Monkey learns to ride a Segway

Best. Video. Ever.



October 22nd, 2008 / 0 Comments / Tags: monkey, segway

Booze By the Numbers

The CBC is running a fascinating series of stories on alcohol consumption in Canada. My favorite is "Alcohol by the Numbers", to which I've added a few extras for comparisons sake:

• $18 billion: Total sales at beer and liquor stores in Canada in the fiscal year ending March 2007, a five per cent increase from the previous year.
• $220 billion: The entire budget of the government of Canada for fiscal 2007-2008.
• 47: percentage of beer sales as a proportion of total alcohol sales in 2007. That's down from 52 per cent in 1997.
• 2.3 billion: Number of litres of beer Canadians purchased in 2007; per capita that is 69.69 litres for every man, woman and child.
• 28: Wine accounted for 28 per cent of the alcohol market in 2007, up from 21 per cent in 1997.
• 71: 71 per cent of spirits sold in Canada in 2007 were Canadian spirits, with whisky, scotch and bourbon being the most popular choices.
• $667: The amount, on average, each Canadian spent on alcohol in 2007.
• $463: The amount that alcohol abuse costs every Canadian a year, in lost productivity, heath-care costs and crime-related costs, according to a 2008 study by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.
• 5: Alcohol's ranking on a list of harmful substances, behind heroin, cocaine, barbiturates and street methadone. Cannabis was 11th on the list, compiled by researchers at Bristol University in the U.K.

October 18th, 2008 / 0 Comments / Tags: lay off the sauce

The 40-ft tall Optimus Prime of Kunming, China

October 18th, 2008 / 0 Comments / Tags: transformers, kitch, public art, heroes

Rep by Pop

Okay, let's compare the percentages of the popular vote to the percentages of seats in the House of Commons that each party took. I'll be taking all of my figures for the rest of this post from the CBC website and the Wikipedia pages on the Canadian election results for 2004 and 2006.

PARTY /// % VOTE /// % SEATS

Conservative /// 37.63 /// 46.43

Liberal /// 26.24 /// 24.68

Bloc /// 9.97 /// 16.23

NDP /// 18.20 /// 12.01

Independent /// 0.65 /// 0.01

Green /// 6.80 /// 0.00

Other /// 0.51 /// 0.00

As is fairly evident, the only parties benefiting from first-past-the-post are those who poll a minimum level of broadly based popular support (the Conservatives) or those with a strong regional concentration of a relatively minimal popular support (the Bloc). The threshold for converting broadly-based popular support into corresponding seat count would be the Liberals, who converted 26% of the popular vote into 24.5% of seats in Parliament.

Below that threshold, the disproportionality and biases of the system emerge. The 18% popular vote polled by the NDP only converted into 12% of the seats. To me, 6.19% is a pretty serious discrepancy. Based on the absolute number of voters in this election, that represents about .

Comparatively this was a good result for the NDP though. Looking back at the 2006 election, the NDP got 9.42% of the seats with 17.40% of the popular vote (a 7.98% discrepancy). In the 2004 election they earned only 6.17% of the seats with 15.70% of the popular vote in 2004 (a 9.53% discrepancy).

Maybe you can shake that all off just because you don't like the NDP, but how is this a properly functioning democracy if where the NDP had almost twice the share of the popular vote compared to the Bloc, yet got 13 fewer seats?

The promise of a first-past-the-post system is that (1) the majority rules (regardless of how minor that majority may be); and (2) that broad and consolidating national party stability is to be encouraged. Together, these are meant to produce a stable government. But based on its own terms of reference, the system is not working. As a 63% majority of Canadians are far more liberally inclined than the Conservative platform, the majority is not ruling. Furthermore, parties with a legitimate claim to representative national standing, such as the NDP, are not accorded the voice they have earned.

The check and balance on the rule of a disproportionate minority is, of course, the option of the other parties to hold a vote of no confidence and topple the government. In the alternative, they could consolidate into a single party. Neither option is practically reasonable however. Constant federal elections only result in "voter fatigue" and won't often change the outcome. Encouraging parties to consolidate under a single banner is really just forcing very real political opinion into a shape that fits a very artificial theory of democratic representation. As we've seen in the U.S., a two-party system stifles vigorous political discourse from across the spectrum as results in over-consolidation.

October 18th, 2008 / 0 Comments / Tags: Canada, federal elections, popular representation