55dB

WOLF!

I think my few dedicated readers would be upset if I didn’t mention this…
Parliament to resume with more Liberal threats

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

30.Mar.08 Uncategorized Read more Comment (1)

Mayhem, Mayhem, Mayhem

Do we need all those “mayhems”? We do. All right, fair enough. I suppose you know your business.

Robyn and I have been watching the housing market over the past while, seeing if we can move up eventually. We’ve looked at maybe building, which is a pretty exciting and scary prospect (especially when you’re talking Calgary numbers - and ESPECIALLY the West side) - and we’ve talked to a builder or two. Today we decided to go look at a new development down in the SW part of the riding, and showed up 20 minutes after the development ‘opened’. See topic title.

The last few developers we’ve talked to it’s been very much a, “We’ve got these lots, take your time, here’s some brochures, yada yada yada.” This was very much a, “are you going to put money down? no? go away.” Sorry, not willing to drop that much money on a 5 minute decision (yes, I know, that makes me very non-government type, doesn’t it. So does being a guy trained in logic and math, so hush) - granted, the money down was refundable, but I really wasn’t willing to fight people (who would later become my neighbours) over which person gets which lot. What made that even worse was that all the housing elevations were pre-selected, so you not only pick the location, but that determines your house looks like when you drop your deposit. Nothing like pissing off the person with whom you need to build a fence with in a year.

If I wanted to yell out bids, I would have worked the TSE floor. I’m willing to be patient and find what we want.

29.Mar.08 Uncategorized Read more Comments (0)

How’d they Vote?

An article about the difficulty of interpreting Hansard with respect to how MPs voted was published by the Ottawa Citizen the other day.

They mentioned the website How’d They Vote, which I have linked from my campaign site, but as the creator of the site mentioned, it’s hard to stay up-to-date.

How MPs voted is a matter of public record - and in a knowledge-based society, it should be relatively easy to get this information out from Parliament’s standpoint. Barring that, however, I think it’s every MPs job to communicate how they voted to their constituents, and I know that I at least intend to publish that information if I become elected. It’s about accountability.

Politics is changing in the modern world. It’s forcing people to be more accountable, but at the same time, the magnifying glass sometimes prevents people from running. It’s all about where we focus that magnifying glass, though, and frankly - when you’re accountable to 100,000+ people, that magnifying glass should be precisely on how you represent them in government decisions.

28.Mar.08 Uncategorized Read more Comments (4)

Trojan Horses, Privacy, and Voter Engagement

If you watch CBC for more than 5 minutes this week, you’re likely to see a trailer for a new mini-series called The Trojan Horse. It is a Canadian Political Thriller. (stop laughing!). It’s actually a sequel to another very well done Canadian political thriller miniseries called H2O. I’m actually really looking forward to it - I might even re-watch H2O this weekend (yes, I have it on DVD. Remember, I am a Canadian political geek).

In other news, I heard back one last time from Citigroup about my privacy request. I’m satisfied with the result this far, as I now have the name of the company that provided my information to them, and will be pursuing this branch of my privacy’s tree until I can find the source. This whole thing came out of being relatively annoyed at the direct marketing campaign that included me, but I’m learning some useful things about the Privacy laws in this country. I’ll try to document the last few months relatively soon, when I’m a bit less busy with other things…

Sounding like the Spring will not be the time for an election. That will likely change in 5 minutes, and then again in another 5. In the meantime, another ‘project’ which has come up is a project to try to engage the voters of Alberta after the last provincial election (even though we had 13% more show up than the by-elections… ). I had a good chat with Enlightened Savage over the phone yesterday about the project - mainly what needs to be done and how we can get there. Hopefully we pundits, webloggers, and concerned citizens can get something off the ground and work to improve the situation before 2012.

25.Mar.08 Uncategorized Read more Comments (2)