Or rather: Didn’t. The envelope was empty. The image on the left shows how I was robbed, the one on the right shows some curious stamping — apparently the envelope, which took almost a week to arrive, made a stop in Fraud Prevention.

Too bad it didn’t make a stop in Theft Prevention.

The first two things I remember learning about the post were, first, that opening other people’s mail was a cardinal sin. Second, that postmen were the most unrepentant of sinners — thieves, all: “Never mail anything valuable,” our parents told us.

Of course, this was all before postal workers got their reputation as violent psychopaths.

Email is driving this backwards institution under, and good riddance to bad rubbish. “You can’t send physical objects via email,” their line of last defence goes (not yet anyway).

And it’s clear you can’t send them via the post either.

Maybe I’m applying my hostile attribution bias here. Maybe the cap fell out because of a sorting machine and it was routed to fraud prevention for investigation, and cleared there.

So: Canada Post is either full of criminals, or incompetent. Where’s my explanation and apology?

In any case, I don’t know how an individual or business could trust them. Why risk it? Why wouldn’t I just use FedEx or similar — someone who actually cares about customer service?

The planning department for the City of Victoria has a micro survey with just two questions, in the hopes of getting as many responses as possible. They’ve identified twelve issues, from affordable housing to heritage protection. For each issue, you specify how well it’s currently being addressed. Then you get 10 points to allocate between the issues to advise them how to spread their attention. It’s quick, elegant and it gets my stamp of approval as a voting system.

Dan, who is apparently an honorary member of the planning department, has come up with another micro survey tool. On Twitter, post a tweet how you imagine Victoria in 30 years (add the #VicOCP hashtag). If you don’t have a Twitter account, add a comment to this post with few enough characters and I’ll retweet it (eg: “RT Jack:[125 characters]#VicOCP”). Here’s mine:

Distinct. Dense: 200,000 people. Bike & pedestrian oriented. Diverse industries; most of CRD’s jobs. Amalgamated. #VicOCP

Prove Yule Heibel wrong that we have no vision for our city.

John Carpenter’s first film, Dark Star, is about a bunch of isolated, bored space demolition guys whose negligence eventually leads to their own horrible deaths.

It’s rated G, cleverly — similarly to The Fantastic Mr. Fox, actually. The penultimate moment involves teaching a sentient bomb the basics of phenomenology, just enough to make it solipsistic, so that it won’t detonate.

More: prohibition makes criminals rich. More: enforcing a stupid, criminal-enriching law fills our jails with nonviolent offenders and wastes justice system resources while cannabis is easier to obtain and more potent and cheaper than ever. More: the unregulated cannabis market puts children at risk because dealers don’t check ID. More: cannabis prohibition forces the government to forgo a huge tax-and-tourism windfall.

Via WhyProhibition.ca: vote in the recent Conservative online “which issues are important?” poll to move anti-prohibition measures to the top of the list (when they asked it was “only” second or third).

Vote here, here, and here.

Obviously online polls are easily manipulated and ignored, but voting won’t hurt the cause Here are the standings.

… was one of those Mohammed cartoonists.

indies no longer need the traditional distribution channels publishers once provided, they simply need the funding

But the iPhone admin interface seems to require iPhone OS. Oh noes — bad version checking!

We played two counting games while we were there. First, Jill and Turntable and I wanted to see who would run into the most people they knew. I figured I had edge having lived there for three years, but the final tally — not counting significant others — was Turntable: 3, Jill: 1, Jack: 0. Government workers had the volunteerism edge.

The second game, which I liked more because I won, involved counting hockey jerseys.

On the second day of our trip, on the way into town, Turntable and Dr. Z and I divided Team Canada hockey jerseys into three rough piles which we thought were about equal:

1. Luongo — 1,
2. Crosby — 87, and
3. Everyone else (that included a name and number).

We odd-manned-out and Dr. Z took “everyone else”. Then we RPS‘d and for the first time in my life I didn’t pick Rock, so I lost that. Turntable got Luongo and I was left with Crosby.

I wanted to play with the design a bit so I suggested that signed jerseys should be worth more — double points. We didn’t see any over the weekend (plus, they are hard to see), so Jill’s patch was that in future they should be worth 10x as much.

I liked this game, but Turntable got off to a bastard of an early lead in the line at Deutsche Haus. Plus, I wanted to make more of a game of it, and games are made of interesting choices, but this was essentially passive. I suggested one more rule, which proved somewhat exciting:

You can zero another player’s score at any time by buying them a drink.

This game lasted until the puck dropped at the gold metal game (wooo!), and I was well behind the whole weekend up to then. We were all scoring for each other, and called Turntable to report a couple of penultimate Luongos when I overheard Z:

Z: So you got a couple and… What do you mean [Jack] won? 40!?

It was about a dozen Luongos versus about a dozen “everyones” versus about five Crosbys at the start of the day — without me having been zeroed. The good doctor was preparing to strategically zero his competition right before the game when Turntable walked by a troupe of Crosby fans that shot me far and away into the lead with minutes left to go and no liquor vendor in sight.

The day, as they say, was mine.

We worked out some final stats. I had zeroed G-Turns’ score of three in the Deutsche Haus at the cost of a $9 half-pint for a spot rate of $3 per Luongo. Later on Saturday Z was getting a better price at something like $1.25 each.

The dominant strategy, which was arrived at pretty quickly, and which the math above indicates, is that you should wait as long as possible before zeroing someone. Not only is it more cost effective, it’s better strategy barring SNAFUs like my late-hour rocket-win.

Maybe some other mechanic could be introduced to make it more rough-and-tumble. Or maybe it’s the kind of game you don’t bother to play optimally?