I ignored the NDP leadership race until last week when I tuned in to make my decision. I haven’t bothered to watch any of the debates or read any official campaign materials. My opinion is formed entirely from reading a variety of mainstream media articles and blog posts.

The NDP evolved from the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, which was a cooperative between farmers, Labour and socialists. The story of the NDP in the latter half of the 20th century is a story of Labour and socialism pushing out the farmers. Unions turns a lot of Canadians off (even many members) and I believe these ties lost the NDP many votes. I won’t vote for Brian Topp nor Peggy Nash because of their strong Labour ties.

In the federal election of 1988, Ed Broadbent won 32 seats in Western Canada. In the leadership convention of 1989, Dave Barrett ran on a platform to end western alienation while Audrey McLaughlin proposed targeting Quebec. McLaughlin won and the NDP won 0 seats in Quebec and 8 in the West, the rest going to the Reform Party. The NDP have the opportunity to cement their gains in Quebec, giving it a secure base to build a national coalition capable of forming a government. I will vote for Mulcair because he can hold Quebec and I won’t vote for Dewer because he can’t.

I definitely don’t agree with every NDP policy and I have 0 respect for party elders. I’d much rather have a centre-left party in power than a far-left party in opposition to a centre-right government. So I’d be happy to see Mulcair push the Liberals out of the centre and pull a Tony Blair making the NDP viable as a governing party. I think an NDP-Liberal coalition or Liberal-supported NDP minority government is just as reasonable a way to accomplish this, so I’ll give my first ballot vote to Cullen to support his ideas – he doesn’t have a chance of winning. I also want to remind the party that BC was once an NDP stronghold and could be again.

Therefore, I’ll be voting 1 – Cullen, 2 – Mulcair.

I came across the “college liberal” meme today and this instance blew my mind:

It’s absolutely right. If you are unhappy about the lack of whatever-minority-you-are in whatever-positions-of-power-minorities-aren’t-in (science, business, politics, etc.), you have an obligation to try to gain power. If you feel like you personally aren’t suited for particular positions of power (eg: you don’t like science or math), you need to realize that you’ve been socially conditioned to be that way and accept that that’s the full explanation for why minorities aren’t in power. It’s no mere conspiracy theory.

This is a post-feminist argument: women aren’t in positions of power because women don’t like gaining power; if you want to gain power, be less womanly.

Maybe rather than fighting against your social conditioning yourself, you think your energy would best be spent overthrowing our societies conditioning? That’s like becoming an intellectual with the intent of leading the revolution. In socialism, a revolution lead by intellectuals is known as “socialism from above” and resulted in Stalinism. Lenin was in favour of “socialism from below” – a revolution lead by workers, which recognized intellectuals as no more helpful than bourgeoisie. So maybe rather than get that degree you should go organize a union at Walmart?

Personally, I don’t believe that social conditioning in general can be overthrown. So your only hope is to crave out little niche situations that make you happy. Maybe a Women’s Studies degree is good for that?

Mormons believe that all souls must be baptized on Earth in order to be accepted into Heaven. If a person dies without having been baptized (because baptism hadn’t been invented yet, because they weren’t Mormon or because they died before baptism), their soul will remain in limbo until they are baptized by proxy. After a baptism by proxy, their soul will be offered the choice of converting to Mormonism and entering Heaven. (Although I can’t imagine why they would choose to stay in purgatory once their options are clear.)

The Mormon’s famous genealogical research is for the purpose of enumerating all the dead. The official church policy is that you should only baptize dead people that you’re directly related to, but that has been broken many times in history to baptize famous dead people. Judaists have gotten upset that the Mormons have baptized famous Jews and Holocaust victims, so the Church of Latter Day Saints has tried to halt the practice.

I say there are only three logically consistent positions to take:

1. The Mormons are right. Therefore the baptisms are doing the dead Jewish people a favour by getting them into Heaven.
2. The Mormons are wrong. The baptisms are just mumbo-jumbo that happens to use the names of Jewish people. From the perspective outside Mormonism, the rituals are not materially different from prayers for “the souls of those who died in the Holocaust” that are done in other churches.
3. Involving someone in another religion’s ritual is offensive regardless of the ritual.

As an atheist, I like the third position. I hereby object to prayers for “all the people of the world” or any other set that includes me. That includes saying “namaste” at the end of yoga class if there is any metaphysical intention. I also don’t appreciate having my property blessed.

I think most people will agree that in 1906 when the BC Teachers’ Federation (Union) was founded, there was a need for collective bargaining with government. Some people have questioned whether the union is still useful today.

In 2002, the BC government passed the Education Services Collective Agreement Act that imposed a collective agreement on teachers. In 2011, the BC Supreme Court ruled that the Collective Agreement Act violated the right to collective bargaining granted by the Charter. So it doesn’t matter whether the public thinks the teachers should have a union, the Charter grants that right.

The negotiations following that ruling have broken down because, the media claims, the teachers are demanding 5% raises every year and the government is refusing to increase spending. The government has introduced the Education Improvement Act (Bill 22), which will appoint a government-chosen “mediator” to impose a collective agreement with no spending increases. I’m skeptical that the imposed agreement will stand up in court, but it could take another 9 years to sort that out.

One of the chief purposes of collective bargaining by unions is to distort wages above the equilibrium market price. BC has a massive surplus of bachelors of education (I’m not sure there’s a surplus of experienced teachers). At some point the union’s wage bubble has to collapse – I would expect a mediator appointed by the Labour Relations Board to take that into account, although they may not take it into account as much as the government would like.

The union should be trying to reduce the supply of teachers – this is usually done in professions by credential inflation. So I expect to soon see Master’s degrees required for new teachers (existing teachers will be grandfathered in). Since the Charter prevents the government from busting the union, they should be looking for a way to restructure the education system to reduce wages – something like the different tiers of nurses might work.

Via BoingBoing, a paper accepted to the Journal of Apocryphal Chemistry by researchers from Miskatonic University: “A Simple and Convenient Synthesis of Pseudoephedrine From N-Methylamphetamine“.

Pseudoephedrine, active ingredient of Sudafed®, has long been the most popular nasal decongestant in the United States due to its effectiveness and relatively mild side effects. In recent years it has become increasingly difficult to obtain psuedoephedine in many states because of its use as a precursor for the illegal drug N-methylamphetamine (also known under various names including crystal meth, meth, ice, etc.). While in the past many stores were able to sell pseudoephedrine, new laws in the United States have restricted sales to pharmacies, with the medicine kept behind
the counter. The pharmacies require signatures and examination of government issued ID in order to purchase pseudoephedrine. Because the hours of availability of such pharmacies are often limited, it would be of great interest to have a simple synthesis of pseudoephedrine from reagents
which can be more readily procured.

A quick search of several neighborhoods of the United States revealed that while pseudoephedrine is difficult to obtain, N-methylamphetamine can be procured at almost any time on short notice and in quantities sufficient for synthesis of useful amounts of the desired material. Moreover, according to government maintained statistics, Nmethylmphetamine is becoming an increasingly attractive starting material for pseudoephedrine, as the availability of Nmethylmphetamine has remained high while prices have dropped and purity has increased.

…

While N-methylamphetamine itself is a powerful decongestant, it is less desirable in a medical setting because of its severe side effects and addictive properties. Such side effects may include insomnia, agitation, irritability, dry mouth, sweating, and heart palpitations. Other side effects
may include violent urges or, similarly, the urge to be successful in business or finance.

In our search for sources of N-methylamphetamine we have found that, similar to research grade chemicals purchased from the major chemical supply houses, the purity of the reagent varies greatly between suppliers and even between batches despite the above cited overall increase in purity. Unfortunately, and again similar to suppliers of fine chemicals, relative cost is not strongly correlated to sample quality.

I’ve used pseudoephedrine to treat nasal congestion the last few times I was sick. In Canada you can get pseudoephedrine mixed with acetaminophen (high doses cause liver failure) off the shelf, or straight-up by asking a pharmacist or ordering online. Phenylephrine is an alternative decongestant, although it is of dubious effectiveness.

In the States but not Canada, methamphetamine is available with a prescription under the brand name Desoxyn. It’s FDA approved for ADHD and obesity, and prescribed off-label for narcolepsy and depression. JFK was on methamphetamine along with a whole bunch of other powerful drugs for his big pile of medical conditions.

This is a genealogical, geographical and temporal diagram of electronic music genres. It’s more up to date than Ishkur’s Guide to Electronic Music. Of course it isn’t linked to any samples or (not particularly helpful) commentary, so it’s better as an overview:

• With HTML5 animation
• As a static image

I’m not sure what the meaning of their transitive links are. For example, if UK Garage evolved from Jungle, and Grime evolved from UK Garage, what does it mean to directly connect Jungle and Grime? And would it perhaps not be more accurate to connect Drum & Bass to Grime?

Anyway, each of these detailed links could be dissected with great detail, but it does a good job of capturing the broad strokes. The diagram does an excellent job of using colour to help with spatially distant and overlapping links.

Since this is HTML5, the code can be stolenremixed to make other visualizations with dynamic bezier curves.

I saw this in a comment on Reddit the other day and then lost it, so I want to paraphrase it before I forget it. It’s also a consequence of stuff I learned in public sector financial management.

If you can borrow money with x% interest and then invest that money with a return rate of (x + n)% (adjusted for inflation), then it is economically rational to borrow the money. The profit you make off the investment will let you pay off your loan in the future. However, to keep a good credit rating, all you need to do is keep paying the premium and have the ability to pay off the loan – you don’t ever actually need to pay it off. You are financially sustainable if your wealth grows faster than your debt.

This isn’t fool-proof for individuals, because they can’t borrow money at an interest rate lower than the rate of return for guaranteed investments. So they have to take a bet that their wealth will grow faster and sometimes they lose (like when there’s a real estate crash).

Governments have much better credit ratings, because their investment is their own economy and if their investment fails they can, in theory, raise taxes to cover their debts (riots are a side-effect). So if a government can borrow money at an interest rate lower than the expected growth of GDP (adjusted for inflation), it’s economically rational to do that rather than pay down debt. The economy grows fast enough that the debt eventually shrinks to an insignificant amount.

Of course figuring out the exact debt is non-trivial, but the basic idea stands: we should be looking at debt-to-GDP ratio rather than absolute debt. This shows why we should resist comparisons with household debt (bonds are not like credit cards) and resist the impulse of right-wing Albertans to pay off the debt. However, it also shows why degrowth is completely incompatible with contemporary economic management.

Councilors Ben Isitt and Lisa Helps are asking for public input on whether the replacement Johnson Street Bridge design should be changed so that one of the three car lanes could be upgraded to rail in the future. They have no idea how much this would cost, which makes it kind of like asking the public “do you like puppies?”

Mayor Dean Fortin has warned that switching to a rail-upgradable design will waste some of the $2 million spent on design work so far and jeopardize the $12 million in federal funding contingent on completion by March 2012. Given that everything Fortin said about the Bridge before the election was spin, I’m not sure his election win is enough that we should listen to him.

One argument against spending a dime on rail-upgradability is that rail would be used entirely by people living in other municipalities, so Victoria taxpayers shouldn’t be paying for it. But mass transit to downtown would increase the value of downtown for offices and shopping that will result in increased taxes and prevent sprawl (like Uptown).

My argument is that we have absolutely no evidence that there will be demand for mass transit over the Bridge in the next 100 years. BC Transit has said that their first priority is the Douglas Street corridor, followed by mass transit to UVic. Only after that is built would a transit line running through Esquimalt be considered.

Ben Isitt says that we’ll need rail on the bridge after Peak Oil. But there is no regional strategic plan for mitigating Peak Oil. He shouldn’t just be coming up with this plan in his head as potential mitigation strategies occur to him.

Victoria has an infrastructure deficit. That means that every dollar invested in future infrastructure is a dollar that isn’t spent to keep the infrastructure we currently have.

A common accident for cyclists is the “door prize”: when they run into an open car door that wasn’t there a second ago. I believe many people receive door prizes because they are too timid to ride at the correct place on the road: one door length from parked cars – traffic be damned. (Bicycles are traffic.) In many bike lanes, you have to ride at the far left edge of the lane. Sharrows are usually in the right place.

Via the Nudge blog, according to the New York Times, the Dutch have a different solution:

When you are about to get out of the car, you reach for the door handle with your right hand — bringing your arm across your body to the door. This forces a driver to swivel shoulders and head, so that before opening the door you can see if there is a bike coming from behind.

I think this would be more effective than current campaigns urging us to, you know, just not hit cyclists. I’m going to teach myself to do it and then start getting other people to do it.

It’s estimated (Black Rock City Corp is secretive) that the lottery had 70,000 credit cards requesting 1.7 tickets (total of 120,000 requests for 40,000 tickets = 1 in 3 odds). The highest ever recorded yearly jump in ticket demand was 15%, so at most there is a real demand for 62,000 total tickets. 3,000 tickets were sold in the presale and 10,000 remain to be sold, leaving a real demand for 49,000 tickets. Not all those 49,000 potential attendees had the financial ability to purchase a ticket at this time, so it’s assumed that many people entered the lottery with multiple cards and are now holding surplus tickets.

Surplus tickets will be redistributed in one of three ways:

• The official Secure Ticket Exchange Program
• Craigslist, eBay and StubHub
• Local community transactions

Since physical tickets aren’t distributed until July, there is a significant risk to buying tickets unofficially online. The official exchange program will only redistribute tickets at face value, but many Burners believe that is the only ethical price. I suspect most Burners will redistribute their tickets in their local community.

Unfortunately, applications for theme camps, art installations, mutant vehicles, fire conclave troops, regional effigies and other projects are due before many of the tickets will be redistributed. Most people who submit proposals for projects are connected to their local Burner communities, so they will have no problem getting tickets in the long run. The question is: will uncertainly about tickets cause these projects to lose momentum? Certainly I’ll have trouble continuing my personal planning and local contributions with full enthusiasm. (I hadn’t really thought about this when I first endorsed the lottery.)

Although I still think a lottery is the best general solution to excess demand for an economically-diverse event, the participation aspect of Burning Man suggests a different approach: have leaders of projects and regional contacts hand out tickets. It distributes and scales the selection on merit currently done for low income and art grant tickets. This is not necessarily more biased against virgins than any other way of distributing tickets and would skew attendees in a mostly good way.