"Yes We Can" -> "Yes I will"

In case you were in a hole last night, Barack Obama is now the president elect of the United States of America.

While watching the election coverage last night, Anita (my wife) pointed out a stark difference in the venues chosen by the candidates to accept or concede the election results and the people in attendance.

Barack Obama accepted the election results in front of 100 000 of the general public [3] in a public park in Chicago [2].

John McCain conceded the election in front of an (at the start) invite-only crowd [4] at the luxury Arizona Biltmore Hotel [1]. Apparently, as the election results came in they opened it up to everyone at the rally [4]. Maybe they began to see the difference in their outlooks that resulted in such an overwhelming win for their competition. Let's hope.

The crowd in Chicago was chanting "Yes we did" most of the evening starting from the announcement that the election had been called. However, Obamas speech centered around the phrase "Yes we can". As we move into the next four years I hope that the general public of the USA and even the world holds on to the phrase in the present tense. Electing Obama was only the start of the change that is needed. Obama cannot enforce this change on his own. He needs our support in small actions, just like we supported him with small donations.

Will we as individuals unite and effect the small changes? Will we change from prejudice to respect? Will we change from exclusivity to acceptance? Will we change from fear to hope?

Yes I will.

[1] - http://www.arizonabiltmore.com/
[2] - http://www.chicagoparkdistrict.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/parks.detail/object_id/83AA6305-ADBE-4D8A-B333-004449057EA9
[3] - http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5j9B3dL99xtF_ib-_cmTXadhAZ3NAD948JOSO0
[4] - http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1598611/20081105/story.jhtml

Why I haven't seen one hockey game this season

I haven't had any interest in hockey this season. In fact, I think I've watched a combined total of 10 minutes of hockey so far, and that includes the 7.5 minutes of highlights I sat through in order to see the Baseball highlights. I definitely think that the rule changes over the past few years in the NHL have decreased my enjoyment of watching NHL games.

An example of the types of changes that really annoy me has something to do with their relentless pursuit of increased offence [1]. Is the North-American public so enamored with goals that they could care less about anything else? If so, why don't we play 3 on 3 with no goalies and make the nets huge?

I hate power play goals. I always have. I hate them just like I hate penalty shots in Soccer. They're cheap and are too-often the direct result of a bad referees decision. In most sports this isn't so bad because the best referees get to make judgement calls and can thus avoid goals which are within the letter of the rule but violate the spirit of the rule. In the NHL, however, they've made a concerted effort over the past few years to take judgement calls out of it. I for one am sick of it, and won't give them any more of my already precious time.

I'll keep watching football where a hold is only a penalty when the referee thinks it affected the play.

[1] - http://www.tsn.ca/columnists/darren_dreger/?id=252833

More idiots

I typically put my head in the sand when it comes to elections, and then I vote for whichever party I think has a chance of winning that has the most socially liberal policies. This past few months however, I've been trying to read up more often on what's going on, who's supporting what and who I agree with.

Mostly, I've just come to realize how dumb most people really are. I mean, people are suggesting that same sex marriages aren't good for society and then they have the audacity to suggest that this is a biological claim not at all rooted in religious bigotry [3]. Then I find out that the average republican, when presented with evidence that proves their viewpoint is wrong, tends to more strongly believe in the viewpoint [2]! And governments are taught that to stay in power they need to pander to these same idiots because they're the ones who are voting [1].

It's a depressing situation to me. The average person can't be bothered to actually inform themselves on a subject. More importantly, many of the ones who are against progressive, effective policies are prone to more strongly fight against them when scientific research is shown which proves them wrong! How can we be expected to fight this? In Canada they ask for stronger criminal penalties, because in their uninformed opinions this will reduce crime, even though there is ample evidence that it doesn't work [1]. We tried it out in the 19th and 20th Century and it didn't work, so we explicitly avoided it in future laws because we knew it doesn't work. And what happens now? Our government suggests it again because they know that it will win them votes and that's all that matters in today's democracy.

Personally, I'm beginning to more and more believe that the average person is not born with enough brain power or common sense to deserve the right to vote and that democracy is generally busted in its current form. There. I really said it. I know that will be a contentious statement but think about it. If people can't be bothered to inform themselves of what the experts say, and if they can't be bothered to understand that these experts are _actually_ smarter than them and if they can't be bothered to understand that these experts aren't just spouting off opinion but rather that there is truth in what the experts claim, then how can I trust that these same people to vote intelligently.

There are enough issues that aren't actually clear cut, don't have a history of proof, nor a wealth of experts backing it to make elections interesting. We don't need pandering politicians catering to the uninformed voters to further muddy the water.

So what do we do? How do we fix it? What can I do? Voting in the past 2 elections hasn't helped, I live in a riding that always (in a landslide) supports the politicians who are suggesting these backwards, uninformed policies.

[1] - http://ffwdweekly.com/article/news-views/news/harper-youth-justice-policy-not-grounded-in-eviden/
[2] - http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2008/09/the_backfire_effect.html
[3] - http://www.abetterkindofangry.com/2008/10/gah-are-people-really-this-stupid.html

Gah! Are people really this stupid?

From (1)
“How can you be a bigot when you’re looking out for society as a whole?”

ummmm? Does he really not see the parallels between him saying this and other groups that have promoted bigotry under the "society will be better" banner?

(1) - http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/nyregion/12marriage.html?_r=1&em&oref=slogin

Busy Busy Busy ... and then Vacation

It's been a busy few weeks. On August 15th, I switched jobs and started working with some friends of mine at a local company focused on the art scene. During the next 4 weeks, we launched 4 websites and 1 major feature. Unfortunately I can't yet talk about all of them, but I am excited about the ones that I can talk about.

Artcity Festival is a yearly festival of visual arts. Great people, fun time and launching the start of their new online home was a pleasure.

Free and Easy Travel is a Canadian based travel company that provides guided trips to South-east Asia. They have been doing so for a number of years and as such have tons of content, phenomenal photographs and are all around great guys. This site is on of my favorite designs from Ian Russell.

Structured Abstraction is the company that I now work for, and recently the guy who now does business development, Jay MacGillivray, was voted to be the Top 40 Under 40 in Calgary. Congratulations Jay! He was recognized for his phenomenal work in the arts community of Calgary. It will be a pleasure and a joy to work with him again. Because of his award there would be an increased awareness of what he has been doing and we wanted to ensure that we had a reasonable website up and going, so in one day we wrote the content, (harder than it sounds), launched the website and designed and implemented the graphical pieces surrounding the content.

Unfortunately I can't say much more about the other two, but suffice it to say that I was BUSY BUSY BUSY. Now, if you consider that just before I left Etsy Inc. we wrapped up a year long port of an older busted middle layer and replaced it with something that scaled horizontally. That puts the count up to 6 releases in 4 weeks!

So now I'm on some welcome vacation. It starts with a Week in Florida with my Family. Then, we spend less than a week in Portland, Oregon with my Sister and Brother in Law and their 1-year old DeLuca. Then we travel to Greece for 8 days and Beirut, Lebanon for 6 days to visit with my Wife's Family.

Now that I think about it, I'm not sure how relaxing it will be. :P

Ummm ... huh?

http://arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.ars/2008/09/12/second-gates-seinfeld-ad-shows-ad-campaign-has-potential

Does anyone else get these? They feel like a bad version of The Office to me.

Lighting

I want one: http://gizmodo.com/5045555/stimuli-30-lamp-is-perfect-for-home-work-spaceship

By shifting around the panels with an internal 3 axis gearbox, light output can fill the light gap left by a waning sun, maintaining a constant light level through the day.