I randomly passed Rahim Jaffer on campus today. He was walking holding hands with his wife (presumably).
She’ll have to jet back to Ottawa by Monday for the big vote.
Monthly Archives: January 2009
On budget amendments and polls
It’s a little harder to find, but there’s actually a second amendment on the table for the budget.
We all know about the Liberal one by now, full of rhetoric and no teeth. Basically demanding, in the harshest terms, that the Conservatives feign accountability over their budget.
But the Bloc Quebecois has another one that goes to the vote tonight:
A Bloc Quebecois amendment to the federal budget which urges the government to extend EI eligibility and lend more support to the forestry and manufacturing sectors faces a vote in Parliament Thursday evening.
The Bloc amendment also aims to derail a pan-Canadian securities commission and accuses the Tories of giving tax cuts to the wealthy.
The changes, which include a section to “maintain the right of women to settle pay equity issues in court,” go to a vote in the House of Commons at 6:30 p.m. Thursday.
This is an amendment I believe the NDP support, as judged from their latest press release:
On the same day that President Obama passed a bill to protect pay equity in the United States, the Conservative and Liberal parties are set to vote down a budget amendment that would do the same for Canada.
I can’t find too many sources talking about this amendment, but if the Liberals truly wanted to make a progressive budget, these are a few steps in the right direction.
Hell, if this amendment passes, Harper would be forced to justify or backtrack on his relentless attacks on women or lose power to it. But that’s wishful thinking.
The unfortunate reality will be that Ignatieff is much more comfortable in a “coalition” with Harper than he ever would be with Layton or Duceppe.
I have to chastise the CTV article on this amendment however, as it claims that Liberal support is up in Quebec since the budget support was announced:
Earlier Thursday, a new poll showed the Liberals establishing a strong lead over the Conservatives in Quebec, and even challenging the Bloc Quebecois in the all important province.
…
He’s looking strong just one day after putting his amendment on the Conservatives’ federal budget, and seems to be gaining popularity in Quebec, where he has a good relationship with Liberal Premier Jean Charest.
Oh no, CTV, don’t admit the poll was taken before parliament even resumed (Jan 15-25), or that the now-dead coalition was always most popular in Quebec. Who knows what Quebecers will actually think after seeing Ignatieff throw his support against the Bloc amendment and behind Harper’s ConLib budget?
My bet’s that they’ll stay with the Bloc.
Update: As expected, the amendment failed 214-85 (the NDP did support the amendment).
The UAAA gets email
And here I thought most people were generally satisfied (not happy, but “content”) with the new convocation charge, and then the UAAA gets emails like this one from Jack Kotyk:
Well let me tell you how totally insignificant your efforts really are. So you want to be atheists that is your choice why not let everyone else believe what they chose. How wasted your efforts are trying to get the convocation address changed. So you win big deal, you seem like behaviorally challenged juveniles. Now get on with your petty lives.
Sometimes people give me that warm feeling inside. Oh wait, that’s indigestion…
Site updates and Blogger Followings
Two quick notes:
First, if you’re not reading this in RSS, you’ll notice a new Theme in place. Just one of those things I’ve been meaning to do lately.
I also moved some of the blogrolls and sidebars around. Changes are ongoing, and I may make a new banner at some point (consider this all as homework procrastination).
Second, if you are using Blogger I will not “Follow” your blog. I am already (likely) subscribed through Google Reader and am annoyed at the fact it doubly imports your posts into my reader (no offence to your writing).
Bear with me as changes occur (likely also to the About page and a few other spots).
Coalition no more
We were all certain in some part of our head since the proroguation, but with Ignatieff giving Harper back the political power in Canada, I formally remove my support for a Liberal-NDP coalition in this country. (As such the Coalition Bloggers button has been removed.)
Ignatieff likely did what’s best for himself and the Liberal Party, but that doesn’t mean he did what’s best for Canada.
Apparently I’m “socially autistic”
From the Catholic, yet apparent Vox Day worshipping Kenneth Hynek (with whom I think the only thing we could agree upon is Dr. Lamoureux’s generally reasonable position on the evolution-creation debates) comes this position (coined oh-so-eloquently by Mr. Day):
And actually, in looking at Mr. Bushfield’s online persona, I have to say: he certainly seems to fit the profile of the socially autistic Pharyngulan that Vox Day noted a while back:
An Australian study into the sexual history of 185 students at the University of Sydney found male science “nerds” were the least likely to have had sexual intercourse.
Apparently when you have nothing nice to say, rather than say nothing, you should always tease. It’s like we’re in elementary school again. Yay for the internet.
Anyways, before I drop to his level and poke fun, let’s bash this survey a bit.
More female students (78 per cent) than male (22 per cent) agreed to take part in the survey.
Shit, that means they interviewed around 40 guys. Assuming that they had a representative population sample from a school with enrolments similar to the UofA (I’m going to use this reference and exclude education, as this is based on degrees/diplomas/certificates and I couldn’t quickly find actual enrolment data), that would make for 9 arts students, 8 science, 5 in engineering, business and nursing, 2 in medicine and phys-ed, and 1 in each of law and pharmacy (roughly). Of course, I assumed there’s as many guys as girls in each faculty (which is off for ones like nursing and engineering), but the goal here is the same.
Basically, they interviewed at total of under 20 guys in science and engineering and concluded that they have less sex? I call bullshit on this survey.
Whether or not their conclusion is true, this is not a valid survey, and I don’t think it’s worth bringing up ever.
Now, that also is negated by the fact that I have a steady girlfriend, who I’ve been dating for nearly two years and live with (yes, in sin). So yes, I do get laid as regularly as a Catholic priest, only I don’t need the alter-boys to get some.
We can also say using terms like “socially autistic” is legitimately offencive to people who do suffer from autism, but I don’t take people like Kenneth here to give much care to others feelings.
Finally, I think there’s a special place in the blog-o-sphere hell for people who self-link almost 30 times in a single post (and not once to something he’s actually written before, but merely to tag pages). Once or twice in a post is fine, if it adds to what you’re trying to say. But shameless self-promotion for the sake of stroking his hit counter? Give me a break.
So to conclude, as Patrick Ross already hates my activities, it’s good to have a second nemesis.
What would Harper do?
I realized another way to look at Ignatieff’s choice for how to proceed on the budget. He needs to ask himself “What would Harper do?”
Let’s hypothesize:
After a tense political struggle, a politically weakened Michael Ignatieff and his ruling minority Liberals returned to parliament to present a budget that would appease the threat of a coalition of the Harper Conservatives and Layton NDP.
Finance Minister John McCallum’s budget came out like a shotgun blast with money for everyone. It also ended up reversing the 11-year trend, started by the Conservatives, of budget surpluses. It also seemed to try to appeal to soft conservatives with lots of tax cuts.
Further, most of the releases of the past week have not featured Ignatieff, instead featuring his top ministers. Prior to the fiascos of the end of 2008, Ignatieff had held a tight leash on all his ministers.
This all signalled to Harper that Iggy and the Liberals are weak. Bolstered by a rise in the polls at the expense of his competition, Harper plans to pounce and remove Ignatieff and the Liberals from their position of power.
Harper wouldn’t blink at an opportunity like this.
Now, this isn’t to say whether or not Iggy should play the same kinds of games as Harper, but at this point, Harper’s still setting the rules.
Squirrel Physics
Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy is having some issues with squirrels attempting to defeat quantum mechanics.
But I think this requires a closer look and a bit more physics.
In his first picture (Squirrel Wavelength), we see the squirrels would travel with approximately 1/4 a fence-length wavelength. We’ll call this a wavelength of 0.25.
In the newer picture, taken at a lower temperature, we can estimate a wavelength of roughly 0.1 (it’s a little shorter but that’s not too much of an issue).
Phil’s concern is that quantum mechanics predicts that as temperature decreases, wavelengths increase. However, by demonstrating this relationship, these squirrel’s have disproved quantum mechanics!
Now, one commenter suggests that this could be due to multiple squirrels superimposing their tracks, or even one squirrel that crossed the fence multiple times, however, this explanation is just not fun enough for these sorts of exercises.
The general relationship for energy and wavelength is given by E = hc/?, where E is the energy, h is Planck’s constant, c is the speed of light and ? is the wavelength. Energy is proportional to temperature, so wavelength is inversely proportional to temperature.
But there’s a problem here: the squirrel’s aren’t moving at c (roughly 300 000 km/s), they aren’t even moving at a constant velocity!
If we assume that the frequency of the squirrels, f=v/? where v is the velocity of the squirrel, is constant (a safe assumption for most waves), then we can figure out a relationship for the squirrels velocity with respect to temperature.
So since the squirrel’s wavelength decreases with temperature, to maintain the constant frequency relationship, we must infer that the velocity increases with decreasing temperature!
Basically, the little buggers move faster because it’s really cold.
This relationship will have to be further developed as it only takes into account non-relativistic squirrels, and the relationship would seem to imply that as the temperature continually dropped, the squirrels would approach near infinite speeds!
There’s a caveat here though: at a finite temperature the body functions of the squirrel will shut down and kill the vermin, thereby preserving the laws of physics for us all.
Does Harper just hate women?
Well, the budget’s out.
Lots of spending, tax cuts, and wishful thinking that this path will achieve a balanced budget by 2013. No surprises there.
Here’s some big issues though:
The budget also contains no mention of childcare spaces and maintains the attack on women’s ability to pursue pay equity complaints.
Honestly Steve, what do you have against women?
Does your wife support these measures?
Here’s hoping Iggy calls bullshit tomorrow rather than in a few months when it’s convenient for him. To let this budget pass is to say that Canada has two parties that don’t believe women have equal rights in the workplace.
Update: It’s worth going to the source, which states:
Structural Changes
Budget 2009 includes three structural changes, which were announced in the November 27, 2008 Economic and Fiscal Statement:
…
The existing complaint-based pay equity regime is a lengthy, costly and adversarial process that does not serve employees or employers well. Legislation to modernize the pay equity regime for federal public sector employees will be introduced. [emphasis added]
We changed convocation
Although the change isn’t as far as I (or many of the petitioners) would have hoped, the University did change the convocation charge.
Before it commanded us to use our degrees for “the glory of God and honour of your country.” Now, through committee hell (which does exist), we get:
“for the uplifting of the whole people; to inspire the human spirit; for all who believe, to serve your God; and to pursue more steadfastly whatsoever things are true.”
The media blitz has hit again, and the story has been covered on the local TV networks, the Journal, the Sun, the Calgary Herald, and a ton of papers from Vancouver to Halifax (again). I’m not going to tally them this time, but here’s a rough count.
I will say I am pleased that this is a step forward. I’ll take a minor victory over getting nothing.
I’m most disappointed in the administration however. Once Provost Amrhein decided upon this version of the charge, there was no debate left. At GFC Exec he stepped down as an impartial chair to move this one over more secular ones (that had strong support as well). Then, at GFC he and President Indira tag-teamed to crush debate on the issue (consider this: the total length of the debate in GFC was under 40 minutes, including the introduction of the issue).
I proposed an amendment at GFC to remove the religious portion, and received 30 votes in favour (to 59 against), however before anyone was even allowed to comment on my amendment, Indira called on everyone to ‘vote against the amendment” (in a way that confused nearly everyone). The impartiality died and they pushed through exactly what they wanted.
I shouldn’t have expected much less, considering Carl Amrhein’s “consultation” of the issue consisted of a personal call with the Catholic Archdiocese of Edmonton, and friends from St. Joe’s (Catholic) College.
It was nice to get a mention on Pharyngula though.
Finally, I want to send a big “screw you” to CBC for their latest coverage of the event. Mainly for this line that ended their article:
Bushfield said he no longer plans on boycotting his own convocation.
When did I ever say I was going to boycott convocation?
I maintained a strong “play-it-by-ear” attitude with this, and NEVER said I would boycott anything.