Kvetching Turds

So the throne speech includes this: “Canadians live within their means and expect their governments to do the same.”

That sounds familiar: “But families across the country are tightening their belts and making tough decisions. The federal government should do the same.” Obama said that not too long ago.

In both cases the remarks are vague enough to be both true and disconcerting.

The throne speech comment is followed immediately with “Spending designed for a rainy day should not become an all-weather practice.” Again, vague enough to be both true and disconcerting.

Spending isn’t necessarily bad. Spending more than you make isn’t necessarily bad either. So long as the spending is useful.

Also, I don’t know about the rest of the country, but there’s clearly a housing bubble in Toronto. You can rent for well below the cost of owning. Maybe this is a demographic thing with too many 20- and 30-somethings buying a house just because it’s what you’re supposed to do? I don’t know, it’s a hypothesis I’m not going to examine right now. Or a rush ahead of the increased restrictions? Are there readily available data on the types of mortgages being taken out? When everything crashes, the next mayor’s going to be fucked.

Ok. Final figures. Final changes.

First is a weighted ranking. For this, a bronze medal is worth one point, a silver is worth two points, and a gold four. You can tweak this however, but that’s the ranking I settled on, the feeling being that a the difference in value between a gold medal and a silver should be worth at least as much as the difference in value between a silver and a bronze.

Second is a ranking showing an average rank of how well a country performed (on an unweighted basis by medal) based on how populous the country, and by how productive the country (using GDP). (click to see full image)

Third is a ranking showing the same as the above (an average rank of how well a country performed based on how populous the country, and by how productive the country (using GDP)) using gold medals only.(click to see full image)

Why is it that whenever I see a headline along the lines of “[something something something] mayoral candidate says,” if I think “gee, that ‘[something something something]‘ is totally ass,” the “mayoral candidate” is Rocco Rossi?

Given Canada’s gold resurgence, and the wishful argument that gold is really the medal that matters, I’ve added columns based on gold medals only.

For display I’ve broken it into three charts. The first based on total medals. The second based on gold medals. The third just showing the average quick ranking of the two.

I also fixed a mistake in the “Medals/10,000,000 People” formula, those numbers were wrong before (for some reason it was assuming everybody had exactly 24 medals).

As before, clicking will open the full image if it’s looking compressed in the main post.

Canada’s by far the biggest country near the top of that list, so maybe that’s an accomplishment? I guess the marketing was just off. Instead of “Own the podium” it should have been “Own the podium so far as mid-sized high income countries go when favouring gold medals in determining rank.” Yes!

Otherwise, Norway’s still kicking ass.

Canadian researches “have found that the eye perceives red as moving faster than other colours.”

And a hierarchy: “The researchers found that there’s a hierarchy of colours when it comes to speed of eye movement, with red at the top, then green, yellow and blue.”

The headline-worthiness of the article comes then from the leap that olympic judges may perceive athletes in red as moving slightly faster, which could be an advantage.

But this wasn’t a test for that. Instead of having “five participants” take part in “thousands of tests where they watched coloured dots moving on a computer screen,” you need a test where a legitimate sample of people watch objects of various colours moving in a more human-type of path, and see how they estimate speed. Presumably that’s been done before.

There’s also a leap to go from “the eye moves faster when tracking red objects” to “red objects seem to move faster.”

The study authors seem aware of the limits, but the article likes to blow things out of proportion.

Red is dangerous. Our body pays more attention to tracking it. Maybe wearing red makes the judges sense fear on some level. How about that? Stupid article.

Well, not exactly.

So I’m not sure if there’s an easy way to go from .ods to an html table or something, so until I figure that out the fastest thing is going to be a screenshot.

Below is a list of all currently medal-winning countries (according to Yahoo), with data added from Wikipedia for population and GDP (PPP).^*

(click image to view in full res)

Great Britain sucks. Norway Rules. Conveniently, I already have an “I’m moving to Norway” category.

^*I had a brief internal struggle about PPP vs. nominal. I settled without much thought. Maybe Olympic skill is something that some countries can produce more cheaply? I don’t know.

It reads:

Own the Podium dream over: Canadian official

Really?

We need an official statement?

I assumed it was a goal rather than an expectation. That these people seem to have seriously thought otherwise is strange, and seems to only hurt them, because it means they’re both ridiculous and failures. As opposed to the Olympians, who have performed admirably both in their events and in the face of countless reporters asking them “How disappointed are you?” or of each other “How disappointed should we be?” With the athletes, not very. With yourselves, very.

Morons.

The headline of this Canadian Press article (via CBC) seems blatantly terrible: “5 Muslims jailed for Australian terror plot.”

At least throw the word “extremist” in there.

It seems lost will end with its worst season ever, so that’s good.

24 got bad fast, usually it takes a few more episodes for me to decide I can’t watch anymore. Although I do like what seems to be the message of this season. The message is no longer that torture is ok in extreme situations, it’s that torture is ok in extreme situations if and only if the person doing the torturing is Jack.

So there’s a deal. And apparently it’s the same one rejected a year ago, but I’m not sure about the validity of that claim.

In any case, James Laxer seems to hit one of the main veins of criticism on this:

In return for this “concession” from Washington, Ottawa has agreed to pay an unacceptably high price. Under the deal, Canadian provinces and municipalities will permanently give up the right to favour local companies in awarding contracts.

So we’re upset because to get something from them, we’ve had to give the same thing in return?

Then there’s the issue–which James hits on in the title of his post–that parliament isn’t sitting, so there’s no debate on this. And presumably the whole thing’s meaningless until ratified by parliament, though I’m not clear on whether that’s the case.

Um. Canada has better health care because Canada has better health outcomes. Not because it treats rich people better than everyone else.

The Star has an article regarding a video posted to Youtube.

In a tongue-and-cheek video posted by the politician on YouTube, Councillor Adam Giambrone shows himself working out to prove that he has the “years of physical and mental training that it takes to run the city.”

After a brief discussion of the video and some initial reactions (i.e. Youtube commenters, i.e. the worst people in the world), the article concludes with this:

Giambrone is expected to announce his candidacy for mayor on Feb.1.

In what sense has he not already announced it? He was on 102.1 a couple days ago in the morning talking about how he’s not confirming or denying that he’ll be running, but that everyone is invited to Revival on Feb. 1.

At the end of the video, the last thing (and the first serious thing) Giambrone says is “I’m Adam Giambrone, and I’m ready.” The video then invites everyone out to Revival on Feb. 1.

Either he’s running, or he’s being paid by Revival.

He’s running. He just hasn’t filled out the forms.

Do young people vote in municipal elections? Serious question.

Apparently DC is imposing a charge for plastic bags, just like the one here in Toronto.

I think one of the key positive things the tax has accomplished is making it socially acceptable to bring your own bags to the grocery store. The canvas bags now used by most people (and sold by most grocery stores) are far superior to plastic bags. I can carry in two bags what previously would have needed eight. And I don’t have to worry that one of those bags will have its bottom fall out the first time I decide to rush across a busy intersection.

Without making it an everybody thing, it’s awkward to say “Oh, don’t worry, I carry my own bags.” Because people who carry their bags are, you know, bag people.

I was initially sceptical of the “But look at facebook” polling, but given there are 177,000 people in the facebook group for Canadians Against Prorogue, and that 58% (of the 67% who are aware of it) are against prorogue, it’s clear there’s generally large opposition to the motion. It would be nice to think that this could be the kind of event that would politicize a generation, awoken by a cynical act in such a pure anti-democratic spirit. It would be nice to see this play out in a meaningful way, to see the Conservatives branded as the big party that wouldn’t. Given polling on where the parties stand, I’m guessing it will pass with too much effect.

Canada’s good for old people.

The main thing hurting Canada, it seems, is the weather.

The US ranks higher. Because seniors have health care. Of course Canada outranks on the Human Development Index.

See what happens when people get healthcare?

Busy packing/moving for the next week or so, but just saw that everybody in Connecticut thinks Joe Lieberman is a loser, which is exactly what he is and exactly what he deserves, and it’s kind of freaking me out that the right conclusion came out of the right circumstances.

Apparently Walmart is trying to do some good to reduce the material used in overpackaged products.

I actually do own something to make opening packages easier, and I haven’t bled since buying it.

I’m guessing this is less a case of a Walmart board meeting with the agenda “How can we help the environment?” and more the case of a Walmart board meeting with the agenda “What are we already trying to do that happens to help the environment?”

Walmart ships bazillions of cubic whatevers of goods around. If they can cut down on the size of the packaging, they can ship more product in less space.

I’m not saying it’s not good, I’m just saying let’s not kid ourselves about their motivations.

Harper will soon appoint new senators to give the Conservatives a plurality, if not a majority, in the Senate.

The original plan was basically to cap terms as a first step to abolishing the whole thing. Since he couldn’t get that accomplished, Harper said “Fine, y’all can go fuck yourselves” and made a bunch of appointments.

That’s not so much hypocritical as it is highlighting problems by creating those problems yourself.

But Harper could soon have a majority in the Senate. And he could have one in the House, depending on how things go in the next six months. If he gets both, and then doesn’t move on Senate reform, at that point he’d have some serious explaining to do. Though at that point, maybe that means there won’t be enough people caring to demand it.

I never liked Ignatieff. From the beginning I found his statements lacking, from either a political or intellectual perspective. But I knew people who liked him, smart people. And those people no longer like him. It seems Liberal support has settled on the level of people-who-vote-Liberal-no-matter-what. Those who actively require vision have left for NDP or Green. Those who are assholes have left for Conservative.

With a potential election always potentially months away under a minority government, it’s not easy to replace a party leader without seeming to put the party into a position of election unpreparedness. I think the main Liberal strategy right now has to be not about how to take down Harper, but to determine the optimal timing for selecting a new leader. And the whole party had better quickly get behind someone (as they did behind Ignatieff), because any infighting will only hurt.

Despite (or because of?) his unwillingness to govern, I have a feeling we may be seeing Harper for quite a while still.

The CBC image of the prorogation notice was 7:08pm.

The article at canada.com is from 8:06pm.

This blog post from the Prime Minister’s Office is from 4:23pm (according to the timestamp on my Google Reader):

Prime Minister Stephen Harper today announced that the second and final phase of Canada’s Economic Action plan will be launched following the Olympic Games with a new Throne Speech on March 3 and a federal Budget on March 4.

“Our priority in the new session of Parliament will continue to be rapid and effective implementation of Canada’s Economic Action Plan to benefit communities, workers and businesses,” the Prime Minister said. “At the same time, we are already looking ahead to future challenges. These include restoring a balanced budget once our economy is fully recovered and building a strong foundation for our economic future.”

Almost a year ago – in the face of the deepest worldwide recession since the Second World War – the Government of Canada responded to extraordinary times with extraordinary action. It introduced Canada’s Economic Action Plan, which included one of the most comprehensive stimulus packages in the industrialized world.

“While we see tentative, early signs that the economy is emerging from recession, the recovery is still fragile,” Prime Minister Harper said. “Now is no time to change course. In fact, we must press on with the second year of Canada’s Economic Action Plan.

“Our plan remains helping those who need it now, stimulating new job growth, protecting existing jobs and ensuring that our economy emerges from the recession in a stronger position than it entered it.”

The irony of the first two paragraphs is overwhelming.