future evenings with a bare minimum of lighting. The power consuming activities that would normally have been done from the hours of 8:30-9:30 tonight will be done from 7:30-8:30 or 9:30-10:30 instead. Before 8:30 and after 9:30, life will otherwise proceed more or less as it always has, with a bit more squinting once 9:30 hits. People will feel good about themselves for a short while, but not long after the event has passed, the amount of change will be as negligible as the carbon output of a candle, and aside from scattered bits of sanctimony, nobody will notice the event took place, until it happens again next year.

[1] The only source that I can think of that might be more efficient is compact fluorescent lights. But there are environmental issues when it comes to their disposal. Besides, they usually require a connection to the grid.

Dear Google, Pt. II

In my last post, I complained about the apparent uselessness of setting a default location in Google Maps. The address I was looking for was in Hamilton, Ontario, which is also my default location. The address it gave me was in Atlanta, Georgia. (And not only was the location way off from the location I was looking for, but the street name wasn't even the same!) The next day, I was looking for another location in Hamilton. Having learned my lesson from the day before, I remembered to include the city in my search, although I neglected to include the province. This time, Google Maps sent me to Hamilton, New Zealand. Thus, by being more specific about my location, I've caused Google Maps to be less accurate, taking me to a different continent entirely! If I include the province next time, will it suggest an address on Mars? I guess if I want Google to show me the right location, I should just enter the street number and nothing else, not even the name of the street.

As far as I can tell, the only reason to set a default location is so that, when you load Google Maps, rather than showing you a map of the whole continent, it shows you your default location. This is really quite pointless, since your default location is one that you're likely very familiar with, and thus won't need Google Maps for at all.

[1] It doesn't say much for the city of Hamilton (Ontario, Canada) that Google Maps would think I was looking for an address in a smaller city, in a smaller country, located roughly on the other side of the planet from the one I was looking for. I knew that Hamilton has a bad reputation, but I didn't know it had gotten so bad that even a website wants to avoid it.

Dear Google

What's the point of having a "default location" in Google Maps if, when I search for an address without specifying the city, you suggest a location that is 1,567 kilometres away from the location with the same address in the default city, in a city that is not even in the same country as the default?

May I make a suggestion to the IOC?

Regardless of what happens in the other events, Canada can be almost guaranteed to win a gold medal for shooting fish in a barrel women's hockey. And in the rare event that that does not happen, I can say with a very high degree of confidence that the gold would go to the US team, with Canada getting the silver.

Even most of the countries whose men's teams have prevented Canada from getting the gold, and sometimes any medal at all, do not have strong enough women's teams to be considered even remotely competitive with either the US or Canada. The exception is Sweden, who did give the US a run for its money in 2006.

Because of the highly lopsided nature of the competition in this event, there are really two competitions. One is to see whether or not this is the year where the US wins the gold and Canad silver, instead of vice versa. The other is to determine which of the remaining teams receive the bronze. All else leading up to the former competition is merely a formality, a set of large hoops to step through, which really means nothing in the end. The latter competition is really the only one that actually deserves to be called a competition, that is, where abilities of the teams are matched closely enough that the winner cannot be decided by checking to see whether the name on the jersey begins with "Canada" or "USA".

Given the imbalance, then, one wonders whether this should be an Olympic event at all. There are really only two good teams. The rest is facade, for the sake of making it look like a tournament of some sort. You couldn't cancel the event, however. First of all, Canadians need something to make them feel better about themselves when the men's hockey players that have the same citizenship as them don't acquire the medal they assume belongs to them. Second, the fans like it. That means TV ratings, which, in turn, means advertising dollars. And that means that the Olympics are less of a money-suck on the cities and countries that host them than they would be without women's hockey.

Now, Eddie the Eagle could be prohibited from participating in Olympic ski jumping because he wasn't embarrassingly bad, even though he was the best ski jumper of his country. On the flip side, though, it would hardly make sense to prevent either the US or Canada from participating because they're embarrassingly good [1]. Only picking the teams that could beat the US and Canada doesn't work either, because two teams does not an Olympic event make.

I can think of two ways to deal with this situation. Neither of these are perfect solutions, but I think both are better than the current system. The first is to simply give byes to the US and Canada until the final game where they compete for the gold and silver between them and have all of the other teams compete for the bronze. This has the benefit of sparing us from the slaughter by the North American teams, and therefore not exposing us to the currently blatant imbalance. The disadvantage is that, with all these byes, some might think it unfair that we would not be shown that the US and Canada deserve all these byes, even though we all know it to be true.

The second is to invent two new medals that the US and Canada would inevitably compete for. Platinum is more valuable than gold these days, so a platinum medal makes sense. Also, I've seen enough movies involving bomb plots to know that plutonium is also a very valuable element. It's radioactive, mind you, which may require shorter podium celebrations, which may prove unpopular. In that case, other precious metals, such as rhodium or palladium, are good candidates to name a medal after. Both of these metals can fetch prices comparable to that of gold, yet clearly, as you've never heard of them, they aren't as popular as these prices suggest they deserve to be. In addition to solving the hockey problem, popularizing one of these metals would be an added benefit. Having invented these two medal categories for the US and Canada, the remainder of the teams could then play for the gold, silver, and bronze, in something that actually resembles a true competition.

Are you listening IOC?

[1] It's not actually embarrassing that they're good. The embarrassment is the extent to which they trounce their competitors.

Mission Accomplished

Well, now that we've finally achieved that goal, can we start liking ourselves too, for reasons other than "free" health care, without being required to by the CRTC? That'd be nice.

Self-fullfilling Cryptography

One of the courses I'm teaching this term is cryptography, which is, roughly speaking, the study of sending secret messages. At first glance, one wouldn't expect that very much mathematics would be involved, but even the simple schemes that I found in my children's activity books when I was young can be phrased in mathematical terminology.

Conversely, at first glance, one wouldn't expect that the mathematics involved could ever be used for cryptography. The first time I learned about the relevant mathematics, I was not aware of its application to cryptography. It was merely presented to me, like most of the math I learned, as a series of interesting and confusing but mostly useless results. In fact, when I first saw this material, it seemed to be just about the most useless and abstract math I had ever learned.

The fact that it didn't appear to have any use was not a deterrent for me. I still wanted to study it. Yet I was often asking myself "So what? Who cares about greatest common divisors and all that, other than mathematicians?" So one of my motivations when I decided I wanted to teach this course was to learn about the different ways in which this seemingly useless mathematics could be used to solve so-called "real life" problems. So here I am, teaching cryptography.

Recently I handed out on assignment, which was due this past Wednesday. I took a cursory glance at one of the assignments that was handed in and noticed a strange solution to one of the questions. But as I looked more carefully, I saw that he had done everything right.

In preparing this assignment, there were some other questions for which I needed to encode substantially large pieces of text, so I wrote some short programs to assist me. After, I saw the student's strange but correctly obtained answer, I re-examined my code. It turns out I made two small errors. In one case, I misinterpreted a command, which almost did what I wanted it to, but in the reverse order that I needed it to. In the other case, I used the wrong scheme for representing text numerically. It's more natural to represent letters A,B,...,Z by the numbers 1,2,...,26, but in cryptography, we represent A,B,...,Z by the number 0,1,...,25. I used 24 to represent the letter X, according to the more natural scheme, when I should have used 23, as any good cryptographer would. The answer that the students would come to, after doing everything as I told them to, was

ihavf nui bffn sucyfxyaseull.

Kudos to you if you could have figured out what that's supposed to say. The message that they should have gotten, had I not made those errors, is

I have not been successful.

Indeed, I have not.

The Buzz is Wearing Off

Well that didn't last long. In my previous post, I expressed my discomfort with Google's practice of automatically selecting my followers without my permission, thus allowing some people access to information about me that I would not like to share with those people. The simple fact that a person emails me a lot is not an indicator that I want them to know what I'm up to, if I actually decided that Buzz would be the conduit through which people find out what I'm up to, which I haven't and very likely won't. But regardless of the presumptuous practices of Google, I don't see Buzz catching on.

Perhaps gmail users who have been resistant to the pressures of joining Facebook will be tricked into using social media by the new Buzz. For those people, Buzz will be like those freebies they give out at Starbucks if you sit there long enough. Most people take the little sample of an item, but very few actually go and buy the item itself.

Non-gmail users who aren't using social media yet, but might, would be better off going to Facebook, which is open to gmail and non-gmail users alike and probably already has most of their friends on it, than starting up a gmail account and starting from scratch. Unlike regular gmail users, they wouldn't even have the benefit, if it can be called such, of an automatically generated list of followers and followees, since those lists are based on gmail activity, which would not yet exist in a new gmail account. On the other hand, if they want to, new users to Facebook can ask it to scour their email accounts (gmail or otherwise), for email contacts (gmail or otherwise) who are already on there.

And I doubt that many people will switch to Buzz from from its intended rivals, Twitter and Facebook. It offers fewer features than Facebook, and perhaps a few more than Twitter (which I don't use, so I don't know). Facebook users complain when the menu on the bottom right gets moved to the top left, so I doubt they'll be happy with a potential replacement that doesn't offer the menu at all. And Twitter, like blogging, is a very public thing, whereas email is private [1]. To use Buzz like Twitter, then, they would need to turn something private into something public. But why would they give up that privacy when they already have Twitter? Besides, if they really really want to use their gmail accounts for Facebook and/or Twitter, they can.

[1] I.e. although the email address might be public, if we assume that passwords have not been compromised, then only I can write to someone from my account, only they can read what I wrote to them, and vice versa.

Not what I think of when I say I'm into photography

Having discovered this site, I'm glad that I'm usually the one behind the camera. Furthermore, a greater amount of kicking and screaming will be involved in the future than there has been in the past if anybody in my family ever decides to have another family photo done. Actually, I might have some material the site could use....

Buzz Cut

Yesterday, when I loaded gmail, it asked me whether or not I wanted to use their new "Buzz" service. It's their latest attempt to ride the social media wave [1], currently led by facebook and twitter. Not knowing what it was and being impatient to see if I had any new email, I clicked "no". When gmail loaded, I noticed that there was a link to "buzz" on the gmail menu, along with a coloured icon to distinguish it from the other links.

After reading my new emails, I clicked the link hoping to satisfy my curiosity and find out what this new "Buzz" thing was. Find out, I did not. I was brought to what I'm guessing is the main Buzz page, where I discovered that I was already "following" 13 people and 4 people were already "following" me, meaning, I guess, that I can find out what 13 people are doing with Buzz, and 4 people can find out what I'm doing on Buzz, if they're so inclined.

Obviously, I never chose either my followees or my followers. Google did that for me, based solely on the numbers of emails between me and other gmail users (non-gmail users are excluded, apparently). Presumptuous as it is, the fact that Google decided which people I would follow is not so worrisome for me (although it might be for those people, depending on their opinion of me). However, I wasn't comfortable at all knowing that people would have access to information about me, without having given them my permission. I looked around for a way to remove certain followers from my list, people with whom I prefer to share little or no information. I tried, right clicking, left clicking, mousing over, but nothing worked. I suspect, though I'm not sure, that the reason for this is that these people haven't started using Buzz yet, but when they do, they will be following me. So not only did I not choose these future followers, I didn't appear to have any way of preventing them from following me if they ever do get Buzzed.

This is just one privacy issue that I've found regarding people I actually know. Those more knowledgeable than I about privacy on the internet have found their own issues about privacy regarding what information Buzz makes available, by default, to the general public.

Facebook has its own privacy issues. But at least you make the decision to sign up for it yourself, rather than have Google sign you up for it without your asking (or rather, despite your declining the invitation), and you choose your friends rather than Google making them for you. Not only that, but, even though it takes a bit of work to find and wade through facebook's privacy settings, if you're willing to root around on the menus for a few seconds, you can find them. With Buzz, there isn't a link to settings, or even to the help section for that matter.

After a bit of googling (ha), though, I managed to find the Buzz help pages. It turns out that they're embedded into the gmail help pages. I did find instructions for removing or blocking followers, but after some unsuccessful attempts at using those instructions, I decided it was best to ditch Buzz altogether.

The instructions for that are simple, if not obvious. Just look for the "turn off buzz" link in the tiny letters at the bottom of the gmail page. They're effective too. I was successful on my first attempt.

[1] They have something called "Orkut" which is also considered social media, but nobody seems to know about it outside of Iran (Really. I don't remember how I heard about it the first time, but the only people I know of who use Orkut are from Iran, where it is, apparently quite popular. But it's no facebook).

Finally Photography

Hello. I have finally taken the time to upload a bunch of pictures that I took from sometime between the third last week in August and the second Saturday of September.

Enjoy.

Thank you Mr. Libeskind

I remember when the design of the addition to the Royal Ontario Museum, called the Lee-Chin Crystal, was first announced, early in the first decade of the third millennium. I thought it was ghastly. I dismissed my opinions as those of an uncultured buffoon. My roommate at the time agreed with me, without solicitation. That made two uncultured buffoons, I guess. Perhaps this was an architectural masterpiece, and we were just too improperly educated to appreciate it. In any case, I hoped that they would reject the design and go for something else. They didn't.

My current roommate, a graduate of the Ontario College of Art & Design, feels the same way. Hmmm, so even arts students are against it.

I've yet to meet somebody who likes the design.

In any case, it's close to the end of the decade now, and they are close to finishing the project. Lucky Toronto, they are finally getting the international attention they crave.

It's days like this...

...that I'm most proud of my heritage.

Truth in

Some time ago I was flipping through the radio stations when I happened to hear about some sort of remedy to some sort of health problem that I thought I was having at the time. I don't remember what the problem was, but I didn't like it and wanted it to stop. If I'm still suffering the same disorder, I probably still don't like it. The remedy, in any case, involved magnets. I listened intently as they talked about the benefits of magnets, as I was eager to be cured of my ails. I listened until the end (which didn't take long since I tuned in half-way through), when I was informed that this was a paid advertisement. I was let down, although not too surprised. They spoke convincingly about their supposed solution, as if this solution had actually been tested, but their claims were unusual and sounded too good to be true. If I had known from the outset that I was listening to an ad, I would have changed the station immediately.

Although it takes more effort to read a paper than it does to listen to a radio station, one advantage is that when somebody publishes an advertisement that bears the appearance of an article, the newspapers have the courtesy to write a suggestive word such as "advertisement" at the top of the page. Any claims in the middle of the page that seem to be bunkum can be verified as such simply by directing one's gaze upward, thus saving a lot of time that might otherwise have been spent reading bunkum.

This being the age of free stuff on the Internet, newspapers have taken to publishing large portions of online offerings. In doing so, however, they seem to have dispensed with the courtesy of notifying their readers that what appears to be an article is in fact an advertisement.

Festive Photo

Here

Would the honourable members please stop saying stupid things

Yesterday or the day before, HBC unveiled Canada's Olympic clothing for the upcoming Vancouver 2010 Olympics. My reaction was "Ho hum. I don't think I'll buy any," the same reaction I've had for generations of Olympic clothing. Politicians don't share my views. For example Hedy Fry, Liberal MP for Vancouver Centre, has this to say.

"Here is another embarrassing example of crass politics"

She's referring to the fact that both the Conservative Party's logo and the Olympic Hockey logo consist of a stylized C with a maple leaf in the middle. I guess she failed to notice that both Canada and Conservative start with the letter "C" and both are from Canada, whose national symbols include the maple leaf. Myself I've noticed that Liberal logos tend to be mostly red, and featuring a maple leaf, much like Olympic clothing from previous years. She goes on to say,

"Can the prime minister at least stop trying to politicize the Canadian Winter Olympics?"

I think she said "prime minister" when she meant to "Hedy Fry". There's more.

"I think the government should have said ‘I think that this is too similar, people may think that there is a similarity. They may think we are trying to advertise and therefore, we shouldn't do this. Let's find a different kind of logo,' that is what (they) should have said."

From which we extrapolate the general principal that future designers of Olympic clothing should be required to exclude any symbols or colours that are part of any federal party's logo. She concludes (I hope)

"I think the government should have said ‘I think that this is too similar, people may think that there is a similarity. They may think we are trying to advertise and therefore, we shouldn't do this. Let's find a different kind of logo,' that is what (they) should have said,"

Yeah, we'll just whip up a new batch. BRB.

Sadly, Hedy Fry is not alone. From Charlie Angus, the NDP MP for Timmins-James Bay, we get

"If Minister Lunn thinks he can go into a Tim Hortons anywhere in Canada and tell an average hockey fan that this is not the Conservative party logo, then Mr. Lunn thinks the Canadians are stupider."

Fans of other sports at Tim Horton's and hockey fans at Starbucks will not likely be able to spot the similarities. I can't speak for Mr. Lunn, but I know who I think is stupider. It's not the Canadians. With all the orange on them, it's clear the NDP was involved in the design of the Dutch Soccer (sorry "football") jerseys. I bought my coffee at Tim Horton's this morning. I'm not stupid. I see their influence all over. The team kindly requests that the NDP stop interfering.

In conclusion, thank goodness for the Conservative Party of Canada that the Toronto Maple Leafs, with their blue sweaters prominently displaying a maple leaf, actually write their name on the front of their sweaters, lest the intelligentsia at Tim's across the country uncover the horrible truth that the whole team is actually just a marketing tool for the party.

Seasons

The meteorologists tell us when the seasons begin and end. Winter is the shortest day, Summer the longest. Spring begins when days become longer than nights, and Fall the opposite. They can tell us this all they want, but we all have our own definitions. Winter begins at the first snowfall and summer when the shorts come out of storage. Spring begins when the maple trees start showing signs of life and fall began yesterday.

Pics

More.

Off to a good start

Mathematics is an easy subject to study anywhere. My brain, somewhere to write my thoughts, something to write them with, and maybe a math text or two are pretty much all I need (well, those and coffee). This and a shortage of keys to my office [1] for the first half of the summer meant that I got into a routine of working either at home or at a nearby coffee shop. By the time I finally did get my key, the routine was set. Even though I had the key, I continued to work in the same old pre-key locations.

Mathematics is not an easy subject to teach anywhere, however. You need to be in a classroom, and in multi-section courses, you need to coordinate with other profs. Today, I had a meeting with the two professors who will be teaching the other sections of one of my courses. It was the first time I had been back in almost two weeks, and the first time I actually needed the office key. After the meeting, I walked toward my office, along with one of the other professors from the meeting. I reached into my pocket for my keys, then turned to the prof beside me, and said, "It wouldn't be a start of a new school year if I didn't lock myself out of my office on my first day back." Fortunately for me, the head of the department has a master key.

Sometimes the fact that I have a PhD still seems unbelievable to me. My teachers always saw the potential in me, if their report card comments can be believed, even though my grades didn't usually reflect it. I'm now finally beginning to see what they saw. Already in grade school, I was misplacing keys at the PhD level.

[1] For security reasons (which no longer seem all that relevant), RMC recently upgraded its locks to a more secure type of lock. Among its features is the difficulty of making copies. Unless you "know a guy", it can only be done by the company who installed the locks in the first place, not at the local key shop and not at any on-site facilities, and apparently it can only be done at a snails pace.